Day 73

This picture was taken last year in February - Jess on our frozen pond. 

We are experiencing a massive Nor'easter storm, gale-force winds, heavy rainfall, tidal damage to beaches and coastal properties, flooding in people's basements and gardens, and all the rivers running high to overflowing!  We are lucky to live on a hill.  Yesterday afternoon the rain began, today all day, and tomorrow more expected, until the afternoon, as the storm has stalled over New England.

Molly and I were sodden when we got back from our run, only 1.79 miles (2.9km), although it was the same course we always run.  I think because I am running faster, I am taking bigger strides, hence the shorter distance on the pedometer.  I forgot to time myself though.  Molly loves being dried with a towel when she is wet, she just oozes bliss while she is being rubbed down!

When the children were little, Tim used to play a game with them that they loved involving tickling.  They had to stand up in front of him for as long as they could while he tickled them.  Each one would bravely stand for two seconds, then collapse on the floor in paroxysms of glee.  When eventually they had composed themselves once more, they would come back again, to try in vain to stay standing.  I laughed and laughed just watching them, I even have a smile on my face thinking about it!  Matthew was the best of the four, he is the least ticklish person I know, although I seem to remember that my dad was not that ticklish, so perhaps Matt takes after his grandpa. 

Tickling is such a strange thing because we can't tickle ourselves.  There must be that element of surprise, and someone else's hand doing the tickling, your own doesn't work.  People have always thought that humans were the only animals that laugh, but there is evidence that rats can be tickled.  Scientists set up high frequency microphones and caught them chirping away when they are tickled, the same sound young rats make at play.  According to these scientists, their rats will negotiate mazes and press a variety of levers in order to be tickled.  They give the same little chirrup when the dopamine reward circuits in the brain are stimulated.  They think that rat humour would involve a great deal of slapstick comedy.

So this is my fourth portrait of each of my children, they are in no particular order so that if they read these they don't think I have favoured one of them before the other.  (You have to be very careful, as a mother, especially with twins!) This is Nick, who was very cross with me last night when I woke him up at 2 in the morning to make him go and fit his long frame on the little spare bed in his brother's room, because I was fearful of the storm downing more trees and the possibility of one coming down on top of him, exposed where he is in his bed next to two huge windows.  He wasn't able to do it, he protested, and eventually I dragged all his bedding off him and marched into Matthew's room, so that he had no choice but to follow me in order to slip once again into the nice warm nest of his duvet and blankets!