Jam and Leprechauns

It was St Patrick's Day last week: our third in Ireland. We’ve been here long enough now to know what’s required for the occasion (affectionately referred to as “Paddy’s Day” by our friends and neighbours), and so we headed into town on Wednesday to watch The Parade. On display were the usual bizarre array of “L”-plated tanks, deafening vintage cars and apparently sane adults dressed as Leprechauns.

Touched by the way people seemed so enthusiastic to embrace the opportunity to celebrate what some might consider to be something of a characature of themselves, I realised that despite having lived here for a respectable amount of time, I still haven’t quite managed to figure the Irish out. Post “Celtic Tiger”, almost everyone lives in new-builds on identical estates and houses are uniformly furnished with laminate flooring and leather upholstery; everything shiny and new and gleaming. And it seems slightly incongruous to me that people who insist on living this way are so willing to don silly beards and wigs and paint their faces green to celebrate their heritage.

The following day, we set off for a short break on the south coast, DH having taken some time off work. Heading to a self-catering apartment, we stopped to buy some groceries on the way.

“Let’s pick up some jam” said DH, throwing a loaf of delicious Irish soda bread into the trolley.
“Good idea” I agreed, and having located my favourite raspberry jam, I placed it in the trolley next to the bread.
“What flavour did you get?” asked DH.
“Strawberry” I lied, and pushed the pot out of sight underneath the broccoli. DH only likes strawberry jam, a preference I really should have respected, but for some reason my small act of rebellion gave me a childish sense of glee. And besides, I thought, for once it would be nice to put myself first.

We had a lovely few days, the Small Girl loving the hotel pool and I loving the vulnerability of the Very Small Boy, all wide brown eyes and chubbiness, as he had his very first swimming experience.

“What would you like for breakfast today, Sausage?” I asked the Small Girl on our last morning. “You can have cereal, porridge or bread and jam”.

She insisted on cereal, so she and I (the Very Small boy having eaten his porridge at the crack of dawn and DH having managed to avoid breakfast for three days) sat down to eat.

“Mummy, can I have some of that?” asked the Small Girl seconds later, pointing to my delicious buttery bread smeared with lovely sweet raspberry jam.
“Of course”, I said reluctantly, as I sliced it in two and gave her half.

As she tucked enthusiastically into my breakfast, the Very Small Boy, who was sitting on my knee, reached out a chubby little fist, grabbed the remaining half of bread and jam and crammed the entire thing into his mouth. And all that was left for me to do was take a soothing sip of coffee as I looked down at the forlorn crumbs on my empty plate and marvelled at how a pot of jam had come to signify so much.

I Need a Screwdriver, Not a Husband

You can probably tell a lot about someone from the junk you find strewn about their kitchen. After dropping DH off at the bus stop last week (he was on his way to Israel for a business trip), I decided to get the Small Girl and the Very Small Boy to help me conduct a morale-boosting spring-clean (we were all understandably upset at the prospect of a week without Daddy). I surveyed the objects on my kitchen windowsill and silently contemplated what they might say about me: half a pomegranate, a soggy carrot-top sprouting in a saucer of water, a colourful handful of beads from one of the Small Girl’s broken necklaces and a pot of gold enamel paint I’d been using for some project several months before.

“We’ll be fine, darling” I had said reassuringly to DH earlier. We’d all been standing at the breezy bus stop, waiting for the airport coach: the silent Small Girl miserably anticipating Daddy’s departure, her Very Small Brother (who currently has a fixation with buses) shouting “BUH!” at the top of his voice and waving indiscriminately but with great enthusiasm at passing vehicles.

“I hate leaving you… but you will remember to put the bins out tomorrow won’t you?” DH had said, illustrating perfectly that delicate balance in marriage between romance and chores.

“We’re fine!” I had reiterated. “Now, have a good trip… and call us when you get there!”.

