Literally...

Having three small kids is great.

It's bloody tiring (my wife cops for more of that side than I do in fairness as she's nursing our 3 month old boy, "Gubban", whilst I do any nighttime requests for the girls, who are 21 months, "Flisan", and 3 yrs 9 months old, "Gummisen" or "Gummis"), but you never stop learning new things or seeing life in a whole new perspective. The names by the way are their Swedish nicknames as my wife is Swedish. Still not entirely sure about putting their real names on a blog so that'll cover them for now :)

The amount of speaking and listening in a literal (and logical, really) sense that gets done is mind boggling.

Tonight my wife asked Gummisen, having found a box of contraband candy stolen from a visiting playmate hidden in her room, if she "had anything to tell Mummy?". Funnily enough the pause and reddening cheeks betrayed her protestations of innocence, and she came around quickly to the fact she had some "godis" (Swedish for sweets) in her room.

"Where were they?" I asked, actually directing the question at my wife but getting a quipped but quiet answer from Gummis "errr, under my pillow Daddy".

"Why did you put them there Gummisen?".

"So Mummy would not find them....". Ask a dumb question, get a straightforward answer!

Poor Gummis has copped it a bit from Flisan of late. The younger lady is learning to play together quite well, but still has the limited attention span and occasional "clonkiness" of a toddler that makes it hard for them to play together for any length of time. Still, this does not stop her from trying, so when Gummis is a bit bored of her younger sister and makes a break for freedom, Flisan has taken to deliberately winding her up, in an effort to regain her attention and "make" her play with her again.

This effort is sometimes not without amusement for the adult audience, even though Gummis would not appreciate the funny side. A few days ago, after taking Flisan in the car to pick Gummis up from Kindergarten, my wife felt it was a shame for Gummis that Flisan basically shouted LALALALALALALAAAAAAAALALALALALALALAAAAA at her incessantly in order to try and force her to engage. Gummis was trying to have a little bit of quiet "come down" time after a particularly frenetic morning playing so got genuinely upset and kept begging Flisan to be quiet. My wife somehow defused the situation, and then told Gummis in a semi-conspiratorial tone that, next time Flisan kept doing the LALALA treatment the best way to get her to be quiet was to say nothing. Gummisen, ever the conscientious learner, asked if Mummy was sure, would that really work? My wife reassured her that the best way to make Flisan stop with the loud LALALA stuff was just to say nothing to her.

The next day, during the post-kindergarten trip, Gummis again had to endure some LALALAAAAAAs of stentorian nature, before she remembered the advice her Mummy gave her the previous day. Quickly and calmly she turned to Flisan and said "Nothing. Nothing. NOTTTTTHIIINNNNG. NOTHING NO..... This is NOT working really Mummy. NOTHING, NOOOOTTTTHING Flisan. Flisan, I SAID NOTHING!!".

As the LALALALA / NOOOTTTHING battle raged in the back of the car my wife was spluttering her coffee all over the car and trying not to cry....