Bunny

Home, and happy.

We’ve just spent a couple of days up north at my brother-in-law’s. 

It started off badly, with a fraught three hour car journey, during which my five year old boy was a three foot ten inch whinge-bucket (sample below):

“WE ARE NEVER GOING TO BE THERE IN ONE HUNDRED MILLION HOURS!”
“Of course we are. It takes three hours, not a hundred million hours.”
“IT DOES TAKE ONE HUNDRED MILLION HOURS, IT DOES!
“If you carry on shouting and moaning, we’ll stop, until you’re quiet. What do you think?
“NO! I JUST WANT TO BEEEE THEERRE!”
“Well do you think it’s a good idea to be so loud and give your mum and dad a headache and shout around while we’re driving?
“YES!”
“Really? What does Teddy think?”
A pause. A final, pointed, quietly-triumphant, grumpy mutter:
“Teddy thinks the same as me.”

Thankfully, things improved enormously upon arrival. My boy dropped the whinging, and switched to latching on to his adored 18-year-old cousin like a happy leech.

(Later, said heroic 18-year-old nephew even looked after the kids while I actually managed an evening out with that bloke I’m married to. At the same restaurant! At the same time! Although we’re so used to having separate social lives, I insisted on sitting at different tables).

The following day, it was time for the family's traditional Prader-Willi Friendly Easter-egg hunt. My daughter, who was still at a 'Perfect Peter In The Horrid Henry Books' level of smugness (having enjoyed her brother's bad behaviour in the car, obviously thinking it reflected well on her), ratcheted her smugometer right up to the 'Jeremy Clarkson Meeting His Bank Manager Whilst Sipping Champagne From A Call Girl's Belly Button' level, thanks to a monster haul. As well as six plastic eggs filled with a selection of no-sugar sweets, to be rationed out over coming weeks, my girl reeled in the additional Easter booty of three books and a DVD. This was compared to the transitory delights of her brother’s trio of chocolate eggs, which are the best part of demolished already. She knows that the Easter sympathy vote from relatives (who buy her extra stuff because they feel sorry that she isn’t allowed chocolate) is a right result.

“Mum, my books will last forever. And Aunty Jill got me some of my special sweets anyway, because I’ve got Prader-Willi. Well, the Easter Bunny did, anyway. Did Aunty Jill tell him I was special? Did he go to our sweet shop? Is the Easter Bunny real? Jonathan at school says he’s not. He isn’t real, is he? No. He isn’t. But he is. He is.”

She stopped, briefly, to breathe.

“I think the Easter Bunny  is real, yes. Yes. I like being special because I get books and a DVD and it’s loads more than my brother, but I won’t go on about it. But it is kind of TWICE as much. I won’t talk about it though. It is better than his chocolate. My books are definitely better than his chocolate.”

Song is Rico & The Special AKA - Easter Island