Baggy Trousers

The world's 'most prolific' streaker, Mark Roberts, with 519 streaks under his...er, well not his belt, I suppose...retired last month, much to the reported relief of his children.

This is lucky in that it leaves a gap in the market for my son.  Still four months away from his fourth birthday, he is showing early signs of a vocation.  In truth, he finds any excuse to drop his trousers.  In public is best, preferably a restaurant, or somewhere equally embarassing (for his mother);  since he appears to feel no embarrassment whatsoever, but gains some kind of genuine pleasure from this exhibitionism.  And people laugh.  Which he loves. 

He usually claims that his trousers are too big.  I have resorted to adjusting every pair to the tightest setting, so that he has to breathe in to get them done up in the morning.  Nevertheless, at some point during the day, they will be round his ankles, and he'll have a mischievous look on his face, arms outstretched to absolve himself from blame. (Yes, a little bit like Mark Roberts in the picture...)

It's been going on for a couple of years.  Ever since his release from the imprisonment of nappies, I suppose, and the freedom of potty training with its inbuilt excuse to whip his pants off without prompting. His audiences are confined to Pizza Hut and the local pub at the moment, but when he makes a name for himself at Wimbledon, or Wembley, in a few years time, you heard it here first. 

Going Quietly Potty

I may not have fully thought through the timing of this, but today is Day 1 of Potty Training Proper for Gilby. He is almost 2 1/4 now and really starting to show signs of interest, not least in the excitement demonstrated over the choosing of the 17 pairs of 'big boy pants' that we have invested in in readiness.

So. I've read Gina Ford (not usually a great fan, but Potty Training in One Week is exactly what I'm after, so I'm ignoring the patronising tone and trying to follow the advice). We have umpteen sets of spare clothes and pants (well, seventeen, to be precise). We are restricting ourselves to two rooms: the kitchen and the sitting room, both of which have been made as 'accident-proof' as I can manage. I have smarties with which to bribe, toys on hand to occupy, two potties at the ready, a cupboard full of disinfectant and a bucketful of patience in reserve. We're off!

I also have a 16 day-old baby. One who, up until this morning, has mostly slept through the day and kept us awake at night. But of course, Eddie has picked today to reverse the pattern, and has been awake since 7.15am, pretty much uninterrupted, aside from two 20 minute naps.

Which has meant that I haven't been able to devote quite as much time as I would have liked to Gilby's needs. And, though we have strict rules about television (as much of the bedtime hour as supper and a bath allow in the evening and some programmes on Saturday morning) I find that by 11am I have already succumbed to the controlling power of CBeebies.

By 2pm we have had three accidents and a grand total of no potty wees. Gilby has begged to have his nappy back. Eddie must be having some kind of growth spurt as I have been feeding him constantly. There is yoghurt up the walls (another story). I have just about managed to get myself dressed and my kitchen and sitting room look like an advertisement for Toys R Us.

I don't know about Gilby, but I am going quietly potty...and my bucketful of patience has only a few drops left. Ah yes. Maternity leave. I remember it now.

There's A Lot Of It About

I have neglected by blog lately; the household has been plagued with sickness for the last ten days. Apparently, There's A Lot Of It About. Isn't there always? Only Gertie has so far escaped.

At first, Gilby had a number of what can at best be described as 'unhappy nappies'. I put this down to teething, and we had a couple of more-than-usually-unsettled nights.

When I started feeling unwell on Saturday with stomach cramps, I thought nothing much at first. With number three now on the way, I had expected a little nausea. I got worse. To the point where I started thinking about phoning midwives or doctors. I didn't remember experiencing this amount of pain with the previous two pregnancies.

Then Daddy started throwing up. I've never been so delighted to see anyone else being sick! (Sorry Daddy, but this meant an ordinary bug rather than something more sinister and complicated relating to the baby.) So - hooray! All was well. If you see what I mean.

But poor old Gilby was going downhill, and was in too much pain to let his extremely raw nappy skin be touched. "No-oo-oo-ooo," he squealed, trying to hold his body away. "It's all right, it's all right," I kept repeating, aiming to soothe the little man. This became his tearful mantra for a few days: "It's all right. It's all right." He tried to convince himself. Not even the Sock Game could perk him up. (This is the one where they both sit on the bed and Daddy bowls rolled up socks at the pair of them repeatedly amidst much squeals and laughter. I don't really understand it, myself.)

"There's a lot of it about," said the doctor, when we finally took Gilby along to be checked out.

"There's a lot of it about," said the nursery staff, as we explained why Gilby wouldn't be there this week.

And, "There's a lot of it about," said my boss, as I told him I was expecting.

La-la-la-la-la-la

Every mum gets really excited when her child does something for the first time and there are so many important milestones. We reached another one of those today.

But first, a quick example from the past. Ridiculous as it now sounds, Gilby's first poo was one such moment. How can you be proud of an ordinary bodily function, you ask. Well, easily, as it happens. Due to some minor complications at birth, the powers that be at the hospital were insisting that the young man had filled a nappy before they would allow us to leave.

In fact, we took it upon ourselves to discharge from the ward before that happened, and I think he was nearly a week old before the momentous occasion occurred. I was thrilled to finally see a little portion of the tarry black stuff. Needless to say, over the past fifteen months he has more than made up for this early reluctance in the nappy department.

But today's milestone was REALLY, really exciting: Gertie made a breakthrough with her reading.

