Men at work

The Boy Wonder woke up at 6.15am, but I politely declined to get up before 7, so he helped himself to a lift-the-flap book about the workings of the human body, in which he's particularly interested at the moment, and went and sat by the night light in the corridor, reading it to himself. I think I can now claim that he's already spent more time studying human biology than any of my other descendants - and possibly more than the older two put together. It would feel almost bizarre if a science bent were to reappear in the family at this stage.

By 7.30am the two of us were in the kitchen making drop scones for breakfast. The Boy ate his first three with chocolate spread, then had two with maple syrup, to check which was better, and then polished the remains of the maple syrup off his plate with two rashers of bacon. Then R and I took turns to make marble runs with him. After this we watched Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance most Fowl for about the fifteenth time, and then it was time to make a Lego digger to go with yesterdays's roller. 

Having worked with R yesterday, today he decreed that I had to help with the creation, but when R made a comment later about this joint enterprise, B said dismissively, "Grandma didn't do very much. She told me what I had to do, but then I made it by myself." On the one hand, it was nice that I did such a good job of hands-off coaching that he was able to feel complete ownership of the project - so yay me! - but on the other, my misogyny receptors were jangling, and I looked at R with my mouth open in silent outrage and my eyebrows somewhere up around my hair line. 

Women may be more use for cooking breakfast than for constructing things, but they are also allowed to drive Boys around, and after lunch I drew the short straw for the return trip to Wales. The weather by this time was horrendous, and it was a relief to reach Monmouth safely, hand back a sleepy child to his mother, and head off back to the Shire with the storm at our backs.