I'm wearing pyjamas under that stripy cardi, and I have no make-up on and the shiniest forehead in the world, to accompany the weirdest most wonky grin in the world... but it's us, and I like it.
He requested a dinosaur birthday cake this year. I winced, and then made this, and was quietly pleased with myself, though it tasted REVOLTING, exactly as all good birthday cakes for 4 year olds should. My favourite part was the feet made of Monster Munch but interestingly the ones on this side had already disappeared before he'd blown the candles out.
Blampla took this as we landed in a heap at the end of the slide at soft play. I love it!
“Mommmmeeeeee....!”
The unmistakable voice of a Little Dude carries across the aisles and I whirl around, poised to abandon my basket if need be, wondering how he’s managed to get away from me now.
“WHAT?” I hiss, in a stage whisper, peering between packets of cereal to work out which aisle is likely to be the site of the destruction.
But then little footsteps skitter at a rate of knots along the central aisle, and a sing song voice cries out “Mommeeee”! And then “ I HAPPEEEEEE!”
Suppressed laughter ripples around the shop and I wince a little, only pretending to be embarrassed by his exuberance, but really I think MEEEEE TOOOOOOOOO and I wish I could run about like a mad thing and declare it just as freely.
Dada calls just then, and I relay the moment, in between telling off the Little Dude for kicking oranges and shouting GOAL! (But I pause long enough to note just how expertly he drops the orange towards the floor, where it makes perfect connection with his foot before sailing into the makeshift goal expediently offered by the newspaper stand.
Dada laughs at his son’s happy exclamations, and points out that I have the better job of the two of us.
“Your boss doesn’t run about shouting about his happiness, then?”
We both laugh at the irony.
“Well at least you don’t have to change his nappies, it could be so much worse,” I say, and we say goodbye and resume our different days, still laughing.
If I had more inclination to blog, I’d have composed a post all about The Boy’s 4th birthday, but it’s one of those times when the images are so vividly burned on the retina of my soul, and the memories so distinctly caught up in my heart, that trying to pin them all down with words and whack them up on the internet seems like sacrilege. It reminds me of those strange old-fashioned butterfly collections – why decimate the thing in the rush to record its sweetness, why not just let it flutter past, uncaptured, and savour every second of the moment?
These boys – sometimes they drive me to the brink of distraction and back again (usually right before tea-time) but other times more often I am so giddy with the joy of knowing them that it feels positively indescribable.
The Boy makes for the most marvellous 4 year old I know. He still has his moments, of course he does, but he handles even his much-beloved cousin’s fascination with the Art of Winding-Him-Up-On-Purpose with a sort of sweet deference. He thinks about retaliating but more often than not he rolls his eyes, shoots her a pitying look as if to say ‘She’s a girl, what can you do?’ and moves on swiftly. We spent 2 hours on Sunday in the restaurant which not so long ago gave me my first glimpse of the True Horror of trying to have a civilised lunch with 2 little people in tow, and we sailed through it so successfully this time that I started thinking 3 children might be a breeze after all, until I realised Nanny A and Blampla are not, alas, regular fixtures at our Sunday lunch table, but still, you get the drift; being the proud owner of a 2 year old and a 4 year old is so very different from having a 2-and-3-year-old pair of trouble-causing companions, which just last week we had in place of the fine pair of easy going chaps who are now sleeping soundly in their beds.
The impulsive hysteria of being 3 seems well behind us, and the angelic elements of his babyhood are resurfacing, with an altogether too-cool-for-school smattering of edgy charm. If a room full of people sing him Happy Birthday he’ll dive spectacularly for cover under the nearest table, but then how many 4 year olds get serenaded by such a crowd on their big day? And if you suggest blowing out his candles he’ll eye the eager crowd with much suspicion, but gleefully drag his Mama and a select few comrades to a quiet corner where he can enjoy his moment of candle-lit glory in privacy.
