Fight or flight

I write to you from 35,000 feet in the air, somewhere over Colorado, with 1340 miles still to go. I am sandwiched between my two beloved children, but I have to say that if you have to fly with kids, I highly recommend a six year old and a three year old. Dash is playing Angry Birds (or Angry Pigs, as Mabel called it this morning), and has far surpassed the adults in his technique, and Mabel was happily engrossed in an episode of Diego, but has now gone to meet the four-year-old sitting beside her father, leaving me with a chance to blog. 

(Not that I can press publish, of course. I'm just typing up a word document right now.) 

I know I haven't even told you about the party yet, and we'll get back to that, but from the plane I will tell you plane stories. 

****** 

In the past, when I've flown with my kids, I've never had anything less than lovely experiences with the people sitting near us. At the worst, they've been uninterested, which of course is a terrible slight when I have the two cutest, cleverest, best-travelled children on the plane, but we can cope with that. This time, it was different. On Thursday, I got Bitch-Lady. 

Our encounter began badly, I admit. I had put my backpack up above the seat, and got Mabel settled in beside me in her carseat. She had the window, I was in the middle, some as-yet unknown person (Bitch-Lady, as it happened) was going to have the aisle seat, and then B and Dash were by the window on the other side of the aisle. Like this: 

[Window] Mabel | Maud | Bitch-Lady -----  Some Guy | B | Dash [Window]  

Clearly, not ideal. But most people would make the best of things, no? Or figure out some way to swap. At least she had the aisle. She was even traveling with the man in front of Mabel's seat, so I don't know why she hadn't tried to swap with his neighbour in the first place. 

Anyway. Mabel and I were sitting down and B-L had just arrived and taken out a pack of wet wipes (should have been a clue), when I realised that the New Toy To Distract Mabel On The Journey was still in my backpack. I indicated politely to B-L that I needed to stand up and get something from overhead. So I stood in my seat - the middle one - and tried to reach into the bin, which had already been closed by some eager beaver. My small backpack had been pushed right to the back behind a big bag belonging to said eager beaver. I couldn't get it out from where I was standing, so I - politely - indicated that I might step onto her seat, so I could reach better without inconveniencing the people who were still filtering down the aisle to their seats. She looked at me as if I had suggested that she just hold my dog poop for a second while I find a baggie.  

"No. Absolutely not. I just wiped it. Stand in the aisle and get it from there,"she said. "But I can't reach from the aisle," I replied, reasonably. She was shorter than I; I thought she would have understood that. I moved into the aisle, stood up in the seat behind hers, where nobody had yet arrived to prohibit me, and finally fished out the bag. I couldn't close the overhead bin again on her large carry-on, but I didn't consider that much of a problem. The attendants always close them when everyone's done, right?  

No, apparently that was a problem. She ostentatiously stood in the aisle repeatedly trying to close the overhead bin, remarking to anyone who would listen that it had been closed already. She finally managed it, sat down, took her wet wipes out again and proceeded to wipe every part of her seat and table. Her little bottle of hand sanitizer stood at the ready on her tray table, to be used frequently. I really, really wanted to hand her my snotty three-year-old and ask her to help blow Mabel's nose, but I forebore. 

So, we got through the flight. Every now and then Mabel needed to use the bathroom - our first flight without diapers, and she was a superstar - or wanted to go and visit Daddy, and Bitch-Lady would make a great show of sighing and unbuckling her seatbelt, and then standing in the aisle until we came back. At one point she was chatting to her companion in the row in front, clearly gesticulating though I didn't understand the language, showing that we were a constant parade of in, then out, then in, then out... A couple of times I needed to hand something across to B or take something back. She didn't like it, I could tell. She probably wanted to sanitize the air through which my hand had moved. 

Mabel wanted to go and visit Daddy at one point. B-L sighed pointedly, and I said, "You don't have to get up. I can just hand her over." I had clearly offered to pass a vat of bubbling lava across her lap, or maybe a steaming pile of horse manure, judging from the look she gave me. 

To be honest, I wish they had child-free airplanes too, so that people like her didn't have to sit beside people like me. I don't mind sitting near other people's kids, because what goes around comes around and every parent knows that if their kid isn't the one screaming today, it's only because they were that other time, or they will be the next time.  If B-L had been beside the two-and-a-half-year-old in the seat behind Mabel, who was wearing a diaper but had obviously decided that visiting the bathroom was more fun than trying to take a nap, and so went out about four times in twenty minutes, she would have been even more disgruntled. As young children on planes go - and I've seen my share - Mabel was a delight. She entertained herself for long stretches of time, only visited the bathroom three times in five hours, did not scream or cry at takeoff or landing, or in between, and - I can't stress this enough - didn't throw up or even pee herself. Given the gamut of possible bodily fluids, a little snot on the sleeve is pretty mild.  

