Echo

The other day Venus, Mars and I were walking back to the car after school. We walked past the empty canteen and, unusually, one of the doors was open. Venus stuck her head through the doorway and shouted "hellooooo" so she could listen to the echo.

It was a pretty impressive echo.

So she did it again, and then called out to Mars, who had already walked past the open door, but was now heading back in her direction.

"You have a turn" she said to him.

So he stuck his head through the doorway, and at the top of his voice shouted "underpants!"

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is one of the many differences between a six year old girl and a nine year old boy.

Here is an unrelated photo of the kids in their cubby/sweat shop. It looks like they're working hard, but actually they're both playing games. I'm kind of happy that they're not too old to build a cubby and spend time in it together. It's one of things I remember fondly from my own childhood. This one had a limited life expectancy because we used the chairs that we sit on to eat dinner, but the kids didn't mind. We can always build another one next time. No, not just another cubby, a bigger, better cubby with free wifi and lots of snacks. 

Hmm, snacks. We'd better make sure it's big enough for me too.

Pancakes

We love pancakes. Some Saturday mornings instead of having breakfast we make a big bowl of pancake batter and we have brunch instead. 

Ah, brunch. That wonderful meal where you can throw down fluffy pancakes covered in chocolate syrup, and they're so delicious that you inevitably eat too many and can't eat anything else until about four in the afternoon.

Or perhaps that's just me.

Recently some friends came over for dinner and I made pancakes for dessert, but people were pretty full already so we had lots left over. 

Today we were going to have the leftovers for afternoon tea. As soon as we got home from school I got the pancakes out of the fridge and started heating them up. Mars was helping me set the table when Venus came skipping into the room. She asked what we were having, and we told her it was pancakes.

One of the wonderful things about little kids is that they can turn seemingly any string of words into a song. Sometimes it's a song we already know, so they write their own lyrics. Other times it's just a nonsense melody.

Venus started to sing.

"Pancakes, pancakes, panky-wanky pancakes"

Hopefully she won't sing it the next time we have pancakes, or I'm going to have some explaining to do.