Boo!

Hot buttered cinnamon toast (from the good bread place, not just the normal stuff) and tea is a perfectly reasonable Halloween lunch, right?

On a not-entirely-unrelated note, I'm thinking of bribing Mabel with Halloween candy to wean her down to just a couple of times a day instead of all the "I want mumeet while I'm watching TV before dinner" times. That's good parenting right there, I know it.

Dash is off school today, because for some reason even though Halloween is not an offically sanctioned holiday, it warrants a day off. We dropped Mabel at school and went to IKEA, because that's where the fun is. He got a chocolate milk, I got bacon and coffee. We failed to buy a rug for the guest room.

No wonder my mother always says I was no trouble at all. A single child surrounded by grownups is light-years away from two siblings ratcheting each other up to high doh every single second. If it hadn't been for the sinus headache boring a hole in my left eye-socket, I would have had a really nice morning hanging out with my big grown-up (kindergartener) son.

As it was, we had to go home quickly so I could take a Sinutab and make a doctor's appointment for tomorrow. Blech.

Effing and blinding

I was wondering about swearing this morning. I mean, in the abstract; not that I was jumping up and down having just driven an errant nail through my little toe and thinking that there used to be a good word in my vocabulary for just this occasion that had been eroded by all these years of sanitizing my language for use around children. Swearing. The Irish are known for their love of bad language, and I don't think it's all down to that one time Bono said that thing on American national TV. If you've seen In Bruges, you'll know what I'm talking about.


But it's not fair. Other nations swear a lot too, they just do it in their own languages. I'm not saying that all Americans and every Englishman - not to mention the wily Welsh and surly Scots - have speech that's unmitigatedly fair and delightful, but on the whole we Irish are the ones tarnished by the effing brush when it comes to English-speaking countries. (Oh, and the Aussies. They're pretty bad.)

But have you ever heard a Spaniard swear? They've turned it into an art form. It's a point of personal pride to come up with the most elaborate and creative profanities imaginable. (Which made me wonder if it's something common to Catholic countries...) I'm sure other nations in other languages are also quick to blaspheme and find release in using rude words, we just don't hear about them. Do the Irish legitimately have a bad rep?


(You know the way every generation thinks it invented sex? Or at least the orgasm? I was pretty certain as a teenager that swearing was a modern innovation and that my parents had probably never heard any of the words my schoolmates bandied about with such vigour. Convent girls, you know, are the worst. This was not helped by the fact that our Shakespeare was sanitized and somehow they managed to choose only those very few poems in the world that are not literally or metaphorically - at least on the first, second or third readings - directly about sex for our exam texts. I was very surprised when I went to University and discovered that everything anyone has ever written that qualifies as English literature is actually about sex. But I digress.)

So what do you think? Does every language have its potty-mouths? Are Latvians the Bonos of the Baltics, perhaps? Do the Flemish put the phlegm in vitriol? Are the Japanese really calling each other by arcane words for genitalia when they do all that saving face and refusing to say no? Or does every nation think really they could do with cleaning up their vocabulary, at least in front of the children?

Cliff Hanger

I know you're all dying for a potty-training update. It's the most suspenseful narrative since, um, that time Angel was trapped in a box under the sea for a whole summer. For instance.

Our efforts go something like this:

Me: "When you're three, there will be no more pullups. Then you'll wear underpants all the time."
Mabel: "No, when I'm six, I'll wear underpants." 

Mabel, this morning, from the other side of the room where she has barricaded herself behind a fence made of two small chairs, a baby stroller, a large toy car and some items of dollhouse furniture: "I'm just sitting here not doing a poo."

Mabel, just now, as she tripped lightly past me to wash her plastic horsie in the bathroom (she enjoys washing all her toys, frequently, wetly, using up all the soap): "Don't smell me, I'm not pooey."

So you can see how well that's going. She'll be three in a week. We're going away that weekend, but once we come back, will I stick to my guns, or will my carpet forever regret it?

Assimilation

One of the other mothers at school (didn't I start yesterday's update with that line too?) said to me yesterday that they had been slacking off this year on their family pumpkin-patch visits. I tried to explain how this tradition strikes non-natives.

Well, I've only been here, what, almost nine years, and we've only had kids for the last five and a half, and pumpkin patches really don't impinge on your consciousness as a child-free adult. And then there's the requisite number of years spent thinking that it's a particularly ridiculous American thing to take your small child, dress it up (preferably as a pumpkin), stick it in a pile of hay with some real pumpkins and take photos. Because that's what happens at pumpkin patches, right? So at this point we're only really starting to work past our natural Irish cynicism and embrace the autumn tradition.

Dash's first year at nursery school, he was in the youngest class, and their "field trip" to the pumpkin patch took place in the school playground, where some straw was strewn and pumpkins placed. I didn't really even notice it, except that a pumpkin appeared in his tub at the end of the day. We took it home and put it outside the front door, where it probably sat and rotted sadly until about January. His second year, the day of the field trip was our second day back after a trip to California for a marathon, so he wasn't really feeling up to school. I ended up walking him down to the lake where the patch for the "big kids" was created, and accidentally discovering that it was quite a nice thing.