His birthday celebrations seemed to stretch on to fill a week, much as birthdays should, I think, but I feel I’ve not had a moment to ponder the little part I played in bringing him into the world. Birth stories are such juicy moments, packed full of so much hope and triumph, and I like nothing better than to flick through the baby album and hold again each little detail of the day that he was born. But he’s 4 now, and his birthday is much more about Ben 10 and the right kind of icing. In other words he owns the story now; he is the birthday boy, and I’m just the Mama, haphazardly assembling disgusting cake that fits his exacting brief, and fading contentedly into the background, while he grows bigger and more delightful every day.
I think the past week has been one of the most mad and yet most enjoyable weeks ever.
I can’t really remember much about Monday but I know there was a sense of flogging-a-dead-horse about it. I’d spent a chunk of time on Friday writing outlines and proposals for magazines, and then flitted around the house in a daze, struggling and pretty much kicking and screaming at the transition from aspiring-writer to full-time-mama. So by Monday I was feeling a bit despondent; still no bites from commissioning editors, and a vague but persistent sense of lostness.
Then on Tuesday I casually followed up one of the proposals I’d written and lo and behold they replied immediately with a brief, commissioning me to write one of the features I’d suggested for the biggest parenting magazine in the UK.
The rest of the week has hurtled past in a buzz of activity, and I’ve got the kind of brain tiredness that I haven’t really experienced for the past 4 years; and it feels SO good. I feel a bit like I’ve been on a permanent high since getting commissioned – it’s infused a sense of chaos into the way our household works, but overall I’ve loved every second. I’ve definitely lost my house-work mojo and I haven’t gone near the hoover for days but I think we all know that can only be a good thing.
I’ve exchanged late-night transatlantic emails with a world famous child development expert, who’s seen fit to drop a few parenting pearls of wisdom my way for the purpose of my article, despite the fact that he’s on holiday. I’ve corresponded with a seriously well-known controversial parenting guru, and potentially snagged the chance to interview her exclusively for another magazine. I’ve had conversations with doulas and midwives and sleep experts that have been enthralling, enlightening and inspiring. I’ve felt purposeful, challenged and focused, and pretty much buzzed throughout the week. I’ve loved the burgeoning sense that words can build bridges and make connections, that I can choose how and what I write in order to tell stories that engage me, and seem worthy of the telling.
I’ve spent large chunks of the day standing in the kitchen, bashing away on my laptop, inbetween refereeing wrestling matches and legislating on screen time. I’ve put my pyjamas on during daylight hours and wrapped myself in 2 duvets in order to work in the relative peace and quiet of our bedroom while Dada does boy-time downstairs. I’ve driven 30 minutes along the coast with the radio blaring, soaking up the solitude, with the window down to summon the sights and sounds of the sea, all in order to hide away in a coffee shop with free wifi and a barista who doesn’t mind that I take 3 hours to drink a pot of tea, or that I steal from their electricity supply to keep my laptop from dinosauring out on me after it’s pathetic 50 minutes of battery time.
I miss a little of the mental freedom I had to pay full attention to the boys, and only now that my head is so engaged in work do I realise how much I squandered that opportunity. But it’s time for a different rhythm and I think we’re all benefitting from it, despite the lack of housework and sudden disinterest in all things domestic.
Whenever I talk about my stab at earning my keep with my words, I can kind of see people’s eyes glaze over and their interest wane after a while. I suspect I’ve become a bit of an anorak about it but it honestly feels like The Thing I Am Supposed To Do, and that’s all the more fulfilling because it’s taken me SO long to admit that to myself and to stop feeling like such a fraud. There’s nothing like a bona fide commission to make me feel authentic. My first published piece was the stuff of fairytales – an unsolicited pitch that turned into an invitation to write it on spec, no promises made, but enough encouragement to make me think I could do it. And then after months of half-hearted hoping, the call came to say that the right slot had come up for my piece, and I cringed through every word, and regretted the whole thing, and understood why Nicole Kidman says she cannot watch the films she makes. I felt a bit grubby as I accepted the proceeds and let them pay for Christmas this year, and I made up lots of excuses to disguise the fact that the sort of ‘big break’ that never really happens to anyone had happened to me. And all that paved the way to me being here, on the brink of things I’ve only really dreamed about.
