…Or “How I just realized I’m a grown up”

On Monday I had the day off so in an unusual fit of productiveness instead of spending the day sat right where I am now in front of the computer I actually did some housework, I tidied the blonde kids bedroom or using its correct name the “dump”.

Now that in its self did nothing in the way of convincing me that I’d grown up, my mom had been making me tidy up after myself since I was the blonde kids age, No, all that did was reinforce my own belief that when my son grows up and marries his wife will be as long suffering as my mother was with me because he’s a messy little shit too!!

What made me feel OLD was what came afterwards. In the process of sorting out the abundance of k’nex and marbles and matchbox cars and books and comics and dirty socks and I don’t want to even hazard a guess at what the pink thing was from under his bed, I came across a copy of Roald Dahl’s “George’s Marvellous Medicine”. I’d bought it ages ago with the intention of reading it to him chapter by chapter as a bedtime story…thats was until he decided he was “too old” for stories at bedtime and passed up on “Curling up with Mommy-Time” for “DVD-Time” or “Can I stay up later if I promise to go straight to sleep later-time!” and forgotten all about it.

So I decided to get my monies worth (all £2.99 of it, it was the paperback edition). I decided that I should spend some quality time with my son that doesn’t involve shouting, running around, jumping on beds, digging up the garden, painting him blue (don’t ask I only did it once and lost the photos and now he wont let me do it again!) or winding up James and resurrect the whole bed time routine now he’s old enough to appreciate the book, not just the cuddles, and started to read it to him.

I am distressed to report that it is this storybook that has made me feel OLD and all grown up!!

Tonight was the second installment, we’ve been going great guns and have already got to the part where Grandma grows so tall she breaks through into the attic of the house. BUT while the blonde one sat there staring at me wide eyed with wonder at all the whooshing and fizzing of the medicine being prepared (apparently I do good sound effects), and commenting with admiration at the courage of the 8 year old George for standing up the the mean nasty bitter grandmother, and looking at it the way a 7 year old who has never had to stand up for himself his entire life would, George must look pretty brave, all I can think is “Naughty little bastard”.

And that is why I feel old….instead of the wonder and excitement of the story I remember from the first time I read the book myself all I’m worried about is I hope Jordan doesn’t get any ideas!

I hope I don’t get up in the morning to find my bath full of lotions and perfumes and shampoos and food stuff and paint and not that I keep horse tablets in the house but I’m sure he’d find something as an alternative in a reenactment of the story!!

Not that I seriously think he would, but we are talking about a kid who keeps a log called “Loggy” as a pet in the playhouse at the bottom of the garden so it wouldn’t be a great leap for his imagination to be stretched that little bit further and for him to try!

So now I feel old and like a proper “parent”. Worrying not about what has happened but about what possibly could happen IF my son loses all sense of himself early one morning and lets his imagination run away with him!! Tisk!!

I was going to read him “James and the Giant Peach” next but then started worrying that maybe “Loggy” would metamorphise into a human sized caterpillar and he’d run away with it and not love me anymore!! So maybe I’ll forgo it for something less paranoia inducing like “Topsy and Tim”