Sunshine After the Rain

Today the sun shines brilliantly. What a change from the dreary wet. And the chickens began laying eggs again. Is the worst over?





Eddie thinks that he sees a rainbow in every sky. Mostly this is just wishful thinking. "Mummy, I see a rainbow up the sky!" He points up, usually, at nothing but cloud; though I did take this photo from the classroom window the other day.


Noses seem to have been running since Christmas. And Gilby tells me that he has a very bad cough. When he coughs hard, apparently, he can taste 'sneeze' in his mouth. Ah, yes. That is quite a bad cough. I chose not to introduce him to the word 'phlegm'. Such an ugly word. Much prefer a good mouth-sneeze myself.





Currently reading: Bloody Foreigners by Robert Winder

The Dark Side of the Gloom

I've posted before about how much hard work Saturdays seem to be.  Not the relaxing weekend experience I always anticipate. 

Last weekend was Gertie's ballet show.  Gilby was his usual 'Eeyore' in the morning, claiming that he was 'shop-sick' as we gathered groceries.  I say 'Eeyore', though indeed he makes Winnie the Pooh's friend seem like the life and soul of the party.  His glass isn't just half-empty, it appears to have sprung a leak.  On this occasion, however I do him a little injustice.  We came home and he took an unprecedented day-time nap.  For two hours.  Eddie also slept, and Gertie was already at the dress rehearsal.  It was unexpectedly peaceful.  So much so that I was reluctant to wake both boys up.  I

We left for the show with not much time to spare.  Gilby got sick in the car so great clothing improvisation took place and we arrived just seconds before the performance began.  It was beautiful, but long, and I spent three hours wrestling with a one-year-old in a darkened room, which is exhausting.  He didn't seem to want to sit still and watch the ballet for some reason.

We left to be greeted by a flat-tyre on the car.  Yes, Cheryl had let us down.  Let herself down.  Well, let her tyre down, anyway.  Balls.  Hungry children.  Very late.  Call Daddy and head for the Harvester.  We stayed the night with the grandparents and my string of pearls broke at the supper table, cascading across the dining room. 

Bed was a blissful release, I'd had enough of Saturday.  Ah, perhaps that's where Gilby gets it from: the Eeyore-gene.  I have only myself to blame.

If You Go Down to the Woods Today...

The bank holiday weekend has been one endless stream of...fun.  Although, as Jerry Seinfeld says, 'There's no such thing as fun for the whole family,' so possibly not all of us were enjoying exactly the same moments.

Saturday was a birthday party for a four-year-old, and all three of my children were invited: joy.  This eliminated the opportunity for rows to break out over the fact that Gertie receives far more invitations to parties and functions generally than either of her younger brothers.  It was also good for Mummy, who didn't have to be in three different places at the same time (which is my usual weekend party trick).

Sunday began with a christening.  The service began at 10.30 and finished at 12.15.  This was long by any stretch of the imagination, even for mine who are used to attending Mass.  After about an hour Gilby turned to me looking quite pale.  'Mummy, I'm not feeling very well.  I need to get out of here. I'm....church-sick.'  He said it like it was a well-known condition, akin to car-sickness.  Something that would pass immediately, once one was away from the cause.  This, of course, would ensure that I couldn't counter with any suggestion that he be too ill to attend the christening party afterwards.  Clever, I thought.  Though judging by the discomfort on many of the adults in the surrounding pews, they too were suffering from Gilby's affliction.

It was a lovely party afterwards though, in glorious sunshine in the garden of a local pub, and, as predicted, Gilby was soon cured.  We couldn't stay all afternoon, however, since we had to get back and pack up for our camping trip.  Yes, camping trip - our first time.  We were camping in the woods near the house of some friends.  It had all seemed like such a good idea when we decided to it on the spur of the moment the previous evening.  We bought a tent on ebay and picked it up that morning.  No chance to test it out or even check it was all in one piece.  Actually, it wasn't, but that was by design.  Two bedrooms, no less.  No en suite though.