And all week I’ve been remembering this funny detail from my childhood. It was past bedtime on a Saturday night, and I was wearing some sort of ballerina / nurse dressing up clothes get-up, and the whole family was watching something family-friendly that kept making us laugh out loud. “How much do you have to pay to be on TV?” I asked my Mum, and I remember her laughing with my Dad as they explained that those people were actors, and were being paid to do what they were did. I remember staring open-mouthed at the screen, incredulous that people could do something so fun and be paid for it. (And you have to wonder how many Pop Idol contestants were born in a similar moment.) But anyway... that’s how I feel about my first taste of freelance journalism. Giddy with delight at the sheer fun of getting away with spending my time like this, and incredulous that someone would want to pay me for the the thing I most want to do in the world.
-=-=-
“My throat is a bit soggy,” said the Little Dude when he woke, so we spent the best part of the morning at the Dr’s, and then I accidentally inflicted serious damage on the cat when she ate my tub of pineapple cottage cheese (!) so Dada despatched her to the vet this afternoon. And it’s these little moments of daily detail that make me feel grounded and connected in the sea of change that’s going on. The ‘work’ part of me gets re-energised enough to be so much more engaged with the mama part of me, and I feel as though some of the accidental imbalance of recent years is slowly being redressed.
And tonight we’re embarking on a week long extravaganza of celebrating The Boy’s 4th birthday, and it gives me such joy to switch off the computer and declare the working week over. Let the real fun commence.
And no, it's not what you're thinking.
One boy got the good stuff in our house for much longer than the other. There were mitigating circumstances around me giving up feeding so early with the little dude; namely that I kept getting booked into hospital and hooked up to intravenous morphine in a bid to quell the most grimly agonising pain I’ve ever known. That wasn’t really conducive to feeding a tiny babe, though I tried valiantly for weeks, and some of my clearest memories of his babyhood involve us both squished together in a depressing little cubicle, one or other of us wailing in protest. So when the hospital eventually bumped me to the head of the queue for an operation to take away the offending gall stones, I jumped at the chance, and barely gave a second thought to the impact it might have on the little dude. He switched easily to a bottle and I stopped needing morphine in the wee small hours. Everyone was happy. Infact he fared much better on a bottle; I’d had to cut out all fats to try to minimise the attacks of gallstone pain, and ended up the lightest I’ve ever been (so there is truth in that rule, then, who’d have thunk it...) needless to say, since he was 9lbs 9oz at birth it had been a struggle to meet his appetite. At a year old he could sink six 9-oz bottles of milk a day alongside piled-high plates of real food at meal times.
Anyway there’s a point here somewhere. While switching him to formula was the only real option we had, there is no denying the fact that his health is markedly different to his brother’s. He gets tonsillitis and chest infections regularly and had had more doses of antibiotics by the time he was 2 than his brother has had in 4 years. I’m not saying that’s all down to the fact that one was fed for longer than the other, but it’s hard to ignore the facts.
But when the medical professionals are harping on about breast being best, what they don’t tell you is that one day your super-healthy 4 year old will get disgruntled over the fact that his little brother has a chest infection and he doesn’t, which means he doesn’t get the special yellow banana medicine. So when he tells you he hates you because you won’t let him have the medicine, you’ll think back to all those months of being a human cow, all the effort and sacrifice it involved, and you’ll realise it all boils down to a son who hates you because he’s too healthy to get the sugary medicine. They definitely don’t tell you that.
The little dude, in fine form:
I’d just been explaining why I was heading out for the afternoon to do some work...
Mama: ...And so the thing I want to be is a writer!
Boy: That’s just like how I want to be a ‘tographer!
Mama: Exactly! And if I was a writer and you were a photographer then maybe when you’re bigger we’d be able to work together.
Boy: Yes!! I would love that! I’m going to be a ‘tographer!
Little Dude: I BE A ALIEN!!
-=-=-
Little Dude to Mama, when she arrived home: Mama! How was your be-naughty-day?
-=-=-
While the Little Dude has recently established that ladies with fat bellies are usually having babies, I think he’s a tad confused about how they get in there in the first place...
Little Dude: Why that lady got a fat belly?
Mama: Because she’s pregnant – there’s a baby in there!
Boy: When will the baby come out?
Mama: When the baby’s cooked!
