“I am be like!”
“Really! What do you like dear?”
“I bin dun like dah cream!”
Oh no! Don’t tell me ‘bin dun’ is back to haunt us again, one of this pre-emptory terms equivalent to ‘er.’ I look at my little neophobe and his 15 foods. Verily the child doth lie through his little wonky baby teeth.

“Indeed!”

Oddly enough he picks up on my tone of skepticism, as does his brother, who dives in to defend, encourage and elucidate.
“Yeah Mom we are have ice-cream in school today.”
“Ice-cream!”
So much for the ‘healthy food in school policy,’ that didn’t last a whisker.
“How come you had ice-cream?”
“Coz it was Tim’s birthday.”
“Ah.”
“It wuz a birthday treat.”
“Nice explaining dear. Surely he didn’t eat ice-cream?” I ask over his brother’s head in a need to determine the real truth of the matter.
“No….he don eat dah ice-cream.”
I thought as much!
“But he did eat dah cream!”
“What cream?”
“Dah cream dat woz on dah ice-cream!”
“Cream on ice-cream!” talk about overkill.
“Yeah an it was real cold, but he ate it anyways……he din scream at all neither but he did his shivery thing………he wuz real brave mom.”

I smile as I think. Is cream really a food or merely a condiment? Does anyone eat a whole bowl of cream? Can you count cream or would that be like counting mustard as a food?

I look at my boys. The retrieval of the words has the effect of making him relive the experience. I watch as the little one judders involuntarily at the memory and the big one puts a steadying arm around his bony little shoulders.

Bravery awards all round [and rats to the theory of mind.]

I await the day that the boys bodies adjust to Daylight saving. The day that they will wake up at 6 again rather than 5. That day finally arrives. Unfortunately, it is also the same day that the thermostat detects coldness.

I propel myself downstairs to greet the boys at 4:30 in the morning. I detect sound and movement. I am on automatic pilot. I negotiate stairs and propel myself into the kitchen, persuade my eye lids to open, force my pupils to focus through my dirty bifocals. I stand motionless, thus better able to detect the presence of a couple of small people, only to find that they are not there.

Instead I am met by wafts of warm air, tickling my ankles. The heating system has started to work. Cold in California. I must be a barometer! A motion detector? Senile.