James Proclaims!

Rain has stopped play once again at Proclaims Towers. The garden, so oft the location for my blog-writing of late, is off-limits due to inclement weather. This means that I must attempt to occupy my children indoors, while attempting to write. The positives of this are that I can write using my laptop rather than my phone. I’m getting more adept at using a hand-held device to scribe, but a keyboard is still my tool of choice (when indeed I am given a choice). The downside is that my children are more inclined to disturb the creative process (insofar as this can really be described at ‘creative’).

At the moment my daughters are marauding around the room armed with wooden spoons and banging on any available wall or surface that they can find. Not only does this create something of a racket, but several parts of me have been viewed as acceptable surfaces for wooden spoon percussion.

I suppose it is pleasing that my children get on so well. They generally do always seem to be quite pleased to be in each other’s company and can entertain themselves for quite a long time without needing too much direct input from me. It is just a slight shame that indirect input from me seems to be required quite often and normally involves me being hit with a blunt object.

I could silence them quite quickly by turning on the television. I’m not above this tactic, but, in a rare turn of events, neither of my offspring has shown any interest in the TV for the entirety of the afternoon. I possess enough parental guilt to not want to be the person who introduces the concept of extended screen time. I will, of course, acquiesce to the inevitable demand of screen time when it comes but I feel there is a subtle difference between the notion of allowing my children to watch TV and insisting that they do.

I did have a moment of parental guilt when Little Proclaims asked me to read her a story and I refused. Literacy is obviously something I would want to encourage in my children. However, the guilt soon disappeared when I remembered that Little Proclaims can now read quite well, and immediately started doing just that upon my refusal. I think there’s something about giving a fish and teaching to fish which applies here. Although my refusal was more of a timing thing than anything else. I do still like to read to Little Proclaims when I can, because she has always been an appreciative audience.

Mini Proclaims, who can’t yet read, being only two years old, is a less appreciative audience and although she enjoys the concept of ‘being read to’, often insists on turning the pages while I’m mid-sentence, so very little reading occurs. Mrs Proclaims overcomes this by making up her own stories to go with the pictures and I believe she and Mini Proclaims enjoy this act of philistinism. I like to do things properly and therefore derive rather less pleasure from reading to Mini Proclaims than I do from reading to her older sister.

Which is not to say I derive less pleasure overall from Mini Proclaims. She is very much what some might describe as ‘a character’. She has, since late April, been wearing bunny ears during all of her waking hours and has become something of a local celebrity. They were a cheap novelty item purchased at Easter, meant to be enjoyed briefly and then hidden away with all other such novelties, to resurface from time to time until broken or completely forgotten about. They were not designed for the industrial use that Mini Proclaims has put them through and now look worn and threadbare. She will not, however, consent to them being removed. We have tried bribing her with other novelty ears. She was once prone to cat ears. But she will have none of it. The bunny ears are here to stay and now complete strangers walk up to us, laughing and saying things like.

“She’s still wearing them then?”

To be clear, she doesn’t think she’s a bunny. She likes to play games in which she imitates animals and her repertoire includes a range of creatures. She has been a dog, a cat, and a cow in my presence. All the time sporting a pair of bunny ears.

It’s quite hard to explain and in many ways quite perplexing.

But it is also ridiculously cute. She is not always the best behaved of children (as I have mentioned in previous posts), but it is very hard to stay annoyed by a small child wearing bunny ears.

And I think she is well aware of that