Boy: NO! Babies don’t get cooked!
Mama: No, you’re right, I’m being silly, it’ll come out when it’s grown big and strong enough to breathe and drink milk by itself.
Little Dude, solemnly, while wagging a finger at me: WE NO EAT BABIES.
Like a fiercely independent toddler with a good set of lungs on him. I've never seen feist like it. What's that you say? But his mother calls her blog One Feisty Mama? Oh yes. I see your point. Thanks for that, no really.
Apparently he reserves the right to:
Shriek in abject horror when you have the audacity to hand him a sweetie.
Repeatedly yell I DO IT MYSELF! until you get the message, and a bleeding eyeball to boot.
Insist that you return the sweetie to its original location and allow him to DO IT MYSELF!
Screech when you try to unwrap said sweetie for him.
Scream when he realises that he cannot do it for himself.
Shout when you try to intervene.
Then he’ll stand at the bin for a good 5 painful minutes, painstakingly unwrapping the sweetie with the occasional shout of frustrated fury.
But then he’ll skitter off in a cloud of delight at his independence, and you’ll both wince a little inwardly at your increasing sense of redundancy, and whoop whoop silently at your increasing sense of redundancy.
So this is what the tantrums are about: the need to prove to the world that your baby is a big boy.
I am furiously googling tantrums this morning. My companion is just furiously tantrum-ing.
Wowsers but this is a whole new challenge to my parenting.
The little dude woke at 10pm last night and threw a monstrous one. Absolutely no idea why, and I was utterly unable to make it better. Infact I’m fairly sure that standing him on his feet in my bathroom with the light on and ordering him to STOP THAT NOISE RIGHT NOW probably aggravated it considerably.
We live and learn, people. That was today’s mantra. And then he threw another one at 7.59am while I was furiously wrestling them into clothes in order to make it to nursery on time. The Boy is obsessed with being the first to arrive, as if generally getting there vaguely on time isn’t enough pressure of its own. Then Dada rang. Granted, they haven’t actually seen him since bedtime on Sunday, and the little dude was desperate to speak to Dada, but after several minutes of him resolutely saying nothing into the phone I had to move things on. 40 minutes of screaming fury followed, soothed only by the emergency purchase of chocolate brioche and giving him a straw so he could join me in my much-needed therapy-by-hot-chocolate.
I think we’re in one of those rare moments where both boys are Testing Boundaries. And growing alot. I seem to feed them all the live long day and still they appear in the kitchen with empty plates, with the little one saying “What else me have?” Everywhere we go people go a bit crazy about how much they’ve grown.
In the space of a few hours yesterday Big Brother succeeded in having every single sticker removed from his reward chart, and then he spat at me, screamed that he hated me, and soon after that precious little moment he made an impressive effort to use the worst swear word he knows. Well actually the only swear word he knows. It’s so tricky to understand what’s going on for them emotionally at times like this, and harder still to know how best to nurture them. I think today I’m going to invest heavily in some floor time and some sort of activity that will give us lots of space to be together constructively, with lots of chat and eye contact.
And here’s a weird thing – my kid hero-worships this other kid but every single time they play together, without fail, my kid comes home a bit manic. He also repeats everything the other kids has said, which is generally aggressive madness about policemen locking people up, people dying, and, my favourite, “You’re fired!” What IS that all about? And how do you legistate on the kids they want to be around, if it makes them into monsters?
On the upside it feels fabulous to realise that I’m handling what feels like the most challenging phase thus far with bucketloads of patience and good humour. That’s progress.
-=-=-=-=-=-
Mama: Did you have a good day at nursery school, honey?
Boy: (whispers wistfully) It. Was. WONDERFUL!
-=-=-=-=-=-
Mama: Oh honey you’ve got a temperature and a little cough. I think you’re a bit poorly so would you like to stay at home today? Or would you rather go to school?
Boy: (Leaping out of bed) I rather go to schoooooool!!
-=-=-=-=-
I can’t remember what I did to deserve this – probably something involving food, but in the midst of yesterday’s mayhem The Boy also breathlessly uttered the immortal words “MUM. You are the best Mummy EVER. Ever!!”
