"Don't Forget Mama, I is Only Two and a Half!"

OK, so as this heading suggests, we had major trauma last night....and sweet innocent Egg was (again) the one responsible.

Jay had just gone next door to Morley College for his weekly bass lesson and Auntie Ba had (wisely) sneaked off back home next door when i wasn't looking. So it was a toddler, a baby, and me. No big deal, right? However it just so happened that i discovered that my bank was ripping me off and this instigated an immediate phonecall. Sat at the computer upstairs in the studio, baby Ollie on my lap languidly slurping away and Egg systematically relieving his giant bookshelf of all their contents, i felt relatively in control of the situation. A little while later, engaged in verbal warfare with a stubborn, utterly unsympathetic bank clerk on the other end of the line, i barely noticed that i had been puked up on merely flipped the baby over face down on my lap like a pro and absentmindedly wiped at the spreading white stain of vomit on my new Replay jeans. Whatever.

Sure, i guess i noticed that Egg had left the room but i was trying in vain to conclude this ever-increasingly annoying phonecall and as Noah had finally started to snore from his face-down position in my lap, and there was no way i was getting up to investigate.

An hour or so later Jay eventually came home, Auntie Ba came back over (the child to adult ratio once more restored to a more manageable level) and we all sat down to a yummy pasta dinner. A while later, after Egg had been bathed and put to bed, Auntie Ba and i found ourselves downstairs in the lounge, trying to sit through an awful Aston Kutcher movie ("Guess Who's Coming for Dinner" - DO NOT WATCH THIS YOU'D HAVE MORE FUN DOING YOUR TAX RETURN). Suddenly we jumped as we heard an almighty roar from upstairs!!

My first thought was that Egg had somehow fallen out the second-story window in his bedroom. That was quickly followed by the possibility that jay had discovered a rat's nest beneath our bed (which really wouldn't surprise me given the prevalence of tiny critters which have been playing havoc throughout our row of terraces recently). My musings were cut short however with yet another unholy bellow from jay and exhausted though i was, I managed to unglue myself from the sofa and trudge upstairs...my curiosity getting the better of me. Plus the movie truly did suck.

Jay stood flushed and more furious than i've seen him in years, gesturing angrily at his laptop.

"That little bugger broke my laptop!" he shouted.

True enough, as we both stood there staring at the blank, black screen, it indeed looked to be the case. The conversation which ensued i shan't bore you with, but let's just say there was a fair bit of rather unfriendly querying about how this might have been allowed to happen. This was followed by some more rather unfriendly discussion about whose fault it might have been. Amidst all this we barely noticed the little figure standing at the bedroom door, clutching his big brown teddy bear Bacon. He looked up at us wide-eyed and in response to Jay's flustered, "EGG! Why did you break Dada's laptop?!" he merely raised his hand, palm upwards, and rather beseechingly, replied,

"Don't forget Dada...I only two and a half years old!"

Now what are you supposed to say to that? He had a point. He was only two and a half years old, and as we later discovered, the challenge of trying to jam three cd's in jay's dvd burner had proved too irrisistable for him. And more power to him in that we didn't think that could even be done!

I'd like to say that this story ends happily, and in some fashion it does, in that jay eventually got his computer working again, but not without some battle scars (don't this he'll be able to burn anymore cd's). Alas, i suspect this won't be the last time an episode of this type occurs. Nothing is so enticing to Egg as laptops, ipods, stereos, records, cd's, amplifiers, guitars, keyboards, mics, and of course power supplies and plugs. Just the way it is.

Only this morning after i spent twenty minutes in vain trying to cajole him out of our front hallway and back into the flat (he was pajama-clad and trying to get out onto the busy street outside to go look for 'Auntie Ba'), he answered my flustered cry of "Eggie, why are you so naughty?" with the now standard response of,

"I only two and a half mama!"

If only that worked for me. When Jay asks why i've forgotten to register our son for school, or why our weekly shop contains ample chocolate but no milk, i could simply cry out,

"Don't forget darling, I is only thirty-something years old!"