Birthday Boy

I was reading our local free Parish newsletter today, when I noticed an article written for children, which ended with the words “and remember, there are two VIPs on the way, Baby Jesus and Santa Claus!”.

“They have got to be joking” I muttered to myself, and looked at the Very Small Boy, who was daintily dipping fingers of toast into his bowl of soup and then flinging them on the floor.

It’s hard to believe, but it’s been a whole year since our own little VIP was born, at 2.24 pm on a frosty November afternoon in Dublin. So different from the tiny, delicate Small Girl at birth, he was all plump rolls of fat; he didn’t even seem like a newborn, his sturdy little body was so solid.

“But he’s so chubby!”, was all I could say when I first set eyes on him.
"We’ve got a son!” said DH quietly to no-one in particular, looking vaguely stunned.
“Yes… and look how chubby he is!”

The irony is that the Very Small Boy (who weighed over 9lbs at birth and has always been pleasingly stout) was never really very small at all.

Now, aged one, he’s a robust and very masculine little bundle of energy; dashing about the house, bashing things against other things, throwing his food on the floor and making gratuitous use of his one and only word: “hot”. Yes, our patient wait for his first word has been rewarded with this fascinating insight into what goes on in his little mind: he appears to think that absolutely everything is hot.

In a birthday celebration which seemed over the top for someone too small to know what was going on or remember it in the future, we had a family party for the Very Small Boy’s very first birthday. After the Small Girl had helped him open his presents, she sat happily playing with his new cars and trucks and hammers as he tore their wrappings to pieces, and I realised that we had actually gone to so much trouble for her. Because now, she is old enough to remember and one day, she can tell him all about it. And because she can’t remember her own first birthday, but she now understands that we did all this for her too, regardless.

After a heartfelt rendition of “Happy Birthday”, we presented a puzzled-looking Very Small Boy with his very first taste of chocolate cake. Looking delighted, he pointed at it, shouted “hot!” then crammed it into his mouth, saving a fistful of crumbs to delicately cast over the floor about his high-chair.

Super Eleven-Bat

“What are the symptoms of swine flu?” DH asked me this morning, sniffing and looking a bit sorry for himself.
“Well… I think you’d probably know if you had the flu, darling” I replied sympathetically, handing him a cup of tea and a tissue.

It was 7.00am, and all four of us had been up for over an hour. The Very Small Boy, never a particularly good sleeper, started fussing about at 5.00am and by 6.00, he’d woken up a rather irritable Small Girl, so we’d given up on the idea of further sleep and all come downstairs for breakfast.

“Come on, Sausage”, I said to the Small Girl, who’d just finished her Weetabix and was whining about turning on the television, “want to come upstairs and do your teeth?”
“No” said the Small Girl, and stormed off.
“Actually, it was a rhetorical question” I muttered to myself and, picking up the Very Small Boy, who was hanging desperately onto my trouser-leg, I followed her upstairs.

“Who are you going to play with this morning at Playschool?” I asked the Small Girl, trying to cheer her up.
“Waychel!” she replied, perking up noticeably.
“Oh great!”, I said, “and what game will you play?”
“It’s a chasin’ game, and she’s chasin’ me, and I’m Super Eleven-Bat!”
“Super Eleven-Bat?” I asked “that’s an interesting name, why are you called that?”
“Because she’s Super One-Bat and so I thought I’ll be Super Eleven-Bat!”.

I considered this for a minute, remembered the Small Friend in question had a favourite toy wombat and suggested:
“I think perhaps she’s “Super Wombat” darling – a wombat is a kind of animal who lives in Australia”.
"No, She’s Super One-Bat and I’m Super Eleven-Bat!” She insisted, close to tears now, and ran into the Very Small Boy’s room.

Once more, the Very Small Boy (now happily sitting on my hip and watching the proceedings with interest) and I followed her. She had pulled down a packet of nappies from the changing table, and was balancing precariously on its slippery surface in her sock-feet.

“Don’t do that, darling”, I said “you’ll go flying”. The Small Girl stopped what she was doing and looked at me in wonder.
“Up in the air?” she asked. I sighed and left the room.

Some time later, when we were all dressed and cleaned and brushed and ready for the day, DH decided it was time to extract himself and leave for work.
“I’d better run”, he said, handing me his empty teacup and giving me a kiss.
"You’re going to run to work?” I asked, and looked at him in mock horror. He gave me a withering look and backed away to kiss the children.

The Small Girl had already begun her routine “Daddy don’t go” tantrum, so I suggested we all wave to him from the window, which usually placates her enough for him to orchestrate an exit.

As he left the house, head bowed against the gusting wind, we all gathered at the window to wave enthusiastically. DH glanced up at us and, aware the neighbours might be watching, shyly gave a small and furtive wave. Then, bustling with quiet pride, he set off on his way to work.

My Imaginary Life

Driving to Playschool last week to pick up the Small Girl, I was enjoying the miserable, dark day and starting to feel excited about Christmas.

“It’s nearly Christmas, Pootle!” I called over my shoulder to the Very Small Boy, who was sitting in his car seat, playing with a toy truck.
“Aaaaah – DUH!” he shouted, and threw his truck onto the floor.

He may feel indifferent to the whole business of Christmas, but it’s a different story with his Big Sister. The Small Girl is old enough now to remember the excitement of last year, and has recently been entertaining us all with excited chatter about stockings and reindeer and presents and “Santie” coming down the chimney on Christmas Eve.

I’m thrilled for her that the festive season is nearly here, bringing with it such opportunities for unbridled imagination; since the time she could first string a sentence together, the Small Girl has been passionate about imaginary games. For her, at the age of three-and-a-half, there simply is no line between “ real” and “imaginary”, and in the same way that she believes, when we go swimming, that I’m really a shark trying to eat her, she really believes that a fat, bearded man in a red suit will be squeezing down our chimney next month to bring her presents. Santa Claus, the only pretending game that’s specifically initiated by grown-ups for children, is one of the greatest enjoyments of childhood. And yet it’s been causing me to feel distinctly uneasy recently.

Parents in Ireland (so I’m told) feel so strongly that their children actually believe in Santa Claus that they complain to teachers when their ten-year-old children are told by fellow students that Santie isn’t real. And apparently (in DH’s own words), other parents will be “knocking on our door” if it’s our child who spreads these terrible rumours. But I can’t help feeling very strongly that we could still enjoy the pretence and the fun of Santie without actually presenting it as truth: when so much of children’s real lives are intertwined with imaginative leaps of fancy, why can we not have Christmas pretending-games without patronising the smallest members of the family by lying to them?

After we arrived at Playschool and I’d bundled the Very Small Boy up snugly against the driving rain, we picked up the Small Girl, who cheerfully sang us a medley of festive songs as we made our way back to the car.

“Shark?” she said to me (reinstating a favourite game).
“Yes, Little Girl?” I replied in my best Shark Voice.
“Do ghosts live in trees?”

I laughed, marvelling at her imaginative dream-world, and replied “I’m not sure, I think ghosts can live anywhere really”.
“Can they live under the sea like you?” she asked, her eyes widening. “Or at the North Pole? Like Santie?”.
“I guess they probably could. And actually, that reminds me – I’ve been meaning to talk to you about Santie.”

I took her hand as she looked up expectantly at me “Hop into the car, Sausage, and I’ll let you in on a little grown-up secret…”.

Winter Musings

"Is it winter yet?", The Small Girl the asked me yesterday. I replied that I thought it must be winter; Halloween has passed, the clocks have changed and suddenly there's a festive chill in the air and it's getting dark at 4.00 in the afternoons.

I've always been a winter person, really. In Bombay, I fell in love with a hot climate: brightness and colour and clear blue skies and dusty pavements and listless, burning afternoons. But what I missed most about the West (apart from decent cheese) was the miserable British winter. Christmas on a beautiful Goan beach with cheerful, overdressed Indian Santas was fantastic, but to me, Christmas isn't really Christmas unless you're shivering in front of a log fire and complaining about the constant darkness and the driving rain.

