It's A Shoe-On

We don't get out much. 

Even less, since the night time shenanigans began in earnest for Gilby in the run up to Christmas.  Nine weeks of interrupted sleep seems a lifetime, and I wouldn't want to inflict one of those tortured evenings on an unsuspecting baby-sitter.  But given that we have Lady Visa, our au pair, we thought we'd try it last night.  Just round to friends' for supper; a few streets away.  Easy to return if things kicked off back at home. We took the unusual precaution of pre-ordering a taxi, on the off-chance that one or two glasses of alcohol might be consumed.

We returned, relaxed(!) and refreshed at about quarter past eleven (phew - late night!) to find Gilby crying his eyes out, one shoe on, sitting by the back door trying desperately to pull the other shoe on.  Ouch.  That is the combined pain of my heart hurting, and the piercing stab of guilt. 

He was incoherent, but I'm assuming he must have wandered into our bedroom, realised that we weren't there, and, without checking Lady Visa, decided that he had been abandoned.His three year old mind had then hatched a wild plan to head out into the dark night to come and find us.  We live on a main road in the middle of nowhere.  Fast cars and no people!

Once we had calmed him down, he whispered in my ear that he was 'sorry for being naughty and for putting my shoes on, actually...'.  Ouch, ouch, ouch!

Sigh.  So there's guilt and there's...guilt.  It will be a while until we try to go out again, methinks.

On Supersonic Lambs and Limbs

Last week was overtaken by Gertie's school play.  It was a production of The Supersonic Lamb. For anyone unfamiliar with this nativity variation, it is a moral tale: the story of a fast-running sheep who wanted to be the first to get to Jesus. 

Anyway, only the Year 2 children got to have speaking parts, so Gertie was out of the running, (so to speak) but she performed her role in the choir with gusto, dressed as a shepherd.

There was an impressive array of tea-towels on display, on heads.  Who knew there was such variety?

But the real star of the show was Eddie, who chose the final performance of The Supersonic Lamb as the occasion on which to unleash his clapping on the world.  Now Eddie has been a little...reluctant to do most of the things that babies his age are supposed to do, so the fact that he suddenly began applauding with great enthusiasm after each song in the show turned him into the start.  Never mind that parents were straining to hear what their loved ones were saying for their 15 seconds of fame, my baby was clapping!

He has also in the last fortnight begun to 'stand' (whilst gripping on to something shoulder-height for dear life).  But it is standing, nevertheless, and of his own volition.  Crawling is still more reminiscent of a wounded soldier dragging himself through mud, but....come on those supersonic limbs!  We'll soon have you outrunning that supersonic lamb...

Lady Visa returns to Austria for Christmas on Wednesday.  Not entirely sure how we will cope. 

Lunar Lunacy

This morning Gilby jumped on us in bed.  Of course, it was Saturday morning, so we get woken up extra early, because the laws of having children say that on days when you are able to have a lie in you actually get woken up at least an hour before you usually do.  Everyone knows that.  But this morning, he was excited to tell us about his dream. He dreamt that he was a grown up.  (How exciting is that when you are three?) And he was a spaceman.  Every boy's dream, no?  And not only that, but when he went up into space he baked cakes. 

So I am thinking that we will have the first lunar celebrity chef when he grows up; hooray! Move over Jamie Oliver, there is a new niche in the market.

The other good news is that our new au pair has arrived from Austria.  Let's call her Lady Visa.  Very efficient with the children, perfect in fact.  And they love her. But - vehicles seem not to be her friend.  She has been here for a week and a half, and so far she has managed to obtain a parking ticket in Guildford, and had to call out whatever the Austrian equivalent of the AA is to tow her out, since she got Rooney stuck in the mud at some lovely rural spot that she stopped to admire the view at. (Rooney because the car is maroon, not after the England striker; I'm bored of having to explain that.) And she missed the last train home from London, resulting in a midnight dash for my husband to collect her from the next station.  Still.  She seems to settling in well, just as long as transport isn't involved.

She's Offski!

Daddy wanted a cordless drill for Christmas. This did not sound like a romantic present at all, so I decided that a surprise family ski trip was more in order.

I’m not sure though, that planning a massive baptism party for the day before we went skiing was ideal timing. It certainly did not make for a peaceful passage from the house and there were one or two cross words on the morning of our departure. But it doesn’t matter because we have a baptised baby, a sledging Gilby and a fully skiing Gertie now, so all is good.

Tragically, we lost blankie en route, which is nothing short of a calamity and caused two major tantrums and many tears. Gertie is dealing with the trauma and loss bravely now, but it has been with her from birth, and only wrestled from her occasionally to wash so I'm not sure how this one will go. We have promised to try to locate a new one, a promise that I'm not sure we will be able to fulfill.

So our holiday had a chaotic start. But that did not detract from a magnificent trip. The mountain, Gerlitzen, is stunningly beautiful and the surrounding peaks must be good for the soul. It helps if you are taking three under-fives on a skiing trip if you have your old au pair ready and waiting to meet you; not to mention various other family members on hand to help with collecting from the airport, baby-sitting, shopping...

A decade on from my last ski trip I can report that falling over hurts more than it did. It is also more embarrassing to lose a pole and slip from a button-lift when you are approaching forty. Particularly when your four-year-old is more than capable of accomplishing the lift unaided. By day four she was actually skiing down the mountain.