2010 pumpkin patch

They bring a lot of hay and a small pumpkin for every child (and a few over) down to an area beside our local lake that's a short walk from the school. The kids walk down, find a pumpkin and have their name written on it by a teacher or parent (to avoid disputes later). Then there's playing in the hay and snacktime, and then we all walk back up, pulling the pumpkins in little wagons. Somehow, it takes most of the morning, and it's delightful. Last year I was happy to find I was scheduled to co-op on the day of the walk, and this year, with Mabel, I embraced my role as self-appointed event photographer (along with most of the other parents there) and went along just for the heck of it. They're always happy to have a few extra helpers to stop the kids from pitching into the lake or burying a classmate irretrievably in the hay.

2011, Mabel helps

So we've still never been to a real pumpkin patch, the sort where the pumpkins actually grow. I'm ashamed to admit that I bought our big pumpkin in the supermarket this year - on the other hand, it's the first year I've actually gone and purchased one to carve at all. At real pumpkin patches, there are scarecrows and hay rides, and probably farm animals to pet, and all sorts of things I can't even imagine. Maybe next year we'll assimilate a little further and do that. One step at a time.

MTV generation

Never mind school; my children learn everything they know from television.

Dash impressed the zoo employee at the cheetahs' area last week no end by knowing not only why the cheetah needed such a big nose (to breathe in lots of oxygen to run fast) and such big teeth (to eat meat) but also what sort of meat it ate (antelope). This is directly related to the fact that the episode of his favourite show - Wild Kratts -  that he'd watched the previous day was the one about the cheetahs.

One of the other parents from Mabel's school told me that she had brought her violin in to play something for the children when she was co-opping last week. When she took out the bow, she asked the children if anyone knew what it was. Mabel piped up:
"I know! It's a violin thingy!"
The mother was impressed.
"That'll be because we took the music and art class last year, and the teacher had a little violin that the children could try out," I told her, proud of my little Rimsky-Corsikoff.
On the way home, I asked Mabel how she had remembered the violin. Was it from music and art?
"No, it was from Little Einsteins."

Of course it was.

Mugshots

Mabel's Irish passport is due for renewal in a few months' time. (To recap: our kids were born in the US to two Irish parents. So they have two passports each.) The first US passport lasts five years, but the first Irish one only lasts three, which is good, because her current passport photos show a squishy two-month-old with dark brown hair and dark blue eyes. Like this:

Excuse crappy quality. You wouldn't believe the lengths I will go to to avoid scanning things.

When Dash was three and needed his new passport, he was in the midst of one of his stranger-averse bouts, and was especially shy of men he didn't know. I took him along to our local CVS hoping to get the nice lady who was usually behind the photo desk, but there was a male employee instead, and the endeavour was doomed from the get-go. (Or from the gekko, if you prefer. Those lizards.) Dash just refused to stand in front of the white background, and that was that.

An outtake

In the end, I took a shot at home against the white wall, sized it on the CVS machine that actually has a very useful passport photo setting, and sent it off to the Irish embassy with his application with some trepidation. 

  

This is the one we ended up using. (Awww.) They sent it back ensconced in its very own new Irish passport, so they must have decided it was okay. (Either that, or they give you a little leeway on three-year-olds' photos. I began to understand why the US didn't require it till five.)

This year, I thought it would be a doddle to get my gregarious daughter to stand on a stool and smile at a camera for a few seconds. I mean, the girl bids a cheerful "Hi!" to every stranger we pass. Anxiety is not an issue here. Plain old grumps, on the other hand... We got to CVS and the nice lady was there. Mabel was put standing on a box on a chair and asked to look at the camera, while two other employees watched closely to learn the correct technique for taking a good passport photo.

Because I have grown as a person in the two years since we did this with Dash, I had the good sense to bribe her with something small from Target, where we were going next, to get some cooperation. With the promise of a new baby fresh in her head (I didn't say new baby, but she decided I had - we ended up with playdough, which made everyone except the carpet happy for an hour or two) she acquiesced. Eventually, I came home with this.

I decided it was too blurry and her hair was obscuring her eyes, and then it turned out it didn't quite fit the size requirements for the Irish photo (which of course, are a tiny bit different from the requirements for the American one; for one thing, they're in metric). So it was time to make my own again. I thought I couldn't possibly do any worse.

First, it took two days to let me trim her fringe (bangs). You might think it would be easier to just use a hairclip, but maybe you haven't met Mabel. Second, we have no more white walls. Luckily enough the basement door is opposite a window and lacks visible smudges. Then she had just woken up and was suffering from nap-head, but wouldn't let a brush within a million miles of her.

 

So we have: unruly hair, sticking-up fringe, mouth open (not allowed), head not straight, and a shine on the door behind her. Not to mention whatever weird thing is going on with her nose there. I swear it doesn't normally look like this.