When we arrived at our gate for the return flight this morning (Monday) the first person I saw was Bitch-Lady, coincidentally also having spent four days in the Bay Area. I smiled cheerily and greeted her in a friendly manner. She was deeply aghast. 

 I sort of wished we were sitting beside her again, just to piss her off, but mostly I was glad she was far, far away at the other end of the plane. Anyway, Mabel wasn't nearly so snotty today. 

Birthday cake

Cake, I thought. I'm good at cakes. I don't need to just put a bunch of cupcakes in a row and call them a lightsaber. I can make a lightsaber cake.

Hey, self, remember how you don't do fancy cakes? How you're not crafty? How you make delicious traditional round cakes with simple vanilla buttercream or chocolate icing, and deftly wield your little bottle of multicoloured sprinkles, and everyone is quite happy?

So. I said the first to myself. I did not think to add the second until it was too late. Much, much too late.

First I made the cake (Nigella's buttermilk sponge, for just such occasions) in a rectangular pan. I almost fell at the first hurdle by buttering but not papering the pan, and was afraid for a few terrifying minutes that the whole thing had stuck to the bottom, but with a little help from my giant fish-slice, I managed to free the beast.

Then I cut it lengthwise in ever-decreasing thicknesses.

Then I cast about for some way to put it on the table. I taped together several pieces of discarded cereal box, covered in tinfoil. (And they said I wasn't crafty.) And laid out my lightsaber, handle to tip.

I mixed up a lovely batch of buttercream.

The end.

Of the parts that went right, for a while.

Backtrack to the previous day, when I had belatedly decided that I had to buy not just food colouring, but natural food colouring, so as not to send everyone's children home high on Red 40, that evilest of evils. With my stomach still loudly and painfully complaining that no, I was not entirely better yet, I made the entire family drive first to one organic foodstore and then to a second, where I triumphantly exited clutching my three tiny vials of stuff. Red stuff, blue stuff, and yellow stuff, guaranteed to enable me to mix any colour I liked. Visions of a perfectly lifelike silver-and-black-handled green or blue lightsaber cake danced before my eyes. (I may have still been a little feverish too.)

So here we were, the proto-birthday-boy and I, ready to mix our colours. He said he'd like a green lightsaber cake. I pulled a little ceramic eggcup, that had never before seen the light of day since we got it as a wedding present, out of the cupboard, and carefully dripped in one drip of blue. It didn't look very blue, but it wasn't the yellow bottle or the red bottle so it must have been. Then we carefully added one drip of yellow. The yellow was lovely and bright, but my mixture in the bowl was nothing but sludge brown. We added some more yellow. It was still sludgey.

Rather than taint my beautiful buttercream with mud-colour, we decided a blue lightsaber would be fine. Remembering past experience with cochineal (oh, dead red beetles of my past, why are you no longer around to be mushed into natural food colour?), I dripped one sole drip of blue into the sea of cream. Nothing happened. I dripped a couple more drips. Still nothing. The blue did nothing at all. Stupid natural colours made of vegetables. (But really. Have you ever seen a blue vegetable? The yellow is from turmeric or cumin, so it was great, and the red is from beets, but what is the blue from?)

"Purple?" I said. "How about we add a drop of red and it might turn purple?" The boy, bless him, was game. The red worked pretty well, beetles or no. We had lovely pale pink buttercream. If only it was his sister's birthday, I thought. We put in more red. Pinker pink. Half the bottle. Damn pink.

At this point I was stumped. I found my old bottle of Evil Chemical Red and sloshed in some drops of that for good measure. Now it was what you might call definitely dark pink, and I had compromised all my principles, but it didn't seem in any danger of turning red. Dash was getting disheartened. I was too. We decided to take a break and see what Daddy thought when he and Mabel got home.

Daddy thought the pink would be okay. I thought I should go out and buy something. There were three hours to go before the party, and nothing else was done yet. What's a birthday party without a last-minute rush to the shops for something you didn't know you needed?

I went to the local supermarket. No helpful bright blue or green or silver tins of frosting. There were more fake food colourings, but I wasn't sure I was up to more mixing, and I was very vague about how I had been planning to make silver anyway. Silver balls, that's what I need, I thought, with a brainwave. Remember those silver balls that were a decorating staple in days of yore? (Yore being the 70s.) Whatever happened to those? Because apparently they don't sell them any more. Not in my stores, anyway.

