A Word on Christmas Cards

Two posts in a day? It must be the holidays.

The mince pies are wrapped, the presents are iced, the Christmas cards are baked and the gingerbread house is posted. Or a version of that.

But the writing of Christmas cards did offer another opportunity for reflection. Eddie decided (after a whole term in reception) that he would write his to all his classmates unaided overnight.  I have grave doubts about how many of them will have actually made it to their intended recipients, since, to give a flavour, this one was meant for 'Lucy':

But Gilby went one better and sent a card to God. Yes, he did. Left it on the gravel outside, assuming. I suppose, that angels might carry it up to heaven. Or a dove, perhaps. Wishing God 'lots of fun' at Christmas. 

Ironies on many levels. But lots of fun.

Currently Reading: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Feel the Force

I'm all nativitied out, now.

Gilby was a shepherd in his school production: A shepherd dressed in black with sunglasses and a walkie-talkie, but we love a cheeky anachronism or ten.

Eddie was a king (of course, again) in his nursery version.

Both delivered their lines beautifully, knew all the words and actions of their songs, made their mother cry and generally did what nursery and primary school nativity productions are supposed to do - including providing those moments of sublime but unintentional comedy through missed cues and prop-handling (poor baby Jesus slung mercilessly into his cradle is perennially amusing.)

Gertie's class do the Easter production (unless this is her way of letting me down gently with the news that she didn't get a part this year) but she watched her brothers in their different shows patiently and supportively.

And all three were on parade again this morning. It was the advent 'family mass' where the children took responsibility for all the key moments of the service.  Gertie led the opening prayer and lit the advent candle and Gilby wrote and shared his bidding prayer. They both had 'acting' roles in the gospel.

Eddie played with his lightsaber, mostly - and after some cajoling took part in the offertory procession.

But his main, unscripted contribution took place during the contemplative calm of the Eucharistic prayer. He took himself off to stand in front of the kneeling congregation and demanded, loudly, 'When are you all going to stop BEING LIKE STATUES?'

It had the desired effect, since some of the assembled worshippers were, indeed, unable to maintain their stillness; there was some definite shoulder-shaking.




Currently reading: Remember Me by Melvyn Bragg

Dressed to Distress

Everything is a battle with Eddie at the moment, but matters of sartorial choice are the worst.

He uses strange adjectives to explain why he will not wear a particular pair of trousers.  They might, for example, be 'too furry', (though I can confirm, categorically, that he does not own a single pair of fur trousers) 'not bony enough' (likewise) and often complains that the pockets are 'bumpy'.

His wardrobe is extensive, which is what happens when you have an older brother and get all his hand-me-downs; but only two or three items remain eligible for actual wearing at any given time.

This means that mornings are often fraught and it is easiest to let Eddie dress himself.

Which is how he ended up at church this morning clothed in mismatched stripey socks, the lower half of his Ugandan national team football kit, and a t-shirt with a monster on it.  Not exactly Sunday best, more like 'Sunday mess', but at least we managed to leave the house without a row.

Though he decided to announce loudly, delightedly and without preamble during the quiet moment of reflection between the gospel and the homily, 'MUMMY, I HAVEN'T GOT ANY PANTS ON UNDER MY SHORTS.'

A pause, and then a stage whisper, ''SHALL I SHOW YOU?'

Even the priest looked like he had to suppress a giggle, though some older members of the congregation were less understanding.

We didn't stay for coffee this morning.


Currently reading:  Living With It by Lizzie Enfield

Ouch

I remember being at a cricket match about three years ago and having a drink with another Mother who at the time had two young boys. She asked idly, just to make conversation, I think, how many times we'd had to go to casualty.

Gertie was four, immaculately behaved with a penchant for sedate pastimes like reading and beading.  Dipping her toe into waves at the seaside was about the limit of her daredevil activity.

I laughed and thought the other mother was joking.  But no, it transpired that this was a regular occurrence in her household.  There had been falling out of trees, from bikes, in the playground.  It was a world alien to me as I cradled my baby boy and watched as Gertie worked away at her tapestry.  (I embellish a little, for narrative effect, but you get the idea.)

Fast forward to last weekend and our very first 'A&E' experience.  Another sunny Saturday afternoon at the cricket, home team on the verge of what would be a tight victory. A cry from the long grass.  Gertie comes running over because Eddie has fallen.  Eddie's arm hangs limply by his side and he is emitting a strange wail that I have never heard before.  I scoop him up in my arms and run to Hearth-father pronouncing that we have a 'situation' on our hands.  There is an off-duty nurse at the pitch side.  She takes a look and doesn't like what she sees.