I can remember years ago seeing these groups of wobbly-headed, helmet-clad little children on skis careering down the mountain at breakneck speed, hands clasping wobbly knees. Never for a moment did I dream that I'd own one of my own.

But the highlight of Gilby's trip had very little to do with the snow. He was lucky enough to meet his hero, 'Bino Bear' mascot of the ski-school on the mountain, which made for one very happy little boy.

On Poultry, Politics, au Pairs and Picked Flowers

I'm rather glad it's Sunday as it's been a helluva week so far. Kempton's still in her first season which seems to have been going on forever, and despite multiple websites suggesting that there won't be much mess: there is.

We discovered that Gilby's illness was caused by Campylobacter; I'd never heard of it before, but we will be looking at the storage and preparation of raw poultry in our kitchen from now on. A call from the doctor was quite apologetic since they had fobbed us off twice before taking a sample from him.

Gertie got in to our second-choice school, which in 1066 And All That fashion may actually be a good thing. Daddy's spin is that it was his first choice anyway, so I don't think that we will be going through the appeal procedure. And we have just calculated that I will be on maternity leave just after she begins in September, which, though unplanned will mean that I won't miss out on those precious school gate moments.

Possibly most dramatic of all is that Brenda left us on Thursday after fifteen months. She was our au pair/nanny from Australia. We are trying to adjust. She is in Las Vegas, at a Celine Dion concert in Caesar's Palace as I write this!

And Gertie presented me with a broken Gerbera plant for Mothering Sunday. Orange is my favourite colour, and it was clever of Daddy because we had these flowers at our wedding. I'm quite impressed that he knew and remembered that. It could be a lucky fluke, but he is claiming prior planning. Anyway, there were three flowers on the plant, but Gertie appears to have 'picked' one for me already, so that leaves two and a broken stem. Gilby made me a card at nursery which he carefully destroyed in the car on the way home on Friday.

Happy Mother's Day!

OMG!

I have to make a confession. I'm not really a fan of text-speak. My husband and I always text each other in 'full words', no abbreviations whatsoever, complete with careful punctuation. I know that the format requires brevity and doesn't really lend itself to this, and that I give my age as well as my profession away in doing so, but the English teacher in me won't allow those time-saving contractions.

Not so Brenda, the wonder from Down Under, who has happily settled in with us and looks after the children for three days a week now.

Oh no. Being still a teenager (for a few more days, at least) she is quite happy 'lol'ing with the best of them. In fact, AIH, I get into a right old 2n8 trying to decipher her texts. All this is a bit TNC, but I was surprised, nay distressed, to disover that my not-quite-three-year-old is now using 'OMG' in speech as a descriptive term for anything a little bit shocking or out of the ordinary.

Like, "OMG, Mum, I fell over today."

Or "OMG, have you seen what Gilby's just done with his biscuit?"

Right, Brenda, you might be brilliant with the children but we are going to have words about their linguistic development. Is this Australian, or just young?

Home Alone (For Forty Minutes)

I experienced a small and totally unexpected and ever-so-slightly-guilty pleasure today.

I have been back at work for two months now, and Brenda, the wonder from Down Under has been living with us for about the same length of time. (She is amazing, but doesn't look after the children all the time as they are still attending nursery for a couple of days a week; she has just begun another part time job at a local adventure farm park.)

Anyway, she was working at the farm this afternoon and I had to do the nursery run. I also, happily, finished work a little early today. Usually I have to pick up in a mad dash on my way home, but today I just went home first to get everything ready. I could turn lights on, have supper all prepared and then just hop into the car and get the kids.

I couldn't work out was odd as I came into the house. Everything was as it should be. Except that it felt different. And sort of smelled different. And definitely sounded a bit different. And suddenly it dawned on me: this was the first time I had been 'home alone' in nearly eight months. Ever since Gilby was born, in fact.

And I had a whole forty minutes there - in my own house - with only my self for company. I had completely forgotten what it was like. There was just silence and everything was tidy and I was in control. It was really, truly odd. I sort of savoured it, but then it was over oh-so-quickly and once again the house was filled with noise and colour and mess and 'hecticity'. I'm sure that's not a word but it features regularly in my vocabulary.

So now I can't wait until the next time I am able to sneak home alone. Why didn't anyone tell me how great it was?

The Wonder from Down Under

Well, it appears that somehow it has been a whole week since my last blog post.

This is I think, my longest break since I began this blogging lark. Now, in my defence, it was half term, and having only been back at work for just over a month, I wanted to spend lots of time with the little people. But a week is a long time in the blogosphere, I have discovered, and I have plenty of catching up to do.

It has been a bumpy ride, but things this end are looking up. 'Brenda' has arrived, our very own wonder from down under. In fact, she has now been here for a month and has made herself completely indispensable in that time. She is 19, an ex-student of mine from my teaching exchange to Australia in 2005, and extremely capable and hard working. She is staying with us as a kind of au pair.

Brenda spent the previous twelve months working on a cattle station in the outback, mustering 1500 head of cattle and acting as a governess to two secondary children, so looking after a toddler and a baby for two days a week and managing a little ironing in Sussex is proving well within her capabilities.

And though we have to put up with the odd Australianism - 'doona' for duvet, or 'chooks' for chickens (not to mention a bizarre penchant for Celine Dion) - it is a small price to pay. The household is slightly less hectic and more colourful for her presence, and Gertie and Gilby love her.

Everyone should have one!