Toilet humour

Okay, so I mostly phoned it in yesterday. But I was just thinking of you, you know. Sometimes you don't want a whole, long diatribe about my life to wade through, no matter how full (or empty) it may be of thrilling hilarity and/or insightful witticisms. But I want you to know I'm still here for you, so I limit myself - with great personal sacrifice - to no more than a line or two.

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Twice today Monkey raised my hopes and then dashed them. Mid-afternoon, he announced loudly that he was going to the toilet, and then ran off to the bathroom by himself. I followed, to see what was up, and he told me to go away. "Oh-kay," I thought. "Maybe this is it. Maybe his need for privacy and a big truckload of sense have both just kicked in. Together. At once.... Hmmm."

Five minutes later he emerged with his jeans tucked into his socks and wearing cardboard 3-D glasses under his pulled-up hood, and annouced that he was Baseball Man. His superpowers are speed and strength, I believe. And, as his father remarked when he did the same thing later on this evening, a bladder of steel.

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Earlier on, he and Mabel had found my discreet emergency stash in the spare-toilet-rolls drawer in the bathroom. (Not the chocolate digestives. The Ladies' emergency stash, if you know what I mean. Oh, wait. Same diff.) When I got to the scene they were passing them back and forth, bartering a pink panty-liner for two yellow maxi-pads, and finding out how many tampax regular you can fit in the centre of one toilet roll. (Five, if you must know).

Which is still better than the day I had to remember to remove the unwrapped panty-liner from the coat-closet door where Mabel had stuck it (and where it was impressively camouflaged) before company arrived.

Gratuitous culprit photo

Two truths and a lie

Or is it the other way around? You be the judge.

• My children did not say anything amusing today.
• I did not learn any valuable parenting lessons today.
• I am eating just one banana butterscotch muffin with this cup of coffee.

Lingua franca

Every set of parents needs a secret language. I know learning a second language early on opens up all sorts of wonderful neural pathways and gives your kids advantages in many fields ... but have you considered how important it is to remain able to make parenting decisions in their presence without their input, even after they can spell? (And really, who wants to have to spell out entire sentences? Or put the letters together at the other end? I find I'm much quicker with the spelling than the understanding.)

We - B and I - are lucky, to have the Irish language as part of our culture and our heritage. It's a rich tongue, steeped in metaphor and poetry, and we're both pretty crap at it. But it serves its purpose when we need a quick conference over whether Monkey is, in fact, allowed a piece of Halloween candy as dessert after only having eaten half his sandwich, or whether it's a bath night tonight or not. (Mabel gets all excited at the prospect of a bubble bath, so you don't want to mention the possibility unless you're planning to follow through or she'll be upstairs running the water and divesting herself of clothing before you can say Ahoy, Matey*.)

Most of our Irish revolves around stock phrases that we learned early on and employed in every essay thereafter: "off with her as fast as the wind"; "it broke into smithereens" (ina smidiríní - a phrase imported from Irish into English; did you know that?); "he fell in a heap and lay there without knowledge or words"; "it was a fine summer morning and I awoke early"; that sort of thing. These snippets are not always exactly what we need these days, but we interpolate a few words of French, Spanish, German, or Italian as the mood takes us, and the message is somehow transmitted. (We also have a strong psychic link. It helps.)

I should note that our grasp on all of the languages mentioned above, lest we sound like genius polyglot types, is mostly basic to abysmal. I have (had, a million years ago) pretty good Spanish, B learned it for three years; we both had leaving-cert French; he did some German evening classes, I did some Italian ones; we've been to all those countries at some point. If I wanted to order two beers (dva pivo) or warn you to mind the doors which are about to open, without the kids knowing, I could actually do it in very approximate Czech, too.

I like to think that although we don't have an actual second language to gift our children with, they'll be exposed, badly, to many different tongues. My parents used to use French (from school) or German (from Austrian ski-ing holidays) to discuss me within my hearing. I remember once I was acting a bit out of sorts on a road trip. They exchanged an incomprehensible sentence or two in the front of the car, and I rose zombie-like from the back seat to announce indignantly, "I'm not sick!"

The advantage of using an almost-dead language from a country in which we do not live is that unless they go to great lengths, the kids will probably never understand what we're saying. As soon as I went to secondary school and started to learn French, my parents were limited to German, and suddenly all their secret conversations were about Gluhwein. The funny thing about Irish, mind you, is that you can never be sure who might understand you: almost everyone has a story about how they once used the mother tongue to discreetly pass a remark regarding the couple in front of them in the queue at Disneyland or the restaurant in Mauritius, only to have one of them turn around and retort in more fluent Gaeilge themselves.

Use it wisely, my friends, and keep your children pure as the snow on the mountains of Kerry in their ignorance of your secret language, whatever it is. It will serve you well.

*Irish joke. Never mind.

Scary movie

So we had our first Thanksgiving in the new house, and didn't invite anyone over. We sat at our real dining table, using our proper crockery and our Waterford glasses (though I was too lazy/busy cooking to go upstairs and fish out the actual cloth napkins; maybe next year). The chicken was moist and tender (but not pink), the roast potatoes were a vision of golden crunchiness, and the vegetable was broccoli because the beans hadn't looked great. Then there was apple pie and custard, and some stilton with cranberries to cleanse the palate. And a nice bottle of red. It was a reasonable, low-key Irish-American Thanksgiving.

Monkey had no interest in partaking, but Mabel downed her chicken enthusiastically and called it pasta. She had more pasta several times.

Earlier in the day, B took Monkey to see Tangled (the new Disney retelling of Rapunzel) while Mabel napped and I lazed indolently about, before realising that I should probably start cooking because a roast chicken, while not a turkey, still doesn't get on the table in 20 minutes like most of my dinners.

Sadly for B, they had to leave before the film was over, because Monkey wasn't enjoying it. In fact, he was refusing to watch any of it, and had been hiding obsessively behind B's hands since the opening credits. Not the most successful trip to the movies ever, then.

He's been before, to Toy Story and Toy Story 3, and enjoyed them both. But in general, I must admit that he's not the most adventurous viewer. (As I type, he's hiding behind my back watching/avoiding an epsode of Rupert Bear.) I hear of other kids of a similar age who love Star Wars and even Star Trek: I can't even get Monkey to see Finding Nemo - we got it last Christmas; he watched it once and won't let me put it on again because of the sharks. (I had carefully skipped over the traumatic opening scene. I can hardly watch that myself.) Even his once beloved Little Mermaid is verboten now because the impending scary bits - which he used to just get me to skip over - weigh on his mind so heavily that he can't stand the tension of the in-between parts. Cars is the only film he's ever watched from beginning to end (once or twice or three million times in the past year), and I have to give it kudos for having no scary parts at all. His father is waiting impatiently for the day he can show Monkey the Indiana Jones trilogy, but so far, no dice.

In fact it seems, in some ways, that our little rough-and-tumble bruiser is - dare I say it - sensitive. I know other boys far quicker to cry at a physical injury, more likely to protest their mother's leaving the classroom of a morning with a tear in their eye, generally giving off a far wussier vibe; but for all his bravado, Monkey has a soft, squishy interior, and I think finding stories and films scary probably goes along with his vivid imagination and rich internal monologue. (That's what I call it when he spends a good five minutes making his index fingers argue with each other about who gets to flush the toilet.)

