Bah Humbug

Come Christmas time there are so many wonderful, magical things laid on for children; Christmas fairs, parties, visiting Santa, nativities, crackers, presents and treats. In our house, Rachel, despite having ripped open her own chocolate advent calendar on the first day and torn off windows for dates still to come, also gets to eat the advent chocolates of her brother and sister too. They don’t like them (its Kinnerton - yuk – not proper chocolate at all) so feed them to her instead. So already, Rachel is doing quite well out of the Christmas season.

On Wednesday, I took her to the Smallfry toddler group Chrismas party which promised a toddler participation Nativity and singing in the church, party food, an entertainer, Father Christmas and presents.

Rachel was invited to be an angel – there is some inappropriate casting for you. She loves dressing up usually, particularly in her ballet outfit, which in her wearing of it, makes her less Darcey Bussell and more Rambo.

Anyway, she refused to put the angel costume on. She just ran around in her vest, and short of chasing her round the hall as she made her getaway in the huge plastic fire truck, I was not going to win this one. I even offered her a choice of outfit, but she did not want to be a Snow Queen in the costume her friend had brought along for her either. (Come to think of it – powerful, demanding, selfish, controlling - that character sounds much more up her street.)

Never mind though, we’d just go and watch the others take part and we filed into the church with all her little friends. In the quiet before the service began she stopped in the aisle on her own, arms folded, refusing to sit down with us.

“No, Mummy. DON’T WANT TO!” (I should never have read her that Tiger and the Temper Tantrum book – it was supposed to teach how TO behave not, how NOT to)

I look around the church wondering which Mum that awful child belongs to. I am rumbled as she makes a beeline for me, really crying now. Geez, this is supposed to be fun! I scoop her up and take her to the back of the church, where one of the play leaders reassures me that is fine for her to make a noise and watch from the back. It is not, however, fine with me.

She stops crying and is slightly intrigued by the sheep masks stuck on the stable in the nativity scene at the front.

“Want see sheep!” she demands, and we creep closer to see better. We crouch and watch and sing for a bit and her friend comes and joins us at the front. I hold Hettie’s hand. Rachel notices and goes beserk with jealousy shouting “Go away, Go AWAY.” She is really not quite herself, definitely time to leave.

“Want go home” she says petulantly, and I couldn’t agree more. So bailing on my friends we slip out. After all, who am I doing all this for really? It’s all for her benefit, not mine.

Halfway home Rachel says “Want see Baby Christmas.” You are kidding me. I debate going back but on further questioning I establish that all she really wants to do is go home and watch C-chuffing-Beebies. Bah Humbug!

This whole debacle only makes our family Christmas card this year, all the more appropriate. Ben came up with the idea, but it really couldn’t be any more apt. Rachel really does live for the opportunity to watch CBeebies.  

We are getting some really lovely Christmas cards this year. Lots of them are beautifully drawn by friends’ children. All very cute depictions of snowmen and Christmas trees, and “elfs” (by our friends the Elph-icks – Ho,ho,ho.) A lot of them are done and printed through school and my children got the chance to do the same.

I, rather meanly, refused to buy my children’s designs, as sweet as they were, purely on the basis that none of the three could spell Merry Christmas correctly. No, we’d much rather dress them in silly costumes than let friends and family know just how illiterate they are. 

A New Crime

December 16^th 2011

I was upstairs in the bathroom with Patrick this morning when we heard a loud squeal from Emilia, who was down at the breakfast table with Rachel.

Patrick, toothbrush in hand, gives me a knowing look and starts listing off possible causes of the commotion.

“Pulled hair? Biting? Pinching?”

“Probably” I agree, and we both roll our eyes.

When we get downstairs we discover that a new crime has been committed when Emilia complains;

“Rachel spat in my cereal!”

It made me think of a similar story when cousin Charlie was a baby in the highchair at the table next to Patrick (then 3.) He sneezed hugely and Patrick ticked him off;

“No, Charlie, I don’t like that! I don’t like Bless-you on my cheek!’

