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”.