On the other hand, maybe it doesn't mean anything. As a teenager I spent plenty of time trying hard to believe I was the sensitive, highly spiritual, artistic type. Also, willowy, slender, and ethereal. This was all about as true as you might imagine for a kind of square-shaped (at least in my school uniform) eminently sensible pragmatist. I blame Anne of Green Gables.

In my 20s, when I briefly held a low-level managerial position that put me supervising five or so of my peers, it soon became clear to me that I tended more toward the rhino-hided than the thin-skinned. I had to run things by my more-feeling best-friend/colleague to make sure I wasn't going to upset people; and even then, on occassion someone would come to me in tears after a staff meeting because my throwaway comment about a new project keeping them busy had apparently made it sound as if they were a bone-idle waster the rest of the time. (For instance. Ahem.)

And yet, I hate scary movies too. I've never watched a bone fide horror, and even thrillers have to be, well, worked up to a bit. I am adept at looking away and humming just when the gory scene happens in, well, anything. I did not like the end of Braveheart, and not just because I was sick of Mel Gibson and blue paint by then. So maybe there's hope for Monkey in this hard-as-nails world after all. Still, I fear for his teenage years and his heart which will get stomped upon and broken into a million pieces by some unthinking girl who hasn't noticed his devotion.

Ah, it's all ahead of us. What a thought.

Tiny moments

Happy Thanksgiving to USA-ians; happy Thursday to everyone else.

Last night Mabel slept soundly from her initial going-to-sleep (around 8.00, or earlier; I think I dropped off there for a few minutes myself) all the way to past 11.00. This may not sound like much to you, but she has been religiously needing to be re-settled first 20 minutes, then 40, then stretching to an hour after she first went down every night for her Entire Life. Maybe there's a light at the end of the tunnel. Either way, it was a tiny Thanksgiving miracle. She took what felt like the rest of the night to get back to sleep again, and then at 4am I had to go and comfort Monkey, who'd had a bad dream about Pippi Longstocking (as you do), so it wasn't the best night ever, but it was a start.

However, the wee small hours are not the tiny moments I was thinking of.

Yesterday we went to one of the local playgrounds before it got too dark. This one has a small carpark right beside the playground itself, with the carpark "road" running around its perimeter, so kids still can't just run from car to swings without looking. I had to change Mabel's unsuitable shoes for her runners, and as Monkey was already out of the car, and since there was nobody else around and there were no other cars in sight, I told him he could go on over to the playground without us. But, to make the point, I cautioned him still to make sure he was crossing safely.

As I glanced up, I saw him stand conscienciously at the edge of the marked spaces and look carefully right and left in the deserted carpark.

When we joined him on the other side, he was chuffed. He beamed at me. "Now I can do that all times." I didn't want to deflate him, but I had to add some caveats: only when I say you can, and not even every time at this playground, only when it's empty enough. It was such a tiny thing to me to give him - the chance to walk a few yards unaccompanied - and yet to him it was the opening up of a whole new world of responsibility and grown-upness.

Other shoe. (Third shoe.) Dropping.

I don't particularly want to talk about the fact that Monkey barfed up all his apple juice and cheerios just before we left for school this morning, meaning that we didn't get to leave for school and Mabel and I also didn't get to meet up with friends at the playground on this, possibly the last day of lovely mild weather before it gets cold again, and how instead I spent most of the day lounging in front of the tv, gingerly enquiring as to the state of his tummy, and finally feeding them both ice cream at IKEA, which may not go down in history as the healthiest turned-out-to-be-dinner ever.

Okay, so the end part wasn't so bad. And when he's lying inert on the sofa Monkey is really very sweet and it stops him jumping on his sister. But still. Not the day I'd envisaged to lead us into the five-day weekend (from his school's point of view). He even missed their Thanksgiving feast, not that he cared as he wouldn't have eaten anything and had missed most of the run-up to it last week. I was working hard on priming him to try some cornbread, but now we'll never know...

You know, it's funny that I never needed a "sick kids" tag before last week. Just as well I'm not drawing any correlation between his finally totally weaning and all this getting sick he's been doing lately. To be fair, I don't think this even was a virus; I think it was just all the snot he'd been swallowing all night, plus a lot of coughing in his sleep, that finally revolted in his stomach and decided to come up again.

[We had discussed how it might be a stomach bug that he had caught or could pass on to other people. Later in the day, when he was still feeling a bit fragile, he said to me: "I think maybe there is a beetle in my tummy."]

You may think that ice cream is not well-advised food for someone with a dodgy tummy. You might be right; we'll see. But I distinctly remember that, when I was small and had a pain, I used to ask for ice cream because that would make it better. My parents, naturally, thought I was trying one on. The thing is, they must have given in, at least some of the time, because I know that it always worked. That was what I was thinking of when I agreed that we could go to IKEA just for ice cream this afternoon. We even went in the exit doors to do it, because sometimes you have to rebel just a little.

Here's something I prepared earlier

I was halfway through a terribly worthy and insightful post when I realised I'd said most of it before. So here's something completely different that I wrote and put elsewhere around this time last year. Apologies if you've read it already, but maybe it bears repetition.

Top Tips for Taking your Children to New York City
to Experience the Magic of Christmas

1. Don't.

2. Or at least wait a few years, till they're big enough to enjoy it and not keep needing naps.

3. Or a few years after that, when they can go on a school trip and you can catch a show and go out to dinner like real people.

4. If you must go now, try to pick a weekend with good weather.

5. When lamenting that you planned for snow but not for rain, while observing your sodden and wailing baby and mentally waving goodbye to that Best Parenting award, take a moment to check your bag and see if there might just be an umbrella in there after all.

6. Do bring a spare pair of gloves. For everyone.

7. Aim low when planning what you'll get to do.

8. Now aim even lower.

9. The queues will be insane so don't plan to do anything that other people might like to do too.

10. Remember that you have to pay money and queue up just to sit down in New York in December.

11. And that they charge in to museums in New York, because they're not the lovely Smithsonian museums of DC, so don't try to go into MOMA just to find a quiet place to sit down.

12. Especially if it's sleeting and everyone else thought the same thing.

13. Also note that you'll have to stand in line to get into FAO Schwartz, the famous toy shop where they have the giant piano that Tom Hanks played on in Big.

14. Which will then be out of order.

15. [There is even a queue to get into Abercrombie on Fifth Ave, who knows why, not that you'd ever want to go in anyway. They must have been giving away drugs, or free Robert Pattinsons or something.]

16. Do acknowledge that the most fun your three-year-old has might be riding the subway, so make the most of it.

17. Do not get crown tickets for the Statue of Liberty, because your three-year-old will languish spaghetti-like after the first two steps of the 150 or so up to the platform, and need to be carried all the way. The crown is another 300-odd after that.

18. Don't worry. So long as you come home with the same number of children you set out with, the trip was a roaring success.