To distract Emilia, I reminded her of a time, and I am not sure if it is worse or better, that Ben was midway through a bowl of cornflakes and suddenly stopped and announced,

 “Mummy, there is a stick insect in my cereal.”

Our stick insects had had babies and we seemed to have had an escapee (or more – who could tell, we never counted.) Luckily this one was returned to the tank before it came to the crunch.

A Dilemma

December 12th 2011

I’ve just worked out that next term Patrick will need to be at the swimming pool at 8.45 am once a week, meaning Ben and Emilia will be left to find their own way to school that day.

This is fine, they have done it before (although I did just happen to have to ring up school later that morning anyway, and while I was on the phone, the secretary did have a quick look at the register to check they had made it. I think us Mums do need a little reassurance as our kids take these first steps towards independence.)

However, it has come up for discussion what route they should take;

a) the lonelier, muddier alleyway towards the woods, through the field behind the school or

b) the busier pavements, the road way where most parents walk, which requires them to cross one more road.

So, which would I rather? Knocked down by a car or molested by a stranger?

I don’t seriously think that either way poses any real risk but it is a question.

Not one that bothered my parents though. My brother, sister and I went to this same school and I am pretty sure that we went mostly unaccompanied, though which route, I have no recollection, probably both interchangeably.

Although, clearly there wasn’t any danger then, everybody did it. And particularly in “my world”, bad things didn’t happen at all. 

Apparently, I used to talk about “my world” quite a lot. A world where the sun always shone, flowers grew, butterflies fluttered and everyone was gentle and nice and kind.

Dad likes to remind me of a time when we were in a Little Chef and I overheard some irate customer complaining about to the waitress about the coffee tasting like dirty dish water. He obviously wasn’t being very nice about it as I (aged about 4) turned to my Dad and said;

“In my world [which, don’t forget is full of lovely things and everybody is nice and kind], in my world, if anyone spoke to me like that, I’d tell him to F*ck Off”

Whereupon my disciplinarian parents,fell under the table, they were laughing so much.

The Tom-boy and the Pack Horse

December 2^nd 2011

She does look like a girl, she was even wearing a skirt today. Pretty as a picture really with her angelic blonde curls, clips holding back the more unruly locks, stripey tights and pink t-bar shoes, smart, double breasted baby blue coat and pushing her doll’s pram – sweet. And yet she is a thug, a wolf, in sheep’s clothing.

We set off for school, somewhat ambitiously, without Rachel’s buggy. She was pushing her pram and her friend Toby was proudly carrying his “suitcase” – an old box once of Milk Tray now stuffed with his papers – his morning’s work at nursery. Ah yes...all because the lady loves Milk Tray...but not as much as Toby clearly, who would not be parted with it, anymore than Rachel could be persuaded to leave her doll’s pram behind.

Once round the corner from the house Rachel announces ‘I tired, want cuddle.’ Now I know exactly where this is going – me carrying her most of the way. I momentarily considered putting Rachel in the dolls pram (even giving it a go) before establishing that wasn’t going to work. I concede defeat and after collaring a fellow parent to watch the little ones, I sprint home to get her pushchair and hurry back with it. Rachel, of course, then proceeds not to make use of it.

She lovingly pushes her pram, which contains not a sweet baby doll, but a hard plastic Buzz Lightyear and dismembered Woody, whose limbs are rolling round in the carry cot along with the toys and her now pulled-out hairclips.

After negotiating the curbs crossing the road, she stops at the top of the hill and with a loud “Ready, Set Go and an almighty shove sends the pram hurtling downhill to end up careering of the pavement and into the tyre of a parked car.

Her attention is now caught by the bare twigged plants on the grass verge. “Want stick Mummy, want stick.”

Having rescued the pram, I fish out a couple sticks from the undergrowth for her and Toby and they begin to duel with them. So feminine.