I tried a different place, happening into Party City on the way to pick up some paper cups with Yoda on them and a Darth Vader mask - both vital, as it happened, to the party, so it was just as well I'd gone out. By my third stop I had a decision: a jar of red sprinkles (made entirely of Red 40, of course) to make the red icing look redder, and a jar of chocolate sprinkles to make the "black" lines on the handle, which I would just do in plain white buttercream.

I went home; I did the needful. The finished product looked like this.

A little, um, fleshy, perhaps, but the boys didn't complain, and everyone wanted some of the red icing.

But remind me next year, okay? I don't do fancy cakes.

With apologies to AA Milne

When he was One, he had just begun.

When he was Two, he was nearly new

When he was Three, he was hardly he

When he was Four, he was so much more

When he was Five, he was very alive,

But now he is six, he's clever as clever, 

and I think he'll be six now for ever and ever. 

(Or maybe just a nice long year.)

Happy birthday to my baby, my big boy, my engineer, my scientist, my enquiring mind, my constant talker, my reader and writer, my machine-maker, my glass-half-full optimist, my heart, my son.

On the radio

The effect of U2 on the Irish ex-pat cannot be underestimated.

Okay, maybe it's just me. But let me explain. U2, you might have heard of them, a little band from Dublin that made it to the big time. And stayed, and stayed, and reached insanely enormously famous proportions. We may scoff now at Bono and his ubiquitous sunglasses, but it means that wherever you are in the world, you can turn on the radio and there's a good chance that you'll hear something that's yours, more than it's anyone else's in that place where you are that's not Dublin.

I was never a big U2 fan in my teenage years - for me, their big album was Achtung Baby, and every song on it connects me to memories of college discos, boyfriends, summer in Dun Laoghaire. But now when I hear earlier hits like "Where the Streets Have No Name" or "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For", they have retrospective power over me.

There I am, 30-something-ly driving to nursery school to pick up my three-year-old in suburban America, and the twangly chords sound unexpectedly - but not surprisingly - from whatever classic rock radio station I happen to have tuned in to. I have to smile. I have to remember all that I am and everywhere I've come from and teenage mornings at school when other girls were swooning over one or other member of the band - because U2 belongs to us, the Irish public, the Dubliners, the south-county-Dublin-ers; and Edge's guitar riffs (am I allowed say riffs?) and Bono's unsmooth tones and the huge sounds of those songs - they proclaim everything for me that Bono never even knew he was saying back when he wrote them in his much-less-famous early days.

When U2 comes on in the supermarket, I tell the kids to listen to their heritage. It's right there, all over the world.

Thanks, Bono, Edge, Larry, Adam. You did a good thing.

Uncharitable thoughts

My underwire is inconveniencing you? I'm so sorry. But hey, you know what, your entire self insisting on being attached to my breast for as long as it might take you to fall asleep tonight, which is evidently going to be a long, long, time, is inconveniencing me too. My last respectable nursing bra is biting the dust and I really really don't want to spend good money on another one when their days are so (so, so) numbered, but lying down to get you to sleep in a regular bra, with its underwires all up in my face and poking me under the chin, is not much fun for me either.

Oh dear, my arm is not positioned just so to cushion your head while you nurse to sleep? Well it's not made of rubber, so it doesn't bend that way, and also I have other things to do than just lie here being your plaything for half the night, I have foam pool noodles to turn into lightsabres for your brother's birthday party tomorrow.

You are disappointed to wake and not find me exactly where you left me? Well, I'm disappointed to hear you wake, because I have the stomach flu and it's really rather gross and I haven't eaten a thing that's not banana for two days so I may be a tiny bit grumpy, but excuse me if you find me less than sympathetic when you bounce up in bed at 3.30 am and tell me you're hungry, because you were offered a full and nutritious dinner, while all I had was a bowl of cereal, gingerly, afraid of repercussions.

You want to sit up and have the big side? Again? And I seem less than forthcoming? I roll onto my front and tell you to go and find Daddy?

Must be morning.

Just call me Homer

Yesterday I came the closest I've ever come to being That Mother. The one - because I realise there are many Mothers who may qualify as That - who forgot to pick her child up from school. Mabel went down for a lateish nap, and for some reason I assumed that meant I had oodles of time to zone out in front of my laptop and contemplate how much better or not better I was now feeling.