Have a great time!

Me with a pretty miserable Mabel, just before the rain began.

Bladder half full

Despite the increasingly willful two-year-old (and it's not like she was ever a pushover), it's still the preschooler who drives me to distraction, swearing, and feeling like a very irritated big sister instead of a mature and dignified (who me?) mother on a daily basis.

For one thing, he seems to have started tantrumming. At 4.5, that it's a bit late in the game, but when things don't go his way, he has a new response: drop to the floor and shriek, repeatedly. I'm trying to assess whether it's really a beyond-his-control toddler-style response or if he's just decided it's effective. I tell him I don't like the noise, and I don't pander, and I hold him and comfort him if he seems over-tired or I think it's because he's still getting over being sick, but sometimes I just close the door and leave him to it. Like, for instance, this morning at 5.30am, when he didn't want to be asleep any more and he'd woken the baby, who'd only recently - it seemed to me - gone back to sleep after her 3am waking. If this is the coming-up-to-5 regression, I don't like it, because I have no intention of putting up with it for five more months.

When I'm in a particularly even-tempered mood, I can see that we're making progress on the toilet front. Since I cut out the daily tiny dose of laxitive, which I had thought was essential, he makes it intact to the bathroom and his underpants are delightfully free of skidmarks. This is great; really, it is, and I make sure to make an effort to tell him so.

But. (Aaarghh.)

He seems to be participating in the "how long can you go" competition, and I'd say he's beating whoever the other participants are hands (sorry, pants) down. On a weekday we make him go before school, and by the time he gets home he really needs to go again. But he usually holds it until after nap/quiet time, at which point he's dancing around and shimmying so much he can scarcely unbutton his jeans, never mind aim.

(Another point of progress: since some time last week he's opening his eyes again. This is excellent, even if he's resolutely focusing on a point well north of the location in question.)

Today, being a weekend, nobody bothered to make him go in the morning. It's 2pm and he has just now evacuated his bladder. For the past two hours he has been driving me absolutely demented with the wiggling and the denial and the inability to stand still and the craziness. Then he finally dances up to me, or perhaps sends his minion, Mabel, to inform me that he needs to go, and I have to hold his ears as I promised. So I stand behind him, venting my frustration again by telling him: "See, it would be so much easier if you had gone hours ago," and "Watch what you're DOING;" and then I remember that I'm the one blocking his ears, so he probably isn't catching all my pearls of wisdom.

Half past two, and because of you, I haven't slept a wink

When I was first pregnant, my sister-in-law told me that I'd never sleep through the night again. She may have been right.

At three in the morning, every morning, I am wide awake. Poised to leap, gazelle-like, from one bed to another, proffering solace here, laying on hands there. My sonar is highly attuned, alert to the smallest pre-waking mumble, the creak of a bed being sat up in, the cough of a child who is no longer sleeping through it.

At six, every morning, I am an inert blob, deep in slumber and heavily invested in dreams of taking buses from one vaguely recognised part of a city to another, or having to walk all the way home from Sandycove in the dark, or other things that rarely involve the care and feeding of small people. I think my dreams are trying to reclaim the me that's just me, before I get up and become the me that's such a seemingly vital part of everyone else, again.

[The title is from a great song by an Irish band called The Stunning. Very early-90s. Very not Nirvana. You can hear it here.]

Doctors: Lots, Maud: Nil

When the nurse comments on your new haircut, it's probably a sign that you've been to the doctor's office too often recently.

A quick summary

• Weeks in question: Two
• Office visits: Four
• Co-pays paid*: Five
• Actual illnesses: Two
• Shots: Three
• Prescriptions issued: Three
• Prescriptions filled: Two
• Pain and anguish: A certain amount

Monday of last week, we went to the doctor because I was afraid Mabel had an ear infection. As she's had a cold For Ever, can't yet blow her nose (she thinks she's doing it, but she's just putting her lips together and blowing out between them to make a noise; she's so pleased with herself at this achievement I hardly have the heart to tell her it's not working), and has a history of symptomless ear infections, I'm always alert to this possibility; and she had said her ear hurt. It turned out there was some fluid and a little redness, but no infection. The doctor gave me a scrip in case it got worse, but I never filled it.

The following day was her scheduled two-year checkup. So we went, she's fine, her ears were perfectly healthy, she got two shots, she looked betrayed, that was that.

Monday of this week, as I may have mentioned, we were there again, this time for both kids to be diagnosed with some very obvious pinkeye. Prescription issued, filled, about 3% actually used. Flu shot for Monkey. More betrayal. Recovery enused. So far so good.

Yesterday - Thursday - Mabel woke early from her nap and, after some standard 'I shouldn't be awake' nursing and moping, suddenly started some serious crying, pulling on her ear, and totally unprompted complaining that her ear hurt. Something about her tone, or her face, or the fact that she'd woken up with a Brand New Iteration of the cold, made me call the doctor's office straight away rather than doing my usual "Let's sit on it and see how she feels in the morning." She was clearly in pain, and I couldn't imagine letting that continue overnight.

Luckily, the pediatrician said that they had a cancellation at 5pm - and with our regular doctor, even. I dosed Mabel up with Motrin (infant ibuprofen) and by the time we got there the kids were in fine fettle, chasing each other up the corridors and happy as clams. I felt a bit silly. Then the doctor found a red and raging infection in both ears. I felt less silly. Poor Mabel.

The Motrin wore off at exactly the six-hour mark each time, and I redosed her twice more last night with happy, not to say miraculous, effects. This morning she didn't need another dose and hasn't yet complained of pain. I have filled her prescription but not yet given her any, since it's every 12 hours so I want to wait till bedtime. (So really I didn't save any time by going to the doctor yesterday, except to give myself peace of mind about what was up and license to dose her to the gills with pain reliever.)

We shall not discuss why Monkey felt it necessary to wake up for the day at 3am and sentence his recently returned, even more recently gone to bed, father to be up with him, playing Go Fish at 4 in the morning. He is now sleeping.

*For my Irish or other non-American readers, I should explain that co-pay is what you pay at each doctor's visit. Your insurance pays the rest. Thus, I am in the happy position of only having to pay $15 every time we go, which means I willingly take them along if I suspect something, for my own peace of mind. If we were in Ireland, where your health insurance covers a trip to hospital but not basics like office visits, I'd be seeing the nice people a lot less often. While everyone agrees that the health system in America is broken, it's not exactly fixed in other places, and this is one of the things I'm very grateful for while I have small children.

Sibling revelry

They love each other to bits, these two. According to the chapter on siblings in NurtureShock, their constant interaction, whether they're being sweet or jumping on each other, bodes well for their future relationship. But I think I could see that without being told.

This morning, after I had perpetrated some terrible injustice on Monkey - refused to give him a new hand towel all for himself now that his pinkeye is gone and there was a perfectly good towel-for-everyone in the bathroom, I believe - I spent some time heartlessly ignoring his tantrum. (He elected not to go to school today even though he'd been white of eye for the requisite 24 hours. Given this particular overreaction, he probably was still feeling a bit under the weather.) While my back was turned, Mabel approached him sympathetically and asked, "What's the matter, Sweetie?" When I looked, she was straddling his supine form, stroking him adorably and trying her best to make him feel better.

