



Where Tasha and Chris ramble on about their daughters, Rosemary and Eleanor


For some reason, Rosemary has taken to calling me Dorothy. Her pink spotty dog is called Toto and Toto is my dog, though Rosemary looks after him by sleeping with every night. Sometimes, she’ll use it to try to get me to stop lecturing her about something:
“So, Rosemary. Remember that, when you go to sleep, you’re not going to call out. You’re not going to get out of…”
“No, Mummy. You’re Dorothy.”
“OK. So, you mustn’t get out of bed. You mustn’t…”
“No, but you’re Dorothy!”
“OK. Well, Dorothy needs you to stay in bed and look after Toto. And you have to be quiet, so you don’t wake Toto up.”
Sometimes it’s easiest just to play along.
In an interesting development, apparently Chris is Charlie. We shall if this catches on.
This is what Rosemary announced to us over lunch today.
“You tried to what a little girl?”
“I was strangling her”
“Why did you do that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Ah. Were you trying to give her a hug?”
“Yes, I was.”
“And you were hugging a bit too tight?”
“Yes, it was too tight and she cried.”
“Did you stop strangling her?”
“Yes, I did stop.”
“Did someone ask you to stop?”
“Yes, one of my ladies.”
A bit later, we decided on a few more leading questions.
“Did you play nicely with the other children?”
“You weren’t nice?”
“No.”
“Were you horrible?”
“Yes, I was horrible.”
“Why were you horrible?”
“Because I tried to strangle the little girl.”
In the end, Chris phoned the nursery school to check. Yes, she was trying to give a girl a hug and the little girl was getting upset and Rosemary didn’t realise. She let go as soon as one of the adults asked her to. And she played very nicely with all the other children. Phew!