Next comes the mugshot. This could be right up there beside Lindsay Lohan. She looks like she just knocked over a 7-11 for some fried chicken, and they'd run out of ketchup and then she got caught to boot. Not helped by the scab on her chin. I don't know what she did to her chin.

I think this is the one we're going with. Head straight, mouth closed, looking at the camera. How do you rate my chances? At least her hair is brushed, right?

Just say no - to housework

This morning has been one of those accidental housework days. I thought to myself "Ugh, should clean the downstairs toilet," and "Maybe I'll hoover the stairs too," and now I've spent an hour and a half noticing things like grimy baseboards and sticky fingers on doors and - here's the kicker - doing something about them instead of shrugging and deciding to leave it to the housework fairies, as I usually do. And now the stairs still haven't been hoovered and I've doomed myself to do the shopping with two children in tow because I have no more free mornings this week, but a girl's gotta blog. And those darned housework fairies, they keep cancelling on me. It's so hard to find good help nowadays.

I walked to school with Dash this morning; possibly the first time I've brought him to school without Mabel, and therefore on foot. It was nice to chat uninterrupted - we get far too little one-to-one time these days. And I took the opportunity to talk to him about drugs.

Yes, he's five, and I don't think he's getting into bad company just yet. (Five-and-a-half today, actually.) But according to a notice that came home from school on Friday and I found this morning as I rooted for his lunchbox, this is Red Ribbon Week, and we will celebrate not taking drugs this week (I paraphrase) by wearing a team jersey on Monday (don't have one, Batman will have to do - Go Team Gotham!), crazy socks on Tuesday, something red on Wednesday, sweats on Thursday, and the costume you were going to wear anyway for the storybook parade, which is the school's "not Halloween" (I see through their cunning scheme) on Friday. How this helps beat drugs I'm not sure, and I really have no idea if the kindergarteners will be participating in anything about it, but I thought I should give him some warning in case someone comes along to tell the five-year-olds not to do drugs.

Seriously though, it's probably another of those things, like sex, and bullies, and religion, that you should mention to your children early and often, so that it's something we talk about at home, not something that's never mentioned and therefore (a) your parents have never heard of or (b) totally tabboo. And actually, the subject has come up before, earlier this year when a friend's husband was mugged and I was trying, with difficulty, to explain something about people's motivations for crime, to Dash.

The kids know about cigarettes and how they're bad for you but adults are allowed smoke them if they want to. I tried to extrapolate from there to illegal drugs, first mentioning other sorts of drugs that are fine, like medicine the doctor gives you to make you better. It went something like this:

Me: ... but there are other sorts of drugs that some people like to take because they make them feel good...
Dash: Oh yes, like an inahler.
Me: No, not like an inhaler. An inhaler for asthma?
Dash: Yes.
Me: No, not that. These drugs make people feel good but they're bad for their bodies. And it's against the law to take them.
Dash: Oh.
Me: So I don't think your teacher will talk to you about this at school, but just in case she does, I thought we should first.
Dash: Right. ... I saw a punknin!

... and that was that. Another parenting triumph.

Mrs Tweezers

I can't help thinking that I've done something wrong somewhere. Again. Just for a change. The thing is, I'm so fond of having a quiet life and working things out so that everyone remains (as) happy (as possible) as often as possible, and not getting myself into face-offs with toddlers, because we all know they never end well, that it appears young mistress Mabel has never heard the word "No" in her life. At least, that's what it feels like lately whenever I do say no to her.

It brings to mind the story of Owen and how Mrs Tweezers next door asked his parents if they'd ever heard of saying no, and they hadn't. Mrs Tweezers (ominously enough) filled them in.

Owen's parents eventually found a compromise to keep everyone happy, and Mrs Tweezers and her antiquated notions of childrearing were sent firmly back to the other side of the garden fence - but sometimes, whether it's not staying another five minutes or not getting another cookie, saying no just has to happen. And Mabel is displeased. Depending on her level of nappedness, Mabel is wheedling, whiny, whingy, screamy, shrieky, or appalling. And sometimes I reach a compromise, and sometimes I just can't.

I don't think she's spoilt, but then, what parent ever does? Yes, she's the baby; but I try my hardest to treat them both the same when it comes to things like cookies and priveliges - not least because I know I'll have trouble on my hands from the elder lemon if I don't. I am trusting that we're doing pretty much the same with this one as we did with the other, and while he's certainly not a done deal yet, he's just that much less of a work-in-progress that I can see a light at the end of the tunnel, and it seems to be a good sort of light. (More daylight, not so much oncoming train.)