We've had a spate of knock-knock jokes recently, to add to the chicken crossing the road joke. Monkey has been trying to invent some of his own, with limited success (unless you find surrealism particularly hilarious). He's known the orange one for a while, the one that goes

Knock, knock.
Who's there?
Banana.
Banana who?
Knock knock.
Who's there?
Banana.
Banana who?
[Repeat for as long as you can stand it.]
Knock, knock.
Who's there?
Orange.
Orange who?
Orange you glad I didn't say banana?

But he can't quite get the hang of why this is funny, so he thinks that any repeated word will work. Which leads to Mabel telling me jokes like this from the back of the car:

Knock, knock, Mummy.
Who's there?
Tree.
Tree who?
Tree you glad I'm not a tree.

Humph. Sigh. And then I have to explain to Monkey why it's funnier when Mabel tells it than when he does.

I taught them the interrupting cow joke this afternoon, as we failed to find a fancy new supermarket and instead ended up going to our old faithful Newest Target You've Ever Seen (it's a long story). It goes like this:

Knock, knock.
Who's there?
Interrupting cow.
Interrupting cow wh --
Moo.

Peals of laughter from the back row.

I'm an only child. All this is uncharted territory for me. This sharing of genetic code, of household in-jokes and linguistic shorthand, and having someone who's been there since the day you were born - or the day they were born. Almost all my friends had siblings, of course - come to think of it, they all had more than one, which is probably why I feel like just one is only just enough, but maybe it's all that and a bag of chips. Maybe it's just exactly right. My friends had little brothers who were a nuisance; other people had big brothers whose friends provided romantic fodder; but it never occurred to me that brothers could be best friends to sisters. I always thought you had to have two of the same sex for that to work.

But maybe here, as in so many other things, my children will prove me spectacularly wrong. I hope so.

Inside the mind of a two-year-old

Mabel met a bearded man today.
One of the dads was at the playground, and helped her up onto the bouncy see-saw.
Afterwards she said to me, "Mummy, that man has eyebrows."
"Yes." I suspected there was more to come.
"On his mouth."

Proactivity: Lacking

Plague report: Improving. Monkey's eyes were less red today, there was less gunk all round, and Mabel's never even went pink at all. (Which is just as well because she won't let the eyedrops anywhere near her. Her brother is a model patient by comparison. Four-year-olds are better than two-year-olds, sometimes.) I'm hoping that if we can get through tomorrow symptom-free, Monkey can go back to school on Thursday. Oh please oh please.

Other-things report: Hmm.

I'm not, by nature, a very proactive person. I mostly prefer to let events come to me than to seek them out. My best friend, frustrated by this aspect of my otherwise stellar personality, once told me that I'd never find a job ad in the paper headed "Maud: This is your job." (She was right.) How important something is to me can be measured directly by how much effort I put into making it happen rather than sitting back and expecting it to ensue on its own.

I'm hoping that next year, for example, when Mabel is at school three mornings a week and I start thinking that paid work might be a good thing, all my networking and musings and hint-dropping and LinkedIn-updating (and blog-posting, even) will just come together to produce a lucrative and time-efficient freelancing business without my having to actually go out and get a job. We will see whether this pans out or whether I have to start reading job ads and applying for things that do not have my name already on them. (I'll answer to Maud or my real name. I'm not picky.)

Anyway. I'd been thinking for a while that it would be nice to get some real photos taken of us all, while the kids are in the cute stage and before I start ageing completely gracelessly [whole sidebar post on ageing could go here, but I'll spare you]. I enjoy wielding the camera, and now and then I get a good shot of one kid or the other, or even both piled up on my husband - they're stackable, you know. But that means I'm in about ten percent of our family photos, and when you disregard (that is, when I delete) the ones with a double chin or my terrifying profile (terrifying to me: you didn't know my granny so you can't see how my scale model of her nose is disconcerting, to say the least) or that make me look like a middle-aged Irish housewife (howrya, Biddy) or a forbidding schoolmarm, there's not a lot left that I like. And I realised that the longer I put it off, the more middle-aged I'm going to look, because that, sadly, is the direction in which time marches.

But I didn't do anything about it, because that would be proactive. Instead, I did precisely nothing. And it worked. My sister-in-law recently posted some stunningly gorgeous photos of her daughter (aka The Competition) to Facebook, and when I remarked on them, said she could put me in touch with the photographer and we'd get a 100 euro discount for being recommended. I was still pretending to consider the notion when I realised I'd been daydreaming about what we would all wear for our photoshoot for the past two days (who am I kidding; I've been musing on this, on and off, for maybe a year), and it was really a foregone conclusion. You don't say no when opportunity knocks on your door and offers you a substantial discount on a quality product, do you?

So the one thing, apart from Christmas dinner, that we now have firmly booked for while we're home in Ireland next month, is a professional family photoshoot. I'm thinking we'll go the casual-wear route (for one thing, because that'll be easier to get the kids into, and also because we'll be more comfortable) and all wear jeans with plain tops in solid colours that suit each of us individually and also tone nicely together. Which means (yes, I have been thinking about this; can you tell?) blue and blue for the boys, and either turquoise or maybe lavender for Mabel, and green or rust for me. I might have to go shopping. Perhaps. Just a little.

So tell me, have you ever done professional portraits? What did you wear? Is the everyone-in-jeans-and-bare-feet formula terribly dated or will it age well? I'm haunted by the spectre of B's family portrait from 1977 or so. Not a good era for fashion at the best of times, but his orange-dungaree ensemble has left a lasting scar. This, we wish to avoid.

Plague II

Mabel woke up in the middle of the night to remark, "That's what was in my eye, Mummy. It's a plant." I saw in the half-light from the hallway that her lashes were encrusted with gunk.
"You have pinkeye," I told her. "Keep your eyes closed and I'll fix it in the morning." I think she was quite content to have the same thing as her big brother, and thankfully she went back to sleep.

A while later, I heard Monkey playing unquietly in his room. We are trying a new thing, where I have set an alarm clock in his room to go off at 7am, and the idea is that he will wait until then before waking Daddy up. (Since Daddy made him a jet pack out of cardboard, foil, and duct tape the other day because he'd had a lie in and was all fired up with enthusiasm for parenting, even Monkey can see the benefits of letting him sleep.)

Impressive jet pack. Happy boy, rear view.

The spirit is willing, but the flesh is just awake too early to wait that long. And right now, since Daddy isn't here, I'm the one paying the price. He waited as long as he could, and then I heard him swish swish swish up the hall to us in Mabel's room. (I have discovered why he's so noisy moving about. He doesn't just pad, he slides along the nice shiny hardwood floors on his cold dry feet. Must get a rug.)