The Very Small Boy had thought that this farewell was just about the most thrilling thing that had ever happened to him: the combination of close proximity to a bus, an opportunity to wave, and then Daddy on a bus, waving back sent him into frantic paroxysms of excitement, whilst his sister, tears sliding down her face, sat silent and miserable in the car all the way home.

Whatever else you say about me, the fact is I’m pretty resourceful. And it’s probably just as well, because as soon as DH boarded his plane to Tel Aviv, everything seemed to fall apart. The telephone suffered what the phone engineer described as a “catastrophic failure”; the stairgate (which is very much required with a Very Small Active Boy about), fell off; all the clocks in the house suffered a systematic malfunction (making me continuously late); our ancient boiler system ran out of oil, leaving us without heating.

“Oh you should have told me!”, said a friend, looking at the prone stairgate the following day; “I would have sent my husband round to fix it for you!”.

“Well, actually what I need is a screwdriver”, I muttered. “Not a husband. I could fix the gate myself if only I knew where the screwdriver was…”

But in the end, we had a perfectly pleasant week, filled as it was with playdates and fun activities so that the time passed quickly. And it didn’t really matter that everything fell to pieces because by the time DH returned, the bins were empty, the clocks were ticking, the heating was on and the telephone was working. We’d even managed to eat the pomegranate, re-string the Small Girl’s necklace and plant the carrot-top in a smart new plant pot of its very own.

Another Year

It was my birthday last week: seemingly, another year has passed, and yet I barely feel older than I did when I met DH in my early twenties. Although growing older has never really bothered me (not having particularly enjoyed being too young to know any better), the gentle havoc it wreaks on my appearance is admittedly starting to irritate slightly.

“Mummy, you look like a weirdo!” shrieked the Small Girl one night, sitting in the bath with her Very Small Brother and clapping her hands with glee at the sight of my panda-eyes as I took off my makeup.
“Thanks Sausage!” I laughed, “I suppose I do look a bit strange…” I wiped off the last of the day’s mascara and gazed at my bare face in the bathroom mirror: pale, lined and sagging slightly around the edges.

When I was a teenager, I used to make myself up to look as old as possible - eyeliner and lipstick lent me a convenient mask behind which I could slip unnoticed into certain undiscerning pubs well before the legal drinking age. But ironically, these days makeup is more about disguising the effects of age and giving myself the appearance of youth; hiding the lines and covering the dark circles in an attempt to look young and fresh-faced. (Which of course never works out the way it’s supposed to, because trying to apply makeup whilst holding a whingeing 25lb baby and pretending to be a toucan is like trying to juggle with cats – a noble idea but not terribly practical).

“I look old” I said to no-one in particular, peering into the mirror the night before my birthday.
“But darling, you look much younger than you are!” said DH cheerily, putting his arm around my shoulders.
“Really? How much younger?” I demanded.
“Well… at least five years!” he replied. And with a sinking feeling, I realised that even if I were five years younger, I’d still be in my thirties.

“Hello, lovely birthday girl!” said the Small Girl the following morning when she got up, before bursting into a hearty rendition of “Happy Birthday To You”. This cheered me up no end; to her, birthdays are simply about Being the Centre of Attention, and Eating Lots of Cake. Perhaps, I decided, I ought to take a leaf out of her book.

“Want to have a birthday tea with me when you and Baby Pie get back from playschool, Sausage?” I asked her.
“Yaay! Yaay!” she cried, jumping up and down and waving her arms in the air.

So it was decided: while my two lovely children were otherwise occupied, I spent my birthday morning buying cake, crisps, sweet treats and pink juice to share with my two Favourite People. And for once, I didn’t even bother to put on my makeup before leaving the house.

Reality Bites (And Sometimes It Throws Up Too)

I remember clearly the moment that the reality of being a mother hit me. In limbo, adrift between India and Ireland, we were staying with family when the Very Small Girl had her first real illness: a nasty bout of flu. It was the middle of the night and not a single person was awake other than she and I. And sitting there, painfully alone in the silent darkness as I tried to soothe her to sleep, it struck me - this is what it means to be this child’s mother. Being her mother means being the only person who will do at 2am when she has a fever. The enormity of this privilege was not lost on me, even at that time of the morning.