Hearth-father looks longingly at what is left in his pint glass and decides that it isn't worth the risk with the inevitable drive to the hospital ahead.

Hearth-granny is called to babysit the big kids.  Hearth-mother is crying, convinced that x-rays will reveal the worst.  (She's not entirely sure why she has slipped in to third person at this stage, except that it also contributes to narrative effect.) Eddie doesn't stop screaming for the entire journey, despite being cradled by his mother all the way.  She feels every bump and jolt and corner even more than she did in labour on the same route two and a half years ago.

It is Saturday night and the accident and emergency department is standing-room only.  A queue of unfortunates line up waiting to be seen.  Eddie has cried himself to sleep and now looks unconscious, which gains some sympathetic glances from the other casualties.

The triage nurse provides painkillers and unhelpfully wakes Eddie in the process of weighing him.  Agrees that the signs are not good.  Eddie perks up a bit when he sees the toys in the paediatric waiting room, and we are at least now away from the drunken melee in the main waiting area.  Eddie tries to play, but cannot move his arm and feebly plays left-handed.  Another boy, about the same age is being tickled by his daddy.  Eddie wants us to do the same, but is too protective of his arm to find a giggle.

Two hours pass.  All the toys have been played with.  Conversations have been struck up with the other parents.  Everyone now knows everyone else's business.  Eddie has inadvertently revealed that Gertie was giving him a piggy back when he fell, much to the consternation of his parents and the amusement of everyone around. Oh.  That puts a slightly different complexion on things, exacerbating the extent of the injury.  He has fallen from a greater height than we originally thought.

Two more hours pass. There are still fourteen people ahead of us to be treated.  Eddie is becoming increasingly fractious (that's one of my favourite euphemisms). We decide to leave and get some sleep.  It it past midnight by the time we reach home.

Eddie wakes screaming at 2am and we give him more medicine.  In the morning his arm is still useless.  He tries to eat cereal and screams as he raises the spoon.  We phone NHS direct and they advise us to go straight back to casualty.  We cancel our plans for a visit to friends, and bring plenty of snacks and activities to the hospital.  The big kids are excited by the adventure, though Gertie is a little sheepish about her role in events, and her reluctance to impart crucial information the previous evening.

Three hours and three x-rays later, we discover there is nothing wrong.  Nil. Nada.  Eddie high-fives me. With his bad hand.  Which has miraculously come back to life with the news. I manage to refrain from throttling him in full view of a number of health officials.  It really is a very good job that he's cute.

We try to salvage something of the day by going out for lunch, but Eddie is grumpy and we abandon the mission. Hearth-mother is unsympathetic. (See, detaching myself again).

Eddie wakes up on Monday morning and with a twinkle in his eye asks if we can go back to the hospital and play with the toys.  My response is unpublishable.

I come home from work to find that his nanny is 'really worried about him' and has him lying on the sofa with his arm in a sling.  She is mopping his brow.  Seems perturbed when I am undisturbed.  Eddie realises that the game is up and hops up smartly to begin playing with his siblings...

Ouch.  Not sure who has been hurt more by the whole episode.  I am just aware that I lost seven hours this weekend that I won't get back.  Eddie: not his real name.  Might change it to 'Flimflammer'.


Currently reading: You Talkin to Me? By Sam Leith

I Wish I'd Never Asked...

Earlier today, Gertie and Gilbert were gallumphing around the kitchen on either end of the feather duster.

 

 

 

"What are you doing?" I was foolish enough to ask.

"We're playing the willy game!" came the reply in unison.

Right...I don't think I even want to know the rules.

Send in the Clowns, Carefully

Like most families, we spent half term coming up with ever-more creative ways to have fun whilst avoiding the rain. We saw the stage version of The Tiger Who Came to Tea and marvelled at how they had managed to turn 5 minutes of story-line into an hour-long show. (We have been doing tiger-aerobics ever since.) We had lots of friends round to play, and that kept Mummy very busy with the huge amount of tidying-up it seems to generate. We went to Fishers Farm Park a couple of times and monopolised the indoor play-areas. But the big success, and the one that has given me new insight into my daughter's character, was our visit to the circus.

Max Beecher, the impossibly bendy contortionist of 2009 Britain's Got Talent fame, was the star turn. His first act involved him appearing as 'Max, the swash-buckling pirate' and performing balancing feats on an ever-more precariously arranged tower of chairs. He tried to garner the support of the audience, miming the idea of placing a chair even higher for dramatic effect.

"Yes, yes, yes!" chorus dozens of gleeful children.
"No!" shouts Gertie, loudly. "You might fall."