Anyway, after some private prevaricating, he appeared in the doorway like the ghost of morning to come, and whispered loudly that he couldn't wait any longer. Or something. We had a lot of whispered to-ing and fro-ing, each one ending with me telling him to go away, and with him leaving for half a second in order to fabricate the next reason why he had to come back in and ask me something else. I told him to put on his dressing gown, and then he claimed he couldn't get back into bed with it on, and didn't want to sit on the floor, and so evidently I had doomed him to just stand there, in the middle of his room, with nothing to do. "It's all a disaster," he gloomed, not leaving the side of the bed where Mabel was inching ever closer to waking up and I was doing everything in my power not to move and rouse her.

Of course, she did wake up, and annouced that she had a wee, and that was that for the morning. It's not the bedtimes that are so bad (for me, the one with the magic boobies) when single-parenting at this stage; but I really hate the mornings. When I finally got to look at the clock, it was all of 6.05am, which means Monkey was probably awake at 5.30 or so. Have we adjusted to winter time? I think not.

So now we have eyedrops, just in case it's bacterial rather than viral, which the doctor couldn't tell at this stage; and based on the amount of success I had putting Mabel's in her eyes, I think I've probably just paid $25 for a very tiny vial of nothing at all and I hope it is viral because I don't know if any of the (gold-coated, saffron-infused, diamond-encrusted) drops will ever go where they're supposed to.

And poor Monkey got a painful injection into the bargain because I asked for him to get the flu vaccine and they had to give him the shot instead of the nice easy nasal spray thingy I'd promised him (because he had a history of wheezing, which contra-indicates the mist), so he was feeling pretty hard done by. He will be needing a largeish bribe-present when we go back for his booster in four weeks. (Somehow he missed getting the second dose last year, possibly because we all had the swine flu itself and I thought two goes of the regular flu vaccine and one of the H1N1 were enough for any boy on top of having got the actual disease it was all supposed to be protecting against; but that means he needs the booster this year instead.)

And all the outing they got today was one to the doctor's in the morning and one to spend half an hour in each of two different drive-through pharmacy queues (the wrong one, and then the right one). Tomorrow we will have to go into the back garden and rake some leaves.

And now I must go to bed to prepare for round three. Tune in tomorrow night for another thrilling installment.

Plague

This afternoon my beloved spouse waltzed off to the airport, where a luxury jet (hey, any plane without your own children on it is luxurious) whisked him away to the exotic city of New Orleans (see, I wasn't even being sarcastic) where he will man a stand and attend a conference and do stuff-y stuff for four days.

Coincidentally, this morning was exactly when Monkey's cold-of-the-damned turned into pinkeye. (Or conjunctivitis, as we stuffy peoples of the North call it. The other sort of stuffy.)

I had a tiny misgiving about such a possibility yesterday when I registered some gunk on his eyelashes, but I must have missed, or been in denial about, the notice stuck to the classroom door last week letting us know that Somebody had pinkeye. (They always want to preserve the anonymity of the child in quesiton. As if we'd all berate them on their return for bringing illness to school. Well, maybe we would.) When I told him this morning what his ailment was, he said wonderingly, "Oh, that's why my eyes were all sticky yesterday." Would have been handy if you'd told me then. On the other hand, it being the weekend, what could I have done? I'll call the doctor in the morning to find out if they want to see him, and I'll keep him home from school, of course.

The terrible thing about pinkeye is that you can't smuggle the sick child anywhere without being certain that everyone else in the place, whatever place it might be - perhaps the supermarket where you had to pick up some milk and apple juice and, being the only adult present in the household, had to take him along - is noticing his bloodshot orb and condemning you for the terrible parent and human being you are. Perhaps a bell and an "Unclean" sign would help.

But with the other one to entertain and nobody else to delegate to, I took them both to a playground this afternoon, since we hadn't had any fresh air at all and the weather was lovely. I tried to pick one where we were unlikely to run into acquaintances and which is usually pretty empty; but it being Sunday afternoon, there were quite a few kids there and Monkey even made a new friend. (Sorry, Ethan's dad. And mum. And entire class.) Germs can't live outdoors, right? Right?

Anyway, one solo bedtime down, four to go. Actually, apart from the hysterics over the number of pieces of toilet roll he should use (again), bedtime was easy. Mabel's over her regression, or whatever it was, and back to just wanting me to sleep the hours of midnight to 6am with her. And she has a new bed that doesn't creak, so sneaking away is much easier now.

Small girl, big bed

Second-tier words

I've never been much of a swearer, certainly as far as Irish people go. I mean, we don't all swear like rock stars, but profanity is to a certain extent more of an everyday event in Ireland than it is in America. At least, it was when I lived there, and when I wasn't in the presence of my parents (who are just not the sort of people you would ever swear in front of: my Dad's worst possible words are Blast and Damn); but that was before I had kids.

Since becoming parents, we've both cleaned up our language to positively spotless: when riled I'll admit to letting fly a "sugar" or perhaps even "flip". (Oh, all right. Sometimes - three times a day or so - the four-year-old elicits a muttered "Jesus Christ". I'm not a saint. It's ironic, really, that the reason you don't swear is also the reason you most want to.)

But then there are the second-tier words: the ones that while not actually bad, are not in the first line of vocabulary you'd want to use in front of the queen. Or the nuns. Mostly those amusing little words like fart and snot. Such words were never required in my house: burping was about as inelegant as bodily functions got, once I was potty trained.

But this house is not my parents' house, and I want my children to be comfortable talking about what happens in the bathroom and elsewhere. Besides, I have a boy. And while I'm all for correct biological terms for body parts, I don't feel the need to make a meal of words and phrases like mucous and saliva and passing gas when there are perfectly good and simpler words available. As a bonus, it's pretty cute when a two-year-old comes up to you and says "I'm 'notty. I need a tissue," or answers your query as to whether she's pooey with a nonchalant "No, I just farting."

SAHM I am

Yesterday, I said a terrible thing. The hairdresser asked me what I did for a living, and I said, "I'm a housewife."

I quickly corrected myself to "stay-at-home-mom," but still. The word hung in the air, fuzzy because I had my glasses off, buzzing with remorse and a desire to be taken back. I don't think I've ever said it before. I didn't enjoy it. I will try hard not to do it again.

I was a bit discombobulated when she inquired. I'm so unused to being asked that question these days; and I have to confess that it rarely occurs to me to ask my friends, the other stay-at-home-moms, what they did in their former lives, or even sometimes what they do in their part-time jobs, or what they plan to do at that hazy point in the future when we all/some/maybe go back to earning a paycheck outside the house. (Not that I get a paycheck inside the house. But then, our division of labour is simple: he earns it and I spend it.)

And I hate small-talk at the hairdressers. There's some sort of addendum to etiquette that means it's perfectly reasonable for a person you've never met before, whom you are paying to provide you the service of cutting your hair into a shape other than that of haystack, which you have been sporting for the past several months (sorry; maybe I'm projecting a little here), to ask you all sorts of questions about your personal life, under the guise of "passing the time".

But I'm never clear on whether it would be polite of me to ask the same things right back; and quite frankly I don't really care. I came here to sit still for an hour without anyone climbing onto my lap and demanding I get a boob out, or making me read single-syllable books over and over, or wanting me to play superheroes or give them ice cream. I'm prepared to answer you politely, but I don't really want to get into anything futher. Besides, the woman in the chair beside me is having a much more interesting conversation and you're cramping my earwigging, thank you very much.