Stripes for the kitchen

Every time I upload photos from my camera (download, upload, it's all the same to me...up to my computer, down from the camera, blah...) I get a message telling me that there are duplicates and asking whether I want to re-upload them or not. (Because I don't delete the camera contents until I've printed out hard copies of the ones I want for my old-timey paper album, just in case something happens to the laptop.) Usually, I get the right answer to this question, and leave the duplicates alone. But every time I see the prompt I remember the time I uploaded a batch shortly after Mabel was born, when I gazed at the question in genuine puzzlement, unable to work out which way I should answer, and eventually chose poorly. Baby brain in action.

(There was also the time I couldn't for the life of me remember whether it was half as much water as rice, or the same amount, or twice as much. That was baby brain #1.)

Then I upload the photos and iPhoto promptly crashes, becasue it is the red-headed stepchild of iThings and I don't like it at all and it appears the feeling is mutual. (Sorry, Mr Jobs. Nothing personal.)

All that is to say that I just uploaded/downloaded yet more photos for your viewing enjoyment.

Remember back when we bought the house? And moved in? And had the bench made in the kitchen? (Hmm. Apparently I didn't blog that development, but it happened while we were away that summer.) And the next step was to get cushions for the bench? Well, here we are a mere year and some number of months later, and whaddaya know, we have cushions! I had known pretty much all along where I wanted to get them (www.customcushions.net) and the fabric I wanted, but I just kept procrastinating on finding the tape measure and clicking the Purchase button.

See the red/orange napkin over the back of the chair? That was my inspiration. I nearly second-guessed myself on the colours and went for something safer, but in the end I'm glad I stayed with my first choice.

Of course as soon as I took them out of the box, the children started to jump on them. But I'm hoping that once the novelty wears off, it might cut down the amount of walking all over the window seat that happens now. Don't disillusion me, 'kay?

Introducing Dash, and some new superheroes

Monkey - no, I think it's time for an upgrade: Dash. His new name is Dash. Monkey isn't really "him" any more, and in my travels on the Internet I have noticed that far too many other bloggers, in a fit of originality, have dubbed their offspring Monkey. I will try not to make this too confusing for you.

Dash, then, has never shown any great artistic talent. This is not terribly surprising: I take more after my can't-draw-a-straight-line-with-a-ruler mother than my architect and sometime watercolourist father, and B will tell you that he reached the zenith of his artistic heights with a pencil drawing of a blue-tit at the age of ten. (That's a bird. Really. Stop looking at me like that.) So while it would be nice for my kids to take after their maternal grandfather, the odds are mostly against it. But sometimes, Dash surprises me. It's not that he can't draw, it's just that most of the time he's uninspired to put pencil to paper.

The other day the bigger boys on our road told Dash he could maybe, perhaps, be in their superhero club. These boys are second-graders, seven-year-olds, and Dash dearly wants to impress them. I think his superhero knowledge is standing to him in this respect, as he can discuss Wolverine and Iron-Man and the finer points of Thor's hammer-flinging abilities with the best of them. Immediately after the ensuing battle involving a light saber, a Captain America shield, and possibly some sticks - I didn't step in because at least everyone was still wearing their bike helmets, which I think is an excellent spin-off of all this safety-consciousness we have these days - Dash rushed indoors (dashed, even - see how good this name is?) and sat at the desk, demanding a clean piece of paper and rooting for a pencil.

In the next couple of minutes, and again later on, he came up with the following four new superheroes to show "The Boys". (I'll translate for you, because it's possible you can't read his writing.)

 Slick shot. He, um, shoots things. Slickly?

 Slurp Buzz. He has snakes' tongues coming out of his hands.

LightningBoltGrip. His hands are lightning bolts. Obviously.

And Blast-Four. You can probably read that yourself.

It's been a while since I subjected you to a sample of his artwork. You can really see how he's come along. Okay, so the humanoids aren't exactly DaVinci-esque, and I'm not sure why so many of them are cloven-hoofed, but what I really love about these are the names, and the fact that he sat down and so industriously and dedicatedly came up with them, and asked me how to spell the words and wrote them so well with very little input from me.

This is just one more of those times. The ones when your child acts like every other child, but because you've been there all along, seen him from the days when all he could do was suck and burp, watched him crawl and walk and stumble along the way and keep going - because you've been watching the whole time, it just seems amazing.

Be nice to tourists

It's sad, but to a lot of other people in the world, America is The Enemy.

Not in military or political terms - though that happens too - but for simpler things. America is the enemy of the fight against obesity, against consumerism, the fight to save the planet. Even, sometimes, of common decency, a modicum of modesty, and good old-fashioned politeness.

Hollywood is to blame for a lot of it. Even though Hollywood itself is probably one of the most densely populated centers of people who are obsessively thin, fit, green, and left-leaning, the America it manages to portray to the rest of the world is skewed. We see the extremes, rarely the norms. Because the extremes are more interesting and more fun: they tell better, funnier, sadder, more money-spinning stories. (Because Hollywood is about consumerism. They can't get out of that one.)