Christie-Jane, performing on the 'silk tissues' high up in the big top, was the next act. Gasps of delight at each carefully choreographed somersault or stretch went round the ring. "How on earth is she going to get down from there?" was Gertie's serious interpretation.

Looking a little anxious?

The clowns were just about acceptable, though Gertie found one or two moments to pause and frown at moments of perceived danger whilst her peers giggled on.

She was very good at comforting her younger brother who burst into tears at the sound of cracking whips in another act, looking at me reprovingly over her shoulder as she cuddled him.

A future health and safety officer, perhaps?

Stop Hitting Me!

Gertie and Gilbert have invented a great new game.

They simulate punching themselves in the face Fight Club style whilst shouting, 'Stop hitting me, Mummy!' very loudly and giggling.

Now, although I came down firmly on the side of Harry in The Slap, Christos Tsiolkas' novel and recent television drama, I can state categorically that I have never hit any of my children.

So bring back Hooker-Mummy, it's a far less damaging cry.

Gumps' Ossage

I often write about Gertie because at Nearly-Four-Going-on-Forty, practically everything she says or does is inherently funny to me.

But my little man is now beginning to come in to his own. He won't be two until late in the summer, but the pair of them will now sit at the kitchen table together, falling about helplessly with giggles at something only they are complicit in, and being Actually-Not-Far-Off-Forty myself, I don't have a hope of understanding.

Gilby now has a bedtime ritual to rival Her Ladyship's: placing all his 'people' one by one in the cot (Iggle Piggle, Macca Pacca, Alien, a dinosaur, a crotcheted blanket and a stuffed bee with crackly wings) then gathering them beneath him mother-hen style to sleep on top of them all. They all have poky, uncomfortable looking bits, especially the dinosaur, but this doesn't seem to bother him in the slightest. I'm not entirely sure how the blanket constitutes one of the 'people', but it is at least soft. World War III breaks out if one of them is missing but as long as they are all in position, a simple, "Night, night Mummy," is followed by thumb in the mouth and lights out. This will inevitably be repeated when he still wakes for another bottle of milk somewhere between 1am and 3am.

He is exceptionally, at times, comically, polite, with an exaggerated, "No thank you Mummy," accompanying any food or activity offering not entirely to his taste. When playing he is regularly heard to insist, "My turn..." which he just looks far too little to be saying. At first this is cute and endearing, but when you realise that it is his turn straight away, always, it becomes less so. Other Mums smile at me in a congratulatory fashion the first time it happens over a disputed toy, then frown at me the next fifteen. Particularly when it is then accompanied by tears and a tantrum.

"Where's Gumps' Ossage?" is an oft-heard cry in our house too. Well, 'Gumps' only has himself to blame for this one. It has become Grumps' new nickname since their grandfather often arrives with a cling-filmed cooked sausage for each of them when he comes to visit. It may stick long beyond toddlerhood. I rather like it.

But my current favourite catchphrase and behaviour, clearly adapted from a well-known television quiz show with a distinctive presenter, is where he runs in to the room and without any preamble tells me, "You are weak! Bye!" before disappearing again.

I'm recording all this because I now know that it will change within a matter of weeks, and then I will probably forget, but I wonder about other parents' most remembered phrase and fable?

Seven Months

Gilby was seven months old yesterday. The time has just flown by. He can now:

• Sit unaided, and it's been a good few weeks since we had a wobble backwards
  
• Giggle, brilliantly and repeatedly at the same silly thing. Over and over and over again. I think he will be easily pleased in later life. Big sister Gertie would laugh a maximum of twice before a thing no longer amused her.
  
• Pick up little things like blueberries; though he chokes if he eats them...
  
• Look at what you are pointing out to him instead of focusing on the end of your finger!
  
• Push himself backwards but not yet crawl forwards. Oh yes, and move mysteriously to traverse long distances but only when you are not in the room to figure out how he does it.
  
• Wake up only once in the night for a feed (hooray, hooray, hooray, but when will he be able to go all night without waking up at all? His big sister had been doing it for ages by now...)
  
• Dribble as though his life depended on it (very hard gums, but no sign of a tooth yet).
  
• Make his likes and dislikes very clear. If he doesn't want that mushed up parsnip then those lips are clamped firmly shut and nothing is getting past them. Ditto for the medicine he just had to take; no wonder the ear infection took a while to clear.

I find the whole process of watching this baby growing and developing absolutely amazing. Maybe even more so as I watch it second time round. And this time I don't care if other babies are doing more or less than him at this age, in fact, I don't even notice.