So Mu has this friend. I say friend, because I am unsure as to how much you can reasonably expect 2 year olds to grasp the concept of mutual attachment to another person based on some common ground, usually a personality trait, which bonds you to another. Anyway, Mu has this friend. In all honesty, I think Mu has this friend because Mam has a friend who happens to be Mu's friend's Mum, but that's escaped Mu.
So Mu's friend is a regular fixture in her social calendar, Toddlers, Church, and even calling on one another to see if they're "Laikin''" (playing out) and they get on like a house on fire - manageable and warming to start with fuelled all the way to totally out of control and in possible need of calling the army.
Today Mu's friend called to see if Mu was Laikin, and, living somewhere where nothing happens unless you make it, Mu was. Mam managed to get dressed before the friend arrived (monumental as it was just after 9am) and off we went.
Mu and her friend did play together for the most part, the bounds of this statement being drawing on each other in felt tip was technically together and there was no resultant fighting (until Mam found out). However, there was, not for the first time, an altercation revolving around the play kitchen.
Mu's Christmas gift from Granny and Granda was a lovely(?) hot pink play kitchen, Auntie Lor and Uncle Mark providing utensils and food to accompany the delightful moulded plastic fixture. It is of average size but more than plentiful for two small toddlers to share. I think the fracas started like many wars do with an insignificant and un-notworthy instance - this one involved a pink plastic frying pan, a plastic cauliflower and ladle - however what unfolded left me cowering in the nearby open washing machine.
It's unclear who had tenure of said items as both Mu and her friend remain adamant that it was they who had "MY TURN" and it is also unclear who struck first but my first real memory of the incident was both infants brandishing a plastic meat cleaver at one another. Were it not for the fact that Mu's friend was fortuitously holding a plastic bun tray also, Mu may have had the upper hand at this point. But not to be outdone, seeing that the friend had both hands tied she seized the plastic frying pan spilling the cauliflower and catapulting the ladle - both these items landing near Karoo who was playing on the floor nearby and whose attention was now turned to the battling preschoolers. This kickstarted Karoo into a chant of "EEK" "EEK" "EEK" - roughly translated as "FIGHT" "FIGHT" FIGHT" and the tots took this as green.
Mu's friend, affronted at such an underhand move by his buddy, dropped his bun tray and advanced with his meat cleaver, at which Mu backed away, forced to leave the frying pan. Now Hands Free and with an advancing, irate, cleaver-wheilding "friend" Mu grabbed...ME.
Whirling me round and round her hand by my Handy Hook, she attempted to clobber the friend over the head, however my loops caught on the ornamental Cinderella's Castle adorning the top of the kitchen, the result of which brought the entire Disney Princess Kitchen and accessorises crashing to the ground. During it's raising, the kitchen fell onto one of it's buttons, meaning we were now being constantly asked "Is princess Aurora awake yet? Breakfast's almost ready". At this Karoo's chant erupted into one long "FFFFFIIIIIIGGGGGHHHHHTTTTTT" and both Mu and her friend shook off their layer of plastic food debris and charged....
It was at this point, just before contact, that Mam waded in. She disarmed both tots in one swift motion (as only Mam's can) whilst silencing Karoo with a rice cake, and, holding both of them at arms length, she revealed the look that only Mam's can give (the one they receive as a free gift the moment they give birth) and both children fell silent. Her tone was firm, yet quiet. Her face angry, yet disappointed, and to give the woman her credit, the only time she raised her voice was to utter the line "THERE'S A REASON SHE'S CALLED SLEEPING BEAUTY" at the cooker. And this was after she'd listed who both kids had let down in their behaviour.
There was naughty step time, there were apologies and there was, following the departure of Mu's friend later that afternoon, the subjection of us all to several episodes of Mr Tumble's Something Special to re-enforce the point to Mu what friends do with each other. And a pointed note at the end, by Mam, that in not one episode had Mr Tumble, nor his friends, used any of their surroundings as an arsenal against one another.
Although 6 episodes later, I'm at a loss as to why the spotty man hasn't been taken out by his spotty bag by one of his 'friends'...
