Jesus Christ

“What would you like for breakfast Mister?” I asked the Very Small Boy yesterday morning at 6.00am as we stumbled blearily into the dark kitchen. “Sugar!” he cried, shielding his eyes and wincing as I switched on the light, before adding “with Weetabix”, then changing his mind “No, no – jam!... with toast”

“Mummy, who are you?” he asked me five minutes later as he tucked into his toast and I gingerly sipped my comfortingly large and very strong coffee. This is just the latest in the endless string of difficult – and often unanswerable – questions fired at me recently by the Small People.

It all began, predictably enough, over Christmas, with the question “Mummy, is Santie real?”. The discussion that sprang from this reasonable-enough enquiry (“he's not actually a real person, but he is real in our imaginations”) led to a whole host of “is it real? ” questions (“Are you real?”; “Is this pasta real?”), which eventually, to my relief, led to a thorough understanding of the concept of “real”; by the time the New Year rolled around, further interrogation was no longer necessary.

“Mummy, is that whale real?” asked the Very Small Boy after Christmas, pointing to the television where “Free Willy” was cavorting damply across the screen.
“Well, that's a real whale” I replied, “but the story is just a made-up story and the people are just actors”
“But, what's that whale's name?” he persisted, looking at me intently.
“Errr... Willy” I replied, bracing myself
“Aaaaaaahahahahhaaaaa” the Very Small Boy fell to the floor, clutching his sides and rolling around, laughing hysterically. Then he sat up again and looked seriously at me.
“No but really Mummy: what's his real name?”

Walking back from Big School yesterday afternoon, the Small Girl too was full of questions:
“Mummy?” she asked
“Yes Sausage?” I replied.
“What lives longer, a camel or a polar bear?”

I thought for a minute, before replying “I have absolutely no idea, we'll have to ask Daddy's iphone” (the mysterious and magical Daddy's iphone being the definitive voice on even the most unanswerable of the Small People's questions)

She considered this briefly and then asked “Mummy, do you believe in Jesus?”.
“Ummm...” I stalled, taken aback (my mind still on the camels vs polar bears problem)
“Well, yes Darling: I believe that Jesus was a man who lived a long time ago, and that the Bible tells the stories from his life”. The Small Girl had skipped ahead as I was speaking.
“But I don't really believe in the magic stuff” I added quietly, and she stopped and looked suddenly up at me.
“I believe in the magic stuff” she said, nodding her head thoughtfully to herself.

“Well that's just fine” I said “because what people believe in is a very personal thing, and it's something that we each have to decide for ourselves; only you can decide what you believe”. I took her hand and squeezed it reassuringly and together, we walked back home pushing the Very Small Boy, who had fallen asleep in his pushchair; his favourite Batman figure clutched tight in his grubby little fist.

Rites of Passage

“Mummy?” asked The Very Small Boy, looking up earnestly from where he was sitting at the breakfast bar and cramming a handful of Smarties into his mouth.
“Yes Baby Pie?” I replied.
“You can call me a smashing fellow if you want to!”
“Oh good!” I laughed, kissing his chocolatey cheek “because you know what? I was just thinking to myself what an absolutely smashing fellow you are!”

We had spent a happy afternoon baking a cake and decorating it: the Very Small Boy is Very Nearly Three, and I had promised to send him in to playschool on Thursday with something celebratory to share with his friends. The Small People were having a marvellous time, wielding icing-laden spatulas and squabbling over bowls of sweets and sprinkles, the Small Girl busily trying to convince herself that she had a wobbly tooth (something she had been wanting for some months since a friend’s tooth “like actually fell out” at school).

“It really is wobbly!” she declared crossly, one hand to her mouth, the other curled protectively around a small bowl of jelly snakes.
“I know Darling, I’m sure it will be wobbly very soon” I replied soothingly, pushing the cake out of her brother’s reach as he attempted lick the icing off.

I find it hard to believe that the Very Small Boy is no longer a baby. With each passing milestone - from solids to first steps to outgrowing his cot and finally his nappies – he has grown into a complicated, interesting little fellow able to hold his own in a conversation and share his views (of which he really does have many but which mostly involve the "baddies" from the movie Home Alone).

I met with the Small Girl’s teacher today to discuss her progress at school, which so far has been very good. She is able to read pretty well and can figure out new words by sounding them out. She’s good at maths and is popular and sociable, quiet and thoughtful but gaining the confidence to speak out in class and hold her own against the other children. And I was desperately touched to hear that her teacher has pinned up a note at home on her fridge that my lovely girl gave her in class which reads “teacher is byootiful”.