So, a bit of back-to-nature for us.  A roaring camp fire, toasting marshmallows, three in a bed, (the lack of a ground-sheet for the outer living area meant that poor old Gilby couldn't sleep in his cot) last minute checks for lurking gruffaloes: all a great adventure.  Mummy froze, though, in the night, and was too worried about everyone else worrying to drink as much wine as she ought to have done.  I wanted to keep myself under the limit in case a midnight flit back to civilisation was required.  In fact, this couldn't have happened in any case, as the flat battery on the car in the morning testified.  Much huffing and puffing and pushing was required before we were eventually rescued by a digger and jump-leads.  It was not the finest moment. Still, it was an experience.  The kids came home filthy and desperate to do it again.  Mummy will have a couple of glasses of red and think about it.  Cheers!

The Unbearable Excitement of Being

Gilby has 'hand, foot and mouth disease'. A 'febrile illness(caused by Coxsackie Virus) with associated vesicle formation on the hands, feet, and mouth of affected children'. It began with a few chicken-pox-type spots around his groin area, and it sounds much worse than it is, but it did mean that the very first day of my holiday yesterday was spent in the company of a screaming, irritable child. It is mild and short-lived though, so I am hoping that by tomorrow (his second birthday) he will be a little more sociable. He wants a 'Mr Bump' birthday cake, which seems quite appropriate.

Thankfully, Gertie is a little cheerier, and her perceptions of the world continue to delight. She is very, very excited about the arrival in a few weeks of her new sibling. It will coincide with starting school, so her little world will turn upside-down, but she is ready for it all. Except that she did ask me a strange question this week: "Mummy, you know that baby in your tummy? What clothes is it wearing?" I can't escape the image of a fully-dressed foetus in there now.

She also made me smile when she came across me reading in the bath a few nights ago. "Um, Mummy? What exactly are you doing?"
"I'm reading a book. I find it very relaxing in the bath."
She looked dubious, and glanced over at the vast array of brightly-coloured plastic toys that adorn our bathroom these days, and that I had tried, unsuccessfully, to hide for my sojourn into the water.
"But Mummy, how can you possibly relax in the bath when it's so exciting? I don't know how you can just sit there when there's so much to do!"

Well, who knew?

33 weeks pregnant: Struggling to heave my whale-like proportions around.
Currently reading: The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas

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!

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.

Love and Infection

Gertie has been suffering for the last nine months or so with something called 'Molluscum Contagiosum'. I say 'suffering' but it doesn't really bother her too much, and though it sounds terrible, it manifests itself as small clusters of pink lumps across her neck and underarm. Sometimes it can look very 'angry' and sore, and it can itch a bit from time to time but is not really troublesome. It is some sort of viral infection common amongst the little people with their underdeveloped immune systems.

We were visiting friends recently, who have a little boy just about the same age as Gertie. Although the two of them don't see each other very often, they seem to get on really well when they do. They tore off across the village green together, and Gertie even managed to briefly overcome her fear of our puppy, Kempton, in an effort to impress her young beau. It evidently worked, because they came back out of breath and holding hands, and I overheard him tell her, "I like your spots. I'm going to get some."

Well, if he gets too close, he probably will.

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!

Oh No! I'm one of Them...

I have become one of those mothers who rushes to the GP's surgery every five minutes. When Gertie was a baby I used to despise them: the new mums who made an appointment to have their offspring examined every time a hair was out of place. What I didn't understand then was that I was blessed with a very healthy child.

