Joey doesn’t wear dresses. Yet. But in line with contemporary, inclusive, non-judgmental, gender-neutral, freedom-of-choice-for 1-year-olds, zeitgeisty thinking, should little JoJo choose to dress in the clothes normally assigned to a non-binary gender of the traditionally menstruating classes, then dresses he will wear. To prevent such an action is ILLEGAL. Boys will be boys. Unless they select alternatives. Remember: ‘Jojo was a man who thought he was a woman…’

Lila has no such issues. She is non-discriminatory against all clothing. As long as it befits a princess. Whereas if it actually fits a princess, it may be too big. For current purposes. And you may have noticed, of late, that Lila does seem to be acquiring a rather extensive wardrobe of princess attire. Some might even deem it ‘excessive’ or ‘obscene’. But its all about value. And benefits. And the art of negotiation.

Lila, the world’s most totally perfect granddaughter, has one minor shortcoming. She wakes before any living bird has even thought of singing. The larks are still dreaming larky dreams when Lila’s eyes burst open and refuse to even consider the option of closing any time soon. Even if its still dark. Even if its 4.30 or thereabouts. She wakes therefore she IS!!!!

And yes, kids wake early. But 4.20? 4.30?? Anything with a ‘4’ is just a bit much. Yet, she’s 3. She can’t tell the time. Ahhhh, but she has a clock anyway. A special clock. You set it to change from ‘darkness and moon’ to ‘sunshine’, at an appropriate time.

But Lila is Lila. So when she wakes up she just calls out. Or ‘visits’. At which point she’ll be told ‘but its not morning time!’ To which she said once ‘I think my clock is broken’. Which, of course, it wasn’t.

So the new deal. If she sleeps til ‘morning’, which currently is still a bit fivey for my taste, but baby steps, she gets a ‘star’. And much as ‘points make prizes’, thus do stars make dresses. And Lila takes her hard-earned stars to the Mummy/Amazon wonderland of ‘princessy dressys’ and the very next day (with Amazon Prime or Mummy Prime), those lovely boys in white vans deliver an Elsa dress (from Frozen), or a Snow White Dress, (from, errr, Snow White), or an Anna dress (Frozen) or a Belle dress (Beauty and the Beast).

So Mummy and Daddy get to sleep, Lila gets a new Princess dress and Disney get more royalties so they can afford to make the next wave of movies to sell more dresses to Lila.

Could be worse. Could be football shirts.

Happy ‘it actually rained!!!!’ day

A xxxx