But I'm here to tell you that it's a shame. Americans are the politest people I've met. They work harder than anyone else, and whatever they rush to the shops in their enormous cars to buy in bulk, they've damn well earned. (For the most part.) Far from being the sex-crazed heathens so often seen on screens, a lot of middle-Americans are as just repressed and guilt-ridden as their Irish counterparts, if not moreso. Jewish guilt and Catholic guilt cover much of the same ground.

Americans are nice people. They come from a country so vast and variegated that sometimes it's hard for them to see - by which I mean, travel - beyond its borders. Those of us from smaller countries, who can easily travel abroad to places where people speak other languages and live in different ways, eating different things for breakfast and dressing more stylishly, find it easy to scorn someone who has never left their native country; but if you lived somewhere with so many amazing things on your doorstep, you might not either. Many Irish people are more familiar with Benidorm or the Algarve than with the Ring of Kerry or the Giant's Causeway, and that shouldn't really be a point of pride.

Americans are proud of their country, and they show it in ways that some others may find a bit in-your-face, with all the rampant flag-waving and God-Bless-America-ing - but the sentiment is just the same as that of all the Irish people who get obnoxiously drunk and paint their faces green white and orange when our team gets past the first matches of the World Cup. (Any sport.)

So if you're in Dublin and you see some Americans on the Dart, announcing their origins with every step of their bright white runners with their stone-washed, high-waisted, tapered-leg jeans, looking for their roots and being delighted anew at all the quaint, be nice to them. They'd be nice to you.

Wiggles

I was just composing a lament to lost naptime, an ode to naptimes past, when it struck twelve-thirty and there was Mabel looking for mumeet. So we went upstairs, and lo, she is asleep. Hooray for naptime.

I will pay later on, of course, when it will take an hour and a half to get her to sleep tonight, but for the moment the respite is welcome.

I think we're just at that stage, where she needs a nap half the time, maybe less, and when it happens it's vital, but it messes up bedtime no end. So we need a new bedtime routine for the days when she doesn't nap, in order to get her to sleep earlier than 8pm, which was fine in the olden times but not no more. The trouble is that it's difficult to get her to sleep before her brother, unless she's really so fried that she has a total breakdown and I cart her off to bed on the spot.

The old routine started at 7.00 for both of them: pyjamas, game of superheroes, upstairs for teeth and stories in Monkey's bed with Daddy, after which I would be summoned to spirit Mabel away to her downy rest. The new routine goes straight from pyjamas to stories on the sofa with Daddy, and then I take Mabel upstairs for teeth and bed while Monkey gets a reprieve and a more leisurely game of superheroes and whatever else he needs downstairs.

This worked pretty well on Saturday, when it was implemented. Monkey decided that if we were having stories downstairs, we should just go ahead and sleep downstairs too, so he carted his duvet and pillow down to the sofa and every one got cosy. Nobody did sleep downstairs, mind you.

 Hm. Looks like pyjamas hadn't quite happened for Monkey at this point.

Earlier today, looking at a two-inch-high plastic horsie, of whom Mabel is particularly fond:

- Mabel, why does this horsie have no ears? Did you bite them off?
- No.
- Oh. So where have they gone?
- Well, they were wiggling all over the house, and then we went to the zoo, and they just wiggled off.
- I see.

Meet the babies

- Mabel, how many more babies do you think you need?
- Lots.

You have no idea how hard it was to get them all to sit up straight with their eyes open, facing the camera, without any kicking and biting going on.

Mabel would like to introduce you to everyone:

A few more group shots:

Baby can-can

Square o' babies

With our proud Mama/overlord

Hanging out, watching TV. We seem to have been infiltrated by Baby Elmo.
He's a bit furry, but hey, he's a baby too, so it's okay.

Meanwhile, T-Rex realises he's fallen out of favour. I have a bad feeling about this.

 

 Dun-dun-duuuuunnnnn....

Things, quickly

1. I should not leave it to the last five minutes of naptime to blog.
2. Oh well, what are you going to do?
3. No, don't go away. That was rhetorical.
4. I had to try to explain sarcasm to Monkey the other day. Then I overheard him explaining it back to his father. He did a pretty good job until he got to the example: "It's like, when you say 'Go right ahead, then.'" I think his father was confused. I may have been addressing my comments to a driver who took my turn at a four-way stop when the need for the explanation occurred.
5. Mabel did the thing with the soap and her hair a second time yesterday. I think maybe she enjoyed being rinsed off at the kitchen sink a little too much. Next time I'll just put her out in the rain.

Girl with a (metaphorical) curl

I had a badly needed haircut this morning, at a new place that had been recommended by a few friends. I wasn't sure about it at first, but now that I've had a while to pose in front of the mirror at home and flatten it down some from its slightly Jersey-Shore proportions, I think it's not bad. The acid test, as always, will come when I wash and dry it myself, but I can put that off for a good few days yet.

Mabel had a perfectly good morning at school, but it deteriorated horribly when I removed her hastily from playgroup at lunchtime and she had a screaming fit all the way home in the car. She was stockpiling the riding toys and refusing to let anyone else play with them even though she wasn't either, so I decided it was time to go. Cue the screaming. And some more screaming, all the way home in the car, because of the indignity of being removed early.

