Sprung

The snowdrops are getting drenched outside, and they look very sad about it. Ana is convinced that we are under attack by a vicious gang of rain fairies. As a wiser scribbler than I might say in this situation: the sun is not shining, it is too wet to play, so we sit in the house on this cold, cold, wet day.

Thing One and Thing Two.

Last weekend, Ana and Papa busied themselves by finding computer ghosts in the closet, 'fixing' them, then sailing them off to the electronic tip in the sky. When they ran out of computer components to hammer on, they started building shapes out of marshmallows and chopsticks. Then they ate the marshmallows. Then they made more shapes for the purposes of eating more marshmallows. Not a bad way to learn about geometry, or about marshmallows.

I was consumed by cabin fever, so we popped out to the woods to check for super-duper-early bluebells. Naturally this silly idea led to more rain and zero bluebells.

Have you tried turning it off and on again? 

Of course, some wonderful things come out in the rain. Wiggly worms, puddles, the aforementioned malicious rain fairies. But rain does lead to soaking, which - as the snowdrops would tell you if they could - is sort of a drag. We braved garden playtime yesterday for a spell anyway. Ana spotted a frog, which upon closer inspection turned out to be two frogs. 'Looooook!' she bellowed in delight. 'The mama frog is hugging the papa frog!'

If my neighbourhood frogs are already so bursting with springtime enthusiasm, then I suppose sunshine, bluebells and an army of tadpoles must be just around the corner. I can only hope that Ana never outgrows her tendency to confront the general silliness of reality (and surely frog dating falls under silly) with relaxed cheerfulness - in part so that our future bird and bee conversations will be fairly straightforward.

But that's years away. For now it's still raining, and the speakers in my head are playing this song (of which Papa does an excellent rendition by the way):