For Arddun’s first birthday, I had bought her a toy garage – with the ramps and the car wash and parking and the petrol station. A couple years later, Tony handed her a small box of his childhood treasures – cars, buses, trucks, and even a wooden cowboy gun.
She plays with Tony’s toys still, and Atticus loves them literally to pieces. But then one day, he came across the toy garage and it was like a light came on inside him. Ah hah, he seemed to think as he put two and two together.
For the past 2 days, he would retreat into the library or the rumpus room and play with the garage and the cars for at least half an hour on his own. He is smitten.
As much as I’ve been reluctant to stereotype my children’s behaviour based on their gender, I am beginning to understand what mothers of sons mean when they say, “He is such a BOY.”
A few of you know that I’ve been searching for a paying job for the last few months, in amongst the steady stream of visitors and birthday parties we’ve had.
Lately, I’ve been more self-conscious of how different my interactions with both children are; how I automatically give grace and room for mistakes with Atticus, and yet how much tougher I seem to be on Arddun because she is older “and therefore should know better”. And yes sometimes, she ought to know better.
But sometimes, she’s not even 5 yet. She’s not. She’s very tall for her age, her dresses are for six-year-olds, and she definitely knows her own mind on many things. But she’s not even 5 yet.
Months, MONTHS late with these photos, but I thought I’d share what little photos I managed to take and borrow (thank you Andrea and Famiza!) that were taken during our trip to Singapore in late January.
We’ve been reading Alice in Wonderland to Arddun lately – the unabridged version. She’s watched the Disney version about ten times and has a very short board book version of it. But it wasn’t until she kept asking me to read the Ladybird Classic version – broken into chapters – that I wondered about her appetite for the whole hog.
I ended up downloading Alice for the iPad. More ebook than app, it features the unabridged version of AiWL with some cute interactive bits now and again – falling cupcakes, Alice elongating like a telescope as she gets bigger before shrinking again, comfits bouncing off a Dodo’s back… A childhood classic imagined by Lewis Carroll, illuminated by John Tenniel and then brought to life through the wonders of technology.
I don’t know that Arddun pays attention to the whole thing. There are lots of talky bits and Alice herself tends to go off in tangents that a 4yo can hardly keep up or be bothered with. But by and large, Arddun understands what’s going on. And she really looks forward to doing the book together come bedtime.
So it was little wonder that when Book Week was around the corner and Arddun was to turn up in school as a book character, we did Alice.
Arddun in Wonderland was born!
Alice through the looking glass
Lots and lots of rules about the dress-up, actually. They could only come as a book character, not a TV one. Please, no princesses or superheroes (read: no last-minute raiding of your child’s dress-up box). They had to bring their book along to school (so I had to run out and buy one because she wasn’t going to traipse into school with my iPad!)
After a quick rummage through existing stash and a dash to Top Bargain for that cheap and cheerful traffic-stopping yellow wig, our Alice was born. But just so there could be no mistaking who her book character was, we needed a storytelling prop.
She brought the house downPoor Mr Rabbit’s houseBack view of cottage
All in all, a rather fun non-uniform day.
We got to read the book in school – twice!And everywhere that Alice went, that house was sure to go.I was told she stayed in character the whole day, wig and all. Even during her surprise afternoon nap in school!
Finding The Happy 