It was only as I heard her call from upstairs that I glanced at the clock and did a double take because it said 3.10. Dash gets out of school at 3.15. Usually I make sure to wake Mabel by at least 2.45 if she's still napping, so that she'll be decently attired (by which I mean, at all) and snacked and mollified before we leave on foot / in stroller at 3.00. Yesterday I thanked my lucky stars that she had woken herself in the nick of time, stuffed her unceremoniously into the car, found the last parking spot, and managed to make it to school no later than we would on a normal not-early day. He was the penultimate kindergartener sitting waiting on the wall.

Today the timer is set so that there will be no forgetting. Can you imagine? The tears, the guilt, the anxiety? I was one of those children who would get myself into a lather of worry when I thought I was late home and that my mother would be concerned, only to have her look at the clock vaguely and say, "Are you a bit late? Oh," when I arrived panting and tearful through the door.  (Okay, maybe that only happened once, and I was obviously a bit older than Dash is, but it's left a lasting memory.) And Dash is like that - he'll worry if I'm not where I'm meant to be when I say I'll be there.

Then there was the time a few years later on when I stayed out much too late on a first date that involved a walk both on the beach and then down the pier (not in the same place, though it sounds as if they should be), and my poor father was calling the hospitals by the time I came home. In these days of mobile phones, such a thing would not happen, but back then I erroneously decided I'd rather cycle straight home really fast than go out of my way looking for a phone box to ring home first and set their minds at rest. Young, misguided lust is really all I can blame for that one.

So this almost-lapse is being blamed on the fact that I'm still at least partially sick. But, having been on both sides of the worry-fence, I will do my very best not to ever let it happen for real; though I suppose I can't promise that my children won't do it to me.

Ick

A little hiatus in all this party-planning, chewing-gum-buying fun, because I'm sick.

Blurgh. Yes, sick.

Acutally, I was sick yetsterday, but I'd written most of yesterday's post the day before while on hold with the travel insurance people trying to figure out why we still hadn't seen our refund for changing the flights in February - oh, because both times I sent my documentation to the correct e-mail address, it completely failed to show up, that's nice - so it was easy enough to finish it off and get all publishy with it even through my haze of feverishness (mops brow delicately).

The night before, out of nowhere, it seemed, I had come over all odd, so that we had nothing for dinner and I couldn't even muster the energy to do something about it, so poor B had to go and get us a pizza. Then yesterday morning I still wasn't entirely sure that I was sick - I had to get up and see what breakfast thought about me to help figure it out. Breakfast was not interested in me, nor I in it. And when I can't even make it through my morning bowl of cereal, you know there's something wrong.

Anyway, yesterday shall remain a blur of going-back-to-bed interspersed with some naps and as little interaction with other people as possible, and today I'm quite a lot better, thank you, but very tired, so I'll just be over here on the sofa if you're looking for me.

Legal limits

Dash, as he will tell anyone within a two-mile radius, repeatedly and at top volume, will be six in six days. He's quite excited.

As well as getting the new blue light saber as used by Anakin Skywalker himself in person before he gave it to Target to sell to me, and some other stuff Dash knows is there but has not been specified (it's a Leapster to keep him quiet on flights and put off the day of the DS Lite a bit longer, and some books), and the Star Wars party that's slowly coming together but might only have four boys in attendence, the big thing he's excited about is the fact that he'll be allowed have chewing gum.

At some point in the distant past, maybe when he was four or so, he asked when he'd be old enough to have chewing gum, and picking some far-off era I couldn't even imagine, I took a number out of the air and said "When you're six." This conversation was apparently recorded in that part of the brain children use to keep things you said that you might want to deny or regret later, and as far as he's concerned, it's gospel. You can drive when you're 16, you can drink when you're 21, and you can chew chewing gum when you're 6. Thus spake the mother, and thus it is now and for ever.

This morning he suggested helpfully that the next time I'm shopping, I might want to pick up a packet of chewing gum. Just in case they didn't want to sell it to me on its own; he was afraid there might be some minimum-item requirement in Safeway. So I put "Chewing gum for Dash" on my shopping list, and he was quite mollified. (He just wants the sugar-free minty kind that his dad and I like. He doesn't know about terrible things like Juicy Fruit. (While perusing the various available gums at the checkout, I reflected on how close our society has come to Willy Wonka's ideal - there were flavours called Strawberry Shortcake, Key Lime Pie, and Mint Chocolate Chip, so that you can have your whole dessert for zero calories.))

So now there's a pack of very special chewing gum awaiting its moment to shine. If the chewing gum police come to the house, I can assure them that he is waiting impatiently till next Tuesday to break into it.

Denouement

But the water bottle, you ask. What happened with the water bottle?

