"Kung Foo Fighting"

Dumpie has taken lately to giving Dada the occasional 'thwack' across the face, when the husband has had the misfortune to be holding him and scolding him at the same time. It is most embarrassing when said 'thwack' is administered with perfect precision so as to elicit a most satisfactory noise and stun Dada into speechlessness. Given how coordinated our youngest is, he never misses and is accurate to within a millimetre.

"Isn't it funny that you've produced something that is part of you and yet autonomous enough to attack you?" I asked the husband the other day?

He just glared.

Of course Dumpie never smacks me. He does occasionally get his chubby little arms flailing like a windmill and come barreling into me, if I am foolish enough to withhold biscuits from him for example, but given the current Oedipal complex he appears to be stuck in, I am usually the recipient of loving caresses and back rubbing - not 'thwacks'.

The other night we had a friend over for dinner and he barbequed fish on an outside fire. It was a whole grouper bought fresh at the market that morning and Eggs and Dumps stood there entranced watching it blacken, as the flames licked its body.

"Are you going to have some yummy fish Dumps?"

"No."

"Why not baby? It looks delicious".

"No. I no eat fish head. I no want it to talk to me."

Hmmm....he did have a point. The mouth was stretched open as if the fish had died howling.

Egg on the other hand was worried that the fish wasn't dead yet and we were burning it alive.

Either way, neither boy would deign to touch the fish and instead spent dinner jumping on their thin, cheap excuse of a mattress, sword fighting with empty water bottles while our childless film maker friend filmed them with his camera.

He then projected the footage of the monsters in combat, onto the husbands bare chest using his little portable projector. Surreal doesn't even begin to describe it.