Babyhood

Pauline recently discovered the existence of her shadow (on sunny days, naturally) and the first time she realised what it was, she said "Look, there are two Paulines". Her great game now is to try and jump on Kevin's shadow as we walk anywhere, which of course provokes howls of outrage from the young sir (you would think he really was in pain!) and if P. happens to be with us, he can't resist joining Pauline. I seem to spend a lot of my life rescuing Kevin from his father's teasing, not a job I enjoy. Recently however, Pauline was very angry at her father when he insisted over and over again that she put her slippers on. She howled with rage and shouted "Your name is poo-poo!", which is the worst insult she knows.

The two of them have very long and highly amusing conversations in the back of the car and I love to eavesdrop. When driving back from Provins, Kevin said to Pauline "If you found a poo-poo in a pond, what would you do?" She said she would try and fish it out with a stick! Hope I'm shopping in Paris or travelling to London if that eventuality ever occurs! So you can see what their current obssession is.

We haven't had any more "How do babies get out of their mummies' tummy?" conversations for a long time. Today Kevin put a dress on over his trousers and Pauline told me he was a little girl called Madeleine playing with her. She took K's hand, saying, "Come on Madeleine, let's go shopping" and he was furious, saying his name is Kevin and he's not a little girl. Maybe that will teach him not to cross-dress!

Our visits to Fontainebleau library continue every two weeks and we're consequently doing a lot more reading, as they pick four books each and make me read them every night. They don't like having to take the books back though, they'd like to keep them! There are even a couple of books in the library which we already have at home and they understandably get very excited to see them. But annoyingly, they always want to take them out, and start screaming when I say no!