Midnight Feast

“Can we have a midnight feast?” ask Emilia and her friend Libby, who was staying the night.

Are we either so lenient and approachable as parents that this is not an unreasonable request? i.e. they don’t fear us enough, or do they fear us so much that it is unthinkable they do something without our express permission? I can’t believe they are too goody- two- shoes for the latter, so it must be the former, but aren’t they missing the whole point of a midnight feast?

It is supposed to be secret, surreptitious and sneaky, an event with the added excitement and fear of being discovered.

“Don’t ask ” I reply “I don’t want to know what you are planning.”

The children had a cosy evening cuddled on the sofa in pjs watching a film with hot chocolate and mountains of popcorn. When it finished the girls and Patrick said “Can we get the food for our feast now?”

I block my ears, “No, no, you are not getting this, are you? You have to sneak food out of the kitchen when I am not looking, it is a secret....from me.”

I can say this, 'help yourself' bit, secure in the knowledge that we have nothing more exciting in than apples, bananas and mini bars of Soreen (and yogurts, I later discover.) Well, that they know about, or can find anyway.

They rush off and busy themselves hunting for snacks, whilst I pretend to occupy myself somewhere else in the house. Libby comes to find me, carrying small apple juice cartons. “Can we please have these for our midnight feast?” she asks.

I give up!

“Yes, whatever you like Libby, that is fine.”

I get them all settled in bed. I read them a story and Rachel falls asleep. (One down, four to go.) I take Rachel to another room and tell the others to go to sleep.

“Can we have a clock so we know when it is midnight?” they ask.

“What you need to do,” I confide “is to tap your head 12 times or gently bang it 12 times on your pillow before you go to sleep, and then you’ll be sure to wake up at midnight.”  I remember too late, this actually quite hurts, or the way I used to do it did.

I go and fetch them the clock, kissed them goodnight and turned out the light, confident that they’ll sleep all the way through past midnight until morning. After all, that is what always happened to me as a child.

I went downstairs and caught up with some admin on the computer. In the kitchen with the washing machine and dishwasher going loudly, I was blissfully unaware of any activity upstairs and assumed by about 10.30pm they’d be asleep.

I underestimated them. Fool I was, not to have just moved the clock forward a few hours.

Upstairs, I discovered lights blaring, cards and signs of other activity strewn across the bedroom and three children standing on beds and bunks and around the room, very much awake. No attempt whatsoever, was made to dive under the covers, snap off the light and pretend to be sleeping. They clearly didn’t hear me coming.

“Get back to bed, NOW!” I say, using my firm, but not so scary ‘aware we have guest children’ voice.

“We haven’t had our midnight feast yet” they wail “and it is nearly midnight”  Emilia points to the clock. (It is five to eleven, telling the time is not her strong point – but I don’t correct her.)

“I don’t care about that now,” I say “you weren’t supposed to stay awake until midnight, you are supposed to go to sleep and wake up for it. Just go to sleep now.”

I leave the room to get ready for bed myself. On the way out of the bathroom I meet Patrick on the landing carrying a packet of something.

“Can you just open this for me, Mummy?”

***************************************

It is not the sleepover I mind, it is the responsibility and guilt I feel for the resulting tiredness – not in my own children but in the visiting one. Overtired children are beastly and I hate to inflict that upon anyone, let alone their parents – whom I call my friends.

Actually, we seem to have got away with it so far and the kids have not been demonstrably overemotional. (Tomorrow will be the shocker probably.)

We had one dodgy moment – caused by me – on the way to my uncles’ house, when I brought up the fact I was surprised that Emilia had left the stuffed toy class mascot, Reggie at home. She has to write a diary of his weekend with us, and of course she had not meant to leave him behind, and was completely unaware that she had....until I pointed it out....Durrrrr!!!!  Tears ensued, but I managed to placate and distract and we got off fairly lightly. She incredibly, managed to leave this stuffed toy behind basically every time we were off to do something exciting, that weekend (swimming, tennis, boating and tractor driving!)...but at least he was there for the sleepover. 

