Who stole all the conkers? I have mental imagery of ninja squirrels in the midst of the night on a secret tactical mission to relieve the country of all conkers.  Seriously, this time last year The Spawn had bags overflowing with shiny conker goodness and yet this year, none. Zip. Zilch. Nada.  How grossly unfair. You can't have Autumn without them.  They're mandatory and iconic of the season. As you can probably tell I'm terribly indignant over the utter injustice of this.

I blame aerosols and polar bears....or something.

Oh and the summer of rain. It's still raining. I fear it may never end and we'll have to rename the UK to Atlantis. So much rain yet not enough to wash away the gray. I find myself looking to the ground when walking just to feed the hunger for colour my eyes literally licking the colour from the fallen leaves which incidentally you're never to old to kick. Fact.

Yet It's frightfully easy to jest about the rather unfortunate weather and forget that many of us are indeed somewhat lucky insofar as to say we may be a victim of It's enslaught yet to many It's an indecent attack of epic proportions. We're almost immune to the seemingly yearly pictures of flooding with rescue boats down streets and the utter devastation the floods leave in their wake to homes I can only imagine how vile it must feel,  akin to the violation of a break in. Then there's the small businesses who I feel for.  People often focus on the glamour whoring jobs in the life yet none of those help in these instances, the real hero's are the rescue services and in the aftermath flood restoration companies such as UK Commercial Cleaning and pest control who work hard to put things right again, clearing up the debris of natures parties.

I wonder if they could find me the conkers?

I used to have pet conkers at college. Four to be exact. They were darling little things with their names tattooed upon them with trusty tip-ex, 'William', 'The', 'conker' and 'er'.

I think the weather is broken. We need a sky plumber and sky painter.

Still, each time the rain pauses for breath and the Sun moons us we at least get to drink in the beautiful sight of the rainbows.....

Sod the gold though, I'll be chasing rainbows for a pot of conkers.

Over the rainbow

Today was a grey day lacking in both motivation and inspiration yet filled with heavy swollen clouds and squabbling children.

Whilst The Husband was out playing kirby with Thing One  and Thing Two I took The Toddler out the front of the house to play (seeing as the back garden in bogland at the moment) briefly after tea hoping some fresh air may encourage better sleep and also to get a break from his boob junkie behaviour.

Some bubbles and some skittles and he was incredibly happy. The dark clouds seemed to be sucking the light from the sky as they hung bloated as it was nearing 8pm. So, imagine our surprise and delight when we caught sight of a vibrant surprisingly bright rainbow and a much fainter rainbow next to it.

It's the small unexpected things that stoke our embers and keep our personal flames alight.

We watched it for seemingly ages, it was still there just as bright when we went inside (due to The Toddler stepping into a puddle of water under a drain pipe soaking his shoe and sock)

Far too often by the time we spot a rainbow it seems to fade and disappear within minutes.

The little things..

Everyday she looks more grown up, so I cherish the parts of her that still hold the subtle chub of babyhood like the gorgeous dimples in her hands.

I admit.  I'm one of those Mum's that is terminally guilty of throwing out that old adage 'In a minute' / 'Not right now' / 'maybe later', often without thinking and mostly because I'm really busy doing absolutely nothing of any importance, such as catering to my net junkie ways.   So many little things that wouldn't actually take long in time or indeed much effort.  Little inconsequential things to me that mean so much to a child, because they have it right, it really is the little things that make us happy, that show we care, that change the here and now into a positive.  Their innate ability to be utterly thrilled by the small things.

Thing Two is getting to an age where she wants more Mummy time and more girly time.  She's a wonderfully undemanding child so it's a subtle undertow that is detected rather then knowingly expressed.  We don't get enough time together and I really do need to rectify this, it really is my fault.  She adores her nails painting, it's a rare treat.  She has a tiny bottle of nail polish that goes on like glue yet needs about 4 coats to show a decent colour and then peels off within the hour.  So, I promised her that in the school holidays I would paint her nails using 'big girl nail polish'.  She asked once and I was too busy, she doesn't show her disappointment she just accepts it but I know it's there and I know I'm the root of it.  I said yesterday I'd either do them that night or this morning.  Last night I explained that as she was about to get in the bath it wasn't such a good idea and that I'd do them this morning.  I don't think she believed it would happen.  Her face was a picture this morning as we sat on my bed whilst my bath run.  We raided my makeup bag and found neon pink, neon green, neon orange, neon yellow and blue.  A colour for each nail.  Bright, shiny, happy rainbow nails. She drank up the attention like a hungry sponge, I could feel it fizzing in her veins and sparkling in her eyes.  All I was doing was painting her nails.  We chatted and we smiled, we giggled and we laughed.  She was chatting to me about creationism, theology and other topics that she's drawn to, despite being five years old.

She once asked her teacher, before 9am in the morning, 'Why do some people believe in God?' her teacher was mostly amused.  Thing Two is an Atheist.  She's told me that she only believes in things she can recognise and detect with her senses like books and tree's but not in God because he's not real and she can't sense him. She tells me she believes in the Big Bang Theory of how the earth came about and yet implored me to tell her how we as 'people' came about seeing as you need a person to have a baby so where and how did that person come about?  Which led on to The chicken and The Egg and evolution. All this in the ten minutes it took my bath to run and for me to paint her nails.

She's an astute smart cookie.  She was lecturing me on a grammatical inconsistencies in Ben and Holly the other day which is quite remarkable seeing as beyond sentences and full stops she's not au fait with the technicalities of grammar.  Whilst suffering from one of her far too common bouts of insomnia she proclaimed to The Husband late one night 'I keep on thinking that life is just one big dream...'

I'd say that I don't think it was ever really about the nails yet despite being a beautiful little oddling wise beyond her years, she still is a five year old little girl and of course it was about the nails.  Shiny colourful rainbow nails.......and time with mum, just mum.

Ten minutes out of a whole day and we both sparkled.

Maybe next time, if only for once, I'll get up off my fat backside and do one of the little things there and then....life is too short for 'not now's' and as a grown up it's far too empty of the little things that really do matter so very much.

It's one thing telling them they mean the world to us yet an entirely different kettle of fish proving it.  Proving that they're enough to make us stop what we are doing, for them, to do something fun and inane.

I've promised Thing Two a girly day out during the holidays, shopping and lunch with Nanna.  She's never been out with me and NOT The Toddler since he was born.

One day when she's an angsty whiny teen who wants nothing to do with me, I want to have memories, good memories that we can share when she's older about the little things we did together in this beautiful time of childhood that passes so very quickly.  I need to learn to grab hold of it for a while before it's gone. Words are cheap.