beckity

I struggle with pushing the door and pulling the pram, but eventually we are in. Elsie is twisting round in her seat and demanding more raisins: 'more! more!' but I tell her to wait until we have finished in the shop. She moans, pulling at her straps in a vain attempt to be out, and I scan the shelves. No tea of the kind I want - something with ginger to ease the nauseous lump that has taken up residence inside me in recent days. I push Elsie over to the bread and weigh up the pros and cons of white baguette versus multi-grain baguette. Avoiding taking a decision, I stick one of each under the pram hood and go to pay. Out of the shop and back on the street, Elsie has lost interest in raisins and sticks her thumb in her mouth; the other hand stroking and pulling at doudou, her blue comfort toy. I swear under my breath as I note the escalator to the metro is not working and carefully ease the pram wheels down each oversized step until we reach the bottom. A girl in a long ski...

I push the door open and Elsie walks cautiously through. She takes Daddy's hand as I rummage in my bag for my purse, and hand over the coins to the man on the desk. Spotting our friends, I go forward to greet them, (your little one has grown! what a big boy!) and Marek takes Elsie's shoes off and stores them on a shelf. 'Ooh look, Elsie!' I gush. 'a ball pool!' I love those things. She looks up at me with a blank expression, and only wanders over when I lead her. Ignoring her friend, she stands in the middle of the play area, staring at the kids rushing past. The noise, and colours, seem to overwhelm her, and she just stands. Takes it all in. Absorbs the madness. More friends arrive, and we sit down to chat about the sleeping newborn in her carseat, upcoming holiday plans and the ridiculous size of our firstborns. The two boys from our party join the buzzing crowd, rushing about, sliding down slides and jumping into the pool of plastic balls. Our little gi...