Doing something right

I was shopping with Rachel in Waitrose recently and as I was putting the food through the checkout Rachel asked,

“Please may I have a banana Mummy?”

The girl at the till remarked, “That is the politest child I have ever been witness to...and she eats fruit!”

I was just about to jump in with the ‘don’t let her fool you, looks can be deceiving, normally she is a right little.....’ when I thought, no, don’t do that, accept the compliment graciously, pretend it is true, feel a little smug about your perfectly mannered daughter, glow with pride, and get out of there quick before Rachel has the chance to blow a raspberry at her.

It is very warming when people compliment your children, particularly if it is about their behaviour, if they’ve been noticeably good. It means more than, ‘what pretty hair’ or ‘what long legs’, though this is nice too.

What people usually say about Rachel, within about 5 minutes of meeting her is, 

“Oooh, she’s a character!” This comment can be taken either way, and one does wonder sometimes what exactly is meant by it. However, most things said by strangers can only be taken positively, as it means something has made them stand out from the crowd to make them worthy of comment. As trying as our children can be at times, we all want them to have a bit of spark or personality about them, and it is lovely when it is not only noticeable to us.

Later that same day, I met my Mum who was off to do her shopping at Waitrose. She offered to take Rachel with her.

“No thanks, I said quickly, “Rachel has got a really good reputation in there now, I don’t want her to go and spoil it.”

I’ve been shopping in Sainsbury’s ever since.

Key Performance Indicator 2

“Mummy!” berates Emilia, my seven year old, “do you think you could make sure I have clean pants in my drawer because I am fed up of going downstairs [to the washing line] to get them.”

“Oh sorry, Emilia” I reply, with the merest hint of sarcasm, “I am clearly failing in my duties.”

“Indeed you are” she agrees.

And indeed I am, failing, in all aspects of house-wifery. I am not on top of it at all. The washing is piling up around my ears, the house is rarely tidy or clean and I have never got the right food in. This is never more the case than in the holidays, when the mess is created as fast as you can clear up and another meal time seems to come round constantly. No sooner than you finish breakfast, you are making a picnic lunch, which invariably gets eaten in the car on the way to wherever you are going anyway.

Any small task, like popping out for milk, becomes an event when you have to be accompanied by four other bodies. Before we can go anywhere I become a sergeant major, shouting out instructions, and chivvying and cajoling children into finding socks, shoes, coats/ jumpers and getting them to stop what they are doing and simultaneously leave the house. In the process of ushering everyone out of the door I can usually be relied upon to mislay my own shoes, keys or phone. (A person can be lost for sometime in the abyss of the shoe cupboard, attempting to retrieve a matching pair of the right size, shape and appropriateness.) I wonder what the neighbours think as they see me doing shuttle runs up and down the front steps gathering forgotten items, whilst the children all wait on me.

Ben clearly thinks I need some parenting assistance too, and actually he is brilliant with Patrick, far more patient than I am. He is great at distracting him out of tantrums and can usually get him to do what needs to be done. The only thing is, he now feels this service needs some recognition. The other day he said to me; “Mum, you know I help you with your job, of raising the children,”

“Yes?” I reply cautiously

“Well do you think you might give me some money for doing that?”

I think actually, if I was getting paid for doing this I might be inclined to do a rather better job. You know things aren’t going well when you find yourself using the brush from the dustpan to flatten down your son’s hair as you are leaving for school. (In my defence – it was a brand new one I hadn’t actually used for the dust yet.)

To be fair, my standards have slipped...a lot. I used to mind about the days of the week marked socks being worn on the wrong day, or about pyjama top and bottoms not matching. I used to need the children’s teeth to be cleaned before their bath to prevent the need for rewashing faces clean of toothpaste.

I like order... I don’t get it. Patrick goes out of his way to wear odd socks, another of his misguided fashion statements.

I don’t mind these things now, either through increased tolerance or just being worn down. It is enough that they are dressed, clean and fed, or it should be.

Emilia seems to be becoming more and more judgemental of me, and not just in the washing department.  Yesterday when I was eating, she came and looked over at my plate with distaste.

