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.