Naughty girls

Well, we got back from France at 9pm yesterday and life then has been a hectic swirl of washing, looking after the kids (I took them to their childminder’s this morning, only for her to open the door in her dressing gown, looking very confused. Turns out this is her week off. I forgot about that. Oops), more washing, trying to edit a feature about a haunted meat-grinder, still more washing, cooking, cleaning, and did I mention all the washing? Camping, it turns out, makes everything extremely filthy. Who knew?

Anyway, I absolutely was not aided in any of this by my one-year old daughter. I love her more than life itself, but she’s a Grade A menace. Her favourite things to do are putting things in things (usually the house keys in my wellies, or some secret hiding place from which they’re never recovered. We’ve had to buy extras) and just generally tear the place apart. Today, I looked away for five minutes, and in that time she drew an eye mask on herself in green felt tip (hence the picture), scribbled all over the bathroom door, sprinkled cat litter all over the kitchen then started on the garden. Used cat litter, to make things worse, as I’d foolishly not instantly cleaned and bleached the cat box, or at least moved it out of her reach. A long way out of her reach. She’s exceptionally good at climbing.

Maybe I’m looking back with rose-tinted glasses, but I don’t remember her brother being anything like as naughty at the same age. I was no angel at her age either, mind you. I can remember, aged about 3, cutting off my sister’s pigtails when we played hairdressers (yes, I knew exactly what I was doing – I didn’t want her to have long hair like mine. She was actually thrilled with the spiky look I gave her. Mum definitely wasn’t.) Before you start feeling too sorry for her, she once knocked me out with a tray just because I was sitting on the floor below her chair, and she was holding a tray. The weird thing is that we’ve actually always got on pretty well.

So are girls just naughtier than boys? I wonder….

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