Tales of Snails

It's 9:30pm, Jose comes up the stairs and finds, on the top step, one little girl dressed in pyjamas and, contrary to parental assumptiuns, very much not asleep. Nor sleepy. "I can't go back to bed, mummy. I'm not sleepy at all," she shrugs, and won't budge, stubborn little thing.
Five attempts down (stubborn mother), I cave in and offer the next best thing: How about we sit in my bed and chat about... things? Tara is all for it. Can her Baby Sophia come; she can't sleep either? But of course Sophia can come! The more, the merrier.

So we sit in bed, in the dark, holding our respective babies, and chat. Better, Tara chats. And chats, and chats and CHATS. She LIKES this!
"Mummy, is there a shark under your bed, and what is it going to do when..."
"...and then we grabbed the snails and squished them and they went *pop*..."
"...and the queen and the man-queen..."
At midnight I realise that my strategy of uhm-ing and aah-ing does not have the desired effect of sending her off to sleep. Neither works plan B, that of occasionally warning her how tired she will be tomorrow. I switch to plan C of doing all the talking myself. "Tell me the story of the four friends in the garden," demands Tara. "But that's a story in one of your books downstairs," I decline. "But it's also in your head," insists Tara. She is subborn and clever, and she's very sure of what's in mummy's head. At 12:3oam, the four friends have been to the beach, and the hospital, and Tara is asleep. Sophia too. I don't like story telling. I don't like the four friends. I do like Tara. She's awfully cool.

The next morning, I am a little bit tired. So little bit tired I lose track of what I'm doing. Like, I walk down the stairs with a vague feeling I've forgotten something. The empty push chair at the bottom of the stairs tells me that's my baby. I'm glad he's not dressed in pink, white and purple - I may not have found him in the mess, forgotten why I came back up in the first place, and/or grabbed Baby Sophia instead. You never know what a tired mother is capable of.*


* Not cooking, that much is for sure.