Winter in Ireland is a particularly miserable affair. The bleak grey skies, the bare trees and constant drizzle, the ridiculously short daylight hours, make our little town seem desolate and empty. But without that contrast, our house wouldn't feel like the warm, cosy, welcoming place that it is becoming.

When we bought our house two years ago, I think people thought we were mad: it was cold and rambling, badly designed and obviously hadn't seen a coat of paint or a new kitchen fitting in at least 20 years. People here seem to have huge expectations of "home", and the trend is for new-builds with modern appliances, multiple en-suites and lots of marble and chrome. But coming from London, where we have altogether lower standards, DH and I didn't even need to discuss the fact that we would buy somewhere older, in need of renovation, and put our own mark on it.

It's a slow and painful process, especially with two young children, but I'm falling in love with our cosy, homely, characterful house, with all its quirks and eccentricities. I love the fact that we have made it our own and that the kitchen and breakfast room feel like a warm, inviting family space.

In fact, the only thing I dislike about winter is the constant helping on and off with coats, hats and scarves: the Small Girl and the Very Small Boy simply will not tolerate being strapped into their car seats bundled up in countless layers of clothing, so I find myself constantly taking their coats off and on while standing by the open door of the car in the rain.

"Well you're not a very good Mummy" said the Small Girl to me the other day, as she tripped along the High Street with me in the rain "because this coat isn't warm enough and I feel cold!".

I had obviously misjudged the severity of the high winds and lashing rain that day, but I tried my hardest to make it up to her: we spent a long and happy afternoon in the kitchen baking, and then we played a complicated imaginary game, warmed by the apple-pie heat of our ancient oven.

Pootle

The Very Small Boy’s very small personality is really starting to blossom these days. Now that he is more mobile, there is nothing he loves better than to amble about the obscure corners of the house; squeezing himself behind plants, opening cupboards, pulling things off shelves and throwing them boisterously behind him as he goes. He’s also recently discovered pointing, and it’s as fulfilling for the rest of us to be able to start to understand him as it is for him to finally be able to communicate his needs. He loves nothing better than to share a glass of juice with his Big Sister, pointing to it and fussing until I give in and let him have some (and leading me to hide her drinks out of sight of him to spare his little teeth).

We decided to spend the long weekend with Nanny and Grandpa in Kingscourt last weekend. They only live an hour and a half away, and The Small Girl’s ten year old cousin, whom she absolutely adores, lives just down the road from them, so the two girls usually go off to play together and DH and I get to spend some quality time with her Very Small Brother.

The Very Small Boy always requires a short period of adjustment when reintroduced to his grandparents after some time away (the Irish call this “making strange”, which is an expression I love both for its complete meaninglessness and for its perfect encapsulation of that state of nervous clinginess that babies suffer on meeting someone new). After ten minutes or so of Making Strange, the Very Small Boy remembered that Nanny and Grandpa were, in fact, well-intentioned relations, and pulled himself together sufficiently to embark on a thorough exploration of their house.

Impatiently awaiting the arrival of her cousin, the Small Girl watched her Very Small Brother.
“Ooh, he’s investigatin’”, she said, watching him potter amiably about, armed with a pencil case and a remote control he’d discovered on his travels.
“Yes, he’s pootling about”, I remarked.
“Mummy, you said poo!” (the Small Girl currently has an unfortunate preoccupation with poo.)
“No sausage, I said “pootle”. Baby Pie’s pootling about; he’s having a pootle”.
“Pootle!” she repeated, liking the sound of the word. “Let’s call him “Pootle!””.
“OK then” I agreed, thinking it did actually kind of suit him.

“Come on then, Pootle”, the Small Girl called as she held out a hand for the Very Small Boy; then, hand-in-hand, they wandered off together to squeeze themselves behind the pot plant for a game of hide and seek.

Nostrils

Wherever possible, I try to avoid the challenging experience of supermarket shopping with both the Small Girl and the Very Small Boy at the same time. However, one of the unfortunate consequences of the Small Girl moving to a Montessori programme is that Playschool is now governed by a school timetable. To my horror, I discovered that I am expected to entertain her for whole weeks on end during Playschool holidays, as well as trying to get things like shopping and cooking done with the "help" of two Small People.

We started gently this week with October half term, Monday being a bank holiday and therefore leaving me with only four days of entertaining to do. So, in-between the art assignments, stimulating outings, baking projects and play-dates I had scheduled in advance for this frankly daunting few days, I tried to make my own mundane chores as exciting as possible for the Small Girl, for whom even the most trivial task can become exciting if given the right imaginative stimulus. We made a den under the bedcovers whilst changing the sheets, we pretended the vacuum was a monster, chasing the Small Girl around the room while I cleaned, we dusted together and then gave ourselves stickers for Good Cleaning.

By Friday, having put it off all week and sick of spooning the Very Small Boy’s formula powder into my coffee in place of milk, I decided we really ought to go to the supermarket. With no imaginative ideas left to keep the Small Girl amused, I fell back on the last resort of the exhausted mother – chocolate. So, with the Very Small Boy sitting in the supermarket trolley eating a breadstick and the Small Girl running along beside me with a Kinder Egg, we set out for the Dairy aisle.

By the time we got to Beer & Wine, the Very Small Boy had finished his snack and was leaning precariously over the side of the trolley, pointing to the ground and screeching to get down. Whilst singing him soothing songs, pushing the trolley and trying to remember all the items from the shopping list I had, as usual, left at home, I had somehow managed to assemble a miniature woolly mammoth, complete with detachable tusks, from inside the Small Girls’s chocolate egg.

“But what are these called?” The Small Girl was shouting, running along behind me as I grabbed a bottle of wine and hurried towards the till.
“Tusks” I replied, feeling flustered and unloading the shopping, “they’re the mammoth’s tusks”.
“No they’re not tusks, they’re nostrils”, she said, waving them about angrily, her voice rising in agitation.
“OK, you can call them nostrils if you like”. Trying to make myself heard over the Very Small Boy’s screeches, I arranged my facial features into something I thought might resemble "calm and reasonable mother".
“But where are they?” she cried, bending over to scan the floor and sounding really upset now.
“What? Where are what?” I asked in desperation, trying as quickly as possible to calm the Very Small Boy and pack up the shopping so we could leave.
“The nostrils! I dropped them…where are the nostrils?" she continued, "where are the mammoth nostrils? Mummy, where are my MAMMOTH NOSTRILS?”

It was one of those moments when the world seems to stand still. And, in the silence that followed, all eyes were on me (even the Very Small Boy had stopped screeching and was regarding me inquisitively). I looked at the check-out girl.
“I need a glass of wine”, I sighed through clenched teeth.

She smiled and nodded sympathetically. “Or two” she said, and handed me my bottle of Merlot.

It's Been a Long Time, Baby!

Somehow, whole months of my life seem to have elapsed recently without my being aware of the passing of time. Preoccupied for a while with the daily routine, I suddenly realised that the Small Girl was becoming terribly grown-up and that the Very Small Boy was actually just that – a little boy - and no longer technically a baby. Slightly disturbed that my whole life might pass me by in a blur of cooking, cleaning, playschool runs, nappy-changing and general domesticity, I decided I’d better try and get back to appreciating the small things in life and actually noticing the little changes which mark the passing of time.

Certainly in the case of the Very Small Boy, some of the changes that have taken place have been enormous. We had an extremely pleasant few weeks where I discovered that he was able to sit up unaided and, surrounded by a sea of toys, would happily amuse himself for whole minutes at a time. It didn’t last for long – he was soon using the furniture to pull himself up to standing and within a month or two, he had taken his first tentative steps. Now, at just under eleven months, he is dashing noisily around the house, keeling over regularly (ten month old babies are simply not designed for running, I’m afraid) and getting himself into all manner of trouble.

The Small Girl has started a Montessori course at Playschool, which she’s enjoying enormously and which has provided just the sort of new challenge she was ready for. With more of an emphasis on learning, she’s showing an interest in letters and numbers and using increasingly complicated language. We’re also encountering the kind of irritating arguments and name-calling that I didn’t anticipate for a few years and I was slightly dismayed last week to be called a “poo-poo head” (I did wonder briefly whether to teach her some more imaginative insults, before deciding we would have plenty of time for that in the years to come).