So you would have assumed that no sharing + screaming tantrum = a child ready to nap. You would have assumed wrong, apparently. She sat and nursed on the sofa for a long time, watched TV, and finally was playing alone quite happily, but when we tried to go upstairs and lie down she wouldn't even stay there.

Then she went into the bathroom and plastered liquid hand-soap all over her hair.

You know, she's a perfectly sweet child. Just don't cross her, if you value your eardrums.

Current conversation snippet:

Monkey: Mabel, are you making up these stories as you go along?
Mabel: Yes.
A daughter after her mother's heart.

Steve Miller

Balls in the air. (Hey, get your mind out of the sewer, you.) I mean, I'm juggling. No, not even juggling so much as just doing a few things I should do as a matter of course, but never get around to. Last week I had a routine physical at my GP (such as I have basically never done) and my six-months-overdue girly-bits exam. Today I got my flu shot at Safeway and booked a haircut for tomorrow. I would have requested Mabel's passport forms (her Irish passport will expire soon), but the embassy phone is out of order. Not my fault. The only other major thing is a dental checkup, which I promise to book for myself (and Mabel, come to think of it) when we take Monkey to his appointment next Tuesday. I even hemmed my cords so I can wear them with my boots. I'm so smug I'm practically incandescent.

But this comes at a price. The bathroom needs cleaning (when does it not?) and I'm neglecting my blog. I decide what to make for dinner twenty minutes before dinnertime. I haven't made muffins in ages. (Okay. About a week. And I did make zucchini bread, but I prefer muffins.)

I'll probably fall off this efficiency wagon any day now, but once the phonecalls are made and the appointments written on the calendar, most of it just proceeds as scheduled. I'll throw some new balls up - birthday-party planning, trip-to-New-York planning, housework, even - and juggle them for a while instead, and bit by bit things will happen, or not happen, and we'll all totter onwards regardless.

My son might think that time is an infititely large elastic band that stretches to encompass whatever it is he's doing, and then springs back to get us where we need to be at the appointed moment - but I know better. It just keeps on slipping into the future.

Now I'm going to read a book

Blogging against the clock, here. Blogging like the wind.

Mabel is taking her first nap in four days, and will probably wake up any moment. This morning she had her Best Day Ever at school, and for the first time, didn't want to leave the playground the moment I arrived. I hope a corner has been turned.

It seems as if she's turning corners on several fronts right now. The crazy mama-centricity is wearing off just a little; she may be giving up her naps; and she's showing some signs of interest in using the toilet for its intended purpose. I don't want to say anything about that, for fear of jinxing.

She's still screeching, but that's little girls for you. She's still waking up every two hours (at the outside) until I stay in bed with her, but that's life around here. If her falling-asleep time moves permanently to 7.00 or thereabouts rather than 8.30 or later, as happens any day she hasn't napped, some changes will have to be implemented or I'll miss my pilates class every Wednesday. I'm payed up as far as Christmas, so that's not very reasonable.

I walked to school and back again today, at a slightly more leisurely pace this time. If I can do it twice a week, that will be - well, more exercise than I've taken in a while, that's for sure. I can feel the hill in my glutes the next day in a way that I never do after pilates.

Monkey brought home his first school report last weekend. They get them quarterly, I guess. He was marked PR for proficient in every subject except PE, where he only got an Improving (or something; whatever the next one down was). I find this amusing, since running and jumping and so on are what he likes best, and I wonder what he's done to piss off the gym teacher. Or maybe the gym teacher just doesn't give PRs on principle, unless you're the fastest kid in the class. Either way, I'm quite entirely unconcerned. I also had a word with his class teacher on Friday - she's normally seeing the bus kids onto the bus, so we walkers don't see her at the front door at home time - and she told me he's getting on great, takes his time with his work, is quite the perfectionist. That's one way of putting it, I suppose.

He's happy; she's happy; we're all happy. School is good.

Answers

The answers to all those questions that have been bugging you. Me.


Why does it take Monkey so long to get ready in the morning?

Well, I still don't know what takes so long in the bathroom, though I strongly suspect there's a bit of staring into space, a bit of messing around, and probably some putting as much water as possible into the basin to see how the overflow hole works. But I know part of what he's doing in the bedroom, since I was putting away laundry this morning while he was dressing.
First, he carefully picks out his clothes.
Then, he meticulously folds them.
Then he puts them on.

Why yes, I have Googled "OCD+children", thank you for suggesting that. (I'm not too worried for now, but will be keeping things in mind. I think when two type-A people have children, the likelyhood of extra-super-duper-type-A-ness emerging is pretty high.)


What is Mabel doing with her yogurt raisins?

Not eating them, that's for sure. She's rubbing them all over her ankles and calling it sunscreen.

These cows are small...

