Well, we’re on the fourth day of Fecklet not being well. He’s got some sort of tummy bug, and though he’s over the fever now and he’s having some cheerful moments, his appetite isn’t good and he’ll suddenly turn from cheerful to crying and needing cuddles. I’ve definitely noticed a pattern, in that he feels much better after eating something and then has a dip, so I’m trying to make him eat little and often.
Anyway, this morning we baked a cake to prolong a cheerful moment. He loves dumping ingredients in a bowl and mixing. We made an eggless cocoa cake, and then after we’d licked the bowl we decided the pan was too big for the cake so we made half an invented recipe of eggless orange cake and marbled it through. The batter tasted wonderful and it smelled great in the oven. The finished cake is pretty lopsided (I think the orange batter rose more as the OJ reacted with the baking soda) but I’ll slap some frosting on it and it will do wonders to cheer us up this afternoon, I’m sure.
And I also just had a brainstorm and remembered the carrier bag full of plastic dinosaurs I bought from the charity shop and was saving for a rainy day. Fecklet is now obsessed with dinosaurs, and I do believe that even though it’s sunny outside, this might be a metaphorical rainy day.
All of this means I’ve had very little time to write, though I did finish a chapter last night and now have to find out what happens next. I’ve just read Getting Rid of Matthew by Jane Fallon and am now reading The Beach House by Jane Green (I obviously had a subconscious thing about Janes when I visited the library) and the thing that gets me is how effortless their stories feel when you’re reading them. Like the Janes never had to rack their brains to find out what’s going to happen next in their books in between changing really disgusting nappies, doing endless laundry and calming down a red-faced two-year-old. Obviously for the Janes, the stories flow beautifully from their fingers, with nary a crow or a moment of grossness to deter them, and immediately become best-sellers.
Or maybe, just maybe, they have to scrape it and work it and shoo away crows as much as I do, and it just comes out seeming effortless because it’s taken so much effort. (And possibly cake and dinosaurs too.)
Glad to hear the Fecklet is better. And if he is in a dinosaur stage, then I am certain the bag of plastic dinosaurs will just the ticket. I remember when my boys went through it. Never K, just the boys. We had a cassette tape that was obviously designed to drive mothers mad as it was all the dinosaurs Latin names sung to an annoying tune.
Enjoy your cake. Maybe the fecklet could dress up as a pie rat to eat it…I also made a dinosaur costume once.
Oh, dinosaurs. I’ve got TUBS of the things. Also many story books.
Eh? Um, they’re 20 and 23 now. I, um, tend not to throw things away.
The dinosaurs were a hit! Of course, I’d been hoping he’d play with them by himself, but oh well, I suppose it’s fun to be on your knees going “Raaaaargh” to little plastic lizards.
Glad to hear Fecklet is better. I take it you’ve come across Harry and the Bucket of Dinosaurs? He’ll enjoy the books (mine did, too).