The following conversation took place this morning, Nicola at the bottom of the stairs, the girls in their bedroom after some 30 minutes or so of “getting ready”:

Nicola: Girls, are you ready yet?
Lauren: Er… nearly!
Nicola: Come on you two! Get dressed!
Lauren: [in cod American accent] Sure mommy, whatever the creator of my life says!

This was around half an hour ago and they’re still in their pyjamas. I’d better go and jog them on a bit or there’ll be hell to pay when the Crucible of Life finds out.

Nicola: “Occur to me? What do you mean?”

Hannah: Y’know, do they ring a bell?”

Hannah is standing half in her wardrobe. She is “getting ready for bed“.

Nicola: “No, not particularly.”

Hannah (producing theatre ticket stubs with a flourish from within the wardrobe): “High School Musical seat numbers!”

Nicola (slapping forehead): “Of course…”

Daddy, I’ve just made this up, right: imagine there’s this girl, right, and her name’s Suzie – I don’t even know why she’s called Suzie, I’ve just made it up! – and she’s asleep, yeah, and she’s dreaming, but in that dream she’s dreaming, and in that dream she’s having a dream, yeah, and in that dream, dreaming, and in that dream, dreaming, and in that dream, dreaming, and so on, right, until she gets to, like, one-hundred-and-eleven dream, and in that dream… she’s thinking about little doggies because she really loves doggies.

That’s pretty much word for word. (She really did say “and so on”!) Note the lack of full stops because, as we all know, full stops are where you pause to take a breath.

Ha!

That 2005 version of me was an idiot. Nowadays I’m far more realistic about the scale of the task we face. If you want a picture of the future, George Orwell might have told me, imagine a small foot stamping deliberately on its sister’s foot – forever.

Last week’s case in point came from Lauren, just as I was getting out of the shower.

“Daddy, Hannah said I have breasts!”

I went into their bedroom to find them both inspecting each other’s naked chests. (This was, I should point out, after some 30 minutes of “getting dressed”.) I told them to stop being silly and get ready but instead they chose to have a discussion on the differences between:

1. breasts
2. boobies
3. nipples
4. willies

I have to admit it was all rather fascinating, even if I got a bit lost in the detail: I’m pretty clear on the difference between boobies and willies, less clear on boobies v. breasts. In any case, the consensus after a few minutes of robust debate seemed to be that they both have (or sort-of have) items 1-3, but definitely not item 4.

“Don’t we, Daddy?” said Hannah. “Don’t we?”

The path of least resistance beckoned. “Yes, girls. Now get dressed.”

“Aha!” cried Hannah, turning to Lauren with a triumphant finger in the air. “You breast my case!”

Imagine if you had two rabbits, yeah, and they were both called Penny, and you were dropping one of them off at the train station, right, and then her owner said, “Let’s go and pick up Penny,” but you thought she meant Penny the pasta!!

It turns out she was referring to penne. Hannah laughed so hard she almost choked.

Two conversations overheard this morning. First, Before:

Lauren (on toy mobile phone): Hi, is that Hannah?
Hannah (also on toy mobile phone, about 1 foot away): Yes
Lauren: Are you a nurse as well?
Hannah: Yeah, I am actually.
Lauren: Good, ’cause I need your help. I’m having a baby!
Hannah: OK. When’s it due?
[Thud of Lauren hitting the floor]
Lauren: RIGHT NOW!!

And then, After:

Hannah: There you go, there’s your little baby.
Lauren: Is it a boy or a girl?
Hannah: Er… well, it’s just a baby really.

I’m beginning to doubt this postmistress’s obstetric qualifications.

So far they have only learnt one note: that piercing one you get when you blow too hard with all holes uncovered.

Shriek! Shriek! Shriek-shriek-shriek!

Mike Oldfield this ain’t. I am approaching the point of despair.

A word from the wise: if your children ever come into posession of recorders, buy ear muffs or leave home.

