Pulling the Strings

Overall it was a good weekend. It now seems that something of a Saturday routine is developing. In the morning I go off to ride Pich in Orthez which is about an hour away from home. Maxime comes with me. Whilst I am riding there is a young English girl who positively adores looking after the little terror and she often even sticks him on the back of a pony which he thinks is just fantastic. We all then have lunch at the stables with my pal Michel and a number of the other regular riders. After lunch Maxime gets back in the car and I drive slowly home as he starts his afternoon nap. Sometimes I drive so slowly (to maximise the number of winks he gets), that I even need to stop the car to have a snooze myself. Overall Maxime seems to be a big fan of this time with his Dad and the ponies – I have deduced this by multiplying the number of chicken nuggets and slices of pizza he consumes by the amount of mud and dirt he can cover himself in in the space of only 4 hours.

However the problem that I face is that sometimes too much information is shared with his mother about exactly what happens on our Saturday outings. Whereas I have to accept that the dirt is impossible to hide, there are however certain things where we can do better e.g. the tomato ketchup stains on his hands and face or the empty McDonalds bags in the car. I should also definitely stop actually telling Sandie what goes on.... for example on Saturday after 25 minutes of whittling on, and despite my best efforts to change the topic of conversation, I was required to stop the car and pull over into the hard shoulder on the motorway so I could finally put Maxime’s fur lined boots on. Whereas I thought I had done a good job by resisting his demands for a full 25 minutes, Sandie later took great delight in feigning mock horror that I had actually seen fit to stop the car to put some completely unnecessary (winter) boots on a 2 year old child. She seems to be in no doubt about exactly who is pulling the strings on a Saturday. Back to parenting 101 for me it seems.