Funny story, actually.

That afternoon as we waited for our little darlings to exit, be-stickered and suitably exercised, from their dance class, one of the other mothers asked me "So, was the bottle there?"

First I had to recover from the shock of having someone from My Life Version A (real life, that is) reveal that they are also privy to My Life Version B (the blog) - not that it was a terrible surprise, since I have told a carefully selected group of my friends and acquaintances - the ones who have kids, whom I think might conceivably enjoy reading such things, and whom I can count on to probably not judge me too harshly in person - about the blog. Every few months I get crazy and publish a Facebook update to just those people, telling them about it and also how clicking the Facebook Like button here (have you noticed it?) will make fluffy bunnies hop all over their screens in an endearing manner or some such enticing nonsense. (It's true. Just try it and see.) It's called marketing, I believe, or shameless self-promotion, and like many other secret/semi-secret bloggers, I'm never quite sure how I feel about it.

Anyway, my friend had, in one fell swoop, payed me the compliment of letting me know that she read the blog that day and that she was engaged enough in the story to want to know how it turned out. So I told her that the bottle had still been in the playground when we went by a little earlier.

Our third friend wanted to know what on earth we were talking about, so I had to explain. The condensed version, for people who aren't waiting for me to fill a whole page with little black words:

"I found a water bottle at the playground, and I took it home because I thought I knew who it belonged to, but I was wrong so then I had to put it back, and it's still there." As I said it, a thought ocurred to me, but very slowly, like molasses, or perhaps a glacier.

"Like yours. You know, the expensive one your sister gave you."

At this point, you would think that I would have put two and two together. Not a hope.

We discussed further how fancy those bottles are and how my friend felt her life as a SAHM of two always-grubby little boys did not merit one. She lives across the road from me. Her son is in Mabel's class. I probably talk to her every day, as we watch our kids zoom around on each other's bikes or I return a purloined plastic frog to her playroom, that sort of thing.

Later that evening, I had a text from her:

"You know that water bottle you found - was it white? Because the last time I remember having mine was at the playground on Monday evening..."

You would think I might have mentioned at dance class that it was white - not just like, but exactly like the one her sister gave her. Apparently I hadn't. And she hadn't realised it was missing at that point - she assumed it was in one of those places things usually are, like the stroller basket or the car or being buried in the sandbox by some stray tyke.

So there you have it. She got it back. The blog saves the day.

What?

Presented without comment, because I don't think any explanation is required.

Putting

You know what's a ridiculous concept? Putting the baby to sleep, that's what.

Really. Think about it: "I'll just put the baby to sleep, and then I can do all those things I haven't been able to do all day," you might say, blithely (if you didn't know better). But how do you put someone else to sleep?  You don't even put yourself to sleep.

Putting is active - a simple, quick and finite task that you might do with an object onto a surface. Sleep is not a surface. Another person is not an object. And while you can create an atmosphere conducive to sleep, and create habits that someone associates with falling asleep - usually habits you didn't want to create, like bouncing on an exercise ball for forty minutes while singing Ice Ice Baby, or going for a long walk in intemperate weather with a heavy baby strapped to you who will wake up as soon as the rhythmic motion stops and the warm body goes away, or, say, sucking sweet warm milk from the ultimate security object - you can't make anyone fall asleep any more than you can make them eat or poop on command.

It's hard enough to fall asleep myself; I have no idea how it happens or what I do to make it happen, it's just one of those things. I lie down, and stay there, and after a while my thoughts are going all funny and people I haven't seen in years are making illogical comments about my patio furniture. How to communicate that to a small being who's just about figuring out their own name, and then get them to want to try it - well, you tell me. No wonder we all make such a mess of it.

Some babies like sleep and are happy to be placed gently upon its downy surface by a loving parent. Others fight any attempted putting with the passion of a thousand suns, because they know that the moment they give in, everyone else will go to a party in the other room with all the best cake and the sugariest frosting and chocolate ice-cream and Other People's Toys.

I am firmly of the opinion that nothing you did made any difference. You did not break the baby. The baby is just like that, and you will probably have to amend your life somewhat to fit around it, but at least this way you're not beating yourself up about it all.

A cautionary tale

A woman pulls up her car by a deserted playground, gets out, and walks purposefully to the baby swings. She stands a rather nice drinking bottle carefully in one of the swings, turns around, gets back into her car, and drives away.

What would you think? What crazy drug-running scheme, what secret coded message, what clear-liquid time bomb was this?

Friends, I was that woman. Listen to my story so that you, one day, may avoid the puzzled glances of passing cyclists.

