Step forward. Step back

Firstly … ARGH!!! Why are you doing this to me thy shortest of months? What have I done to deserve such turmoil? Okay, fine, I admit I brought my daughter into this world during your time, but to punish me for it five years later is not fair. Is she not happy? Is she not bright? Whatever your reasons, your subservience now cannot repay the stress of yesterday and I shall be glad to the back of ye come June.

My daughter is five now. Has been for a week. She’s off to school now and the blissful quiet of her absence has left me with a lot of time on my hands. So much so, that I’ve finally managed to sit down and type out most of ten thousand words. Granted, I’ve had a back-step in knocking off a thousand in the prologue-like beginning, but I like how it flows. Interested … check out the first few chapters here.
Also, I’m coming ever so closer to the end of The Towers of Midnight by Robert Jordan. Yes, I know it’s written by Sanderson now, but it’s Jordan’s world. Oh, the things going on in the latter half. I won’t say what I think yet, that shall wait until I’m done. Only another hundred pages left.

But back to my daughter. Seems like such a short time from when I was sitting before the tv feeding this little bundle. She’d fall asleep in my arms while the monsters on the screen she couldn’t see roared their heads off.
Small wonder she finds such things amusing now. She watched Iron Man when she was three and Avatar when it first came out. She gets who’s the bad guy and, sometimes, why they’re after the good guys. Oddly, the fighting and ‘dying’ doesn’t bother her. Why? In her own words “They’re just pretending.”
Now the news is a whole different kettle of fish. She stares at that, eyes wide and mouth agape. She knows when mummy or aunty is watching the news that it’s all real. The buildings falling down in the Christchurch Earthquake? Real. Those houses on fire? Real. The happy moments of parents reunited with a lost child? Oh so real.
Yet, she still has that innocence, facing the new with the same wonder and exuberance. She still loves just being a kid. Whether fooling around and making up crazy things, or being her little serious self, which is eerily adult-like at times. But when things get tough, there’s always mummy to turn to.
And the words that can come from her mouth, be it the insight into the most complicated things or a logical, yet completely wrong answer, can still stun me. Like recently, she told me an illustrator illustrates the book (very true, and worthy of praise, especially when she knew exactly what illustrate meant), but the follow-up: “the author authorizes it”. Well, needless to say it had me cracking up (on the inside, of course, followed by a quick correction). Worse, I can see how she got that idea. Ah, the logic of children. Or is that the illogic of the English language?

Guess you’re not too bad May. You did give me the most precious gift.