The Small Girl is usually terribly sweet though, and the other day said to me “Oh I like your pretty necklace, Mummy!”
“Thanks sausage”, I replied, “it belonged to my Grandma!”
“Who’s your Grandma?” she asked, looking slightly confused.
“She was Granddad’s Mummy and she lived in Australia” I said. The Small Girl thought for a moment.
“Do I know her?” she asked.
“No darling, you never met her and” - I chose my words carefully – “she’s not alive any more”.
“Is she dead?” she asked, her eyes growing wide.
“Yes sweetheart, she died a long time ago” I said, not feeling entirely comfortable with where the conversation was going but feeling I ought to be upfront about things.
“But where is she now?” she persisted “is she in her house?”
“Well no, she died so she’s not in her house.
“But where is she? Is she in her garden?” I could see that the Small Girl wasn’t going to give in so I decided to end the conversation with a decisive statement:
“She’s not anywhere darling, she died and after you die you’re just gone. But you don’t need to worry about that, it only happens to people when they’re very, very old and they’ve lived a very, very long time”.

The Small Girl processed this and then started to look worried. “But Mummy, you’re quite old!”

I laughed, scooping her up for a cuddle. “No darling, I’m still very young! And as for you and Baby Pie… well, your lives haven’t even started yet”.

Pardon?

I’ve recently been spending a lot of my time with the Small Girl attempting to answer a series of increasingly unanswerable questions (“why is it Thursday all day today?”, "what are things?”, "is it getting early yet?" etc). Infuriatingly, if she doesn’t accept the answer I give, she merely asks “Pardon?” after I’ve finished my explanation.

This morning the Small Girl asked me “Mummy, why do we have hair?”
"Um, I’m not really sure” I replied, “we just do”.
“Is it so that we can do this?” she asked, shaking her head vigorously.
“Yes, I suppose it could be...” I said vaguely.
“That’s widicleous” she declared, and ran off into the garden to swing on her swing.

We’ve been spending some very pleasant afternoons in the garden now that the weather is warmer. It’s often hot enough for a paddling pool, and on the days when the Small Girl has friends over to play, the children spend happy hours wandering unsupervised through the house and garden whilst we adults sit and talk. We had some friends over for a barbecue yesterday, and as the Small Girl came stalking into the garden in her shorts and t-shirt, eating a handful of cucumber slices foraged from the fridge, I looked at her and wondered: who is this feral little girl who is my daughter? With her wiry frame and her tousled hair and her slender long limbs, smelling faintly of ozone and sun-cream and clambering lithely up the climbing frame, she seemed to bear no relation to her mother – solid, sensible and vaguely anxious.

At least for now, the Very Small Boy belongs wholeheartedly to me. If I as much as leave the room, he fusses and frets until my return, at which point he usually cries desperate tears of relief. Actually, he has got a whole lot easier to deal with recently. He took a great deal of managing in his first few months of life, what with reflux and colic and the ensuing evenings of constant crying. Now that he is seven months old, he can sit up unaided and play happily with his toys. He’s enjoying three meals a day and a couple of bottles (which he took to reluctantly after I was hospitalised during the appendix fiasco), as well as continuing to breastfeed (and I promise I will give that up some time before he starts college). He’s turned into a chilled-out, content little man – “a very jolly baby”, as one friend put it. Oh yes, and now that he’s seven months old, apparently he’s due another developmental check-up. That should be fun.

We were in the car the other morning, stopped at some traffic lights, when the Small Girl pointed out a shop front and asked “Mum, is that a hairdresser?”
“Yes darling” I replied “Very good; that is a hairdresser”
She thought about this for a minute. “But Mum?”
“Yes, Sausage?”
"Why is that a hairdresser?”
I thought carefully before answering “Well, the person who owns that shop must have decided they wanted their shop to be a hairdressers, so they got lots of hairdressers to come and work there and now it’s where people can go if they need to have their hair cut”.
There was a long silence from the back of the car and then: “Pardon?”
I sighed.
"Mum?”
“Yes darling?” I said, bracing myself.
"How's your temper??”

And, laughing quietly to myself, marvelling at this funny little person who is my daughter, I started up the car again and we continued on our way to playschool.

The Lost Month

It suddenly dawned on me the other day that almost a whole month has gone by since I updated my blog. Realising that I have absolutely nothing to show for my lost month, I thought I’d write down everything I do for a whole day and when I did, I could easily see how a whole month could slip by unnoticed. So, here it is: Friday 12^th June, a fairly typical day in the life of Mummy…

5.40am Woken by the Very Small Boy’s loud fussing. Decide to let DH sleep on, take VSB downstairs to feed him and change his nappy.

6.00am Make myself a cup of tea, which I drink while making up the VSB’s two bottles of formula for the day. Wash last night’s dishes, fix breakfast for the VSB and attempt to get him to eat it.

7.00am Take the VSB upstairs and settle him in his cot for a nap. Make DH a cup of tea and the Small Girl (who is now banging on the wall) a milky drink. Look online for finger food ideas for the VSB (who is now refusing to eat anything presented to him on a spoon).

7.45am Lay out children’s clothes. After much fussing and whingeing, the SG agrees to come downstairs just as the VSB wakes up.

8.00am Change VSB’s nappy and get him dressed as the SG plays with her cereal. Leave him to fuss while I chase the SG around trying to get her dressed (she is having a tantrum because I won’t let her watch TV). Toast a bagel for the SG to eat in the car.

8.30am Pack everyone into the car and give DH a lift to the station (it’s raining and he has a hole in his shoe). SG whinges all the way: “I don’t like this thnaaack!”

9.00am Drop SG off at Playschool, drive as fast as possible to the supermarket (with VSB whining uncontrollably in the back) to buy finger food.

10.00am Give the VSB a bottle and pack him off to bed. Unload the car, unpack the shopping, wash the breakfast dishes. Make chicken goujons and bake for VSB’s lunch. Start a beef stew for tonight’s dinner.

11.30am Just sitting down for a cup of tea when VSB wakes up. Offer him chicken goujons. He bursts out crying and ends up having yoghurt and toast for lunch as usual.

12.30pm VSB whinges all the way to Playschool to pick up SG.

1.00pm Make SG sit down and rest in front of the tv for half an hour while I change VSB and clean up chicken, toast and yoghurt from floor, walls and high chair.

1.30pm The three girls from next door come over to play. While they’re busy in the garden, I make chai and veg samosas for DH to take into work for visiting Indian colleagues, whilst entertaining the VSB with a medley of silly songs.

2.30pm Give increasingly fussy VSB his bottle and take him up for a nap.

3.00pm Finish making samosas, wash the dishes, make snacks and drinks for the 4 girls and take the younger two to the loo.

4.00pm VSB wakes from nap, take the girls back home and spend and hour tidying up the chaos they have left behind. The SG has a meltdown because she wants her friends to come back.

5.00pm Give the VSB and the SG their dinner. The SG is so incensed at the sight of my chicken goujons that she carries on the tantrum while the VSB throws his fingers of butternut squash over the side of his high chair.

5.30pm Make a soothing cup of tea which I drink while I clean up the VSB's butternut squash (more of which went on the floor and up his nose than into his mouth).

6.00pm Run a bath for the children (SG still having tantrum and refuses to get in).

6.30pm Fix their snacks and milky drinks while they watch tv and play with toys. SG demands 3 rounds of toast, as she ate nothing for dinner. VSB mashes his toast into my expensive Indian rug and giggles.

7.00pm Take the children up to bed. Read the SG a story in bed whilst breastfeeding VSB. Take the VSB to bed and clean up the bathtime chaos.

7.15pm Finish preparing beef stew. Pack up samosas for DH and put reheated chai into a thermos.

7.30pm Just sitting down in front of the TV when DH gets home. Serve dinner, eat dinner, wash dishes.

8.00pm Spend an hour doing the pile of ironing I’ve been trying to ignore for a week.