This week I took Gilby to the doctor's twice with chicken pox. I spent a long time on the telephone to NHS Direct, then had to use the out of hours service at the hospital on the bank holiday. Because despite having had chicken pox myself, and recognising it immediately when Gertie came down with it a year ago, for some reason it looked different on Gilby and my inner medical expert was convinced it was something more sinister. When the diagnosis came I was relieved: only chicken pox. That was easy to deal with. A few blobs of calamine lotion and some bicarb in the bath; no problem. Except that Gilby was much, much more sick with it than his sister had been. He tore at his clothes and didn't sleep for two nights, crying all the time because he couldn't get any relief from the itching. His ears bled where he scratched and pulled at them, and he couldn't close his eyes properly because of the bulbous lumps on the lids. He had a high temperature and I couldn't console him at all. So I took him back to the doctor. Who suggested a few blobs of calamine lotion and some bicarb in the bath...

So I felt a bit silly. Where did this over-anxiety come from? Because prior to this Gilby has had a succession of unpleasant ear infections (five lots of anti-biotics) and a horrible vomiting bug that meant he just seem to waste away in the space of a week. Gone is my bonny, plump baby; he is now a spotty bag of skin and bone. And of course all his illnesses have happened one after the other since he began at nursery in January. No surprise there. But the result is that I have become one of them: the mothers who clog up the waiting room at the doctor's for minor ailments.

My father-in-law has a good way of expressing the way that anxiety lessens with experience. "If your first child swallows a 5p you rush it to casualty; if your third child swallows 5p you dock its pocket money." Unfortunately I seem to be going the other way. So this week I shall be aiming for some rational judgement and perspective, and hoping that no coin-swallowing occurs.

The Porthole Affair

The year is 1935 and we are travelling across the Atlantic in RMS Olympic, sister ship to the Titanic. Yes, last weekend we hosted a murder mystery evening: The Porthole Affair.

Never done one before, and to be fair, we don't do a great deal of entertaining these days, so it became quite a big deal. I was playing the maid, 'Dawn Trodden' (oh, how appropriate) and my husband was playing the butler, 'Eamonn Etonion'. That gives a flavour of the calibre of the characterisation. Frilly apron and bowler hat at the ready, respectively, and three courses of food prepared the day before; we were ready to go. I had laid the table in the dining room early in the morning, and whilst we had perhaps not quite achieved the 'feel of Edwardian splendour' indicated in the murder mystery box of instructions, the scene was set.

But of course we hadn't factored in the little people. I picked Gilby and Gertie up from nursery on Friday afternoon as usual. Gertie had won a special prize for being a good helper and volunteering to buddy up with a new boy to help him settle in at pre-school, and the staff told me what a wonderful day Gilby had had, 'chatting' away to everyone with his baby-babble and general being very contented. Excellent. All going according to plan. I can work, have happy children and entertain. Go me.

On the way back we had to collect two of our guests from the train station: Auntie Bob (don't ask) and 1-year old cousin Milly. Uncle was arriving later on with Daddy, and all three were staying. Gertie had to give up her bedroom to allow this level of hospitality, but she did so with good grace and it was all turning into a happy adventure.

5pm. Now just to feed all three kids supper, get them into bed, and jump into ridiculous costume prior to the arrival of the other guests. Still going swimmingly.

It was at that point that Gilby decided to start vomiting, violently, in the fashion of a large hydrant gushing on free-flow. I got covered, and changed, three times. The kitchen floor took a battering. Auntie Bob was brilliant at entertaining the girls while I cleared up successive waves of sick. This, surely, was an unnecessarily realistic degree of preparation for the role of 'Dawn Trodden'?

Since I now had more than just carrot in my hair, a shower was required. I couldn't put Gilby down even for a second as he had gone all sort of floppy and pathetic as they do. He also wouldn't touch any food (understandably) but did want to suckle at the breast without taking very much milk. Brilliant. Torn between concern for my baby and the imminent arrival of five more guests, including the wealthy heiress 'Angeline Desguys', and the Russian-German-Jewish emigre, 'Esau Hytall', I didn't know what to do. Should we cancel? Call a doctor? Pour a large glass of wine? Laugh hysterically?

