the twinkle in my eye

since moving to this house i have become “handymom”. i have tools. i fixed a leaking tap. i screwed a door knocker (which says ‘cead mile failte’) to our front door. i drilled a hole in the kitchen cabinetry. and today i built a big box. it’s the walls for our first raised garden bed. i feel all butch.

the twinkle is fun but exhausting. i haven’t had a full night’s sleep for at least a couple of weeks as she’s been crying out a couple of times a night just needing to be re-covered and rearranged. last night we sent her over to the grandparents for the night and this morning i slept in late, late, late. it was a sad irony that the night we didn’t have the twinkle waking us up during the night we had all-night track works going on on the train line outside our bedroom window. but i was so happy about the prospect of a full night’s sleep that i was able to block it out and just sleep.

the twinkle’s hair is growing and people have – on more that one occasion – likened it to a mullet. so i managed to put it in very cute ponytails for one day last week but she hasn’t let me go near her hair since.

this week she has learned to vocalise “no”. she’s been shaking her head forcefully for ages, but now she’s saying “nah!”. tonight she kinda sang along to five little ducks, which i’ve been singing to her lots lately (this song was my brother’s party trick when he was little). she also says “war?” which is how she asks for water. and she continues to call every mammal “cat!”. she was delighted to visit jojof who has real cats and statue cats in abundance.

she’s got her special little quirks, notably her desire to wear video cords around her neck. she also likes to wear my swimming goggles around her neck, especially when we go for a ride around the block.

yes, she is wearing a lot of pink in this photo. normally we don’t dress her in pink but we use the pink stuff as around-the-house/garden gear and this photo was taken on a day when we were gardening. there’s been lots of gardening and with the sunny weather today i really felt the love for our garden and our home. hooray for us and our amazingly quick house purchase!

of course, there’s lots that goes on and many things i could blog about, but now that i finally have found the time to sit down and write, all that comes to mind is the above, plus the fact that her skin had a mild reaction to the soap we used in the bath tonight. sorry for the lack of juicy content.

here’s something juicy – special k and i have been each other’s special friends for 5 years plus one day today. (we celebrated by sleeping uninterrupted throught the night.)