Last Year in Parcent

Having three children is a bit like learning to live in a hurricane zone. It's possible, but you sometimes wonder why you made life so hard on yourself... Course, there are probably up-sides to hurricane regions too, like gorgeous scenery and windmill-powered tv?? I'd better stop the analogy there.

At home in Parcent, Mimosa has become a girl and wanders around in high heel shoes with her hair in strange arrangements. She has a way of tipping her head to one side that is very regal. A bit incongruous considering her scabbed knees and bruised shins from the new slide at school, but if anyone can carry it off it's Mimi. We moved here when she was only four months old, just lifting her baby face up to see the world. As a middle child, she has a life of comparisons ahead of her, but she has an inner calm at four years of age.

Yesterday, Farley went to the dentists in Orba. She probably needs very expensive braces to correct her 'ugly duckling' syndrome - that stage kids of 7 go through when their teeth all arrive at once and look like tombstones being tilted sideways by the undead. However, she can't wait to have a brace. (Weird child)

While we were tiptoeing through our Spanish with the dental receptionist, Farley chatted to people in the waiting room. How cool it must be to speak 3 languages and be able to switch instantly when you meet a stranger. She knows without asking whether to try Castellano or Valenciano Spanish or English, and almost always gets it right. The Dutch guy chatted to her, and a whole Spanish family and a lone English teenager.

Tabi has finally been speaking - probably as a result of listening to visiting adults natter for a week solid - and can now say I do it! My one! and No want bubize! The three of them all loved flying Mimi's kite at the football pitch last weekend, and Farley's trying to master one of those skipping things that has a hoop round your ankle with a ball attached? Shaped like the male sex sign?(I can't do the bloody thing, - bruised to bits)

I had a special 3 hour pass to go shopping at La Marina this Saturday (big mall near Benidorm with groovy shops galore) while Joe took the girls to a huge shaded beach climbing frame in Finestrat - basically he had a 3 hour snooze while they played monsters and tied up damsels.

It sounds as if we've got one of those blissfully uneventful lives, full of shopping and kids funny sayings and home comforts. You should see the house... rustic, we call it. But our lives have been anything but uneventful in the last few years. But more of that later. For now, this is normality. (Written July 2005)