Angry Young(ish) Mum

Get that bottle of wine opened, QUICK. Egad, what a week. Call me Bill Murray and send me to Punxsutawney because I have been trapped in Groundhog Day all week and I can’t TAKE IT any more! You are witnessing a woman on the edge, people. If anyone calls out ‘Mummeeee…’ ONE more time I swear I will scream. I guess it’s just the culmination of 4 weeks with a daughter who can’t quite do everything for herself at the moment thanks to the full leg cast. And this is a girl with a very low threshold of patience. She gets huffy waiting for the TV to warm up so you can imagine the rocket I get if I don’t jump her side within 10 seconds of her calling me. She has this indignant tone that has well and truly driven me round the bend. And I thought I was only heading over the hill, isn’t life full of surprises? But however many times I repeat my mantra that the house and the shopping and the cooking won’t do themselves and Mummy wasn’t actually standing around picking her nose waiting for a job to do it never seems to get through. In fact, while I was writing that last sentence a little voice just called down the stairs for Mummy. The little person attached to the voice was put in bed half an hour ago but they just can’t resist one final request when all I want is to park myself and do something for me for a change. I have tried all ways of getting the message into their precious heads including, I am ashamed to say, yelling until my throat hurts but the next morning it starts all over again and I realise that I might as well talk to the wall. In fact I did just that earlier in the week when I was getting zero response out of my little darlings but they just found it hilariously funny and called for a repeat performance. So now I am the entertainment as well as the dogsbody – my CV has never looked better.

Gawd, listen to me. I must sound like a really resent them, which of course I don’t, and I know I am going to miss it when they both evolve into Kevin the Teenager and declare how much they hate me and it’s so unfair, but puh-leeeze… can we let just ONE minute go by without adding another item to the to-do list? And if it’s not their immediate needs, like feeding one end or wiping the other, then they’re banging on about what toys they’ve seen on the adverts that they absolutely, positively have to have for Christmas. Yes, even though it’s still months away and the Christmas ads haven’t appeared yet I’ve already had the full interrogation from Poppet about how exactly Santa knows what he’s supposed to be buying and how precisely he gets in our house when we don’t have a chimney. It’s my own fault for borrowing the film The Pole Express I suppose. For now I’ve completely banned commercial telly for them, I don’t care how many times they’ve already heard the story in Balamory, it’s CBeebs all the way for us.

Anyway, here’s to a better week; only 11 days to got until my dear Poppet can start to walk again and so fetch her own drink, take herself out into the garden and stay for lunch at school a couple of days a week (yippee!). Meanwhile I shall resign myself to the perpetual routine for a bit longer and take solace in alcohol after lights out. I actually made it to a party last night, minus husband though because the local babysitters are too young to cope with lifting Her Highness should the need arise, plus Pickle is coughing fit to bring up a lung… again. I blagged a lift with a friend who was also husband-less and spent the evening beside the drinks table steadily working through the champagne and talking about anything but children. It was lovely! And tonight the wine is already open so frankly all I’m up for now is a bit of sofa-time.
Thank you for listening!

Buggy-rage

One school-run down, three to go, and now I have 2 hours all to myself, yippee!! First I need to have a cuppa and calm down after the stress of getting one able-bodied-yet-reluctant child into one school and a willing-but-unable-to-walk child into the one next door. It’s dawned on me during these last three weeks since I had to re-join the buggy-brigade just how much I have been taking for granted since the children stopped needing to use the pushchair. Luckily most Mamans outside the school are wise to me now and get themselves and their kids out of the way when they see me coming but there is always one who stands there looking at me as if to say ‘Make them walk why don’t you?’. Er, have you been living on the moon for the last three weeks or what? thinks I. And then you get the lazy ones who park their cars half on the pavement to get that extra 10 metres closer to the school so I can’t get past. I cracked this morning and left a note on one Renault Espace. She’ll know it’s me of course, though, because the grammar is bound to be all wrong plus I don’t write in the flowery French script everyone is taught here. Bit of a give-away so I hope it doesn’t come to an argument! Having been here so long now they all expect me to speak perfect French and quite a few have stopped to ask me about Poppet’s leg recently. I think I am making sense most of the time but in every conversation there is a point where they frown and I realise they’re losing my thread. Oh well. I am making no apologies for being an alien.

But hey, it’s Friday! And it’s felt like one long old week. Nobby got back from Sweden (not Swindon) on Tuesday night armed with presents for all of us. He bought me some perfume by Hugo Boss called Boss Woman. Aptly chosen I thought, clearly he knows who’s in charge round here. Unfortunately he lost his phone during the trip so I can’t send him bossy texts all day any more. When I told Pickle Daddy had lost his phone he frowned and said ‘He’s lost it? But that’s what we normally do’ (meaning him and Poppet). Ah, the wisdom of the young. Pickle himself has been ill again this week. I think it’s back-to-school-itis: they keep those classrooms at about 30 degrees hence incubating all the germs they’ve all picked up on their summer travels and by mid-September half the class is off sick. He was up half the night on Monday coughing and wheezing so it was off to the doctors looking like a pair of zombies on Tuesday morning and I am dosing him with antibiotics now. And trying to ensure there are always tissues within easy reach, by which I mean pretty much in his hand because if there is any effort involved he uses his t-shirt instead. It doesn’t seem to bother him going round with snotty shoulders but personally I’d prefer to be able to cuddle him without the risk of sticking.

