Let's take a Moment or two...

I'm having those 'moments' rather a lot, recently. The sort of moments when you whether you wonder which reality it is you're actually living in. Needless to say, they usually revolve around my sons. Here are a couple of Boy #2-related examples...

Boy #2 (from the back of the car as we drive through heavy traffic to collect his brother from school): "Did you see it? Did you see it, Mama?"

Me: "What? What was I supposed to see?"

Boy #2 (exaxperated): "The HOUSE, Mama. The house!!"

Me: "Well, which house did you mean, Boy #2?"

Boy #2 (sighing heavily and no doubt rolling his eyes at his mother's tiresome insistence on watching the road when driving): "The HOUSE! The blue one! The one covered with smoked salmon!"

Heaven knows what he was on about. I mean, I do live in South Kensington, but even here conspicuous consumption hasn't reached quite those levels...


And recently, every time I start the car, it jumps forward as it has been left in gear. Not by me, I hasten to add - never by me. No, normally it's Husband who does that. (Is it a Man thing, or a continental European thing, I wonder? In any case, it drives me crazy.) However, Husband - in case you hadn't noticed recently - is rarely in the country during the week at the moment. So how is this happening?

Boy #2, of course. He has made it his raison d'etre to do this. Every morning and afternoon, he climbs into the back of the car and, whilst I'm walking around to the other side to clip him in, nips in between the two front seats to slam it into gear. By the time I've wrestled him into his car seat, located the seemingly impossible to find clip underneath him, and discussed whatever is on his mind, I invariably forget to check the car is not in gear when I finally get into the front seat to start the engine.

I turn the ignition and we bunny hop, to his great delight. Not, so far, into a car parked in front of us (we live in area where off-street parking is but a distant dream), but it's been close a few times.

I keep having nightmares where a clerk at my car insurance company opens my claim form and says "You remember that woman in London who hit a car at 5 miles an hour and gave some poor bloke whiplash? Well, she's back. This time she's totalled an Aston Martin parked in front of her and she's expecting us to be believe it was the fault of her three year old son..."

Hmmm. I think I need to leave a post-it note on the steering wheel.