My colleague

13 August 2007 No, you didn't read the date wrong. These pictures were indeed taken a few hours ago. Some luckier aunties have already had a sneak preview. (I'm not naming names.)

Aunty Myrna took ill quite unexpectedly over the weekend and wasn't quite ready to leave her room this morning, and therefore was in no state to look after Saffron earlier today. The result of which was my being housebound, having to work from home, and my reluctant re-acquaintance with the ancient art form of housework. I exaggerate; it was more along the lines of microwaving milk and mixing weetabix with strawberries for Saffron's breakfast. But there were still quite a few dishes to wash because even though I briefly flirted with the idea of eating off leftover disposable partyware, my inner snob wouldn't let me and I was forced to remember how much I really hate drying dishes (not nearly as much as I really hate the sight of dishes drying).

When I wasn't bent over at the kitchen sink scrubbing (dried weetabix is a right pain, along with dried pasta sauce and dried egg yolk), and dreaming of throwing it all in and being a Slummy Mummy, I was working at the dining table, occasionally distracted by my 'colleague', pictured here in her leotard.

Saffron was kept fully occupied by a most fascinating and clever activity book, like a colouring book, only each page has different instructions to, for example, draw in missing teeth to unfinished illustrations, or to fill a field with flowers. With each page completed, Saffron would ask me to read her the instructions for the next. I tried to sneak in a 'Kiss your mother 27 times' between 'Draw them some clothes' and 'Fill their teeth with cavities', but she was too sharp to fall for it. She may not be able to read yet, but she's got pretty good intuition and seems to be able to sniff out tricks and tales*.

Anyway, the reason my 'colleague' is in a leotard, is because the moment she hears Madonna's 'Sorry', she always feels compelled to change into her leotard a la Madonna, and do her dance. In fact, there's a bootleg video of Saffron dancing like Madonna in the 'Sorry' video lurking somewhere in someone's camera. So today, when it came on, she leapt out of her seat and dashed madly up the stairs only to reappear shaking and spinning in her little 'donald' (as in 'Madonnald') outfit.


This second picture here is of a page where she was supposed to draw people looking out the windows. When I pointed out to her that usually, you can only partially see a person's body through the window, whereas her little figure was of the entire body, floating in the window, without so much as batting an eyelid, she clarified, "That's because it's a baby, jumping in the air because he's on a trampoline." You can't really argue with logic like that, can you? After which she promptly proceeded to draw the baby's mother looking out the bottom window.

There was also another page where there were two sulking cartoon figures on opposite ends of the spread, separated by a sea, the instructions to which was to draw a bridge. When I took a look at what she'd done, there was no bridge in sight. Instead, there was a floating red figure of a girl hovering horizontally above the sea, which I was promptly told was Super Saffron (can you tell we've been watching Heroes rather religiously in this household?), who was going to bring them together. Upon my closer inspection, I also saw that she had taken a red marker to the sulks on the cartoons' faces and turned them back into smiles. Awww...

*Not all of them, though. My favourite ruse - and it still works for now - is when she agrees to exchange a set number of kisses, say 10, in return for something, and I am the appointed Kiss Counter. 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10. That always works. Or maybe she's just humouring me.