Peanut was over for a while this morning and she started reminding me strongly of Minnie... she has much the same personality, v. different from how Moomin was as a toddler. Minnie drooled more and I guess was shorter - but the same funny round-eyed happy determination.
I started having all sorts of funny memories of how minnie used to look standing up in her crib and banging things on other things. Peanut is more hyper I think. While Minnie was often happy to curl up with her blankets and suck her fingers slurpily and "work" her fingers around the satiny blanket-edges... the Nut fights naps most of the time and can't wait to be beetleing around endlessly. She is well behaved with Moomin and does not try to eat his toys too much anymore. he is interested in her when she says "uh-oh" or makes word-like noises.
also was remembering how I was expected to be superhumanly patient and kind with her every second. Impossible for a 6 year old!
And then was considering Moomin's feelings about his own friends and playmates. I flashed back on our apartment in the student slums of detroit. That little bastard M4rco H4beck0vich that I was expected to just get along with because our moms were having coffee! Doughy little jerkwad! He'd grab my stuff, and gabble at me in roumanian. And then the moms would come down like a ton of bricks and syrup, "You must SHARE with your GUEST!" and Marco's face would go all smug. He was huge and could muscle me out of the way without effort. I recall one particular incident that made me hate him passionately and realize the essential unfairness of grownups. I had shown him my prized possession, a white helicopter very realistic looking with a wheel that you coudl thumb to make the rotor go around and another wheel to lower a hook on a rope for rescue missions. This, when we didn't have very much Stuff at all; toys were minimal, so that the sort of bag of dinosaurs or rattly little cars you'd buy now at the grocery store for 2 bucks was like, all my toys and each car and dinosaur had a beloved personality. I had the same grocery-store pack of 10 plastic barrettes till I was around 12 years old, i swear to god... Anyway, back to my prized helicopter. There was little Minnie, knocking down my cities. And Marco hogging the rescue copter that was going to hook up the dinosaurs on top of the skyscrapers. And there was one of those "you must share" fights in which I became sick with the awareness that I was considered babyish for caring what I played with when. Then: horrors, the copter disappeared. I told my mom that I thought Marco had taken it. She was even more disappointed in me... for being suspicious... but I felt like she was lying. Because there was another weird little lecture about how he didn't have a lot of toys and came here from another country so I had to cut him some slack. of course later- during some other coffee hour in the apartment upstairs - I found the fucking helicopter! In the little jerk's toybox! And the moms would not listen or take my outrage seriously. I stole it back. I had to keep "playing" with him but I hated his guts! He was a liar, a sneak, and a thief, and was super-manipulative of the parents; somehow in our house he was a guest and must be indulged, but in HIS house I was a guest and must behave extra well. It was such a double standard!
I'm just saying - I can remember my emotions from the time very well! And Moomin is that old, now, or nearly so. We should tread carefully on their senses of justice and fair play and not expect perfection. and have some sympathy for their likings and dislikings of each other which are not always rational or convienient from the adult point of view.
Moomin suggested for his music lessons that he would like to play "the horn". I think he means trumpet - he is thinking of gonzo in the opening credits of the mupp3t show.
I can't believe it's raining here. So unheard of! It's an outrage!