By the time we’ve got a little further she has taken Toby’s stick and run away with it, a gleeful look on her face. While I find him another one (his stick broke as I tried to extract it from her) she, totally unperturbed, busies herself putting all the broken pieces of his stick in her pocket.

Once at school we fetch Patrick and his bike and wait for the older ones. Emilia and her friend Max are dressed as Vikings, so bring out with them an assortment of discarded costume, leather, fur, two helmets and weapons, a couple of axes, a dagger, shields, and two handmade Viking Longboats. I also get handed a coat and a book bag and various other things despite the fact they are all wearing their own rucksacks. By now, I also have Toby’s ‘suitcase’ and Rachel’s pram and toys, and the now raided, biscuit box I always carry. To top it all off we also have Eddie/Freddie, the stuffed toy mascot of Willow class that Max has been assigned for the weekend.

So, six kids, a 2,4, and 5 year old, two 7 year olds and a 10 year old to herd home. They too all delight in sending the pram down the hill with Everard the monkey/raccoon mascot thing perched precariously on top of Buzz. Patrick who was on his bike, has now swopped with Max, (aaahh - child who isn’t mine riding bike with no helmet!) Rachel has gone the secret passageway behind the bushes and has yet to emerge. A couple in front, a couple behind. Toby holding my hand (always prioritise the children in your care, who don’t actually belong to you in these situations) and a buggy loaded with awkwardly shaped and fragile items. Yet amazingly the tom-boy, the pack horse, brothers and sister and friends all made it home in one piece. 

Breakfast Behaviour

November 25^th 2011

This morning Miss ‘I do it myself’ wanted sugar on her Weetabix. Now sprinkling is not the most natural of skills for any small person and commands technique that even the bigger ones have yet to acquire. Mark, not noticing my concern, passed her the loaded spoon. With one flick of the wrist Rachel managed to get sugar everywhere but in her bowl. The actually quite small amount of sugar was widely spread across the table and floor but not a single grain landed where it was intended.

I remember once when Emilia was about 3, her trying to put sugar in our tea and spilling it all over the counter. On being told to be careful she replied: “I’m not a very good carefuller.”

This accidental mess is one thing, but my brother, when he was little, playing his idea of a practical joke, stuck the sugar bowl to the lead of the kettle with elastoplast, thereby setting a sugar booby trap for my parents...I have all that deliberate stuff still to come.

Also, as I was reading the sort of things we said and did as children, I came across this conversation between my mum and me

October 1981

Juliet: “ I want some coffee”

Jill: “That’s not the way to ask.”

Juliet: “Please Mummy, can I have some coffee”

Jill: “Yes, certainly.”

Juliet: “Or I’ll kick your face in”

This did not make me think, what a horrible little brat I was, though that does seem to be the case, but just begs the question why was I drinking coffee aged 5?

Plainly I was quite awkward.

1979

Mum: “What will you have on your toast, Juliet?

Juliet “Marm.........”

Mum spreads marmite

Juliet “....alade”

Or my brother also aged 3

Mum: What do you want for breakfast, Nicholas?

Nicholas “I want toast with nothing on”

Mum: “Where are you going?”

Nicholas: “You make the toast, I’m going to get nothing on”

And from awkward to belligerent, another morning:

Mum “Do you want some toast

Nicholas “No”

Mum “No what?”

Nicholas “No toast”

My own children are the same, and while most adults can claim ‘we were never like that as children’ – I can’t....it was all documented...we truly were.

Ben (age 2) once demanded I cook his porridge cold.

If anything that was put in front of him was too hot, he’d waft his hand over it and explain he was trying to get the smoke out.  Unlike Charlie, who tonight continued to eat hot chips, cry because they were too hot and burned his mouth, then try to eat more, he could not be convinced to eat the other food first and let them cool down. They had to be removed from his plate until they got to an edible temperature.