She has been fantastic at learning her alphabet and can recite her ABCs. She could also recognise the letters in her name. But today, finally, she has started to put those letters together to 'read' her first few words. It is amazing. I am absolutely delighted. She is nearly three and a half. I have no idea if this is good, or late, or normal, and frankly I don't really care. It has just made me want to tell everyone I meet. And sing 'La-la-la-la-la-la' to the tune of La Donna E Mobile or something equally showy-offy.


I think of the doors that reading opens up. She is already happy to sit for hours pretend-reading her books; how much more thrilling will it be when she can actually read them?

And of course, with the delight comes the inevitable guilt. It is half term and so I am on holiday and at home with her spending time playing and learning and reading, instead of thrusting her in front of Peppa Pig before a quick bedtime story.

It just leads me to wonder what would happen if I was actually here all the time....

Things Can Only Get Better

The day began with a very wet Gertie, a stripped bed and a hasty hose-down shower to rinse away the evidence that last night was not a 'dry-night'.

I was up early anyway because of the marking, but this was interrupted by the discovery of a number of fleas in the dining room, (one even had the audacity to hop onto an exam paper) prompting early morning vacuuming undertaken by Daddy under, it has to be said, some duress.

A few minutes later it was Gilby's turn to wake up and a pungent smell greeted me from his bedroom. Gilby is sick, again, and the diarrhoea, though it hadn't woken him had clearly been there a while. So it was a hastily run bath this time, and a second stripped bed.

In the midst of this my mobile rang. A colleague was ill and not going to make it into work today and could I take down the details of his lessons for whoever would be covering them? No problem, let me just wipe away the poo.

All this and it wasn't even 7.30am. Surely things can only get better today!

Dry Night

We forgot Gertie's nappy last night.

She has been out of nappies during the day for nearly six months, but we only occasionally and apparently randomly have a 'dry night' and so she has been in a pull-up overnight for ages.

She was getting lazy though, and would just wee in it some nights, immediately before bed, as an excuse to get back up again. Very annoying, and of course they are not cheap. So we had taken to putting it on very last thing, post-last-visit-to-the-toilet. Except that for some reason we didn't put the nappy on at all. It sort of got lost in the goodnight kisses and bedtime story.

And so she came in this morning and it was the first thing she said. Accusingly. "You forgot my nappy. That was a bit silly."

I leapt out of bed immediately, imagining untold horrors in the bedroom. Unfounded.

So now I am wondering whether having the nappy on is the reason for Gertie not being dry at night. She will be three this May, so I suppose that we ought to get on with it.

Any advice for taking this next step gratefully received...

More Car Horror

Given how busy life is in the run up to Christmas, I am going to cheat with this post and use something I just found in my diary from not long after Gertie was born. Two and a half years ago I don't even think I knew what a 'blog' was, but clearly I would have been 'at it', had I been aware. It also seems quite appropriate given that I have been blogging about my poor knowledge and skills in relation to cars recently...

"All new first-time mums are anxious to get everything right. But no matter how hard I try, I seem somehow to always get it completely wrong. I fear that I may be in the running for this year’s worst mum in the world award.

For the last year or so I have been driving round in a little two-seater convertible. What do you mean I wasn’t ready to have a baby? Admittedly it wasn’t the most suitable vehicle for my final months of pregnancy, and I probably more closely resembled a shuffling hippopotamus than a chic glamour-puss as I got in and out towards the end – but with the actual arrival of my little one it became totally impractical and had to go. One last trip, I thought, as I strapped the car-seat and my newborn into the front. I heard a strange clicking noise as I busied myself with seatbelts and straps, but thought nothing of it. Until I shut the door on Gertie and realised that the clicking noise was the automatic locking system and my bag and keys and phone and baby were securely stuck, inside the car. And no, I hadn’t put the roof down yet, so there was no way to get in.

I had to leave the car to attack someone with a phone, to then scream in tears at my husband who, in turn, drove home from work with the spare set of keys to resolve the crisis. But as I waited for him, I was also expecting social services to appear at any moment. Gertie fell asleep and was oblivious to the whole sequence of ‘abuse’ and whilst the whole debacle was a complete accident, that knowledge did little to help my self-loathing bad-mother vibe. Needless to say, I never took that ‘last trip’ in my car, and was happy to see it go.

When I meet up with the other mums, Gertie is the one with the worst cradle-cap – that somehow must be my fault. She is also the only one who is able to poo through her nappy and all over whatever cute outfit I have dressed her in. Nowhere seems to do mustard yellow baby clothes, as this would be the only way we could make it through the day without looking totally incompetent. The discussion about routines happens, well routinely. Unfortunately the closest we come to the ‘r’ word in our house is in knowing that at some point we will go to bed, and at some point(s) we will get up.

We do do lots of nice things together. We went to a little music class earlier this week. One of the other mums refused a coffee at the start, because she was breastfeeding. So am I. Gosh. She wouldn’t like to hear about my current level of wine consumption then.

But I love my baby dearly, impossibly, indescribably. The problem is that I am used to being successful at work and, in my past-life, being good at things generally. And I am blatantly not good at this mum-thing. Yet. Good job I am going to have many years ahead to perfect it."

Well. Good job I've got it all sorted out two and a half years later, isn't it? Not like I've ever phoned my husband in tears and had to get him to come out from work...