I've just spent two hours getting Mabel to stay asleep enough for me to leave the room. It wasn't pretty. I've heard of some parents who can successfully explain to their little darlings that Mommy needs some time with no children in the evenings, so little Tommy has to stay in bed and go to sleep - but I am deeply sceptical about this. Small children were not put on this earth to do things that make other people happy; they'll be nice if it suits them, but basically they're looking out for number one, becuase that's how they're programmed. And where another kid who is practically asleep anyway might be content to roll over and say to themselves "Ah, feckit" when they realise that Mommy is leaving the room (I'm paraphrasing here), Mabel prefers to wake herself right up and (a) grab my arm, (b) sit up and demand more mumeet, and (c) shriek like a banshee if I go away and/or send Daddy instead. And then I have to go back and she takes twice as long to stop hiccupping and her grip is twice as vice-like and her eyes are twice as ready to fly back open and I've just shot myself in the foot again and can say goodbye to another hour of my evening.

Hence, me griping about bedtime instead of presenting you with a well-thought-out and lyrical piece of prose. Them's the breaks.

I was going to say a few words about perspective. I even found you the perfect Father Ted clip to go with it. (And are these subtitles in Icelandic? How bizarre.)

When we started this year at the nursery school, I was struck by how the biggest kids in the playground no longer looked nearly so big. When Monkey started there, at the tender age of two-and-almost-a-half, the big kids looked so huge, rattling round the little racetrack on the big trikes and playing their carefully orchestrated team-like games of this and that. They were enormous, clearly six or seven or something. (They're four and five.) This year, even though Mabel's just a little older than Monkey was - and probably no bigger in stature, though definitely chattier - the big kids still look like reasonably little kids.

I mean, I'm not saying this is a great mystery. It's just interesting to me. When Monkey started, two of his classmates had big brothers who had just entered kindergarten, and they too seemed like tall, grown-up boys, in a way I can't quite get him to replicate in my mind now, even when surrounded by Mabel's friends.

And then, Mabel is blithely passing out ages when Monkey did such and such - slept through the night, for starters - without getting anywhere near the same milestones. He seemed like such a big kid to me by the time he was three, that I had to keep reminding myself how young he really was. With her, it's the other way around: I have to stop calling her the baby. The one way to remedy this is obviously the nuclear option of having another, which I'm not prepared to do just now: eventually you have to stop, and, one way or another, you're left with one last baby who insists on getting bigger no matter how much you try to ignore it.

[Aside: I used to think that ascribing something to birth order was pretty much the same as blaming it on your star sign. As soon as I had two children, I realised how gigantic an influence it really is, and how impossible to divorce from other aspects like gender or personality. If a child is raised in a family environment, their birth order will always make a difference - though I suspect that once you get to a situation where there is more than one middle child, other elements come into play. (As an only child, I get to make these observations in a vaguely superior way. I have characteristics of both firsts and lasts, but apparently lack the peacekeeper inclinations of a middle. Which doesn't explain my tendency to sit on the fence whenever possible.)]

Anyway, it's not that I don't want Mabel to grow up. It's just that I don't have any pressing need to make her act more maturely than she's ready to. Apart from my pressing need to call my evenings my own again and sleep all night in my own bed, I suppose.

Miles

I walked over four miles today, and have excused myself from pilates. It's not that that's a very good excuse, but more that whenever Mabel doesn't nap, the time she needs to go to bed is just exactly when I would be at pilates. So I can't go. Tonight, she dissolved into a screaming, flailing pile of noooooo at 7pm exactly, whereupon I whisked her upstairs, read a quick book, coaxed her to lie down just to see what happened, and she was out in no time flat. She must have been really exhausted, because usually she will not absolutely never ever no way go to sleep before Monkey's stories have been read. So I'm glad I skipped the class (which starts at 6.45) because she'd never have made it to 8.00, when I would get back, without a lot of grief for all concerned. As it is, I think I lost an eardrum.

I say over four miles, because my husband the runner knows how far anything around here is from anything else, and he did the math(s) for me. The day was beautiful - like the nicest possible summer's day in Ireland, which means it was about 70 degrees and sunny. Perfect for a walk. I took the empty stroller and our packed lunches down to the nursery school at eleven, power walking at top speed because I thought I was going to be late, to find myself arriving ten minutes early. Even better, Mabel was not immediately spottable in her teacher's arms, so I knew things were going well. She ran happily to meet me, and reports of her morning were good. Just a little tearing up around snack time when she didn't want any nachos and told everyone who would listen about how Mummy hadn't fed her dinner last night. Again. Sheesh, that Mummy.

Anyway, that was a very quick mile and a bit, and coming home again after lunch at the playground was slower going, what with the occupied stroller and the person jumping out of it every now and then to "run ahead" i.e. dawdle behind, and then the big hill just before home.