“One elephant, two elephant, three elephant…”
“No, that’s seconds. Minutes is like, one……… two……… three………”
“Oh yeah, that’s right.”

They were clocking roughly 3 seconds per minute.

The second was in the car on our way home from school via the park. It’s a lovely hot day and Hannah and Lauren had been running rings round me playing tag. From the back seat, Hannah’s voice piped up: “When I’m hot, this booby hurts… but when I’m cold, this booby hurts.” They both cackled about it for ages, and Hannah now refers to the left and right sides of her chest as “hot booby” and “cold booby” respectively.

Today, obviously, it’s hot booby that’s causing her the most discomfort.

Hannah: “Daddy, Lauren just said ‘pupils’!”
Lauren (in protest): Hannah started it!!

We were driving out somewhere, and for reasons that were never fully explained to me I was taking the three girls while the other adults all got to go in a separate car. En route, we drove past one of those dinky little Smart cars.

“Look at that car!” said a voice from the back seat. “It’s smaller than a person!”

There followed a good minute of helpless cackling.

“Yeah,” said another voice, “it’s smaller than a dog!”

More cackling. Now Beti chipped in.

“It’s smaller than a rabbit!”

And so on. The smaller it got, the funnier it got – mouse, grasshopper, ladybird, drop of blood (!), until eventually we got to “smaller than a mouse’s whisker”. At that point the back seat finally fell quiet as three little brains tried to think of something even smaller than a mouse’s whisker. I began to wonder if Beti had encountered any microsocopic life forms in her science lessons yet, but I needn’t have bothered. One of the twins happily provided the answer to the conundrum.

“It’s smaller than Daddy’s winky!”

My attempts to stop the game at this point were ignored.

It was only later that the paradox occurred to me: that my “winky” is alleged to be not only smaller than a mouse’s whisker, but also (if we re-examine the original premise) larger than a car. This is hardly the blog to discuss such things in detail, suffice to say I would happily settle for somewhere in between.

Hannah: Mummy? Do you know what porcupines are?
Nicola: Yes.
Hannah: What are they then?
Nicola: Well, they’re animals with lots of spikes, a bit like hedgehogs.
[Confused pause.]
Hannah: So why do people say “Don’t tell porcu-pines”?
Nicola: No, sweetheart, that’s porky pies. It means lies: don’t tell lies.
Hannah [penny dropping]: Ohhh!

Aside: Friends and family will know that porcupines (or one porcupine in particular) will have a special significance for Hannah one day. She just doesn’t know that yet.

Yesterday started with Lauren hurtling into the room some time around half past six. “Mummy!” she chimed. “Is today my real birthday or did I dream it?”

“No,” came a groggy reply from the pillow next to me, “you dreamt it.”

“OK!” And off she skipped.

¹ “Lots, and I was just enjoying one of them. Her birthday’s not until December. Go back to bed.”
² [Long pause.] “Good question. I’ll get back to you on that one.”

Googy covers a whole range of bases. It’s a nickname! It’s a substitute for any other noun! It’s a fast-acting catalyst to monkeying about! For example:

Hannah: Googy!
Lauren: Yes, Googy?
Me/Nicola (through gritted teeth): Open… wide…
Lauren: What is it, Googy?
Hannah: Er… Googy! (helpless mirth ensues)
Me/Nicola (curiously unaffected by helpless mirth): Come here NOW and BRUSH YOUR TEETH!!

Googy has become one of those mixed blessings of parenthood. On the one hand, the girls just wouldn’t be their cheeky selves without it. On the other hand, they wouldn’t be such a pain in the arse without it either. Every now and then there’s an incident that swings the pendulum very much one way or the other. One such incident happened a couple of days ago, as I was still in bed. There was a little conversation going on just outside the bedroom door which I had the good luck to overhear:

Lauren: Googy?
Hannah: Yes, Googy?
Lauren: What’s the French for Googy?
Hannah: Er, it’s… (pause to adopt correct accent)… Gaugisse.

Praise be to Googy. Where would we be without it?