By the grace of God we got to the 7th birthday. Lilliputian Lisa is turning into some kind of project manager, organising everything and everyone. Planning, calculating and overthinking in general. Lilliputian Hannes is a bit of a wild card in most senses. He is everyone’s friend, he is the main attraction to any event and such a gentleman.
I wanted to be all witty with the significance of the number 7. But then I thought that a rainbow has seven colours. Perhaps an ambitious effort but let us see how we go with saying something about my little collection of humans that can be linked to a rainbow. It is Monday afternoon as a write this… so I do not have any wit left 😊:
So the seven colours of the rainbow are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet…
The most obvious link I can make with red is that it is their school colour. Yes, blue and red. The girls still wear those unfortunate little dresses that we know from our own primary school days. But I am not complaining. I adore a school uniform because it has eliminated a lot of the struggles of our mornings. There are no disagreements about the garment of the day. Yes, so this was the first official school year as well. Suddenly, there are spelling tests on a Friday, assessments and robots that have to be built from toilet paper rolls and empty cereal boxes. We have also learnt that Lisa is the one who can keep her wits about her with regard to her earthly possessions. In the afternoon, everything comes home and is accounted for. Her twin, however…
Five months into the school year we now basically know what we will never see again once it leaves the house in the morning. I stopped scolding him about this, because Lisa has now taken over this role on my behalf. She just channels her inner Mamma. When I arrive for pickup in the afternoons, she starts with Hannes; while collecting her own bag, she is running off her little checklist in her mind. “Hannes, do you have your shoes… both of them, Hannes? Do you have the homework? Hannes, close your bag; things are falling out.”
The very first day that homework was dished out, I also proudly sat them at the dining room table. We are doing this, with my gorgeous little homework station with all the needed stationery that I made from Pinterest. I turned my back for a moment and came back to Lisa, erasing all the homework that Hannes had done. “Wat nou?” What are you doing? “Nee, Mamma, dit is nie netjies nie”, she explained, indicating that it was not neat enough. Again, I am reminded why they should not be in the same class.
Alright, moving on, to orange. Here, I am going to take the writer’s liberties and link it to the fruit instead of the colour. I want to talk about lunchboxes. So I had my humour failure some time last year about lunchboxes. The Engineer, therefore, took this over for me. He is a lunchbox packing machine and does it every morning without fail or complaint. Occasionally I get a special request for the shopping list related to these lunchboxes, and the Lilliputians are genuinely concerned that they may not get a lunchbox if the Engineer is engineering elsewhere.
Yellow is the next colour. I had to ask the little robot on the internet to assist here. Apparently, yellow is mentally activating. Who knew? I recall now that I read somewhere that you should make your summary notes on yellow paper when studying for an exam. I have not tried this and am not going to enrol for something to test this theory, but together with this manual activation, yellow is also linked to clarity and focus, optimism and joy, intellect and creativity. So, let us chat about creativity. This year has been the year of new things for the Lilliputians and their parents. One of these new things is the sudden familiarity of YouTube Kids and how easily they navigate themselves into the most annoying little videos with kids of non-descript nationality that I know are making more money than me. YouTube Kids, however, brought dominoes into my house. I bought a set of Jenga that looks like Tetris blocks. Cheerfully colourful and plastic. Cheap cheap! Hannes took one look at these and decided that they would work perfectly to build dominoes with. It took me about 3 days to realise that my Jenga would never fulfil their actual purpose, and it was during such a discussion that Google heard me, and I saw dominoes on Takealot. Now these are not dominoes that you can play dominoes with. It is a set that is intended for building things that need to tumble over. I swiped the card. And bought a little box of utter joy. Not a day passes that Hannes is not building or plotting what to build or making things tumble off my coffee table. Equally creative, his sister, however, feels that the Jenga should be Jenga. And when she was gifted a set of actual Jenga, she quickly told her brother that these would not be stacked for anything other than their intended purpose.
Green I associate with the outside. And as I type this I realise that the most obvious outside thing we have done since their 6th birthday is learn to ride a bike. They got them as their gift last year. Initially with training wheels. The negotiation started that they wanted to take them with on a weekend away and the Engineer steered away from this by saying that they can not fit on a bike rack if they have the training wheels. It took Lisa less than an hour to balance on two wheels. She did initially on turn in one direction. But her determination to get this right will put most grownups to shame.
Blue I associate with the ocean, and that will then be our adventure to Port Elizabeth to visit my folks in Oesterbaai. I placed a post about this. It was quite the event. I am still recovering.
Indigo is up next. And when I hear the word I always think of that song by Watershed, do you know it?
Since the birth of the Lilliputians I have always vowed that I will not play any kiddie music in my car. So even if they are present, we listen to our music (which yes, dates from the 90s – you tend to get stuck somewhere). The Engineer handles the school drop-off in the morning and has the same rule. A few weeks ago, we were all at home, and I heard Hannes softly singing “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana. It was a proud moment.
Music also links to the fact that they started piano lessons this year… watch this space!! In truth Lisa started piano lessons, and Hannes is enthusiastically trying to play any other song than that on the sheet music.
The last of the seven colours is violet. Now here I would like to reach a little for a link with a little purple elephant with the name Tippie. I am personally not a huge fan, but these little entry-level books are the ones that they can recognise the words in… a love for reading is slowly growing. This was also then the costume that Lisa chose for book character day at school. I tried my best to convince them to choose something that would not test and stretch my budget and artistic capabilities, but alas. Hannes wanted to be Timothy (the hound in Famous Five), and Lisa wanted to be Tippie. I was saved a friend who had a cardboard elephant head (no, I don’t know why) and then also the Chinese store where I could buy things to make dog ears from for Hannes. I was particularly impressed with my effort, but the Lilliputians were unsure if my master pieces would last the day. I just wanted a pretty picture, which I got.
In the afternoon, at the pickup from after-care, I see that Lisa is in tears. It has been a long day. Apparently, there were other Tippies. They wore full costumes, looking like little stuffed elephants—no cardboard in sight. Sniffling, with big tears rolling down her cheeks, she sobs. “What’s wrong with you?”
Oh my dear child, so many many things! But at least, by the grace of God we got you to seven. Happy birthday!