Lions and Tigers and Tygones...

Lochie was at the day-carer's today. It was fine, he likes it there, he is usually happy and smiling, and happy to go in and happy when he comes home again.
We got a picture sent to us during the day, they'd been face painting and he'd been made up to look like a Lion.
That was the idea at least... he was meant to be a lion and the photograph that the day-carer sent to our phones looked pretty lion-like. I got the picture in the middle of an English lesson, and my wife got hers in the middle of a council meeting about expected redundancies during the next round of pay cuts.
The pictures were fine but neither my wife nor I realized what the face painted Lochie-Lion had turned into during the day. He'd wanted to be a tiger you see, but the other children, who'd been painted before him since they were younger, had all wanted to be tigers as well and the bright orange face paint had all been used up. The day-carer, clever in psycology as these ladies need to be, had painted him as a Lion but said that he was Lochie-Lion, King of the jungle.
But that wasn't enough, sadly, he wanted to be a tiger, you see, and tiger he would most definitely become. He had announced for the other four children that, actually, he wasn't just Lochie-Lion-King-of-the-Jungle but was in actual fact, actually, really, now to be known as, and called by forever, for all eternity and forever and ever: Lochie-the-Tygone-King-of-all-the-animals-everywhere-including-Tigers. The other children didn't argue, because he's the oldest, and the morning passed peacefully with Lochie-the-Tygone firmly in control of proceedings at the day carer's.
As I'm writing this, he is still Lochie-the-Tygone-King-of-all-the-animals-everywhere-including-Tigers, having refused to allow the face paint to be washed off and absolutely refused to let slip the new, tougher, and all powerful personality that he has become during the day.

Now my three-year-old son is asleep in bed as a half painted lion/tiger mix and only time will tell if the Lochie of old will be permitted to return to us in the morning when I try, once again to wash his face.
Wish me luck...

Guitar strings and nappies...(diapers)

Just in the middle of changing my guitar strings I was interrupted by my 20-month-old daughter. She came waddling through the door, looking up at me with innocent eyes and demanded a cuddle. I stopped what I was doing, of course, not wishing her to be blinded by the waving and flicking of my sharp, metal guitar strings.

I put my guitar down (or up as I should say to avoid the tramping feet of the other children) and reaching down lifted Isla up onto my knee.

I could smell it straight away of course but just to confirm my suspicions I asked her, "Have you had a poo?"
"Poo-bum, poo-bum," was her innocent enough reply so I put her down and, getting a nappy and wipes from the other room, came back to find her lying on the floor next to my old guitar strings waiting for me to change her.
I did it. I've had a few children and have changed a nappy or two so it wasn't difficult but, since I was distracted by her from my original task of changing my guitar strings I was a little thoughtless and un-noticing as I changed her. She was happy, but I was thinking about my strings and looking forward to playing my newly strung guitar and didn't notice as her happy young hands managed to get hold of one of the discarded strings that lay beside her.
She shook it.
Luckily I noticed in time, pulled my head up and the sharp end only cut my lip. Anger flashed through me for an instant. Anger at myself and my distracted and complacency.
The guitar string cut my lip, but it could have been my eye quite easily. And obviously, as everyone knows "...it's all fun and games until someone loses and eye..."