Now that the Very Small Boy has started playschool, we suspected it wouldn’t be long before he started to come down with all the usual bugs (the first thing he did on his first day of “settling in” was dash over to a small snotty-nosed child and take a large swig from his beaker of juice). And I should have realised yesterday that something was afoot when, half-way through our daily walk, the Very Small Boy, usually so full of energy, gave up and whinged to be carried home.

“Mummy, slow down!” whined the Small Girl, trotting along behind me as I strode off with the Very Small Boy slung over my shoulder. I was trying to remain cheerful, but it wasn’t easy: the Very Small Boy had inadvertently trodden in dog poo, which I had then inadvertently got all over my trousers, coat and jumper as I carried him.

I changed into fresh clothes when we got home, throwing the soiled ones, along with the offending shoes, into the utility room to be dealt with at some later date. The Very Small Boy (looking distinctly red about the eyes) whimpered into his dinner, managing to eat just enough of it to do some serious damage a few hours later when it came back up again – all over his cot, sheets, mattress and pyjamas.

“My poor brave little soldier”, I whispered to him in the dark as I cleaned him up, thinking that the reality of being a parent is really just this: sponging sick out of your child’s hair at two in the morning.
“I’ll get up with him when he wakes” offered DH, bundling up the soiled sheets and clothes. But, a few hours of fitful sleep later, it was me that the Very Small Boy wanted; it always is when he is ill.

I really didn’t mind getting up with him at quarter past five this morning though – it really is astonishing to be so utterly required by someone. “Come on, Little Man” I said to my Very Small son as I carried him gingerly downstairs. “Let’s change your nappy and get you a drink. Then we can make a start on that enormous pile of laundry…”

Playschool

“Ni Hao, Mummy!” chirped the Small Girl gleefully when I picked her up from Playschool a couple of weeks ago.
“Oh!”, I replied, puzzled. “What does that mean, Sausage?”
“It’s saying “hello” in China!” she said, jumping up and down as I opened the car door for her.

The Small Girl, it turned out, had been learning about the Chinese New Year - on our journey home, she was full of excited chatter about dragons and parades and Chinese soup, to which I listened in amazement. Now that she attends a Montessori class five mornings a week, she has been finding out about all kinds of interesting things, each week based around a different (and apparently quite random) theme: hibernation; the food pyramid; Thanksgiving. I love the fact that she comes home so enthused about learning, that she’s getting such a great head start for Big School (which is looming scarily in September). It’s a fantastic playschool, and we were very lucky to have stumbled across it.

I remember so clearly when the Small Girl started there: she was just over one year old and we decided to send her two mornings a week to socialise with other toddlers and to give me a bit of a break. Settling in was a tough process; I used to walk away each morning in tears, wondering whether I was letting my child down by leaving her wailing in the arms of a stranger. But she very quickly grew to love her time there, playing with her friends and engaging in exciting activities I simply wasn’t brave enough to try at home (playing indoors with sand and water, messing about with shaving foam, and sticky finger-painting with a gloopy mess of painty Reddy Brek). In the end, I felt it was one of the best things we had ever done for her.

And so it was inevitable that we considered doing the same for the Very Small Boy. I always declared that I would only send him if he seemed to have the sort of personality suited to it and luckily, he is very like his sister was at the same age – outgoing, sociable and full of fun. He completed his second two-morning week last week, and each time it got a little easier for him and for me. I still walk away each morning in tears, wondering whether I am letting my child down, but I know in my heart that it’s healthy to push him away a little; to help take his first Very Small steps towards independence.

After picking them both up from Playschool last week, driving home in the car the Small Girl and I had our usual chat about her morning, while the Very Small Boy listened with interest:

“What did you do in Playschool today darling?” I asked
“We learnt about penguins!” she replied.
“Penguins!” I said “and what can you tell me about penguins?”