9.00pm Exhausted. Have a shower (I can’t do this in the mornings these days). Go to bed, read same three sentences of book I read last night, and just have time to marvel that it’s amazing I even have time to eat, never mind write a blog, before passing out…

In Case of Incapacitation

Since having the Small Girl nearly three years ago, I’ve often wondered what I would do if I were suddenly taken ill; a bad dose of the flu, for example, or a particularly debilitating hangover. My able-bodied presence in the house has become even more important now that the Very Small Boy has joined the family and somewhat ironically, I found myself wondering on Thursday afternoon what on earth would happen if I suddenly became unable to carry out the demanding role of caring for the children.

I say ironically, because by early evening I was feeling distinctly unwell and decided to get an early night. Unfortunately, sleep evaded me; mild stomach cramps and nausea soon gave way to crippling pain and violent vomiting. Assuming it must be a particularly virulent bout of food poisoning, I resigned myself to a few hours of distress, but as the long night wore on, things didn’t seem to be improving. Funnily enough, despite my suffering, I could only think of the children: with every flush of the toilet, I felt more anxious in case I woke them. And, some time in the small hours, unable any longer even to stand, I lay with my cheek against the cool tile of the bathroom floor, fretting silently to myself about how I would look after the Very Small Boy when he inevitably woke for his middle of the night feed.

“You’ll have to take the day off”, I whimpered to DH shortly afterwards, as he lifted the Very Small Boy back into his cot and guided me back to bed. And he did, and my question was answered – if something happens to me, he steps in smoothly and life carries on as normal for the children; I’m not as indispensable as I’d probably like to think I am.

He made breakfast for the Small Girl, dressed and changed the Very Small Boy and then shipped me off to the doctor, who sent me straight to A&E. Without even allowing me to say goodbye to my children, they admitted me to hospital and sent me straight to theatre to have my appendix removed.

“But I can’t stay here”, I protested as they wheeled me down the long, stark corridor in my hospital gown “I’m still breastfeeding! My baby needs me…”. The porter ignored me so, lying on the operating table, I tried to reason with the anaesthetist: “Please don’t give me anything that will compromise breastfeeding my baby!”. He ignored me too.

I had no choice but to remain where I was, recovering, for two nights. The kind doctor who operated told me afterwards that they had performed keyhole surgery with the help of a tiny camera, via three one-inch incisions on different sides of my tummy. Feeling vaguely like one of those people who get abducted by aliens and have weird things done to them, I wondered whether it wouldn’t have just been easier to make one three-inch incision over my appendix and take it out the old-fashioned way.

Looking around me, I noticed that I was the youngest person on my ward by a good fifty years. For two whole days, I was confronted with this sad vision of the way most of us will probably end up; reduced by age and incapacity back to childhood, being gently guided to the toilet or cajoled into eating jelly by our grown children. Still I thought, as I watched the ancient old dear in the bed opposite me, I could do worse than to end up being tenderly humoured by my doting grandchildren as I complained about the way they were putting in my false teeth.

I was finally allowed to return home to the land of the young and the immortal this afternoon, and I did apologise to the lovely nurse for being such a difficult patient. “You should try being married to her!”, murmured DH good-humouredly. He drove me home to the children, who were being looked after by Nanny and Grandpa, and I had a joyful reunion with the Small Girl, who had made me chocolate cornflake cakes. When the Very Small Boy woke from his nap, I eagerly ran upstairs to get him.

As soon as he saw me, he burst out crying and reached out desperately for me. I swooped him up for a cuddle. “Hello baby!” I cried into his soft, fluffy hair. “Don’t worry, Mummy’s home” I whispered in his ear. “Mummy’s here, and it was all a dream. It was all just a bad dream”.

Small Friends

Perhaps not surprisingly, the parents of the Small Girl’s friends are all good friends of ours. It’s all terribly convenient: the Daddies are good chums and often get together for drinks at the weekend, the Mummies are friends and meet over coffee with the children, who are also great mates. And now a new wave of babies are arriving, who are destined to grow up together as best buddies (whether they like it or not).

As often as I can, I try and meet up with my friends during the week so that the children can play whilst we grown-ups compare notes on tantrums and console each other with coffee and solidarity. In practice however, it is rarely that easy.

The Small Girl and I recently met up with one of her Small Friends and her Mummy for lunch at the Shopping Centre. After spending ten minutes queuing up for our sandwiches, the Very Small Boy filled his nappy and I then spent 20 minutes waiting for a baby-change to become free. When I got back, the Small Girls had already finished their lunch, so we spent ten more minutes packing up and clearing away before setting off for a walk. The Small Friend then got into a tussle with a scary-looking toddler with coke-bottle glasses and a ferocious underbite and, with an apologetic look, the Small Friend's Mummy whisked her poor fractious, writhing daughter off home. This caused the Small Girl to go into meltdown at their abrupt departure and for once, I felt sympathetic: my friend and I had, apart from saying “hello”, not actually spoken to each other for the entire duration of the lunch.

It’s often easier to meet at each others’ homes, a prospect that fills the Small Girl with glee (I do wonder why the Small Friends are so excited at the thought of a playdate - mostly, they spend so much time bickering and fighting about sharing that it’s hard to see what any of them actually get from the experience). But the Small Girl is starting to reach the stage now where she plays quite nicely with her girlfriends - we had a lovely playdate at another friend’s house recently, where the two Small Friends wandered off happily together, exploring the garden before disappearing into the house. Some time later, following an anguished cry of “Mummy!”, I found the Small Girl in the bathroom, bent at the waist and wedged firmly, bottom first, into the toilet bowl, arms and legs waving helplessly while her Small Friend looked on in amusement.

When it comes to boys however, the Small Friends’ preference is for arguments; simple disagreements along the lines of “I’m going now”/ “No, stay!”/ “No. I’m going!”/ “No, I want you to stay!” etc. (and hearing these disagreements, I often wonder guiltily what kind of example DH and I might have unintentionally set when bickering about whose turn it is to go to the shop for a pint of milk).

But before they had developed the ability to argue, back when everyone was still in nappies, the Small Girl was most fascinated by seeing little boys having a nappy change, pointing out each time that the Small Friend in question had a willy. One particular friend lent her a pair of his wellington boots for the Irish summer and this led to an amusing conversation about the difference between “wellies” and “willies”. After much confusion, I was most relieved to have cleared it all up – for a while there, I think she thought her Small Friend had two willies.

The Best Policy

Just weeks after having the Very Small Boy, I was dropping the Small Girl off at playschool one morning when her lovely teacher remarked to me “You’re looking great by the way, how are you feeling now?”.

“Well, make-up is a wonderful thing” I joked. “You should have seen me before I put it on. Actually, I feel terrible”.
“Oh. Well at least you look good” said the teacher consolingly.

I questioned afterwards whether I oughtn’t to have just accepted her compliment graciously and been thankful that my complete exhaustion wasn’t as obvious to the outside world as I had assumed. Driving home, I wondered why it is we all feel it’s so important to present a competent front to the world even when in reality we feel as if we are barely coping. I mean, I’d been up since five o’clock that morning, I’d had less than five hours’ sleep in two-hour stretches, I’d had a baby three weeks earlier and the Small Girl had just thrown a challenging breakfast-related tantrum: surely people would understand if I looked a little jaded? But I still stopped to put on my make-up and assume a cheery smile before I dropped her off at playschool.

My younger brother, Hugh (the Small Girl calls him “Uncle Queue”), is one of the few people I know who don’t bother with this façade; if he’s feeling rubbish, he tells you. I was talking to him on the phone the other day: “Hi, how are you?” I asked at the beginning of the conversation.

“Well. I’m still alive”, he replied, with his usual candour (he was having a bad day). And although he often replies in a similar way, it throws me every time, because convention dictates that you say you’re fine, thanks, no matter how you are actually feeling.

I decided to try Uncle Queue’s line of truthfulness myself. One morning last week, I bumped into the father of one of the Small Girl’s friends on the playschool run.

“Hello” he said in passing, “How are you?”. I thought for a minute.
“Oh you know” I replied “This baby’s kept me up all night and I feel like throttling his sister”. The Small Friend’s father looked slightly taken aback and remained silent, lost for words at this unconventional breach of etiquette so early in the morning.