“Is that peanut butter?....and jam?....I can’t think of anything more ridiclious to put in a sandwich....except maybe crisps.”

Another time she was on her way to bed and asked me, “Are you going to watch something now?”

“No” I replied “I am just going to read my book.”

“What a BORING thing to do, if I was a grown up I’d watch TV.”

In the face of such condemnation is it any wonder I am giving up a little.   

Anti-school , Pro–gaming, Cool Patrick

“I want to EXIT school, I want to QUIT it” moans Patrick, who has the vocabulary of a child who has clearly spent too long playing computer games.

ESCAPE, ESCAPE, Abort!  In his head he thinks he should be able to close down that particular window called school and just not do it anymore. He claims he has a headache and can't go. He is irrationally upset about having to go to school. He is still only 5 and has already been there a year and a half.  He blames me;

“You make me go nearly every day!”

How could I? It is clearly completely unreasonable, and he just wants to stay at home. He doesn’t want to do PE or Phonics or Numeracy. He hates having to work so hard, although we're told he is extremely studious. He has told us and the teachers,  “I am just getting worser and worser (at writing in particular).” He only likes break time.

I let him have a day off recently, he was more just tired than ill really. I decided I’d home school him for the day and he’d soon feel that school was the better option. He did do some work with me but it was a painful process and the little we did do was not done without complaint. (One task was painting the letters of the alphabet so I was not exactly pushing him.) He recollected later – “You never gave me break time!”  As I remember it, we did not much more than an hour and he played at home all afternoon while I went out with Rachel. Home schooling is definitely not an option.

He is extra sensitive and upset by minor things at the moment. He told me that a boy in his class “said my prayer was rubbish and hurt my feelings.” 

I blame Mark for the anti-school genes. He hated his first school and his Mum told me the Headmaster used to have to come and fetch Mark from their house as he’d just sit in his room and pick off all the wallpaper in protest.

Patrick has friends and is fairly popular despite the fact he turns down every party invitation he receives. Recently, he was due to go on a play-date after school, but he bailed at the classroom door and decided he did not want to go home with them after all. I felt he shouldn’t disappoint his friend so I went over to talk to him about it all and persuade him to go. Eventually Patrick decided that the one thing that would make all the difference to him was if he could have his DS ‘fully charged’, to take with him. As, is always the case, I knew Patrick would be fine once he got there, and in all likelihood would not need the emotional crutch of the DS. I lavishly promised him I would go home, find it and drop it off on our way to ballet and he went off happily.

I now had a quandary. There was a) the fact I didn’t actually want him to have his DS, I’d rather he played with his friend. (I find the DS anti social, it would only end up with the other child watching Patrick play it and b) I thought I was pandering to him too much. However, if I didn’t take  the DS to him, Patrick would think I just lie to him and pack him off and he will never trust me again.

I went for the 'risk he’d never trust me again' option, with a get out clause of a text to his friend’s Mum to say I couldn’t find it, which in fact I genuinely couldn’t.

He had a fab time and as we drove away he said “I miss Elliot’s house.” I apologised for letting him down about the DS which prompted him to say he thought he might have had a bit better time if he’d had that too. I ignored that. He’d never have discovered the delights of the inflatable green frog he played with there if he’d been glued to that little screen of his.

It is quite a boy obsession; TV, computers, Wiis, handhelds. Ben was 3 when he told me ‘all the best things in life involve a screen.’ It did make me wonder what kind of a childhood I was giving him if he thought that.

Although the computer obsession continues, thankfully Patrick's anti-school phase seems to have passed now, for the time being at any rate.

Computers aren't Patrick's only interest. When asked recently what was his favourite sport he replied nonchalantly; "Just getting cooler and cooler."

In actual fact Patrick is distinctly uncool, wearing his trousers high riding, and everything tucked in, his trousers too short and his zip up hoodie three sizes too small. Unless it is some geek chic I am missing here. It doesn't sit too well with his other image, which is gelled hair, self styled, spiky or mohican, and his skin tight Transformer costume. I think maybe in his case it is just geek.