Sausages! Or Why I Can't Write Blog Posts Anymore

Writing these blog posts has got much more difficult of late. 

Less is funny and more is stressful as they each get older. Eddie will reach double figures later this year, Gilby will start secondary school and Gertie is twelve, going on twenty-five. Hormones mean more-moans, and nothing much seems very amusing. Their problems are more complicated these days. Tantrums aren't cute, they are ugly; and I wouldn't want to write about them. 

Successes sound boastful or smug: both boys scored hat tricks for their football teams in successive weekends; Gertie came fifth at the World Irish dancing championships.

And even the stuff that is funny - Eddie has developed a habit of including the word 'sausages' in every sentence - is difficult to convey. (It is both an insult and a compliment, as in, "You left the door wide open, you sausage, " and "He scored a sausage goal!")

So, for posterity, here's an account of yesterday's not untypical Saturday.

Morning:

Eddie played a very ordinary game of football, and didn't really distinguish himself on the pitch. (That's 'ordinary' in the Australian sense of the adjective.')

Gilby's game was off so he stayed home and watched the F1 on YouTube.

Gertie had a lie in.

Afternoon:

Eddie went to a Flip Out Party, didn't end up in casualty, and got dropped home by another mum so I didn't have to endure the two-hour hell of it.

Gilby went cycling with his mates, then for a swim. (If football's off then there cannot be enough sport in the day, no matter what he does.)

Gertie tidied her room and then went to the gym. The unprompted room-tidying thing is a recent and welcome development - she has gone from living in filth to living in immaculate spotlessness - all seemingly prompted by the addition of a couple of fluffy cushions and a fur throw for Christmas. They appear to have turned her from Stig of the Dump into Marie Kondo. I'm not complaining.

And that's it, really.

Ah. I think I have it. I can see why material doesn't present itself. They aren't with me for the good bits - they are each off, doing their thing. 

And I'm only left with feeding them, doing the laundry, being the metaphorical punch-bag for anything that isn't quite right with their world, and hurrying them out of the door for school. Sausages!

Currently reading: When the adults change, everything changes by Paul Dix

On Hearths. And Mothers.

I have been parenting for twelve years this week. Gertie will celebrate her birthday with a meal at a local restaurant with friends. Very grown up. Very exclusive. In the sense that no adults are allowed. Only at the end to pay the bill.

It follows, though, a bit of a soul-searching weekend. Eldest Gertie has been unrelentingly stroppy and demanding, middle Gilby seems to be in a permanent rage, and youngest Eddie even more than the usual law unto himself. Where have we gone wrong? There was much handwringing and lament. And some consoling wine.

But yesterday! They were immaculate. All day. Morning and evening and bedtime. Eddie went to his gymnastics class without a single murmur of dissent, and on first asking to put his shoes on. First asking! Gertie and Gilby collaborated on a housework project that meant I walked back into a sweet smelling, vacuumed downstairs, with all the laundry put away. I'd only asked them to clear their things after supper. I quite literally didn't know how to respond. 

So. One whole day in twelve years seems to have gone well. (We won't mention today.) Hooray for parenting! Hooray for Hearth-mother!

I chose the name 'hearth-mother' as a reaction against the earth-mother types that I met when pregnant and when Gertie was first born. The ones who were winning at motherhood: those who managed to breast feed incessantly without any effort, and then shredded roast lamb and purée artichoke for the baby whilst serving up four unmushed courses for their partners; the ones who did complex crafting with their precious offspring with endless calm and patience while playing a musical instrument and learning Mandarin themselves; and, most offensive of all: who always had immaculate make-up. I never really picked up makeup again after childbirth, so how women had time to put on a 'full face' was astonishing to me. They seemed there just to make the rest of us (well, mostly me) feel bad.

Going out, as in 'leaving the house', back then was just - well - too hard. Going out with a baby was a massive mission, a feat well beyond my limited capabilities. It was all I could do to sit by the fire, and er, tend the hearth.

Blogposts over the years have regularly been about the funny, silly, awful, brilliant things that the kids do, often alongside barely disguised allusions to my sustained parenting inadequacy. No doubt research could prove a connection between the two.

But I am currently reading Mythos by Stephen Fry, and in discussing Hestia, Goddess of - well, the Hearth, he explains:

In our less communal age of central heating and separate rooms for each family member, we do not lend the hearth quite the importance that our ancestors did, Greek or otherwise. Yet, even for us, the word stands for something more than just a fireplace. We speak of 'hearth and home'. Our word 'hearth' shares its ancestry with 'heart', just as the modern Greek for 'hearth' is kardia, which also means 'heart'. In Ancient Greece the wider concept of hearth and home was expressed by the oikos which lives on for us today in words like 'economics' and 'ecology'. The Latin for hearth is focus - which speaks for itself. 

