Happy September!

The nights are drawing in, and there is a chill in the air. DorkySon’s windows have that sweep of condensation on them when I open his shutters in the morning (he points at it and tells me we need to call the window cleaners), but I love this time of year. The trees are all turning to autumn colours, and some evenings the final moments of sunlight are just magical. Best of all, the city is getting quieter, hunkering down in preparation for winter. The purple cow, the street perfomers and the visiting luvvies have all gone into hibernation.

Last winter, we suffered some serious cabin fever during the snow. This year I’m better prepared, and have already started stashing away jigsaws and craft materials for those days when we can’t get outside. I’m also noticing, with no small degree of pleasure, that DorkySon is far more able to entertain himself these days.

His imagination seems to have taken off; instead of just trundling trucks around the floor he now uses his Lego men and other figurines to act out little scenarios. He’ll happily spend half an hour pretending to be different kinds of truck, rushing up to me every so often to have his tank filled with petrol. Yesterday I had to put an imaginary plaster on the imaginary cut he suffered, cutting up his imaginary blueberry cake with an imaginary knife.

(Are you supposed to tell your toddler off when they use an imaginary knife?! I thought probably not…)

I love watching him lie on his tummy, whispering to himself as he turns the pages of a book. And he makes us laugh all the time with his chat. One day last week he kept telling us over and over that he was Chinese. So the next morning, when he came through to our room, DorkyDad asked “Are you still Chinese today?’

DorkySon looked at him for a minute and then laughed. “No,” he said. ‘I’m French.”

His love of Peppa Pig continues unabated, and while DorkyDad and I are getting a bit tired of watching the same episodes again and again, we still don’t have much to complain about. When we were at the dentist this week DorkySon was very obliging, holding his head back and going ‘aaaaaah’, because he’d seen George Pig do the same a few days earlier.

It’s starting to lead to some interesting lines of questioning though; like why DorkyGranny and DorkyGrandpa don’t live in the same house, like Granny and Grandpa Pig do. I thought I had a good few years before I had to answer that kind of thing. I’m also struggling with questions like ‘What’s electricity?’ … ‘What’s that pigeon saying?’ … ‘Why can’t you fix my Mini, mummy?’

Do you think it’s too soon to buy him an encyclopedia? I might stash one of those for winter too.

Pssst. I’ve taken advantage of some of that post-festival spare time to create a Facebook page for DorkyMum. If you haven’t already become a fan, please consider visiting now and clicking the Like button.