So I said housewife. And then I felt dirty, and as if I'd let the side down.

When I absolutely have to, on tax forms for instance, I list my occupation as "homemaker", which is barfalicious enough. But housewife reeks to me of 50's, Mad-Men-without-the-glamour; it seems horribly middle-aged and so very, very non-feminist. I read a blogger, Kristin, who refers to herself and others post-ironically as "houseladies". I'm not really sure if that's better or worse.

Mind you, when I was an editor I didn't particularly like telling the hairdresser that either, because you usually have to explain it further so they don't think you're in charge of a newspaper or something, and really, it's all too tiring, darling, when I'm trying to relax and be primped. (A former co-worker was asked by one of the canteen ladies what his job was. "Editing," he replied. "Ah, edditing and everyting," she laughed. He laughed along, paid up, and moved swiftly onwards. [You might need to affect a Dublin accent for this to work.])

This is not the first haircut story I've blogged. The other one was much funnier. You should go and read it.

The long and short of it

Irish people are not particularly tall. B and I are not particularly tall Irish people, descended from long lines of Irish people who were less than over-lofty. In fact, at 5'4 I do tower over my mother, who is 5'1 and three quarters (and really resents not having got that final quarter inch which would have made clothes fit her so much better, apparently); and at 5'9, B is the tallest of his family. As far as I was ever bothered, we were just in nice porportion for slow dancing, which was my greatest concern way back when I was judging guys by their height and ability to sway pleasingly to Extreme's "More Than Words".

So our children are not destined to be giants, generational increases notwithstanding. When Monkey was born he was exactly average: 7.5 lbs. He went up to the 80th percentile for much of his first year but after that he gradually came down the curve to 50, where he has remained. (Miraculously, given his eating habits. Peanut butter is really good for you.) He is of average size, which I think is doing well, genetically speaking.

Mabel is a bit smaller: she was only 6.5 lbs at birth (but three weeks early, so that's understandable) and at her two-year checkup yesterday she was 25th percent for heightand 30th for weight (or the other way round; you get the picture). She's just a little little, which explains why she's still not quite tall enough for her 18-24 month bottoms and the 2T pyjamas are floating on her.

Playground conversation yesterday (among the adults rather than those fighting over the correct placement of the stick collection) touched on skinny kids and big babies, and how pointless all the percentile charts are except as vehicles for making mothers feel bad, or cocky, or confused, and leading pediatricians to say silly things like, "Melt a stick of butter and pour it all over his cheese twice a day."

Thing is - and my grasp on statistics is hazy as best, so maybe I'm wrong here - the charts tell you where average lies - at the 50th percentile - and run down a bell curve on each side to the start where only 1% of children are smaller, and the end where 1% are bigger. Right? So if your child is "off the charts" in either direction, either your child doesn't exist, as a member of the 0%, or - dun dun dunnn - the charts are total baloney. Let's go for the second option.

A chunky Monkey, at 6 months

(Update: My loving husband has pointed out that yes, my grasp on statistics is so hazy as to be completely deluded. If your child is off the charts, they are in fact smaller or larger than 99% of the other children, but there is no upper or lower limit, and so the doctors are not, in fact, denying their existence. But I liked it the way I said it, so I'm calling it poetic licence and refusing to let actuality stand in the way of my art.)

Quick and dirty

A quick one, because between this afternoon's no-nap-extravaganza and my pilates class this evening (which will probably give over-tired Mabel an attack of the separation-anxieties and mean she won't let me go once I get home and finally put her to sleep), I doubt I'll have any time to post anything more today.

The end.

All right, so that explanation took as long as actually writing the post would have, but here's the post anyway. I promise not to proof it, so it won't take any extra time.

(I may be lying about that.)

Yesterday I fished out a pair of trousers from the back of Monkey's drawer that he hadn't yet worn. I'd got them on sale during the summer, and they're sort of blue cargo pants. I thought he might like them because they had plenty of pockets, but you can never predict how he's going to react to a new item of clothing, especially when it's (a) not jeans and (b) not superhero themed. Anyway, it turned out he loved them more than anything he's ever had in his whole life, because they have a giant hook-and-eye closure at the top of the fly instead of a boring old button or snapper. He thinks they're the coolest thing ever.

So much so that when we got to school this morning he ran over to his teacher crying, "Look at this, Miss Ann!" and proceeded to start unbuttoning his trousers. She was a little taken aback, but years of teaching four-year-olds must prepare you to be unfazed at all times. "Look at the cool fastener on my trousers!" She said to me, laughing, that she thought at first he was about to show her his underpants. As if.

Later, on the way home, he asked me when he'd be able to click his fingers like Daddy can. I sympathised, and said he'd have to practise a lot and his fingers would have to get stronger. "And they need moisturiser," he pointed out.
I agreed that when your skin is too dry it doesn't work.
"Or you can just put your fingers in your nose," he added.

I'll leave you with that lovely thought for the day.

Today: A comedy in three acts

Act I

Car.

Monkey: I wuv you, Mabel.
Mabel: Nooo.
Monkey: You're the bestest.
Mabel: I don't beweeve you.
Both: Hysterical laughter.

Act II

Supermarket.

Mother experiences hubris as she pushes her delightful children around, watching the smiles of passersby admiring the two blond heads munching contentedly on their bagels and driving their car-trolley.

Nemesis clatters her over the head: "I wanna get ouuuuut."

Nonetheless, things continue pretty well. Both children walk/skip/jump close by as she makes her way through the vegetable department, remembering how child 1, at just two years, would have been a disaster on wheels in this situation: once released from his bonds, he was like a mobile destructo-robot set to maximum carnage and knockage-over. Somehow, having two helps them orbit in smaller circles, and child 2 is less prone to examining everything from point-blank range.

Nemesis strikes again after the checkout when the toddler screams and refuses to be put anywhere safe for the journey back across the car park. Toddler is stuffed unceremoniously into the back-carrier. Passersby are still smiling, but somehow it's different now...

Act III

Dinnertime.

Child 2: I need a fork for my broccoli. [Proceeds to eat all her broccoli.]
Mother: [Last laugh.]

Ravelry

Yesterday's time change has, of course, wreaked havoc on our always-wobbly sleep schedule. This morning Mabel woke early and I managed to keep her in bed nursing for a long time. I was pretty happy with myself and thought we must have made it through the extra hour or so and be back at normal getting-up time by now. When she finally couldn't be contained any longer and left the room, intersecting with her brother on the way in to jump on Daddy, I looked at the clock to find it said 5.30am. Not so much, then. It did give us a nice leisurely morning before school, but sleep would have been better.

I spend so much of the night sleeping with Mabel at the moment that it feels strange to go to bed on my own. I know I've remarked on this before, but some cave-dweller part of me feels that it's just wrong for each child to be asleep in a separate room, breathing and dreaming, apart from me. It's a tiny precursor of all that will come as more and more of their lives become their own and not mine. Already Monkey needs no assistance to sleep and stay that way; I suppose, much as I complain about Mabel wanting me with her all the time, I'm not ready for her not to.

