My Stinky Daughter

My children are stinkers. In one case, that is quite literally true.

I love my girls with all my heart and generally they are very well-behaved but once in a while one of them does something totally out of character and really makes me cross. In the last 24 hours they've both taken a turn.

Yesterday I took them for a walk at lunchtime. We didn't have very much to do - pick up a couple of soft drinks and some juice, buy a fresh loaf from the market, scout around for potential birthday presents for Natasha - that was about all.

Angelica has been let increasingly 'off the leash' as it were. She's grown out of the' running off in public' phase and has learned to wait at the crossings for the green man to come on. She can generally be trusted to walk demurely beside the pushchair, holding my hand when necessary. I have stopped panicking about her running off at a hundred miles an hour or committing the crime of shoplifting when peppers are near.

It was market day in the town so it was a little busier than usual. Angelica was walking along quite happily, chatting away about the pigeons and the ice cream van she could see ahead when suddenly she veered off to the right. I was taken by surprise, I wasn't expecting her to suddenly change direction and I spotted - too late - what she was honing in on.

A puddle.

A great big puddle.

Puddles are like catnip to Angelica. She cannot resist them and she goes crazy for them.

Before I could tell her not to she'd launched into the puddle with a great big splash. In one moment her shoes, socks and trousers were soaked through. I couldn't understand where, on a hot and sunny Saturday afternoon, a huge puddle had even come from. My eyes followed the trail of water along the slanting path until I saw exactly where the water had come from.

Unfortunately it had come from the melted ice around the fresh fish on a market stall.

"WE-E-E-E-ETTTTTTT!" Angelica cried, waddling across to me like a penguin and trying to haul her fishy pants further up her legs.

"That is exactly why we tell you not to jump in puddles!" I cried.

"Wet legs in the trousers!" she sobbed, "need clean trousers!"

"We're in the middle of the town!" I didn't really know what to do for the best, "we can't go all the way back home!"

"Mummy, help!" she cried, "Get more trousers!"

There was only one solution. I marched my waddling, fishy daughter to the closest clothes shop and found the cheapest pair of trousers.

"Take my trousers off?" Angelica asked hopefully.

"We need to pay for these first," I told her, "Then we'll go up to the toilets and get you changed."

I carried on marching to the checkout when I realised she was no longer waddling next to me. I stopped and turned around to see my darling daughter with her trousers around her ankles, in the middle of a busy shop, trying not to fall over as she tried to pull them over her shoes. To say I was not amused is an understatement!

One purchase and one trip top the toilets later, Angelica was far happier and about 80% less fishy, but I think this time she may have learned her lesson about why puddles are only to be entered under express permission from her parents!

As for my other little stinker... well, waking at midnight, staying wide-awake, and refusing to go back to sleep or even to be quiet culminated in an unexpected and definitely unwanted trip out for the two of us at four in the morning... but that's a whole other story!