Parenting a Dinosaur

The first thing you should do when you suddenly find that you’ve become the mother of a dinosaur is to go out and buy some ear plugs.  Dinosaurs like to ROAR.  They like to ROAR a lot. From the moment they wake in the morning, until they lay their sleepy dinosaur heads on their pillows at night, they will be roaring.  They particularly like to do their roaring as close to an ear as possible. 

The other thing young dinosaurs like to do is STOMPING.  This is best done on wooden floorboards for maximum stomping effect, and must be combined with ROARING at all times.  Be wary of taking your little dinosaur out in public as this is when the ROARING and STOMPING will reach maximum noise level.  Your little dinosaur will also assume that anyone else of a similar age or younger is a dinosaur too, and will naturally ROAR the loudest at those of a nervous disposition.  Be prepared for filthy looks from parents whose little non-dinosaurs  have been scared to a screaming frenzy by your little dinosaur.

Once a little dinosaur has taken over your house the only movie you will be allowed to watch will be Ice Age 3.  Any younger siblings will also become dinosaurs, and you will find yourself hunting through the library for books with a dinosaur theme every time you go.

When their grandparents visited, each of my little dinosaurs was given a hard plastic dinosaur to play with. Unfortunately little miss loved her dinosaur so much that she refused to go to sleep without it.  With it clutched in her little hand she would try to go to sleep in her usual position – bum in the air with her hands tucked under her chest.  But she couldn’t get comfortable.  Efforts by us to prise it out of her hands or replace it with a soft toy were met with a dinosaur sized tantrum.  After a few sleepless nights by all, I decided to make her a soft dinosaur that resembled her plastic one.  Whilst not quite as loved as the plastic one, it was deemed an acceptable substitute for bedtime cuddles, and a bit more sleep was gratefully received by all.

When Master 3 saw the cuddly dinosaur he immediately demanded I make him one.  But it couldn’t be just any dinosaur.  It had to be a Rexosaurus.  I pored over dinosaur patterns and tried to coerce him into letting me make an easier one.  Dinosaurs are very stubborn creatures and so he insisted on the Rexosaurus, but he’d quite like a pterodactyl and a triceratops too.  No pressure! And so, because dinosaur mummies can do anything (apparently), I made him a pterodactyl first.  I enjoyed making it too, and we were both thrilled with the result.  I might have even been a little misty eyed watching my dinosaur snuggled up in bed with the pterodactyl clutched to his chest.

Pterry the pteradactyl

But little dinosaurs have big appetites, and no sooner had I finished the pterodactyl than the whinging started about when he would get his Rexosaurus.  So I sacrificed a pair of camo pants that my gigantosaurus-sized butt was probably never going to squeeze into again, and began the hard task of piecing together a Rexosaurus.  It was fiddly and frustrating work that certainly wasn’t helped by an enquiry every five minutes on whether it was finished yet.  You think I’m kidding about the five minutes part?  Sometimes it wasn’t even that long.  After three days and with my sanity rapidly disappearing, I gave up on getting it just right.  I wasn’t happy with the result, but Master 3 definately was.  His daddy quite liked it too.  So much so that one night when Master 3 was so tired that he fell straight asleep without noticing his Rexosaurus wasn’t there, his daddy took it to bed with him. 

I haven’t started making the triceratops yet as I have pretty, frilly dresses and skirts on the go at the moment, but Master 3 is definately putting on the pressure.  Thankfully my ‘incredibly masculine’ little dinosaur has been appeased by the fact that the dresses and skirts are in his size so he’ll get to try them on for me!