Or maybe it's just habit.

There was a while when she was younger when I really needed to get to sleep in my own bed before she'd wake up needing me, or else I wouldn't be able to fall asleep at all. Then, I got so accustomed to it (and perhaps it was winter and I was chilly) that I couldn't fall asleep until she woke and needed me to snuggle up with her. Now I'm somewhere in between: I treasure the time in my own bed, but if I don't fall alseep there I'll fall asleep in hers. I'm not picky.

More important to me is the indescribably luxurious feeling of crawling into the smooth expanse of empty (but still lingeringly warm) bed every morning for my extra hour or so after B gets up with the children. I would feel guilty - or I should say, I used to - but he gets six solid hours while my seven or eight are very much interrupted. I need more sleep than he does anyway, and I'm over apologising for that, because it's just biology. But I really, really, really do appreciate both his generosity in giving it to me, and our luck that his job does not demand that he be at a desk somewhere in the city at 8am - his commute takes 5-10 minutes and his starting time is very flexible.

I have a friend who collects stories of how other people with kids sleep: since finding that she couldn't get her two-year-old out of her bed, she's fascinated by how many of us end up sleeping with our children, big fancy cribs and plans otherwise bedamned. Her neighbour's husband, for instance, ends up sleeping with their seven-year-old son in a single bed every night. I think one way or another, whether we're in their beds or their in ours, whether we start out there or end up there by morning time, families' sleeping arrangements are a lot more fluid than most people admit to. And that's okay. Eventually they'll all sleep on their own, for a while, before they start looking for a more exciting person than you to share their bed with. And then we'll have a whole new bunch of things to worry about.

Granola

I really like this town. It's just crunchy enough for an aspiring hippie like myself, without being overpoweringly hemp-and-tie-dye and I-can't-believe-you-vaccinate.

For example. At our regular Wednesday lunchtime playground session a month or two ago, there was a newcomer with her two-year-old and her burgeoning bump. She said they'd moved to the area fairly recently and, wanting a natural birth, she'd looked up midwives in the yellow pages (or Googled them, more probably) and found a place called Special Beginnings in Annapolis. She wondered if any of us had heard of it.

We looked around the table, did a quick headcount, and said, "Well, three out of the four of us had our babies there." The fourth had gone to a birthing center attached to a hospital nearby. She was delighted to find such good recommendations. I just thought it was amusing how many of us had had non-mainstream births.

That day wasn't particularly an anomaly, though there could easily have been others at the table who had gone the more "normal" route with a planned epidural or a c-section at a hospital; and of course those who despite hoping for a drug-free birth may have ended up with something else instead. No matter what your birth plan, you have to allow that the baby, or nature, sometimes has other ideas.

But "normal" in this context is such an odd word. If we were in The Netherlands or Germany, a normal birth would be at home, or less commonly in a birthing center. Even in Ireland, where I always assumed I would have my children, and where hospital births are the norm, they are mostly attended by midwives. Giving birth is not an illness or an injury: the notion that it should happen in a hospital has only been around since the 1950s or so, and even then, clearly not everywhere.

Mabel's birth was so quick and "easy" - that is, not remotely painless, but very straightforward - that I always said if I had a third I would do a home birth. The idea of being able to just lie back down in my own bed and go to sleep for the night with my new baby beside me, at home, is divine. Right now, the idea of a third is, while not off the table entirely, definitely mostly hypothetical. But a home birth would not be so easy to pull off, because technically such a thing is difficult (if not impossible) to do legally in this state. Ironically, it would be easier to have one in Ireland.

But if I was in Ireland, I suspect I'd qualify as a fully fledged crazy hippie, whereas here I'm just in the minor league.

Ten reasons to host a birthday party

1. Leftover cake.

2. Getting the countertops cleared off for the first time since your last party.

3. A perfectly valid excuse to drink champagne in the middle of the afternoon.

4. Enabling the two-year-old to acquire a new baby without actually having to buy her one.

5. There's no point hoovering beforehand, and afterwards you can really see the crumbs so you're more motivated to do it.

6. Paintings are now on the wall instead of on the floor leaning against the wall.

7. Moving all cardboard boxes out of the main part of the house. Even the Very Important Cardboard that had been made into wings. If he doesn't miss it before Tuesday, it's recycling.

8. You hardly ever look in the basement anyway.

9. How good the cup of tea tastes when everyone's gone home and you're basking in the glow of a party well thrown.

10. Leftover cake. For breakfast.

Two

Mabel is now two; an age much more commensurate with her climbing abilities and vocabulary. It was really ridiculous to think that the little person I was having conversations with was still technically just one. It also feels odd to have a four-year-old and a two-year-old: that makes them sound two years apart, whereas of course they're two-and-a-half years apart, which is a very different kettle of fish. At least in my head.

The lack of baby was taken stoically; in fact, it wasn't even remarked on. She spent most of the day feeding herself the baby bottle and talking on the pink phone (the other item in the diaper-bag set, because what self-respecting mother doesn't have a pink phone to talk on?) She was moderately interested in the kitchen set, and also recieved some lovely wooden furniture and people for the dollhouse, so the presents have been judged a success.



If she'd just start sleeping like a two-year-old, that would be nice; but then maybe she already is. I can't really complain (yes I can; here I am complaining) until she gets over this horribly snotty recurring cold, and then there's the two-year sleep regression (things have been a little better than last week on that front, if you don't count last night when I went to re-settle her at 9.30pm and couldn't leave till 12.45am), and of course the hour going back this weekend will mess up bedtime for a week or so, and then it'll be nearly Christmas when we go to Ireland and totally confuse everyone's body clocks, so I have my excuses set up all the way to mid-January for why she can't be expected to sleep any better.

Cargo

The shipment. Ah, the shipment.

The stuff can be divided more or less as follows:

• wedding presents that we asked for
• wedding presents that we didn't want
• toys from the past two Christmases
• almost-useless electronic items
  
• yard-sale fodder
• pure trash
• small-to-large bowls/vases/jugs

I feel like I'm being haunted by the ghost of my twenty-something self. I never realised she had such crappy taste.

In my twenties, I was living the swinging (not literally), single (sometimes) life of a college graduate with a cushy job in booming software and a flat in the inner suburbs of Dublin. I liked stuff; in fact, I desperately wanted to own stuff, because once I moved out of my parents' house, and after my first flatmate had moved on and taken all his nice stuff with him, it became painfully obvious that I didn't have any. I could fill the shelves of my bedroom with books and clutter up the top of my chest of drawers with bottles of unguents and mugs filled artistically with makeup brushes, but once you stepped into the kitchen/sitting/dining room, the grubby white walls and landlord's furniture were unassailed by anything at all.

Unfortunately, priorities for my disposible income, such as it was, were clothes, shoes, and going out. I had no inclination to spend my hard(ish)-earned dosh on furnishings, pictures, objects d'art, and so on; so I relied on picking up the odd item here and there in the cheapest of shops and getting interesting birthday presents from people whose taste may or may not have coincided with mine. I seem to have amassed a lot of small bowls, quite a few jugs, and more yellow vases than you would think someone who has no inclination towards gardening might ever need. Also a horrible number of cheap and nasty whatsits, thingies, and tchotchkes. And some framed postcards.

