....and I know how to get it!

Rosie’s world is a simple one. She wants a small number of things, all of which seem infinitely get-able. She wants to eat…..well, that’s easy – either ‘Mum’ or ‘Dad’ bring her a dish of delicious(!) food each day. Editor’s note – it’s not our fault she will only eat Chappie or Butcher’s Tripe. When we try to give her other brands of dog food, she picks the meat out of her bowl and throws it on the floor!

She wants to be inside her Mum. That’s me, in case you weren’t sure. The vet told me when I took her in for a check-up the day after fetching her home from Battersea Dogs Home that she’d been taken away from her Mum too soon. Rosie doesn’t mind, you see, she’s got me. She wants to climb inside me and she’s often to be found, trying to burrow through my stomach and under my skin.

Finally, she wants to play. Her ‘weapons of choice’ are either ambushing Archie or, if he won’t play, a tennis ball is the only substitute. She’s got loads of toys but really only the tennis ball will do. She will only choose an alternative if the tennis ball is taken away from her. Here she gets a choice of five toys and guess which one she’s gone for – yep, the tennis ball. (You are SOOOOOOO predictable Rosie.)

It’s nice to know that her needs are met so perfectly here, though in truth, anywhere where she can get all of the above is fine and dandy with her.

For me, I know what I want and, unlike Rosie, I am absolutely baffled as to how to get it. I try and try and still fail at everything I do. Why have we not finished a single room here? Because we can’t for one reason or another. There is still rampant damp on our front wall so we can’t finish painting either in our bedroom or the dining room. We still don’t know if the pipe work for the new back boiler works OK (so we can put flooring down in the bathroom) because there is still no chimney on the stove. Again our priorities change – we’ve spent the weekend doing back-breaking work in the garden to ready it for fencing and planting…….and what I thought would take two days to complete, has taken two days and I reckon we’re no more than a third of the way through it, if that. Tomorrow I go back to work, having failed yet again to complete anything.

I know what I want and I have no idea how to get it…….if only I could swap places with my little girl.

Beautiful babies and bedtime bunnies were last year's subject matter.