‘Mummy, I know what paramedics do! They take people to hospital!’
‘That’s right, and they also help people when they come in the ambulance when there’s no doctor around. Would you like to be a paramedic?’
‘No, I want to be a mummy!’
‘I see! You can be a mummy and a paramedic. I am your mummy, but I also work. Daddy is not just a daddy. He’s also an engineer. Would you like to be an engineer?’
‘I already am an engineer! Just like Rosie Revere!’
So there we go. Get your priorities right!
She also wanted to be a vet not that long ago, but for some time, she’s refused to even hold her pet snake and went upset every time I said it was time to handle her. I thought about changing the strategy, since I couldn’t get anywhere asking why she didn’t want to do it anymore. When our neighbours came to see Sienna, I suggested to Vesper she shows them how to hold her and tell them what she eats.
I then acknowledged that she may have felt pressured by me to hold the snake and would she rather me tell her when I am taking her out and then decide for herself if she’d like to do it as well?
The idea was greeted with enthusiasm and Vesper took Sienna out for 2 consecutive days after that, asking me to ‘wipe Sienna’s vulva first’. So there we go. Mystery solved – the snake pooped on me twice before and Vesper was worried that she was going to get pooped on as well. Yesterday we both took a mouse out of the freezer and decanted it into a smaller box to thaw overnight. We were running slightly late this morning so didn’t have time for the feed, but I could see Vesper wanting to do it herself – I put the rodent back in the fridge and she fed it to the snake this evening.
I am so happy that I was able to stop in my ways and approach it from a different perspective – and also, even if she got them slightly wrong, it looks like us naming the body parts with their correct names is starting to take effect!
Ballsed -up Parenting 