Careful

"Bauble," said B.

"That's right," said R. "Which is your favourite?"

"Dis," said B, reaching for a glittery red one.

My heart was in my mouth, but R reminded him that he had to be very careful and gentle with it, and he was - it only rebounded slightly when he let go, and stayed attached to the branch. If he'd gone for the Venetian bauble to his right, I might have had to bark out a "NO!", but luckily that didn't happen till later.

Having achieved entry to a room he can't usually access, the Boy was determined to make the most of his opportunity, and moved on from the Christmas tree to close examination of the various objects on the low window sill. These include a pair of small Art Nouveau salt dishes and a Secessionist mustard pot with a blue glass liner, along with two tiny silver spoons. He immediately began an elaborate game with these, mixing up some kind of imaginary food in the three receptacles and then pretending to eat it, as well as spooning or pouring it from one dish to another, and into other things such as the empty cups of a pair of candlesticks. R and I were fascinated to watch this game, which completely absorbed him for about quarter of an hour, but I called an abrupt halt to it when I saw him start to turn the mustard pot over, endangering the irreplaceable glass liner. He was startled by my barked command, but seemed to accept that grandparents have their strange little moments, and went back to playing happily with his toys as soon as we'd relocated him back to the snug and the rest of the grown-ups.

This evening I produced a curry feast - though with less good humour than I would like to have shown, because I stupidly didn't start cooking early enough, and had to rush to get everything on the table by B's dinner time. (Stiff memo to self about poor time-keeping, and allowing stress to get the better of me.) The rest of the evening passed relaxedly though, with L, H, S and myself deeply absorbed in the National Gallery flower painting jigsaw, while G and R watched 1917 on television. My daughter manages to surprise me quite often, and today was one of those days: I don't remember seeing her do a jigsaw puzzle since she was a child, but tonight she turned out to be a jigsaw ninja, completing the whole of the black edge that the rest of us had left on one side because we'd felt it was too difficult to tackle.