Yesterday Mabel and I went to get Dash from school, as usual. We passed a playground on the way, and waved at a fellow parent who was pushing her adorable baby girl in the swings. At school, Dash boinged out of the building to us, and we turned around smartly to go back whence we had come. As I turned, I noticed the daughter of the fellow parent still waiting, and assured her that we'd just seen her  mom and she'd be here any minute. Sure enough, a few yards further on I saw the mom pull into the parking lot.

Five minutes later we're back at the playground, where we'd arranged to meet some friends. In one of the two baby swings, I spot a rather nice drinking bottle - the glass sort with a wide neck and rubberized stuff over it to make it grippy and less likely to break on impact. Pretty much this one, actually. (So, a $20 water bottle, give or take. Not the sort you want to leave behind.)

I thought it probably belonged to my friend the fellow parent, so I decided to take a chance and bring it home with me, so that I could give it to her the next day at school pickup rather than leaving it in the playground for some unscrupulous person to purloin. (You can see where this is going now, can't you?)

Two hours later, when we got home - after leaving the playdate early because Mabel announced she needed the bathroom in a way that could not be decently taken care of behind a tree - never mind the fact that the city seems to have chopped down any trees big enough to go behind - or provide an iota of shade in the summer for that matter - near that playground - and then finding when we got back to our street that she'd rather play with the neighbour kids than do the poo after all - I Facebook messaged the other mother to let her know I had her drinking bottle.

Nope. I didn't. I had someone else's drinking bottle. Oops.

So, on the way to my board meeting last night I stopped by the playground to put the bottle back where I'd found it, hoping its owner would return again even if they'd already been by once and cursed the unscrupulous person who had taken their $20 water bottle. And I got some pretty curious glances from the cyclist who'd stopped to take in the view and was obviously wondering what on earth I could possibly be doing.

I wonder if it will still be there when we go past this afternoon.

Tiny increments of betterment

Is it time for an update on the sleep situation? I suppose it is.

Let's start with the good news. Mabel is definitely toilet trained. Pull-ups are strictly for night time, not even for naps. (I put a waterproof crib mattress pad under her at naptime just in case, but mostly she doesn't need it.) My diaper-totin' days are over. I am in no way tempting fate by saying this.

Okay, okay, that's not sleep.

Last time I took you down this fascinating road of good intentions, I was trying to night-wean the three-year-old; something many people do when their babies are six months old, or maybe twelve, or perhaps two years. But I'm a slow starter, and I dislike confrontation.

The first few days went startlingly well: Mabel would go back to sleep without nursing at her first wake (10pm or so) and skip her second wake (midnight-ish) entirely. By the time the formerly third wake happened (3am) I was so impressed, and she so frantic, that I would happily give her what she wanted, and we'd all go back to sleep.

But then she started not eating dinner. Which made her wake up hungry in the middle of the night. Which was not conducive to staying asleep or being content with an inane story about Dora and some butterflies instead of the much-desired boobie.

(She has started to say "boobie" instead of "mumeet". I am not happy about this development. When I'm on the phone to my mother and Mabel starts to shout "Give me your boobies!", there's little I can do to dissemble about what's going on.)

So we had some frustrating evenings while B was away, and we're just getting back into the swing of things now, remembering to send him in when she wakes the first time, even though she's not yet back to ever going back to sleep without me. But still, some times, more often than not - almost always, I'd say optimistically - she will go back to sleep without nursing at the first wake. The night before last she went back to sleep the first two wakes without nursing. Even. But she's still waking - that is, enough to start calling for me and escalate if ignored - as much as ever.

Still. I'll take what I can get, for now. It's a start.

Shiny

We have perfect Spring weather right now: blustery and shiny bright, new-leaf-shimmering, with just the right amount of warmth in the air. I've been wearing my jeans for about two weeks straight (don't worry; I have two identical pairs) because I'm saving up against the time when the weather gets too hot and I have to abandon my beloved denim for three months. I keep putting on loads of washing just because the Irish housewife in me can't resist this wonderful drying weather.

The children leave the house like pinballs, bounce onto their scooters or bikes and spin away up the road, crossing each other's paths once or twice along the way. Mabel abandons hers at the foot of a neighbour's lawn, and runs around the back of the house, where they have an irresistable tub of sand and a variety of toys to play with, and sometimes a small boy or two.

I wander out in their wake, locating her by the downed scooter and wondering what exactly the etiquette is when your child is - permissibly - in someone else's backyard. I don't want to look as if I don't care and am happy to abandon her, but nor do I want to make the adults of the house feel they have to stop and chat to me while we both survey children who are actually mostly just fine without any observation. (Only mostly. Which is why I usually trail after her if she doesn't re-emerge soon.)

