Category: Uncategorized

At half seven, Little S came to see me for our pre-bedtime ritual of “kiss questions”. I ask her questions. If she gets them right she gets a kiss. If she gets them wrong she gets tickled. Little S generally prefers to get them all wrong.

She jumped up on my knee and I started with a Fathers Day theme:

“Which little girl whose name begins with ‘S’ made me very very happy today?”

She put her hand up: “Me!” I gave her a big squeeze and the obligatory kiss.

“But I also made you a bit sad” she said. She looked into my eyes and then looked down.

“How?”

“When I was in church I didn’t do what you told me to.”

Another little breaking of my heart. I told her she hadn’t made me sad. The only thing that could make me sad would be her being sad. She tucked her head into my shoulder.

This is what happens when you give the girls a free hand to choose their own outfits:

Lil S was sat on my lap this evening as we made plasticine crocodiles. She started to shape a ball of green dough with a plastic knife.

She looked up at me and said “Daddy, you can only do this when you are four. When will you be four?”

I explained that we only get to be four once and then felt unaccountably wistful. How great it would be to be four and Lil S’s friend. How fantastic to be bumbling along discovering the world together.

Oh, the things we cannot have.