“Mummy, my tooth really is wobbly!” insisted the Small Girl once more, after we had arrived home from the parent-teacher meeting. “feel it!”.
I sighed and gently put my finger on the little tooth. It moved perceptibly back and forth.
“Oh my goodness!” I cried “I felt it! It really is wobbly, I can’t believe it!”. Thrilled for her, I dashed off to text DH the happy news.

Half an hour later, I sat down next to her on the sofa, sobbing quietly.
“Mummy, are you crying?” asked the Small Girl with concern.
“Yes” I said, sniffing “I just realised that your wobbly tooth was the very first tooth to come through when you were a baby… I was so excited when I realised you had a tooth, I couldn’t wait to show Daddy, and we felt its sharp little edge in your baby gums, and it was so amazing… and now it’s going to fall out!” I sobbed, and burst out crying again.

“Don’t worry Mummy!” she said, smiling and shaking her head. “I only just realised it was wobbly today. It probably won’t even fall out for ages!” And with that, my very grown-up daughter put her arm around my shoulders to comfort me, wiping away my tears as she did so with her sleeve.

Conversations With My Family

“Mummy, when my children are grown up, will now be the olden days?” asked the Small Girl thoughtfully as we drove to her dancing class yesterday.
“What a great question, Sausage!” I said. “Yes, I suppose your children will think that it was the olden days when you were five”
“But it’s not really the olden days is it Mummy?” she continued
“Well no, not really I suppose”
“The real olden days was when you were little!”
I had to agree with her: “yes, when your children are grown up, they’ll think that when Granny was small it really was a long time ago!"

The Small Girl thought about this for a moment, then:

“Mummy?”
“Yes darling?”
“Were the dinosaurs alive when you were little?”
“No darling” I laughed, “I am old… but I’m not that old!”

Whilst she was dancing, the Very Small Boy and I walked into town to while away the time.
“Want a coffee, Mister?” I asked him
“Yaay!” he cried “can I have a Babycino?”

As we sat in the café, he looked thoughtfully at my figure-hugging animal-print dress and commented

“Mummy, you look like a leopard!”
“I know darling… it’s probably a bit much isn’t it?” I said, looking down self-consciously
“Yeah…” he agreed, nodding sympathetically as he sipped the chocolatey froth from his milk.

Later in the evening, after the children were in bed, DH and I lounged on the sofa in the breakfast room, aimlessly watching television.
“Have you seen anyone next door recently?” he asked, referring to the fact that one of our neighbours, in his sixties, had spent some time in hospital undergoing tests.
“Yeah” I said “I bumped into their daughter today actually”
“Is he OK? Do they have a diagnosis yet?” asked DH
“Yes”. I told him the diagnosis.
“Jesus…” he murmured quietly “that’s not good”
“No” I replied, standing up and taking a deep breath, feeling I might cry again “but he wants everyone to carry on as normal apparently, so that’s what we’ll do”.

And I gathered the empty dinner plates from the table, carried them to the kitchen and started to load the dishwasher so no one would see my tears.

Autumn

Collecting the Small Girl from school on the last day before the mid-term break, the Very Small Boy was stunned by the fascinating assembly of witches, skeletons and superheroes who had accompanied his big sister on the annual school Halloween Fancy Dress Walk. The Small Girl herself, dressed adorably as a witch’s cat, came skipping out of class behind a small, disgruntled Buzz Lightyear; helmet askew, satchel trailing solemnly behind him.

“How was your Fancy Walk darling?” I asked, lifting her pink-sequinned cat mask to give her a kiss before we set off to walk home.
“Great!” she replied, swishing her tail “all the mummies and daddies dressed up too!”
“Really?” I asked, wishing I’d been free to go along myself “and what did your friends’ mums go as?”
“Evangelina’s mummy was dressed as a crayon!”
“A Crayon!” I cried, dissolving into fits of laughter “that’s… weird!”

I don’t usually go in for Halloween, having grown up in England (where it’s less popular) and being possessed of typical English reserve when it comes to the whole business of encouraging my children to knock on the doors of complete strangers and make unreasonable demands. But this year I decided to give it a go. And despite starting off nervously, after half an hour I was happily propelling my children up the neighbours garden paths, making them hold their loot bags up endearingly and snapping at them to ring the doorbell again if there was no answer (because all the lights might be off but that was definitely the flicker of a television I spied between the gap at the edge of the curtains, and in any case, what kind of person goes to the trouble of decorating their house for Halloween and then pretends to be out on the actual night?).