We need to get a bench for the front of the house, so that I can "supervise" in comfort while reading a book or making use of the wi-fi connection. Maybe a glass of something refreshingly fruity, some chips and dip...

Party line

I'm nearly completely organized. I mean, for the upcoming months, specifically. At the end of April we're going to California for a marathon - I have flights, hotels, and rental car booked. Dash is signed up for a week of gymnastics summer camp (how cool does that sound? I would have so loved to do that - here I am living vicariously - but I think he'll like it too) in July, and I've just about arranged the week at the beach in the summer that I've been promising the kids ever since the nicer weather started.

There's just one thing outstanding. And it's coming up before any of that: Dash's birthday party.

I'm stumped. Everything's different this year, because he's in "big" school, so I don't know the moms of any of his friends any more. I can't just invite everyone over for a big siblings-parents-and-all playdate, because for one thing, six-year-old boys are too old for that, and for another, I don't want to invite a bunch of strangers. I feel like we need a specific thing, but I don't know what that thing is.

I thought of laser tag, which he and his father would love (maybe the latter moreso, truth be told), but the only place that doesn't seem to have a prohibitive age or height limit is 30 minutes away, and they only offer parties for 9 guests (or more). We don't have 8 people to invite, unless we just randomly pick kids he knows (and then where do you stop?), and bringing fewer would make it a two-venue party with cake here and laser tag there, which I can't really do to everyone who would have to ferry their kid around all that much but then not even get to eat the cake. Besides, I'm not entirely sure all his friends' mums would be happy with their peace-loving still-five-year-olds (perhaps) brandishing guns and bloodthirstily peppering their friends with laser beams.

I had great hopes of a bowling party, but Dash didn't want to. I thought of a swimming party at the pool, but our pool doesn't "technically," as the helpful employee behind the desk told me, do those. Despite the fact that we'd just seen one going on.

The thing is, time is advancing. The party needs to be on either the 21st or 22nd of this month, which is a mere two weeks away. (Damn. Two? I've been ostriching on that.) So it's either no party or I just invite the kids over and we think of something on the fly. No party is perfectly reasonable, except that we seem to have got ourselves into this - our kids each have a birthday party every year, and I think all Dash wants is a chance to get his friends together and show them his birthday light sabre and eat cake. Surely I can give him that.

So I think it'll be a Star Wars party, in very little but name. Maybe I can come up with something a bit easier than the very elaborate sew-a-Jedi-cloak-for-each-kid sort of things I've read about on other people's websites. Elaborate is not me. Crafty is not me.

Cupcakes and candles, though, that I can do.

Go, Dash, Go

It's still Spring Break, you know. I mean, the husband came home and all that, which was nice because now I feel like I can breathe again - not that I was asphyxiating for lack of him, but just that when it's me and only me with the kids, there's no safety net, no room to manouevre, no end of the day in sight - but on the other hand, now he's at work and I'm still here with two children, one of whom might be asleep for a scant hour in the afternoon if I'm lucky. At least the weather's nice.

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We were given a copy of Go, Dog, Go for Mabel's second birthday. It was sort of an in-joke from the friend who gave it to her, because her son loved it and was always excited to go to a party because the dogs in the book go to a party in a tree at the end. He was thrilled to be invited to her birthday party, so we got the book. To be honest, I didn't think much of it - boring, basic, and without even a rhyme to pull it along for the poor benighted adult reader. I saw it as inferior, wannabe Seuss.

But now, I get it. Dash is at the point where he can sound out three-or-four-letter words pretty well, but even our "Beginner" I-Can-Read book was too hard - and babyish - for him, with its proliferation of hard words like "whose" and "mouse". He was badgering me to make a book for him on my computer, composed entirely of words he knows. (And what a thrilling epic that would be.) But then I thought that we must, surely, have some books that would work that way. One Fish, Two Fish, maybe, or Go, Dog, Go.

So I pulled it off the shelf a week ago, and this morning, after three or four sessions, he finished it. (It's quite a long book, you know.) Okay, so the narrative isn't exactly engaging for those of us used to something more at the level of historical fiction or true crime, but as far as he's concerned, it's the best book ever written. And watching him work through from the first, simplest page through the antics of those crazy dogs with their hats and their boats and their cars - well, I have a new appreciation for the story. More importantly, I can see how each page's words build on the learning in the pages before, so that he learns "out" and on the next page comes to "around", with the same -ou- sound, but a bit more of a challenge.

