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.