So we have plenty of bowls now. Come over and sample a selection of chips and dips, won't you?

In the event, the unwanted toys took up very little of the useless-crap space in the shipment. Mabel is delighted with her new baby, has been playing with the Little People farm and the Sticklebricks, and the few books have been perused. Much more useless, heavy, and space-taking-up was the entire mid-size stereo, complete with two speakers, that inadvertently came across the Atlantic to us.

No, this wasn't a wedding present. What happened was that in addition to the nice boxes of dinner service and the several Waterford Glass objects we didn't ask for and don't like (and couldn't return for credit as we did several more), there was a bunch of stuff in the room (henceforth known as The Room) that had come from B's mother's house when she downsized a couple of years ago. So along with two bags full of past exam papers (Leaving Cert Chemistry, anyone?) and physics notes and reject photos, we got the stereo that I'd lent to her when I left the country and hers had been on its last legs. When she got a new one and brought the loaner back to my parents' house, it was put in The Room with everything else of ours. And then it was packed and lifted and driven and loaded and sailed and unloaded and driven and finally unpacked, to my horror and dismay, in our living room. Technically, it works; but it would need a transformer and a plug adaptor and it's horribly out of date (though it does have a double tape deck and a five-CD changer as well as knobs and buttons and slidey things). If you'd like it, let me know and we'll work something out. So long as it doesn't involve shipping it back to Ireland again, because I don't think I'm up for that.

Even more annoyingly, I opened another box to find my Irish hairdryer - the one I had specifically asked for as a Christmas present last year because I was sick of using a 15-year-old model every time we went home, and that was absolutely definitely meant to stay in Ireland. It will be going straight back with us at Christmas this year, taking up valuable luggage real estate, and I will be very grumpy about it.

Presents aforethought

When Monkey turned two, I spent some number of weeks, if not months, contemplating and then sourcing his presents. He got a trike, a tent, and a Duplo train set.

The tent in question on the morning of the birthday

Mabel considers the trike hers now, though her feet don't yet reach the pedals. The tent still provides fun and a place to hide from monsters for all, and the Duplo is in regular rotation. Mabel will be two in two days, and this morning, with very little forethought beyond how to get there without any children, I left her with a friend and dashed out to Target to pick up something for her.

Since Monkey had thrown a hissy yesterday when I tried to drag them both, too late in the day, to the supermarket, I had to do the regular shopping as well as track down the perfect present, all in the scant hour I had carved out between school drop-off and Mabel's music class. So there was no perusing the toy aisles at leisure, no weighing the pros and cons of Little People versus Weebles, no doubling back to the art supplies (kept inexplicably far from the toys) for perhaps some magic does-not-write-on-walls-or-sofas markers and paper.

Mabel wants a baby. But she already has five babies: Dolly, Baby, Little Baby, Baby with Hair, and Fluffy Baby. Two of these are very recent acquisitions, one having just arrived in the shipment from Ireland. We had a discussion last week about how she might get a baby for her birthday, but it won't be a real baby. She wants a real baby, but has accepted - for now - that she can't have one, and certainly not two, until she's grown up. (Mind you, she told me this morning that Monkey is a grown-up. Hooray, I can be a grandmother in just two years' time!)

So maybe I'm crazy, but I decided not to buy her a new baby in Target today. (B's reaction to this was: "Tharg not sure how this will go down." Indeed.) I bought her some baby accessories instead - a set with a bottle and a changing bag and a nappy and, I dunno, something else. She's fascinated by the notion of baby bottles - never having had her own, I don't know how she even knew what to do with one, but as soon as she found them in Monkey's classroom last year, her favourite thing to do every morning as we dropped him off was to give the dolls there a bottle.

I also got a bucket o' kitchen sort of thing: a tub containing play cooking stuff that handily folds out into a mini kitchen and then folds back over to hold it all. She's clearly into imitative play, so I think she'll like it. And a new pair of shoes.

I will keep you posted on the reception.

By contract

I have finally weaned the baby.

No, not that baby. The other one. My firstborn is no longer breastfeeding.

If you're new(ish) to the blog, and especially if you know me in person, this may come as a bit of a shock. You might even be horrified, and not sure whether you can look me in the eye again next time you see me. You'll get over it.

Fact is, I didn't go shouting this momentous news in the nursery school classroom or at the playground this week. I don't really talk about it anywhere except here and with a couple of close friends. I even contemplated not blogging about it, now that I've gone just that tiny bit more public with this, but that wouldn't be fair to my legions (legions, I tell you) of readers who are here because of the "extended nursing" tag and my slight leaning towards crunchiness. And of course, those who were waiting with baited breath for the day this post would appear.

If you want some background on how I came to be still nursing a four-and-a-half-year-old, you'll find it here.

In April, when Monkey turned four, we cut out the pre-bedtime session, and he was down to just the morning. (Some days, that was like this, if you missed it the first time.) And I started telling him that we'd stop altogether when he was four and a half. He agreed, because at the time I may as well have been saying twenty-four and a half: it was a long way off, so he didn't care.

A few weeks ago, I pointed out that his half-birthday was coming up, and we'd be ceasing with the side. He got cold feet and said no, no, no, he'd stop when he was six. Or sixteen. I didn't push it. In the last week or so he began to go straight into his dad in the mornings instead of coming into me. (I'm in the baby's room by then, remember.) Sometimes at breakfast a couple of hours later he'd remember and ask for his side, and I'd give him "five seconds" without demur. I thought that we'd try for the half-birthday cold turkey, but if it didn't work I didn't mind continuing this way if he seemed to need it.

I made a bit of a big deal of his half-birthday. He got a new book, and I made cupcakes at his request, and as it happened it was a weekend day and we had a few friends over. (Since his sister's birthday is coming up, I think it's nice to give him a bit of a treat at this time of year anyway.) That morning, he asked for side after breakfast, and I said "But you're four and a half now, you don't do that any more," and he said, "Oh yeah," and that was that. And he hasn't asked since.

It's called weaning by contract, when you negotiate a time to stop with an older child. I admit this was more pushing than negotiating, but it worked out the same. It was the right time for him, and that made it easy.

I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my two friends in real life (one near, one far) who also have/had long-term nursers: I don't know if I'd have managed to do this for so long without their moral support and positive peer pressure. Friends in the computer are one thing, and stories of other people you don't know are all very well, but there's no substitute for being able to tell your doubting mother that it's quite normal: x and y are still doing it too. Which is to a great extent why I want to tell this story here - in case I can help someone else who's trying to persuade herself or others that people do do this. Normal people you might meet anywhere. We just don't talk about it much.

I'm by no means saying that I think every child should nurse for four and a half years - that would be crazy. I'm not saying that everyone should stop when they're four and a half either; there's no call for that. But I'm happy and proud that, despite all my complaints, and mock complaints, and eye-rolling, and embarassment, and wondering if he'd ever stop, we nursed for as long as was right for us.