Well of course, then the door went. Toby O'Notoby and Ed Butte had arrived. Cancelling was now not an option. The phone rang almost simultaneously. Enid Ann Hallaby needed to know where to park her car as the driveway was full. The surgery was closing; no doctor until Monday morning. Large wine and laughter the only remaining options. We weren't a sinking ship yet. Threw some crisps in a bowl to keep the guests happy. Eventually got Gertie and Gilby to sleep. Rustled up a toffee sauce for the sticky toffee pudding. Hid wet hair behind frilly maid cap and got on with it. One moment scrubbing baby sick from the floor, the next dining amidst the great splendour of the Captain's quarters amidst one of the most fabulous ships ever built. Ish.

P.S. Gilby recovering well.

Inner Ear and Inner Sanctum

More guilt from the 'recently-working-and-not-very-happy-about-it' mum this week.

My baby, Gilby, got an inner ear infection and I didn't notice it until after the worst was over. I came home on Thursday and spotted lots of nasty gunky stuff in both ears, so rushed him up to the surgery. The doctor actually said to me, "Well he's not in pain now, but he would have been two days ago..." Excuse me while I just punch myself in the head.

On the upside, I have been invited into the 'inner sanctum', as I was included in a night out with the Ummer Nursery Mums this week. (Gertie actually stopped substituting 'ummer' for 'other' a year ago, but for some reason neither my husband nor I have made the same linguistic leap...)

I don't know what I have done to deserve such an honour, but it was good fun and something of an eye-opener. Discussion involved the politics of the nursery (I simply had no idea!) and Other Children. It did make me wonder what might have been said about us on all previous nights out. Whilst the wine flowed, I felt that I was undergoing some kind of test.

Only another invitation will determine whether or not I passed, and meanwhile I will contempate whether or not I want to!

Three Wise Mothery Things

I am thinking in threes this week due to nativity overdose: three wise men and three shepherds (and only three more presents left to get).

So here are my three gifts in Christmas week, my Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh. Three things which I have learned since becoming a mother, and which have featured with varying degrees of drama in my life this week:

1. Never wear a long dangly scarf or beads while supervising a potty situation.
2. 'Messy play' is a great idea, in theory.
3. Sick over one shoulder is perfectly acceptable; over two, suggests carelessness.

Number one speaks for itself, really. In number two, whilst my back was turned red paint became lipstick and an ugly scene ensued. Number three was pointed out whilst I was at a Christmas party. Nice.

Party Pooper

It was Gertie's nursery Christmas party today and she was sick.

This doesn't surprise me in the least because her timing is fantastic. Last year she contracted chicken pox three days before Christmas so that we were in quarantine for the big day. Whole other story - but back to the present. She regularly tells me that she feels sick and my typical response is unsympathetic: "Ok, well finish your lunch and you will feel better; just drink some water and you will feel better; a bit of fresh air and you will feel better..." This morning, however, she seemed genuinely under the weather. Subdued, clingy, and a little shivery.

I was upset. Mostly because I didn't want Gertie to miss her Christmas party and the arrival of Father Christmas ('wrapped, named present to the value of not more than £5' had been supplied by us the week before), partly because we had made a plate of marmite sandwiches as our contribution to the festivities and I didn't want them to go to waste, and a little bit because I was due to be spending the day with an old school friend that I don't get to see very often and it would be distracting enough with the baby, let alone a sick toddler accompanying us. I know: selfish thought. Shouldn't really reveal it in a public forum...

Anyway, the party was fancy dress, so Daddy and I glanced at each other conspiratorially: "Why don't we just try your gold princess dress on with the tiara and see how you feel?"

One glance in the mirror seemed to do the trick and I haven't had the dreaded call from nursery to come and collect her. I do think however that I have discovered the real root of the problem, because my other method of persuasion was along the lines of, "And you don't want to miss Father Christmas do you?"
No response.
"You do want to see Father Christmas?"
Short pause.
"No...I want to see Grumps!"
So she would have preferred to be seeing her grandfather today instead of a random old man she doesn't know. Fair enough!