I thought I’d better take a picture of the kids by the Christmas tree on the morning of our last “tree pick-up” day. We had been so severely sick during the season that I couldn’t remember if we took any pictures of the kids at all. And what’s another ten digital pictures, if the computer’s already full of hundreds and hundreds of them anyway? The invention of the digital image and camera has secured that not a single meaningless moment goes by unrecorded in a child’s life, while also securing themselves a prosperous future through parents, who’ll always be in need of memory upgrades, new digital software and such. Sad, really!

So, I took this picture of the kids, loaded it into the computer, stared at it for a while … but it took a few moments before it registered. I knew that something looked odd. And then it dawned on me… the colouring. It’s so strange looking at your own kids and realizing that judging by the skin colour they could almost pass for children of two different races or at the very least from two different families. And that is without adjusting the colouring or the contrast in the image at all. Honestly. I had never thought about it until now, but Kaspar is very pale. Alabaster child. Stella almost looks tanned next to him. Ever since noticing it in the picture I’m also seeing it in real life.

I had these grand plans of all these things I was going to write about today, but Stella is making those grunting, huffing and puffing and little kitten noises already. So, I might have to keep this short for the time being. She’s been acting really odd the last few days – restless, very restless.