But it’s going to be a busy weekend again, no rest for the wicked. Last weekend we wanted to get Poppet off the sofa and out in the sunshine so we went en famille to the ‘Pick-Your-Own’ farm on Saturday afternoon. She languished in her pushchair pointing out all the discarded comedy veg she wanted me to pick up for the ‘collection’ she was making for her stuffed bear; carrots that look like a pair of legs, potatoes that look like a pair of buttocks, that sort of thing. Then she started snacking on a carrot fresh from the field, dirt and all. Mmm, yummy. I just thought about the vitamins and let her get on with it. The only thing she could really help with picking was the raspberries so Pickle and Nobby did most of the harvesting and had a lovely time while she and I grappled with the spiky raspberry bushes. Of course for the rest of the weekend all they wanted to eat was crisps so most of the veg is still tucked up in the dark in the garage now.

On Sunday once Nobby had left for the airport I had the great idea of taking the kids to the local Brocante – it’s a cross between a car-boot sale and a flea market and the whole town closes down for the day so the residents can clear out their attics and garages and flog their unwanted possessions - and let’s face it total tat - on pasting tables and rugs up and down the street. It only takes place once a year so it’s about a mile long and packed solid for the whole day but it’s a good source of cheap toys that they can break at their leisure and last year we even kitted out the whole family with second-hand roller blades for about 10 euros. So I bravely set off with the double buggy and a pile of cash and we returned a couple of hours later with four more Barbies with a talking car and horse-and-sleigh and three more Action Men, one of whom has a parachute. Pickle started launching the parachutist off my balcony and I had visions of him following it down – it’s about the height of the slide Poppet broke her leg on so naturally I was having kittens watching him. So I taught him how to fling it up underarm from the ground instead which he accepted. Then he had the brilliant idea of flinging it underarm from the top of the climbing frame to get more height. I think perhaps I should have plumped for the deep-sea-diver Action Man instead…

Anyway, this weekend there is French school tomorrow morning, including the annual parents meeting, where the teachers get us all in a room and tell us how they will be challenging our little darlings this year. They make us all sit on the children’s chairs and keep quiet until they’ve finished so it’s a real power trip for them and a dreadful flashback to being 6 years old for us. The children all go off and watch television during the meeting, lucky things. I know where I’d rather be considering how hard I have to concentrate to follow the French. Saturday afternoon should be more fun though, when two little friends are coming for a sleepover while their parents go to a wedding in Paris. The children have been excited about it all week. Pickle has already made up a bed on the floor in his room and even put out some of his favourite pyjamas for the little boy, and I’ve heard the little girl has been telling her Mummy how she’s going to sleep in the same bed with Poppet. Hopefully she’ll change her mind once we point out Poppet’s plastered leg and the cute little bed I’m making up for her on the floor.

So check back here on Monday and I’ll let you know how it’s gone, and whether we actually managed to see any of the rugby. I am hoping that the girls will play Barbie and the boys will play trains and they’ll all be knackered and in bed by 8pm. Hmm. Place your bets, please.

No, I haven’t slipped off the face of the planet

Is it true? Have I got 5 whole minutes to finally update my Blog after about a month of complete silence? Can I really get it all done before all hell breaks loose again? I have been trying for 5 days but something always comes up, usually the children getting an attack of the ‘Mummy!’s. How is that they can be completely quiet for hours, even tell me to go away and stop interrupting their games if I dare to try and find out what they are up to. Then the second I pick up the phone, turn on the computer or sit on the bog they suddenly need me desperately? ‘Mummy! Will you get my Barbies?’. ‘Mummy! I’m hungry!’. ‘Mummy! Will you wipe my bottom!’. Well, for now, Nobby is in Sweden – which Pickle has delightfully misheard and insists he’s gone to Swindon – Pickle is upstairs doing who-knows-what with his train set and Poppet is parked on the sofa as usual watching the TV. She’s watching Pop though, so I know that as soon as the adverts come on she’ll pipe up with more additions to the Christmas list. ‘Ooh look! A dolly that can swim! Oh, I’d really like one of those, Mummy.’ And did you know that with commercial channels like that you can’t get away with saying ‘Mummy can’t afford it’ because the very next advert will be for a loan and the kid just says ‘but look, Mummy, you can borrow the money’. If only CBeebies played back-to-back Charlie and Lola we’d never turn over.

