Second third birthday


It was Destroyer’s third birthday today, which we celebrated in slightly lower key style than the party last weekend; Destroyer opened some presents and then played outside in the sun, while we abandoned her to the care of grandparents and went to the market to buy vegetables and alcohol.

She still got a cake, but that wasn’t brought out until the afternoon. We fed her, called her other grandparents and aunt (hooray for videoconferencing via Facebook Messenger) and then in the late afternoon, to help shift some of the sugar calories she’d been mainlining, I took her and her sister for a walk.

To the doughnut shop.

Throughout our walk, La Serpiente complained. Her main complaint is to whine that unless I let her do something (for example walk in the road, or clamber on a precarious rock, or just tit about) she won’t love me at all, ever and ever. I think this might be an improvement on being told I’m not invited to her party, but maybe it’s a derangement.

Destroyer, on the other hand, was happy and content. We walked all the way to the doughnut shop without complaint, and when La Serpiente was anguished because she’d eaten her half of her doughnut, Destroyer shared more of hers, unbidden. On the way back, I gave Destroyer a piggy back and she volunteered to give it up in favour of her sister, after La Serpiente’s howls that it’s unfair to have to walk after being rude to your father for half an hour.

I was impressed by this, right up until they reached the house and began to bicker over who had seen the house first. It’s a two storey structure so spotting it is hardly an incredible feat of observation. Nevertheless, both girls were reduced to yelling "nananaaaa" at one another and weeping. Hostilities were over by bedtime, and mercifully both children were asleep almost as soon as I’d finished their bedtime stories.

So it comes to pass that Destroyer is a more mature three year old than La Serpiente at five. Some of the time. Onwards and ever upwards.


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