Being a parent is a bit like gaining acceptance into a secret club, the other members of which being the only people you are allowed let your guard down with. A friend of mine recently said of her new status as a mother “No one ever tells you beforehand how hard it’s going to be” and I wondered, should I have told her? When she said she was thinking of having a baby, ought I to have said “Look, are you sure you want to go through with this? I mean you’ll be in for a lifetime of worry and guilt. And as for the sleepless nights… it’s a form of torture, you know!”.

Perhaps that would have been going a little too far. But maybe if I had been a little less evasive and a little more truthful about my life in general with children, she would have realised how tough it can be at times.

In the end though, I think I put on my make-up and my cheerful smile and gloss over the challenging bits because despite driving me at times to the brink of sanity, my children are the most extraordinary thing that has ever happened to me: two small people for whom I am filled with a remarkable sense of pride. So I owe it to them, really, to show the rest of the world how fulfilled they make feel, even on the bad days. And that’s the truth. Honest.

Soundtrack

I was driving back from playschool with the Small Girl recently, and we were listening to songs on the radio (and if it sounds as if I spend my life driving about in the car, it sometimes feels as if I do - ferrying Small People about and running errands). During my numerous daily car journeys, often my only adult company is the radio.

And so it is that song lyrics often take on great significance, reminding me of a particular occasion, or merely providing an appropriate background commentary to my life. There's a certain Take That song, for instance, which seems written for the Very Small Boy: "Sometimes I see your face looking at me/ All your love and grace smiling at me..... I just want you to help me - 'cause you're keeping me up all night". His little gummy smile, with his single small tooth, does radiate love and grace and warm my heart. And he certainly does keep me up all night.

Every car journey I make is either undertaken at great speed (rushing the Very Small Hungry Boy home for a feed) or extremely slowly (hoping he will fall asleep before we reach our destination), thus infuriating other road users. This particular drive home was one of the slow ones; the Very Small Boy was on the verge of sleep and I was therefore in a good mood, and was singing happily along to "Just Dance".

"Mum?" The Small Girl asked from the back of the car.
"Yes, Sausage" I replied, jigging happily about in my seat to the music.
"I think you're too old to sing that song!"

I laughed, taken aback by her unnerving ability to expose my deepest insecurities. Because sadly, I fear she was almost certainly right; my dancing days are probably over. At least for now.

The song that remains the most poigniant however, is by The Killers, and was playing on the radio as DH drove me to the hospital the day the Very Small Boy was born. It was 6.00am on a cold, dark November morning and as we pulled out of the drive, I listened to the lyrics: "And so long to devotion/ You taught me everything I know/ Wave goodbye, wish me well/ You've gotta let me go...."

And I looked up at the Small Girl's bedroom window and thought of that little girl, fast asleep in her bed, unaware of just how much her life was about to change.

Very Small Concerns

If I hadn’t already been up with the Very Small Boy since the crack of dawn, I might have been quite annoyed on Thursday morning to have been woken at 6.20am by a noisy rubbish truck making its way slowly down the road. I looked out of the window and noted that in any case, it wasn’t our rubbish truck; our recycle bin was still parked neatly by the side of the road, its contents freshly washed and ready for collection.

I have to admit that rubbish collection (and in particular, recycling) is one of my current favourite Things To Complain About. The whole system is privatised here and on our road alone, there are at least three different companies catering for the refuse-related needs of its inhabitants. Each house has at least two bins, one for recycling and one for everything else; we also have one for compostable food waste and one for glass. So that’s at least eight different trucks which have to do the rounds. Now I’m no expert on green issues, but surely all those enormous heavy-duty vehicles hauling up and down the roads every week or two can’t be good for the environment.

Later on, we pulled out of our road on the way to take the Small Girl to playschool, narrowly avoiding yet another scrape on the car, thanks to our own lumbering recycling truck, trying clumsily to jam itself between us and a parked car. I glanced sympathetically at the poor, choked trees lining the road - not even 9.00am, and we were already on our third HGV of the morning.

“Mum?” A Small Voice piped up from the back seat.
“Yes Sausage?” I asked
“What are we going to do this afternoon?”
“I’m not sure Darling; I thought maybe we could pop over to Anne and Jimmy’s”
“Oh yaay! Anne and Jimmy – yaay!... are we going today?”
“Yes, today – after playschool”
“Will we drive there in the car?”
“Well, I suppose we could…”
“In our car?”
“Yes, in our car”
“Mum?”
“Yes, Sausage?”
“Will you be driving?”
“Yes, I suppose I will, if we go in the car”
“Will you be sitting in the front seat?”
“Yes…”
“And Baby Pie and I will be sitting in the back seat?”
“Yes…”
“And can I listen to my music on the way there?”
“If you want…”
“And can I bring a thnack?”
“Yes, Darling” I said, beginning to lose my patience. “But perhaps we ought to just walk – after all, they do only live next door”.

Listening to our conversation from his seat next to the Small Girl, the Very Small Boy raised his earnest little eyebrows and gave his big sister a proud grin, revealing a single, gently gleaming, Very Small Tooth.

Life's A Beach

I read in some book or other recently that a good technique for remaining calm in a stressful situation is to close your eyes and visualise a favourite tranquil scene. Having a particular interest in remaining calm in the midst of chaos, I decided to try thinking of my favourite beach in Goa when feeling stressed to see if it helped me to calm down.

It’s been a busy few weeks. For a while, any time I’ve find myself with a spare ten minutes, it’s been all I could do to haul myself onto the sofa with a cup of tea and close my eyes. After the news at his last developmental check that the Very Small Boy was “following his centiles nicely” (whatever the hell that means), I was surprised to be summoned back to the Health Centre less than a month later for yet another check-up. But I thought I’d go along anyhow, thinking I would ask about starting him on solids in an attempt to help him sleep better.

Feeling predictably tense after the obligatory hour-long wait, I stood patiently whilst the nurse (who I noted, was considerably younger than I am), stared into Baby Pie’s eyes and repeated “and how are you Baby? And how are you?”

“Um, I don’t think he’s going to answer…” I offered. She ignored me and I thought of gently rolling waves, sand so soft it crunches like powdered snow underfoot.

She lay him on his tummy, turned him onto his back, then crouched down in a stoop, held his hands and pulled him up to a sitting position on the bench so that their eyes were level and repeated “how are you, Baby?” It was no use; the beach disappeared as I mentally reached out a hand and gave the nurse a shove that sent her gently somersaulting to the floor.

She reeled off such a textbook answer to my question about starting solids that I actually looked around to see if she had a baby manual cleverly hidden somewhere within reading distance. And, reminding myself that I’ve had at least two more babies than she has, I ignored her advice to postpone real food for a month, and we set off home to give the Very Small Boy his first taste of banana.

Sunning myself in the garden later that afternoon while the Very Small Boy slept, full and content, in his pushchair, I was interrupted from a particularly pleasant daydream about my lovely Goan beach by the Small Girl. She came dashing across the lawn, hands cupped together before her, shouting “Mum! Mum!”

“What is it darling?” I asked
“Mum! You’ve got to see – it’s a Wildebeest! A Wildebeest!” And she tenderly opened her hands to reveal a Woodlouse, lying small and stunned in the palm of her hand.

Frame It!

Having had a good deal of practice with me when I was a toddler, Granddad arrived with a pretty good understanding of just how much hard work it is to keep a Small Girl entertained. He arrived equipped with an array of interesting puppets the evening before DH left for India, and threw himself heroically into the job of getting reacquainted with his granddaughter.

Whilst I was distracted with an increasingly fussy Very Small Dribbling Boy, Granddad and the Small Girl spent many long hours playing Going to the Doctor with various puppets afflicted with disturbing ailments (a penguin with “a stomach in his head” was particularly memorable - he required several rounds of pink lollipops at the chemist before he felt better).

Pacing the upstairs hall one evening with a Very Small Overtired Boy, I was overseeing the Small Girl's bathtime and listening to her conversation with my Dad.

"Gwanddad?" she was asking
"Yes, Sweetie?"
"Frame it!!!"

