Cat and Mouse

What is it about kids wanting to be animals? In the past week I've swung wildly between 'mummy cat' and 'owner' but the pretty constant theme is little a as kitten. This makes barking orders to stay in bed quite difficult - a bark doesn't carry so much meaning when it has to come out as a meow.

And it's added an entertaining new spin to Angelina's Royal Wedding (how apt! perhaps little a is a psychic cat! I can roll her out for the olympics now that the world cup octopus is sadly no longer with us). We still relish the twee stories and drool at the tasty wedding feast. But we also gobble up the mouselings as they prance across the page.

Most satisfying.

All together now: Meeeowp!

sugar plum fairies

A confession: I'm starting to worry about just how girly and wrapped in cotton wool little a is becoming.

I started with the best intentions. I avoided pink and nurtured her instincts to climb to the very top of whatever tall thing she could find.

But pink was the first colour she recognised, auntie's gift of blue shoes induced a tantrum that could be heard in Camden - and she loves ballet in the way it seems only little girls can (Billy Elliot doesn't seem to have had a great deal of impact on our patch of SE London).

It really struck home to me this week on our trip to the Tower of London with our friends and their son. When he corrected my authoritative discussion of the catapult in the moat by the entrance by pointing out that it is in fact a trebouchet, I realised I was totally out of my league. Resplendent in knightly armour of purest plastic, he galloped around, sword in air, shouting 'chaaaaarge' at passing groups of gormless teen tourists, while little a skipped the corridors singing about princesses. Should I worry about this? Is it just the natural order of things asserting itself? Or should I have embraced the opportunity to discuss the finer points of warmongering and kingship in a hope that our bloodthirsty surroundings might shake some of the sequins out of her head?

I definitely shouldn't be reading her Angelina Ballerina. But I can't resist. The intricate illustrations, filled with cottages and chintz and home-made jam, remind me of the brambly hedge stories I loved as a child (must try and track some of those down ...) and the mouselings' adventures are sweetly pretty in every way. Billy Elliot would approve, I'd think: it seems there isn't a problem in the world that can't be solved by a delightful ballet dance.

As well as the books, there is the live English National Ballet show, which entranced little a when we saw it last summer, and a beautifully intricate pop-up house with paper dolls, that can keep her occupied for half an hour at a time.

Next week, I promise, I'll read her something macho. But this week we're being girly and frou-frou and dressing mainly in pink froth.



We chose Angelina and the Royal Wedding on our trip to http://www.primrosehillbooks.com/ today. Such a lovely lovely bookshop. Could almost have been conjured up by Angelina's creators Katharine Holabird and Helen Craig - just what a bookshop should be.