So. Turns out Hearth-Mother might be a bit of domestic goddess. Literally. Not this one, obvs, but in name, and, on the eve of Gertie's twelfth birthday, my heart (hearth) is singing.

Currently reading: Mythos by Stephen Fry

Intelligent Parenting: In My Dreams

When I began writing these blogposts eight years ago, I think I envisaged a light-hearted look at the humorous escapades of my growing family. I don't think I realised that they would, in fact, be much more revealing of my own flaws and parental inadequacy. 

Take yesterday, for instance. After a week of living in close proximity to both the nuclear and the extended family over the festive period, my ability to cope with the constant mess resulting from incessant meal-making and food-production reached its limit.

'Right,' I snarled, staring in horror at all the crumbs on the floor at the end of lunch and after I'd already vacuumed once that morning, 'Things are going to change around here!' 

I paused, realising that I hadn't quite thought through precisely how they were going to change. 

Thankfully, inspiration struck. I stood Gertie, Gilby and Eddie in a line. 

'You are each going to take it in turns to clear up after every meal, including getting the Hoover out,' I yelled in the manner of Gunnery Sergeant Hartman in Full Metal Jacket. (Actually, it's a Dyson, but we're quite partial to a propriety eponym in this house.) 

I circled, menacingly, to deliver the final learning outcome. 'Perhaps that will make you more careful about dropping crumbs!' I finished firmly, and with a self-congratulatory nod to myself at the end.

There was a short pause, then some shrugs of acquiescence.

'But Mummy, I don't know how to use the Hoover,' remembered Eddie, suddenly.

Um, OK, well. I didn't realise that- how remiss of me - but it was easily solved. I was very patient and parenty as I helped him to do it for the first time.

When it came to Gilby's turn after dinner, I reminded him to wipe down the table before doing the floor. 

'No problem,' he agreed. 'Where's the cloth?' 

Now, I can just about cope with the fact that the youngest hasn't used a Hoover, but if Gilby doesn't know where the kitchen cloth is kept that must mean that he has never, ever wiped anything down in his eight years on this earth. 

And whose fault is that? It can only be mine. 

Luckily, Maternal Hearth-Grandpa sent me this:

I am confident that this 1944 edition is going to sort me right out.

Hearth-Father also saw fit to present me with this for Christmas:

So, between the two of them we are about to work out a few things in this house. 2018 is going to be a whole different place.

Currently reading: The Faithful by Juliet West (as well as the above!)

For Sale Signs and Errant Pants

So we've made the decision to try and sell the house.  Again.

There is no more money in the pot, but we need more room.  When we moved here, Gertie was just a few months old, not yet on the move.  For two adults and a tiny baby it was positively palatial.  We bounced around in our big house, and once she did start crawling, I might even lose Gertie for a few moments. These days finding five minutes alone in the bathroom is an unlikely proposition.  Now there are the three little people.  And they are not so little.  They have this habit of just growing bigger.  And bigger.  By the day. Moving towards a time when they will want to spend increasingly long times alone in the one bathroom.

I can remember all the empty rooms when we first moved in and wondering how I'd ever have enough furniture to fill them.  Ha. Now every corner is crammed full of stuff.  Each inch of wall space is covered in pictures and photographs.  There are thousands of books.  Everywhere.  And that count might go up to tens of thousands if you include the boxes in the loft. There are plastic toys in places where toys simply shouldn't be. Like in my shoes. And behind the washing machine. It is impossible to keep tidy. And therein lies the first paradox.  Because in order to sell your house you need to be able to keep it very tidy.  So that it can be viewed at a moment's notice.  Well, we had our first viewing today.  It took me four hours to get things straight.  That's not happening every time, I can tell you. And when we came home there was a pair of toddler pants smiling up welcomingly from the utility room floor, that I must have missed in my final tidy-check.  That subsequently looked like they'd just walked there themselves.  Which I guess they might have done, being Eddie's.

So now I follow the children around hawk-like, beady eyes scanning for any potential mess-making hazard. They will be the first to tell you that this is not fun.

And the house we have our eye on is...'in need of modernisation'.  In other words, a wreck.  And a smaller wreck than our current abode at that.  And it costs more money.  But it is a wreck with the potential to be bigger.  At some point, when the childcare costs stop sucking the lifeblood from our very veins.

We tried to do a similar thing a few years ago, but the wreck of a house we wanted then sold almost before we'd got ours on the market and it felt like a blessing in disguise.

So I've got my eye on the estate agents' window these days.  Today I was drawn to an attractive property in the top right hand corner.  It took me a second to register that it was the one I already own. ( I say 'own'.  I think we might own approximately a square metre of the floor space, by now.  But another paradox:  It looks lovely in the pictures, all tidied up and de-cluttered.  Like somewhere I might actually want to live.