6443/19363
Now we are no longer parenting 24/7 and have a bit of help, the weekends have become a lot more fun. It's family time. It still grinds your face into the ground by the end of the day, but it's fun til then. It would be more fun if the 2 year old could sit still and didn't tip everything out of its box and then not play with it and just tip everything out of another box. But I know I will miss this little bundle of fizz when he's morphed into a five year old. If I can remember him. It doesn't seem possible that my five year old was ever two, but then the photos around the house dispute this.
Phoebe is ever more imaginative and creative. She wants to be a pop star and some of her improvised songs make me think that maybe she might be. She did a mournful one about the Coronavirus, which I don't think has mainstream appeal but employed a minor key to give a sense of menace: “The Corona virus is coming today, baby. Uh uh uh uh. Baby how ARE you? How ARE you? Yeah the Coronavirus is here. You're going to here me say…â€
It's very different in tone to her favourite song Barbie Girl. More like something by Nick Drake.
It's hard to know how much impact the virus is having on the psychology of the kids but as long as it is creating great art like this then I guess it's worth it.
My mum sent us an amazing email today telling Phoebe that when she was her age she also had to go through a weird and unsettling experience, being a kid during World War Two. Mum speculated that Phoebe might also remember the Corona Virus times when she's an older lady, though I hope the virus will not be quite as long lasting and devastating as that war.
There was great stuff about the Morrison shelter that served as a dining table and the gasmasks that they had to learn to use (not sure if a proportion of people refused to wear them because they didn't want to go down the shops like that just because of some gas) and the fact that my grandad didn't go to fight because his feet were too small and they didn't have boots for him. He was stationed in the UK instead and still only saw the family a few times, which surprised me, saving up his chocolate ration to give to his daughter on his rare return. The beaches all had barbed wire and mines on them so mum couldn't even go to Redcar to play in the sand.
My grandad's brother, Ernie, didn't make it back from Dunkirk, so my grandad was lucky that his feet were so dainty.