The day after Halloween, we had some bad news - one of our tropical fish was discovered floating alarmingly at the top of the tank: belly-up, eyes glazed, he was very definitely deceased. It was a Saturday morning and I was enjoying a rare lie-in.

“Mummy! Mummy!” two shrieking voices, accompanied by thunderous footsteps, flew down the corridor outside my bedroom, before the door was flung open and the Small Girl and her brother leapt onto the bed shouting “There’s a dead fish!”

I glanced at the clock: 7.14am, not bad for a weekend lie-in, and although I would have preferred to be woken a little more sedately, DH had followed the Small People upstairs with a welcome cup of tea so I wasn’t about to complain.

“Oh no, I’m sorry to hear that” I said, letting the Small Girl into bed for a cuddle and gently wiping away her tears.
“But why did he die?” she cried
“He was probably just old sweetheart, and got to the end of his life. You shouldn’t be sad, we rescued him from the pet shop and gave him a great home!”
“But it’s not fay-ur!” she wailed.

“I know darling. Sometimes life isn’t fair I’m afraid… it’s a tough old world out there you know”. I yawned and reaching for my tea, gazed out of the window at the beautiful clear blue sky and the bare autumn tree-tops, holding on precariously to the last of their crinkly golden-red leaves in the crisp morning light.

Fishbowl

“Mummy, do fish have feelins?” asked the Small Girl yesterday morning as we watched our new tropical fish swim in slow circles around their tank.
“No darling”, I replied, “they don’t feel things the way we do”
She thought about this for a minute, then: “do they feel homesick?”
“No sweetheart” I laughed. But I did wonder what the bright little fish, fluttering languidly within their four walls, made of our giant shapes looming up to their tank.

When I fist decided to write a blog, DH was horrified.
“Am I in it?” he had asked, looking concerned.
“Of course!” I had replied, secretly relishing the power that exposing our family life was going to give me over him “so you’d better be on your best behaviour from now on darling!”

I find the experience of writing down and sharing my thoughts both cathartic and liberating. Despite the fact that it means that everyone pretty much knows everything about me, I’m honest about the funny stuff. And I try to be candid about the darker things too: the past, my depression and the challenges of parenting (like how to deal with an hour-long tantrum about post-it notes or how to explain the word “sexy” to a five-year-old who has just heard it in a song on the radio).

But besides the (admittedly deliberate) disclosure of writing a blog, I also find it very hard to escape the close scrutiny of the people I actually live with.
“Have you lost more weight?” DH asked me accusingly yesterday morning as I got out of the shower .
“No darling” I sighed, used after a year and a half of fairly intense running to this line of interrogation. And then, catching a glance of myself in the mirror, “I need to colour my hair though”
“I prefer it your natural colour” commented DH.
“Oh…” I said, crestfallen “but it looks quite natural, don’t you think?”
“No, it’s too blonde” he replied.
“Oh well” I sighed, “I wouldn’t worry about it too much darling, you could be doing a lot worse for yourself”

Hearing the Small People collapsing in fits of hysterical giggles behind me, I looked over to see them wrestling over the Small Girl’s camera. The Very Small Boy pointed to the screen and screeched “It’s Mummy’s bum-bum!” before dissolving back into a giggling heap on the carpet. Rolling my eyes, I reached for my hair colour and left the room.

After we had fed the fish last night, the Very Small Boy reached up to throw his favourite Batman figure into the water. As I stopped him, he cried
“But Batman wants to bash the baddie fish down!”
“I’m not sure the fish want to be bashed down darling” I said, gently taking the figure from him.

“Mummy, do fish feel guilty?” asked the Small Girl thoughtfully.
“I seriously doubt it darling” I replied, and tucking Batman into the back pocket of my jeans, I put an arm around each of the Small People as we peered into the glass to watch the fish dart about, catching the papery bits of multicoloured fishfood that floated gently down through the water to the gravel below.

Road Rage

A very dear friend told me recently “you’re one of the strongest people I know”. I was shocked to think that anyone would describe me this way, because “strong” is just about the last word I would use to describe myself - the world seems to rush in at me disconcertingly; the pain and anger and sadness of others leaving me raw and drained, unable as I am to filter out the groundless worries from the valid.

