Old Post

From 2008

A parenting victory this week! I’ve finally found the secret cache of mascara the 3 year has in his room. Now he’ll stop emerging from his ‘naps’ looking like a silent movie star. He stills comes out smelling stongly of vicks vapo rub but it is quite a nice smell, and of course it has long been my policy that if I let him do it he’ll figure out why he shouldn’t do it all by himself.


Bloke was in charge on Friday while I went to sitting down work. He managed to leave the pram in the car park when he took the children to the shops. It was still there on Saturday morning when we finally noticed it was missing and went back to look for it, and that made everyone feel all warm inside. Which was terrific, because later that day I accidentally threw the unseatbelted 3 year old out of it on to a pedestrian crossing. Note I said ‘pedestrian crossing’. It isn’t like I don’t care about my children’s safety. Anyway we were all hot and bothered and some of us were covered in tears and snot because of accidentally letting go of a helium balloon we’d been given at the beach and so we were pretty much headed for some sort of accident. It helps us figure out when to go home.


That wasn’t even my low point of the week. We went to a birthday party on Sunday morning and I rushed into the lolly shower once the piñata broke as the three year seemed unsure of what to do. I picked up a lollypop and a little packet of smarties to give him and another child tried to take the lollypop away and my hand involuntarily tightened on it. Of course, it was the birthday boy and he burst into tears. It’s hard to describe what sort of behaviour I thought I was modeling and it has been the last thing I think of before I go to bed at night for a few days now. Let me just explain. I needed to GIVE THE CHILD THE LOLLYPOP AND PICK UP ANOTHER ONE. It’s all so clear now, why, why couldn’t I think of it at the time? And who saw me, down on the ground, wrestling with the weeping birthday boy? I didn’t look up and it is distinctly possible all the other parents were watching me. The child’s mother is a good friend of mine but every time I speak to her for the next few months I’ll be listening closely for a tone. I’ll be wondering if her anecdotes have a hidden, pointed meaning. I’ll be strangely hyper-nice to her poor child, probably at my own child’s expense (Sweetie, you’ve had breakfast, give him your sandwich. And your drink. That’s alright darling, he just wants to wear your shoes for a little bit, sit down and Mummy will help you take them off) as if further weirdness is what the situation calls for.


My mother gave the baby a frosty fruit ice block on the weekend. If she were my first child I would have flung myself bodily between her and the ice block screaming “noooooo suuuugaaaar” but she is not my first child so I contented myself with looking up and down the beach to make sure no-one else was watching, because I am ever vigilant. She didn’t even like it that much, but watching a baby screw up its little face in disgust is a scream so we kept on offering it to her. She is eight months and I thought it was time she had a go in the ocean. After all, we all love the ocean. Her brother used to crawl directly into the sea and keep going until we grabbed him. Even now we have to start tearing off his clothes as soon as he hits the sand so he doesn’t just run in fully dressed. And her middle name means “ocean”, so it seemed like an important thing to do. I put her little toes in and she tried to physically retract her legs back into her body. I tried again. She tried again. Every time her toes made contact with the water her knees went up to her ears. I tried shouting ‘weee’ and swinging her so her toes skimmed the surface. She cried. She has a lot of time to learn to love the ocean but this doesn’t strike me as the start we were looking for. I suppose it is fair to say to I’m a little worried as I’m never sure about people who don’t like sand or spicy food and what if she is one ? I can’t even offer her spicy food for years, and maybe she’ll get used to the water but what if it is a sign ?