Granddad looked slightly alarmed and turned to me, lost for words. Laughing, I explained that it was merely an interestingly applied phrase from one of her art programmes and not some veiled expletive. Meanwhile, Baby Pie carried on squirming, fidgeting and fussing in my arms. “Oh frame it, Baby” I said, exasperated, and put him down for his nap.

The week passed surprisingly quickly and we were all sad to say goodbye when Granddad left – especially as we still had a couple of days alone before the return of DH. And typically, on the final night, the Small Girl woke in the small hours with a temperature and demanded to come into bed with me (a request I couldn’t reasonably ignore unfortunately). That, combined with the Very Small Boy’s frequent night wakings, made it a dreadful night for everyone and by 8.30am the next morning, we were all up, dressed, fed and pacing the Shopping Centre waiting for the shops to open so Mummy could indulge in a bit of therapeutic shopping.

One of the few blessings of having had such a disturbed night’s sleep is that at least the children can generally be relied upon to sleep during the day. And by the time we got home from the Shopping Centre, both the Small Girl and the Very Small Boy were peacefully asleep in their car seats. Not knowing what to do with this sudden and unexpected free time, I carried them in asleep, made myself a nice cup of tea and put my feet up before realising that DH would soon be home and that I had better spend the next hour frantically tidying the house.

By the time he arrived, the children were awake, refreshed and full of energy, I had changed out of my baby-sick top and into something new and swish, the house was gleaming and we all crowded around to welcome him home and examine our presents. And while he spent a bit of quality time with his two favourite Small People, I retired to the kitchen with a glass of wine and my new Indian spices to cook us all a fabulous curry.

Teeth Are Coming (And So Is Granddad)

The Very Small Boy recently entered a particularly upsetting phase of Very Bad Sleep. If only it were as simple as giving in and putting him on a nightly bottle of filling formula, I might actually consider doing just that and giving in to everyone around me who thinks I am unreasonably insisting on continuing to breastfeed (well he is only four months old).

In any case, my opinion is that the Very Small Boy’s sleep-related problem is twofold. Firstly, he has learnt a New Skill (grabbing) and therefore forgotten an Old Habit (thumb-sucking). This isn’t as irrational as it sounds: he is so delighted with his newfound ability to grab anything that comes within reach that instead of putting his Very Small Thumb in when he lies down, he thrashes about trying to grab the bedcovers and put them into his mouth instead (and with far less satisfying consequences).

The second issue we are dealing with here is that the Very Small Boy’s sleep appears to be disturbed by teething. The signs are all there: hot little cheeks, continuous biting and an alarming amount of dribble. Putting his recent grabbing skills into practice, he has been cramming everything he can get his hands on into his mouth to chew on to try and provide some sort of relief from the discomfort.

Unfortunately, although I have tried all manner of teething toys for him, he seems to find them all compelling and yet somehow strangely unsatisfactory. What he enjoys best is to clamp down with bitey little gums on my thumb (the irony of his having forgotten about his own thumb is not lost on me) and chew frantically on it with a small frown of concentration.

And so it was with a feeling of great apprehension that I received the news that DH had decided he could no longer put off a work-related trip to India, and was planning, at fairly short notice, to fly off to Delhi. Thankfully, Granddad promised to come over from London and help pick up the pieces. And he did. But that’s another story.

Being Mummy

We woke to a beautiful, sunny morning on Tuesday and the Small Girl was thrilled that Daddy was to have an unprecedented day off work: it was going to be a good day.

I like the idea behind St Patrick’s Day; being English and therefore rather reserved, it’s nice to see people letting their hair down and really having fun. And what better reason to do it than to celebrate Being Irish? There’s no English equivalent to St Patrick’s (the Brits are far too stuffy to celebrate Being British and anyhow, it’s far too un-pc in England these days to actually be proud of your heritage), so it’s all rather a novelty to us.

We dutifully dressed the Small Girl and the Very Small Boy in green and painted the Small Girl’s face with little Irish flags (which resulted in a predictable paint-related tantrum), and set off into town to watch the parade. On the way, DH and I tried our best to clear up a complicated misunderstanding with the Small Girl about just who Patrick was and whether or not he had anything to do with our next-door-neighbour, whose name happens to be Patrick.

The St Patrick’s Day parade in our town consists of a bizarre jumble of floats from local businesses, schools and clubs, thunderous vintage cars and fire-engines, all interspersed with an impressive display of might from the local military base. We found a place by the roadside in amongst the jostling crowd of green-painted, beard-wearing, flag-waving leprechauns (and that was just the grown-ups) and settled down to watch the parade.

As a huge tank rolled slowly past (I was pleased to see the “L” plates had been removed as it passed perilously close to a group of excitable green-faced children), the Small Girl pointed to a fire engine.

“Mummy, is my Daddy a Firefighter?” she asked me. I looked over to DH, who was pulling a silly face and waving Mister Horse (a favourite rattle) for the Very Small Boy.
“No darling, he’s a Software Engineer”, I replied.
“But Mummy, why is he a Software Engineer?” she persisted, in another of her unanswerable “why” questions.

Picking her up as the parade began to wind down and we started to make our way slowly home, I looked down at the Very Small Boy in his buggy, who stared with great concentration at Mister Horse, raised him slowly skyward and then bashed himself firmly on the head. I turned back to the Small Girl and explained:

“Well, that’s his work – when he goes to work every day in Dublin, he works as a Software Engineer and he does Important Things on a computer”.
The Small Girl thought about this. “But Mummy, are you a Software Engineer?”
“No Sausage, I’m not”.
“Why?”

She obviously wasn’t going to let the subject lie, and I had a nagging feeling that I ought to answer her question with caution.

“Daddy and I just do different things for work” I replied, not even knowing where to begin with this one. “Daddy goes to Dublin to work and I stay home with you and Baby Pie. My work is to be a Mummy”.

And we were both momentarily distracted by a grassy bank of bright daffodils, shining optimistically under the cloudless March sky.

You Learn Something New Every Day

Stuck in traffic on the way back from our weekly family outing to the smucasmarket yesterday, the Small Girl was whingeing ("I want another thnaaack!") and the Very Small Boy was beginning to get agitated (he loves car journeys but the moment the car stops, he starts to get very cross). We soon discovered the cause of the tailback: a very large group of spectators had gathered by the roadside to watch two single-person horse carts racing slowly the wrong way down the road.

"The Gypos are in town" remarked DH as I stared back open-mouthed at the rabble jumping into their cars and racing off drunkenly after the horses. Sometimes living in Ireland can be very strange.

"What's the story behind St Patrick's Day?" I asked DH as we continued on our way.
"I'm not sure... something to do with how he drove the snakes out of Ireland I think" he replied.

A Small Voice piped up from the back of the car:"Patrick got the snakes and all the people didn't like Patrick. They didn't like him and then he took the snakes away and then they liked him". I was amazed - the Small Girl had just taught me something new, which she must have learned at playschool. I never would have thought that at the tender age of two, she would be lecturing me on Irish History.

Then again, both my children have taught me a lot of things when I think about it. They've taught me that I didn't really know myself until they came along. They've also taught me not to judge people for who they are, because mostly it's out of our control. And they've taught me to stop and try to appreciate the small things in life, like a decent night's sleep or a lovely sunny day. Or even just a nice cup of tea.

And we pulled up by the side of the road as a huge army tank crawled past us down the High Street with a large and prominent "L" plate displayed just below its camouflaged machine-gun operator.

Wake Up & Smell The Coffee

"Oh you're a Marmelous Pie!" said the Small Girl to her Very Small Brother yesterday morning when she woke up. It was all very well for her to say this; she hadn't been woken by him at the crack of dawn.

The Very Small Boy is going through a phase of waking at 5.00am at the moment, and despite our best efforts, we simply cannot persuade him to go back to sleep. By the time he has been fed and changed and had a play and gone back down for a nap, it's 7.00 and the Small Girl is banging on the wall ready for her milky drink. It's lovely for DH and I to have a couple of hours of quality time alone with him - it's just a shame that it all has to happen quite so early in the morning. I really oughtn't to complain though - he is marvelous at going to bed, and he does sleep through the night.