She thought for a moment, then: “If you drop a penguin on its head, it dies!” she said theatrically. Then she leaned back in her seat and spent the rest of the journey looking thoughtfully out of the car window.

Small Allies

I was pottering in the spare room last night, waiting for the children’s bath to run, when the Small Girl and her Very Small brother came wandering in. It’s a relaxed time of day for us – I usually put the stair gate up at the top of the stairs, and they dash about happily (and often bare) playing and, in the case of the Very Small Boy, flinging objects over the top of the gate and down the stairs, where they land with a satisfying crash.

“Mummy, what’s that?” asked the Small Girl, pointing to a dismantled baby play-mat balancing on the top of an ever-expanding pile of “things to go up in the loft”.
“It’s a play-mat, sausage. It belonged to you when you were a baby, and Baby Pie used it as well - but he’s too big for it now”.
“I remember that!” she cried, and turned to her Very Small Brother, who was tugging forcefully on the wires at the back of my computer.

“Pootle, you used to have that when you were a baby!” she said to him and, as she turned to leave the room, added over her shoulder “you were a nightmare when you were a baby!”. And shaking her head thoughtfully, she wandered off to check on her bath.

After the children were bathed and changed and sleeping peacefully in their beds, I thought about their relationship with each other and about how they are growing to enjoy each other’s company, play together and appreciate each other. And I drifted contentedly off to sleep last night, thinking about how lovely it is that each gets so much from the other.

My contentment was short-lived, however: somehow, during their pre-bath playtime, the two little fiends had managed to set the alarm on our clock radio to go off loudly at midnight. And five hours later, the Very Small Boy was wailing to get up; unfortunately it was my turn to rise with him.

Two hours after that, the Small Girl joined us downstairs, and the Very Small Boy’s delight at seeing his sister was obvious: he dashed across the room shouting “eh, eh!” and flung his arms around her waist. Half asleep, the Small Girl returned his cuddle and, while I fixed her a milky drink, the two of them wandered off with their arms about each other to find some toys to play with.

Tell Me a Story

When I was pregnant with the Very Small Boy, I decided it was important to start talking to the Small Girl about her own arrival in the world. I wanted her to understand that all this planning, preparation and excitement had happened for her, too (that her arrival had, in fact, been even more precious, as she was our first baby). It backfired on me somewhat, instilling in her as it did a love of improvised storytelling; her demands of “you tell me the story of when I was born!” eventually began to drive me to distraction.

We have since built up a complex set of the tales that make up our family history: the time we moved to India; the time the Very Small Boy was born; the time Mummy broke her arm ice-skating; the time Daddy was a naughty little schoolboy stealing ripe fruit from the neighbour’s plum tree. And I’ve grown to love these story-times with the Small Girl, DH and I tying together the threads of our lives, from our own childhoods to theirs.

I’m pleased to say that, where the Small Girl is concerned, the line between reality and fantasy is as fluid as ever, and these days, her story-telling demands are becoming increasingly imaginative and bizarre. While I was helping her with her colouring-in recently, she turned thoughtfully to me and insisted “Mummy, you tell me the story of when the dinosaurs died!”. After which followed a long and complicated tale (involving meteors, dust clouds and archaeologists) of the kind I couldn’t possibly have imagined ever having with a three year old.

“Mummy!” came the familiar demand yesterday at bathtime (the Very Small Boy was busily dashing in and out of his bedroom with a collection of toys, books and clothes to be flung vigorously into the bathwater).
“Yes, darling?” I replied, fishing a sodden hardback out and setting it out of reach to dry on a towel.
“You tell me the story of when your head fell off!”

“Aha!” I laughed, and began the story: ”it was bathtime on a Monday evening in Newbridge and Mummy had spent a long and tiring day chasing after Small People and telling endless imaginary stories…”