What the Don't Tell You About Small Children

What they don't tell you about small children is just how much longer doing the simplest thing will take.
Maybe when you first thought about having children, you had a lot of high ideals about how their upbringing would be educational and culturally enriching whilst still being fun and loving. They weren't going to be the children you read about, who spend their time slumped passive in front of the television not knowing what a cow is or where eggs come from. You would take them on country walks pointing out items of interest, they would scamper happily about, bringing you interesting things to identify. In reality you will be freezing cold, shouting 'Come on !'  while they trudge at a snail's pace through the mud until they fall full length, face first in it. You then have to carry the screaming, dripping infant the half mile back to the car as they are too outraged to walk, even after you have emptied their wellies of water and wrung their socks out.
Likewise you probably intended to teach them to cook from an early age, having visions of some rosy cheeked child gazing happily up at you whilst you demonstrate how to make a cake. You are probably wearing matching aprons. It doesn't happen like that , the child gets a chair and stands on it, positioning himself between you and whatever it is you are trying to reach. He insists that he can do everything regardless of what it is, this culminates in him resetting the scales as you are weighing the flour out. Whilst trying to stop him tipping all the eggs into the cake at once and causing it to curdle, it is more by luck than anything else that you keep his fingers out of the electric beaters. At last with a sigh of relief, you slam the thing in the oven and turn to clearing up. Once again you wish your arms were two feet longer as once again he is on his chair, this time between you and the sink. Time for slumping in front of the television. CBeebies is now your friend, you know every show and every presenter.
As you may guess, Wednesday is my day for spending quality time with Oliver. Very little gets done normally. This week I managed to sneak a loaf of bread into the oven and then we made a dozen buns together.

Whilst I was taking a picture of the bread, a little hand reached up and took a bun. Hence there are only eleven.