The first time the Very Small Boy "slept through", at only nine weeks old and before he had moved into a room of his own, I spent a sleepless night lying very still in bed and holding my breath so I could hear that he was breathing himself. Overnight, he had gone from waking twice a night for a drink, to not waking until morning, and the reason for this was clear: he had Found His Thumb. The thumb trick doesn't always work though; the way that the Very Small Boy gets his Very Small Thumb into his mouth demands so much concentration on his part that if he is overtired, it is simply beyond him. First, he slowly lifts his arm up over his head, then brings it down sideways so that it is lying across his face. Then, with little dark eyebrows wrinkled and lips pursed in concentration, he slowly drags his hand across his face until his little thumb is level with his mouth; with any luck, the thumb goes in and he's soon drifting off to sleep.

However, for some reason known only to him, the Very Small boy only naps during the day for 45 minutes at a time. I am frankly too terrified to look up the "solution" to this nap-related problem in one of my many baby manuals; after the Small Girl outgrew her babygros, I vowed never to look at a baby book again. They all give such conflicting and guilt-inducing advice that you end up crippled with insecurity and unable to make a decision for yourself (no doubt it would be all my fault that the Very Small Boy only sleeps for 45 minutes and if I had paid more heed to the advice in Chapter 2, I would never have got myself into this mess in the first place).

I remember clearly that the Small Girl also had a phase of getting up unfeasibly early in the morning when she was Very Small. Each time I heard her starting to fuss at 4.30 or 5.00am, my heart would sink and I would think "I can't possibly do this again". We lived in Bombay at the time, and I would take her out in the dark onto the balcony with a coffee (there is something incredibly comforting about a hot coffee at that time of the morning). Sitting in her bouncy chair, the Small Girl would beam up at me with her gummy smile and together, we'd watch the sun rise over the rooftops. As beautiful green parakeets screeched about the hazy early-morning sky, we'd be cheered by the exotic sounds of the city coming alive, and filled with hope for the day ahead.

The Long Walk Home

For some reason, the first thing the Small Girl said to me yesterday morning was “Mummy, you’re a genius!” Cheered by this pleasant start to the day, and by the beautiful sunshine outside, I decided it was about time the Small Girl, the Very Small Boy and I had a really productive, positive day.

To begin with, I vowed silently to myself to remain calm and sensible no matter what the day (or the children) threw at me. And then, since it was really about time I did something about getting back in shape after having the Very Small Boy, I thought we might as well tackle that too, with a nice Long Walk to the playground. Finally, there was to be no television whatsoever for the Small Girl; instead we would pursue worthwhile craft projects.

After an extremely sensible lunch, I went to pick up the Small Girl from playschool. With a jubilant cry of "Mummy!” she came dashing towards me across the Toddler Room and flung herself at my legs. I love picking the Small Girl up from playschool; this moment of reunion is so life-affirming that it is worth the hours of tedious harassment it takes for me to get both her and the Very Small Boy up, dressed, fed and into the car each morning by 8.45.

“What did you do at playschool today, Sausage?” I asked her.
“Painting!” She cried gleefully.
“Oh lovely – what did you paint?”
“Myself!” And with that, she undid her cardigan to reveal her pretty pink top, alarmingly smeared with green paint. “It’s magic paint”, she added, and my heart sank (the “magic” appears to be that it is indelible and therefore ruinous to any item of clothing it comes into contact with).

For some time, fearful of getting stranded miles from home with two small children, I have been putting off going for a Long Walk. Yet to be put through its paces, our buggy board (which allows the Small Girl to stand in front of me, holding the buggy handles as I push) is an ingenious and cost-effective (if slightly cumbersome) solution to the problem of getting around with two children.

However, what with stopping to talk to dogs, experimenting with sitting on variously-sized garden walls and examining small but interesting pieces of rubbish, it took us about an hour to make the 15 minute walk to the playground. Immediately upon entering, I began to feel panicky and anxious about the journey back; my state of mind was certainly not helped by the fact that, out of nowhere, an ominous-looking black cloud had appeared on the horizon.

Despite huge efforts of persuasion, the Small Girl simply would not come down from the slide. And of course, the one thing I had forgotten to bring was an enticing thnack. So by the time we actually set off for home, the cloud was upon us and small drops of drizzle had quickly turned to thunderous, driving rain.

I spent the next hour hunched over the buggy board like some ancient old woman, shuffling painstakingly homewards as the wind whipped my hair about my face and the freezing rain soaked through my clothes. The Small Girl kept up an almost continuous whingeing monotone (“I want a thnaaack! I can’t get my fingers in! I want to get off! You carry me!”), in between falling off the buggy board and trying to rummage in my sodden handbag for concealed snacks.

When we finally got home, exhausted and drenched, the Small Girl made wordlessly for the telly, while I helped myself to a large slice of chocolate cake to counteract the stress.

The Alligator and The Pub

Yesterday, two things happened which are unheard of in our family. Firstly, DH and I managed to have a lie-in; The Small Girl, still recovering from her vomiting bug, didn't wake up until 8.30am (she made us aware of this event in her usual fashion by banging loudly on the wall that divides her bedroom from ours). We very much enjoyed this rare Sunday treat, despite the fact that there was a Very Small Boy passed out in the bed between us.

Secondly, DH announced that he wanted to Go Shopping. DH dislikes clothes shopping - for himself or anyone else - to such a degree that he usually can't even bring himself to enter a clothes shop, preferring instead to loiter apprehensively at the entrance while I, under pressure, make hasty impulse purchases which later have to be returned. But yesterday he decided he needed a new pair of jeans, so we all set out for the shops to help him find them.

Having identified a suitable Department Store, I held up pair after pair of nice jeans for him to choose from, only to have each one rejected on the basis of some minor flaw, apparent only to himself ("the pockets are wrong", "the stitching is funny" etc). Finally, he held up a pair and declared "I like these - what do you think?"

"No, they look like something someone's Dad would wear" I replied.
DH thought about this for a moment. "But I am someone's Dad" he said.

The Small Girl, who had been running wildly around the shop, pulling items off the shelves and trying silly hats on, now came dashing over to us wearing an oversize cowboy hat and shouting "Daddy, where's the alligator?”

Deciding I could no longer pretend that she didn't belong to me, I tried to guess what she was talking about. “Do you mean the elevator?” I asked, pointing to the exciting-looking glass lift.
“No, the alligator, the alligator!” the Small Girl shouted crossly, waving her arms about as she disappeared off in the direction of the escalator.

Some time later, after endless dizzying rounds on the escalator, we managed to entice the Small Girl away by promising a visit to The Pub. She currently has something of an obsession with The Pub, which she thinks is just about the most exciting place one could go (and I’m in agreement with her on this one).

Irish pubs not only welcome children, they often provide entertainment packs much like those you might get on an aeroplane. So with the Small Girl nicely distracted with some colouring-in, we had a lovely impromptu Sunday Lunch and a couple of very welcome glasses of wine. The Very Small Boy woke up and stared with great concentration at his rattle, before slowly raising both arms up, unclenching his fists, making a studied grab for the rattle and missing completely.

Later, DH had to carry the Small Girl out as she writhed and screeched through her tears “I don’t want to leave the pub! I don’t want to leave the pub!”. Thinking of my empty wineglass, I’m afraid I had to admit I felt the same way.

The Smucasmarket

Being the parent of a toddler is a bit like caring for someone with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: there is a strict set of routines that has to be adhered to before one can leave the house.

We decided yesterday to have a Family Outing to the shops, and that it would be a good idea to get up and leave the house early to avoid the crowds. Unfortunately, several hours later, we were still stuck at home, unable to set out until certain of the Small Girl’s obsessive requirements had been fulfilled. She had to have her “milky drink” (milk) in her special pink beaker. She had to get dressed herself (a noble undertaking but one which requires limitless patience). She had to have her “special cereal” with the milk heated to just the right temperature. And finally she had to approve a thnack for the journey to the smucasmarket.