Dropping off the Small Girl at Big School one morning earlier this week, I was accosted at my car by an alarming woman; broad-shouldered, wild-eyed, harshly tracksuited and loudly exclaiming “You nearly killed my children!”. For a sickening moment (before I realised that she was the horribly aggressive driver who had taken exception moments earlier to a right turn I had made), I really thought that I had actually nearly run someone’s children over, and I subsequently spent two entire nights without sleep, unable to get over the shock of thinking I could have inadvertently harmed a child.

I went for a long run that morning whilst the Very Small Boy was at playschool, completing my 10k circuit around the outskirts of Newbridge in exactly an hour, and returning home feeling utterly exhausted but mentally revived. And I realised that when it comes to running, despite being small and not physically very strong, I am tough – I have the ability to keep on going, keep pushing myself where others would have given up, exhausted.

The Small Girl went home from school that day to a friend’s house, and as always on the afternoons when she is off Being Sociable, the Very Small Boy and I felt lost. I missed her reassuring presence after an upsetting morning, and the Very Small Boy, horrified at having to dine alone, began to stamp his foot and demand:

“I want her to come home now! I want her now!”, before adding quietly “I miss her little face…”

When the Small Girl did finally return, full of chatter about zombie games and chocolate pancakes, she took one look at me and cried

“Ohmygod! Mummy! You have a spot!”
“I know darling” I sighed, “it’s been that kind of a day I'm afraid.”
“You know Mummy” she said sympathetically, “ I saw an advert on the telly for some cream you could buy for that…”

I laughed and gave my small girl a big hug, relieved beyond words to have her back safe with us at home. I find even the small-scale daily onslaught of worry and emotion (like absence or a troubling bout of road rage) so draining that it’s no wonder I struggle to process the bigger things. But if there’s one thing I can say about myself, it’s that I’m resilient, and I can console myself with the thought that, despite the fact that I appear both physically and emotionally fragile, I am actually pretty tough on both counts. So, my velour-clad friend, you may be able to reduce me to tears. But I can run rings around you.

Bold

“1. Not hesitating or fearful in the face of actual or possible danger or rebuff 2. Not hesitating to break the rules of propriety; forward; impudent 3. Necessitating courage and daring; challenging”

There is another use of the word “bold” which isn’t included in the dictionary: in Ireland, it’s also used to describe the behaviour of an errant child. It’s a delightful euphemism for “exceedingly naughty” which eliminates the need for negative and unnecessary words such as "naughty" or "bad".

These days, The Small Girl is rarely bold. At five and a half, she knows her boundaries and is less eager to push them than she is to please me. She does have an incredibly stubborn streak however, and is prone to the odd outburst of door-slamming and pouting. But then again, who isn’t? She has also recently developed a terribly sweet habit of writing notes - I discovered a scrawled and crumpled note in my handbag earlier in the week which read "Mummy you are byootiful" and which moved me to unaccountable tears at the Tescos checkout.

The Very Small Boy on the other hand, is throwing himself with vigour into the business of Experiencing The Terrible Twos. Still an early riser and therefore chronically sleep-deprived, he also has a very low frustration threshold, and has recently discovered that certain behaviours (such as picking his nose and name-calling) infuriate me almost to the point of hysteria.

When I recently banned him from watching a movie because he’d been bold, he began a tantrum of such magnitude that I was (and this is pretty rare) actually lost for words. It began, innocently enough, with shouting and foot-stamping, then progressed to tears of rage, screeching and lashing out. After about half an hour (and having provoked no reaction from me) he began to do all the things which usually really infuriate me. And when, two hours later, he was still jumping up and down in the kitchen screeching and crying, one finger wedged firmly up his nose and shouting “Mummy I hate you!” at the top of his voice, I did what any reasonable parent in that situation would do - and got out the video camera to record the tantrum for posterity.

Usually though, the Small People are both pretty well behaved, and are now at a stage where they gain a great deal from each other’s company. They play happily for whole hours at a time in their new playroom, creating imaginary games and entertaining themselves (while I, unsure what to do with all this newfound harmony, pace about uneasily, half-heartedly starting creative projects which I never quite finish).

I was sitting at my sewing machine the other day, trying to decipher the incomprehensible roman blind instructions in my soft furnishings book, when the Small Girl stalked sullenly in and deposited a note on top of my new Ikea curtain material. It was folded in two and had "luve" printed spider-like on the front. I opened it, and read:

"my bruther haz bin bowld"

Heart sinking, I got up and followed the Small Girl back towards the playroom. But I never did get to find out what bold thing her brother had done – before I had the chance to ask, they had turned on their music and both leapt up to dance to their current favourite Jedward song, which is called - appropriately enough - “Bad Behaviour”.

Bad Behaviour