Anyway, quite apart from the constant lumming (as Rose calls it in her house) it’s been kinda busy here, in a Piccadilly Circus meets Spaghetti Junction sort of way, what with reading the final Harry Potter book (fabulous!), popping off to Marbella (more in a mo.) and to-ing and fro-ing to school. I have counted my school runs per week: 18 on a normal week, 20 every other week when there is Saturday school as well. And with Poppet’s leg still in plaster for another 4 weeks I can’t really call in any help yet. The crowd of Mums outside school are getting more used to my enormous double buggy now and have started to make way for us so I haven’t taken out too many ankles just yet. The kids in the playground await our arrival with great impatience and the moment Poppet’s bum is off the seat they all pile into it while we limp to the classroom. I’ve let them get away with it so far as there is naff-all to play on in their playground but they’re going to burst the tyres one of these days. It all adds up to a much lengthier school run than usual so I am constantly chasing my tail trying to keep some sort of routine going. I wrote my parents a veritable encyclopaedia of instructions on how to keep things running smoothly while I was in Marbella for 4 nights, but you just can’t account for the curve balls. For example, you get everyone up and dressed and fed and you’re just about to head for the car and Pickle decides that he needs to play Musical Statues. Right away. Er, come again? This was last Monday morning and the only solution to avoid the massive strop was to go with it for a couple of rounds, and let him win of course. He’s like Jekyll and Hyde that one. (I believe the word is capricious, if you saw Ant and Dec’s spelling bee…) On Tuesday we got as far as Pickle’s classroom, while Poppet was freezing her bits off outside in the buggy, and he announced that he didn’t want to go to French school, he’d rather go to the English school. Hmm. At least that’s an improvement on the previous week when he told my Mum that since he’d been to school twice that week he didn’t feel the need to go any more. Luckily the appearance of one of his friends persuaded him into the classroom so I could drop Poppet off. But as I made my way back out of the playground I found they’d already locked the school gates and I couldn’t get out. Thankfully the ‘Lollipop Man’ had a key so I could get on my way but it’s been becoming a regular event ever since. How much would it take for the gate-locker to glance over to see whether the double buggy is still parked by the classroom before she turns the key? Hey, but zis is France…

I hear a wailing upstairs; I think Pickles game is fighting back and my time may almost be up. So I must just report on my patient. Hard as it was leaving her and taking my trip to Spain after all, it was probably the best thing for both of us. Not so my liver, by all accounts, given that the bridal party in Spain were a bunch of total party animals and I felt compelled to join in and beer it up until 4am each night… but Poppet really started trying to be independent, despite the tonne of plaster on her leg. My Mum reported that she was even getting herself up the stairs the day after I left and she’d hardly needed any carrying. See, there’s the irony again; as Poppet re-masters the art of moving about on her own her Mummy goes out and gets shedded and can’t walk down the street in a straight line any more, let alone find her hotel room. I think I missed out somewhat having never done the Marbella thing pre-children. It was a totally new concept to head out for the evening at midnight, a time when I would usually be tucked up in bed, and I had a serious fashion wake-up call too that first night. The bridesmaids were all looking fantastic in little dresses and strappy sandals with their hair coiffed to perfection, while I stood there in my jeans and t-shirt with hair by Crazy Meg after my long journey which included a whole hour looking for the hotel. Then they announced they were planning to dress up the following night… hello? I’d just mentally discarded the twin-set and pearls and was racking my brains as to whether I had anything vaguely trendy with me, that didn’t reveal too much of the muffin-top or show me up as mutton-dressed-as-lamb, and here they were discussing sequinned camisoles and hot-pants. Deary me, I know sometimes it’s nice to stand out from the crowd but not as the obvious stay-at-home mum-of-2 who gets all her clothes from Tescos. Anyway, I think I pulled it off ok because I pulled a Spaniard the following night when all the girls hit a disco-bar together! Poor guy was a bit crestfallen when Nobby turned up to find out where I’d got to, and Nobby was a bit surprised to find my wedding ring on my right hand… (I was just living the dream for 5 minutes!)

So we came back down to earth with a bit of a bump (not to mention a thumping head) on Saturday but I am pleased to report that my parents made it through 4 days, 4 nights, 7 school runs and a trip to the hospital (Poppet’s check-up) without strangling either of the children, or each other. And my ironing mountain is no more! What it is to have a Mum who actually likes ironing. I am eternally grateful to them for the respite, they are truly wonderful parents to me, I don’t know what I would do without them. Thanks bigly too to Rose for accompanying them to the hospital as translator. And thanks also to our newly married friends for the opportunity to go large in Marbella. Since my return Poppet has been rather less independent for the last few days, I think its subtle punishment for my having sloped off without her, especially to a wedding, her favourite kind of event. She firmly refuses to use the crutches at home but she does shuffle about on her bottom and I’m keeping everything crossed she doesn’t whack her leg on the tiled floor and send us back to square one. But since all exercise is good at this stage I am happy to delay running to meet her demands in case she decides it’s not too much trouble to do it herself. Besides, I think she has a posse of other slaves at school to satisfy her and she did a great job on her friend’s dad the other day when she attended a birthday party and got the poor man to fetch and carry for 2 hours. (I had warned him, by the way, and he had blindly volunteered to give me a break, LOL!)

Well, I hope it’s not too long before I get another chance to write some more. Pickle has just announced that it’s his turn on the computer now. Who am I to argue?