I'm not saying he got every word himself right off the bat - I helped when he got stuck - but the repetition within the book, and created by starting at the beginning again every time, made it easier for him. This morning he ran upstairs excitedly to find the book and reached the very last page, jubilant.

As boring books go, I'm starting to really like this one.

Wild child

On afternoons when Mabel has not taken a nap but really should have, you have to watch her like a hawk, because whenever she decides that she's not getting enough attention, or just because she's a menace, bad things can happen.

In no way exhaustive list of things Mabel might do when she hasn't taken a nap:

• Find some beloved piece of Dash's artwork and take a bite out of it.
• Eat some toothpaste - the minty kind that she likes the taste of but isn't allowed use because she can't spit yet.
• Pick flowers out of the neighbours' gardens, the most prominent and pretty ones that will definitely be missed, and then present them to me with a butter-wouldn't-melt declaration that she wanted to give it to me because she loves me.
• Grab Dash's sandwich before he gets to it and take a bite, or just maul it enough to make him demand a new one, thus enraging both him and me.
• Unroll the entire roll of toilet paper.
• Eat some toilet paper.
• Declare that she doesn't like any of her toys and wants to give them all to the thrift store.
• Take all her clothes off and run down the street.
• Bang the TV remote on the floor until the back pops open and the batteries fly out; then stuff the batteries in her mouth and come to show me, if I haven't noticed already, what a bad thing she's doing.
• Demand food; eat none of it.
• Tip an entire tub of cooked pasta that I was about to put in the fridge onto the floor.
• Laugh a little too hysterically at things that aren't all that funny.
• When bedtime finally comes, fall asleep in five minutes flat.

Which last, of course, almost makes up for all that may have gone before. Almost.

Young padawan

If I had to pick one thing I want for Dash to look back on his spring break and remember, it's not any elaborate trips to the city or organized events, not finishing* the original Star Wars trilogy (as we did last night), not any new toys he may or may not score on a milk-run to Target, not the haircut I swear we're going to get tomorrow, and certainly not the optional homework packet that I have no intention of downloading from the school website. I want him to remember that he spent lots of time outside in windy, sunny playgrounds, riding his bike on the street with his friends, playing like a kid, doing nothing like a kid - outside, with other kids, without recourse to television.

He's outside right now, while Mabel naps. We live on a quiet court, so he's allowed be out without a supervising adult if he wants. I look out the window every now and then and can usually see what he's up to. A little earlier he was pacing up and down behind the seven-year-old from across the way, with the three-year-old from two doors down following both, the three of them looking very serious; two small disciples following their preacher, who was probably intoning deep thoughts on the various colours of the Power Rangers and what each can do. Then he was lying on his stomach beside the three-year-old watching him dig intently in some mud, no doubt filling him in on all the Star Wars spoilers he can lay his mind on, passing down the sacred creeds from one to the next, as the older boys have done to him.

*If it can be called "finishing" when there were quite a few bits we fast-forwarded past. He didn't want to watch the rest of Return of the Jedi, but I desperately needed to use it for speedy-bedtime-preparation bribery, so I promised to skip all of Luke's battle with the emperor and any and all further scary/exciting bits that might crop up. With the result that every time he and Mabel asked, "What's happening now?" I had no idea, because we'd missed all the explanatory dialogue, and I don't really know the stories too well myself once you get past the basic premise as explained in the lyrics of Star Wars Cantina.

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And then we ended up going to Target for bread (got milk, thanks) and buying him a new, blue, Anakin Skywalker light sabre, which has now been secreted away for his birthday in three weeks' time.

Where's Freud when you need him?

Mabel's having a bit of a penis obsession. Again.

Yesterday we had friends over for a playdate. Mabel took off her clothes and tried to show them her penis. I hid under the table.

This morning we went to Ikea.

Mabel: Peenie, peenie. I want a peenie. I love your peenie, Dash.
Dash: Mabel, say peenie again.
Me: Stop it. Both of you. Dash, you know better.
Dash: Mabel, don't say peenie.
Mabel: Peenie, peenie.
Me, darkly: Nobody will be getting any ice-cream.
Mabel: Ponnie, ponnie.
Me: That's fine.

[Five minutes pass; we are almost past the checkouts and at the double-edged sword of ice-cream.]

Dash: Mabel, don't say poopy.
Mabel, with glee: Poopy! Poopy!
Me: No ice-cream, then.
Them: [...]

Ice-cream is consumed. Lunch is deferred. Once again, I resolve never more to darken the hallowed Swedish doors.