My parents live in a cul-de-sac at the top of two steep hills. Wherever you go, you have to go down at least one of them, and usually both. I used to daydream, as I slogged back up after school every day, of miraculous outdoor escalators of the future that would take me home without effort. (They actually have outdoor escalators now, you know. I've been on them in Italy and Spain. But I don't think Ireland got any.) I still have actual night-time dreams where a bus stop has miraculously appeared on our road, at the top of the hill. But then I'm usually late for my exams and have to walk along some fictional road by the crashing sea to find my school and I can't keep my eyes open so I won't be able to read the questions. I'm usually not naked, but sometimes I'm topless. At least my teeth aren't falling out.

Anyway, I'm apparently fated to live at the top of hills, because here we are on one again.

So that was two and a half miles. I needed a drink of water and a bit of a sit down after that. Mabel decided not to take a nap, but I nearly dropped off on the sofa beside her, and it was only thanks to my foresight in setting the kitchen timer to wake me that we got to school in time to collect her brother. Up to school is another half mile, according to my source, and back home; and then half an hour later we went back up to to the playground only a block or so away from the school to fly kites, or try to fly kites, with some friends. Which makes almost another two miles.

And now I am thinking that I would like to get a trailer for my bike, if Mabel would sit in it, because I much prefer biking to walking.

Verbose

If anyone knows how somebody visited this blog from the page of an engineering firm in Russia (this one, actually), I'd be fascinated to hear it. Blog stats are wierd and wonderful things, and I could spend far too much time obsessively refreshing them and wondering who my fan in the Philippines might be. (If it's you, hi! Stop by the comments and tell me all about yourself.)

In other news, we are in for a whole lot of trouble when Mabel gets older. (Okay, this isn't exactly news.) Her brother is as transparent as a sheet of glass - he is completely devoid of guile, and no matter what he's done, he'll always tell us about it. Mabel, in contrast, is full of shite, and I say that in the most loving way. She just told me that her granny just spoke to her on the phone and said that it's morning time so we can definitely turn on the TV. (She's not napping, and I couldn't get her to stay in her room, but at least, so help me, I can keep the TV off for an hour. Is that too much to hope for?)

B brought Mabel to school this morning, and drop-off was painless. When I picked her up at 11.30, though, she was a little teary. First she informed me, hiccupping, that "I'm not crying. My eyes are just a bit wet because I ... didn't get that little bike I wanted yesterday in the playground." Pure fabrication. Her teacher told me she'd spent most of the morning, once she got upset and decided it was time to miss me, talking about how Mummy hadn't done this, that, or the other. Miss L said, apologetically, "I do usually try to give weight to their concerns... but I think she's just... you know..."
"I know," I said."She just likes to talk."

She's playing with the dollhouse. Doll 1 just said to doll 2, wearily, "I don't have any patience for this." At moments like this, I'm really happy I don't give into my first instinct and swear like a particularly blasphemous sailor every time my kids drive me bananas.

Galileo

The temperature has dropped, like a body from a leaning tower*. On Friday morning it was warm and muggy and I was complaining about how going outside was like walking into a sock. A sock that had just been peeled off a very sweaty giant. By Friday before dinner, the kids were out on their bikes again and the humidity had blown away - it was still t-shirt weather, but delightfully fresher. On Saturday morning we were at the nursery school yard sale in our fleeces, and I couldn't pick over the clothes because my fingers had all gone bloodless. (I have Reynaud's. My fingers go numb and look like they belong to a corpse in record time. It's my party piece.)

Tomorrow, allegedly, it will get nicer again and maybe we'll have some actual autumn weather, because going straight from summer to winter is no fun and gives you very little playground time.

Another thing that I hope is short-lived is this new phase of Mabel's. The one where she shrieks a lot, and makes irrational demands, and won't take no for an answer. Mostly it's the shrieking that I object to, since the others are pretty much expected behaviour for a 2-3-year-old. Not exactly helped by her brother, who does things like this:

Scene: The car.
Monkey leaps into his seat and fumbles for the seatbelt. He's in a high-back booster and can click himself in very well. I'm usually a little slower putting Mabel in her seat and settling her five-point harness around whatever baby/t-rex/horsie she insisted on bringing.

Monkey: I won!
Mabel: No! I won!
Me, wearily: It's not a race.
Monkey: It's a race! I won! I'm happy! Mabel, you're sad because you didn't win.
Mabel: I'm not sad! I'm happy!
Me: Monkey, please don't tell her how she feels. That's not helping.
Monkey: You came second, and Mummy's going to come third and she's very angry.
Me: No, I don't care. I'm not angry about the race. Because there is no race.
Mabel (increasingly upset and agitated): I won! I'm happy! You're sad!
Monkey: No, I won! You're sad!
Me: Argghghhh.
Mabel: aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh
My eardrums: Kabloom.

Every damn time.

*Wherever I first read about Galileo and the Leaning Tower of Pisa, it referred to the speed of falling bodies. I assumed he had taken dead people and thrown them off the tower. It wasn't till much later that I discovered it just meant objects, so in my head there will always be visions of the great scientist hefting corpses over the parapet to measure how quickly they fell.