I can’t help feeling a certain amount of sadness at the demise of the Small Girl’s cute mispronunciations; I used to get a great deal of enjoyment from the fact that she called the supermarket “the smucasmarket” (she now looks at us with disdain when Darling Husband and I insist on jovially continuing to refer to Tescos as “the smucasmarket”, and I can’t help feeling that the Teenage Years might be closer than we imagine). In the car, the Very Small Boy slept while the Small Girl reflected on what might happen when we arrived (“A warthog might come and bite you!”) and I put on my make-up (well you never know who you might bump into).

The Small Girl loves going shopping with Daddy; she gets to do all kinds of things which are Not Allowed when Mummy is in charge. Daddy lets her dash up and down the aisles; Daddy lets her choose a thnack and eat it on the run... So they disappeared off together when we arrived (“let’s go find a warthog, Daddy!”), leaving the Very Small Sleeping Boy and I to enjoy our shopping in peace. As I walked serenely past the canned goods, I remembered the old days, when I would push the Very Small Girl around the supermarket in her pushchair and she’d casually fling out an arm and drive an entire shelf of mushy peas onto the floor as we swept past.

Stepping over a messy pot of crushed strawberry trifle, I felt smugly pleased that other peoples’ children must be as destructive as my own. The Small Girl seemed to be having a very successful shopping trip today - she rounded the corner ahead of me, walking sensibly over to say “Mummy, that lady’s from playschool”. Waving to a woman standing next to us, she slipped a custardy, strawberry-scented hand into mine and repeated herself loudly as the woman looked pointedly at the vegetable display.

“Is she from playschool?” I asked, trying to hurry her away.
“Yeah, she’s from playschool…. and I don’t like her!” she declared loudly, staring back at the woman.

At the checkout, the Family Outing to the smucasmarket ended with the Small Girl having her usual almighty tantrum about the tantalisingly displayed sweets. And back at the car, the tears continued.

“Well, that was a nightmare”, I said to DH after we loaded up the shopping and strapped the children in.
“Just think”, he replied, “soon there will be two of them running around in the smucasmarket”.

And we both turned to look fondly over our shoulders at the Very Small Boy, sleeping peacefully in his car seat.

Crazy Like a Moose

I had a phone call yesterday morning from the Small Girl’s playschool: she’d just thrown up into her cake (it was her friend’s birthday), and could I come and collect her? I put it all down to the fact that she had spent quite some time licking the floor of the Health Centre the day before, and tried to come to terms with the fact that it was going to be a long and harrowing day.

Generally, I’m pretty good at dealing with illness, at least to begin with. I leapt into action, settling her under a duvet on the sofa with a drink of warm Ribena and a bowl to be sick in. I cuddled her, stroked her hair and reassured her that Mummy was here and that everything was going to be OK. She lay there whimpering a bit, sucking her fingers and submitting listlessly to my fussing. Unfortunately, I have a very short attention span with these things, and an hour later I was beginning to get a bit fed up with Being Florence Nightingale, and to wish she would pull herself together so we could go shopping.

At least she appeared to have stopped being sick, so I decided to risk giving her Calpol. It worked: within half an hour, the colour had returned to her cheeks, she had jumped up from the sofa and she was pestering me to participate in one of her “games”.

The Small Girl’s fantastic imaginary games always begin with the allocation of roles: “Mummy, you be a monster” (or doctor/ snake/ lady/ Toucan etc.). Once we all know who we are, the Small Girl directs the game. There are several themes with which she is currently preoccupied: Going to the Doctor, Getting the Train to Dublin, Going to the Seaside, etc. Yesterday’s theme, predictably, was Being Sick at Playschool.

“Mummy, you be a Doctor and I’m at playschool and you come and pick me up and give me a check-up and ask the lady in the chemist for a lollipop…” My heart sank - was this really preferable to Being Florence Nightingale?

Still, I threw myself into it and in the end, we had quite a pleasant day, incorporating Going to the Doctor, Getting the Train to Dublin and Going to the Seaside all in one afternoon. I brought out some puzzles for us to do together At the Seaside, and the pieces quickly became the components of a meal, as the Small Girl cooked me “pasta with a nappy sauce” and a “lemonade sandwich”. The whole thing ended with an enthusiastic dance and a hearty rendition of “Baa baa black sheep”.

In isolation in the corner of the room, the Very Small Boy dealt with all this really very well. Sitting in his bouncy chair, watching us thoughtfully and sucking his thumb, he gave us a serious frown with his little fluffy eyebrows. “Are you OK Baby Pie?” I asked him, as the Small Girl ran over to give him a kiss.

“Aaawwwww, he’s a cwazy baby!” she declared.
“A crazy baby?” I asked laughing.
“Yeah…. like a Moose” she said, nodding thoughtfully to herself and wandering off to watch telly.

Self Assessment

A friend of mine recently suggested in passing that I ought to start a blog of my chaotic life with a toddler and a new baby, and the more I thought about it, the more appealing the idea seemed. If for no other reason than that it would give me a sense of satisfaction to turn my exhausting, unglamorous life into a kind of long-running sitcom, I decided to give it a go.

I received a letter the other day summoning me to our local Health Centre for the Very Small Boy's "three month developmental check-up". I read it with a sense of dread. I have managed to avoid all these pointless developmental checks with the Small Girl - until we relocated to Ireland, we moved about so much that, as one nurse put it, she "slipped through the net". It's a net I don't particularly want my children to be caught in; everybody knows that once you're snared, you will be summoned repeatedly so that an overbearing healthcare worker with an air of self-importance can assess your parenting skills whilst trying to find fault with your children.

With this in mind, I put on my Best Trousers (the ones that aren't jeans) and dressed both the Small Girl and the Very Small Boy in smart, clean outfits. As it would obviously have been too easy to hand out individual appointments, I had vaguely been issued with a two-hour time-slot within which to attend. So I decided to arrive really early in order to avoid a long and painful wait. Unfortunately, I didn't account for the fact that, just as we were getting into the car, the Very Small Boy would require a nappy change of such epic proportions that it would involve putting on a whole new outfit. Then the Small Girl needed to be taken to the toilet. Then she refused to get into the car without a snack (car journeys, no matter how short, cannot be undertaken without this vital bit of sustenance - the Small Girl's "thnack").

Half an hour later, we successfully left the house and drove into town to the Health Centre. Unfortunately, they had neglected to inform me that their car park was temporarily out of action (that would have been too easy), so we spent a further half hour driving in futile circles trying to find somewhere to park in the High Street. We eventually parked miles away and I packed up the buggy, strapped the Very Small Boy in, got the Small Girl onto the buggy board and struggled back through the rain to the Health Centre, with the Small Girl complaining all the way (and you have to imagine this in a kind of high-pitched, whingey voice): "I want to go the plaaaygwound... I want to go the plaaaygwound..." etc.

By the time we arrived, the waiting room was packed with prams and buggies, all containing babies waiting for their three-month developmental checks and all booked in before us. I spent the next hour and a half in a state of increasing desperation as buggy after buggy was wheeled out to see the nurse. During this time, the Small Girl, who had started out primly sitting on her seat, descended into paroxysms of uncontrollable whingeing (I want a thnaaack! You go to the shop and buyyyy one...") and embarrassingly bad behaviour. The Very Small Boy, who had been peacefully asleep, woke up hungry and had a drink. Then his nappy leaked. Then he was sick on my Best Trousers.

By the time we were eventually called to see the nurse, the Very Small Boy was exhausted, stained and whingey, I was flustered, dishevelled and covered in sick and the Small Girl was lying on the floor underneath one of the waiting room chairs, wearing only one shoe (and that on the wrong foot) and doing experiments with her own spit.

During our brief ten-minute slot with her, the nurse spent much of the time looking sympathetically at me and asking things like "and how are you coping?" and "but are you having more bad days than good?" and - that meaningless phrase I hate so much - "how are you in yourself?". The unsurprising result of the actual developmental assessment was that the Very Small Boy has put on lots of weight and grown quite a bit. And, after some vague muttering about head control and letting Baby spend more time on his tummy, we were dismissed and told to come back in a month...

So, my chubby Baby Pie - you can hold your lovely wobbly head high, and feel proud that we are all - in ourselves - doing just about the best we could. Under the circumstances.