Bumpy lines

At some point, I realised that when visiting friends' houses and looking interestedly at the photos on their walls, I was curious to see what they'd looked like when they were younger. Not younger like when they were children, or teenagers, but on their wedding day now that they have three kids, or when they first met their spouse, or on whatever other occassions might be marked with a photo nice enough to display for random nosy guests like me. Because - here's the thing - they, we, look older now.

For a long time, from about 20 till 35, I'd say, I felt that I basically looked the same. My haircut may have changed, I may have dropped or gained a few pounds, but my face was my face and that was that. I buy the moisturizer, I use the sunscreen, but it all seemed very hypothetical until I found myself looking in the mirror and thinking that I should buy some of that serum stuff I've been hearing about, because I need all the help I can get. (That's not true. And what about ageing gracefully? I believe in that, don't I? Still, no harm trying.)

Mabel looked at me quizzically one day and said "What are those lines?"
"What lines?"
"Those ones on your forehead where it's bumpy."
"You mean bumpy like this?" I raised my eyebrows. She laughed and traced the ridges on my brow with her finger.
"Those are my wrinkles," I said.
"Do it again!" She was delighted with them. Now when she and Dash get out of the bath or the swimming pool, they examine the pads of their fingers for their own pruney wrinkles. So exciting, so fleeting.

Those diagonal lines from the sides of the nose to the edges of the mouth: they're coming. They're not here yet,  but I can see the shadow of where they will be, inexorably, in a few years.

It's very odd to be approaching 40. (I'm not. I'm approaching 39, but there's a certain inevitability about what follows.) It's very... middley... I was thinking yesterday. I can't honestly claim to be a young adult any more, but I'm certainly nowhere near old. I suppose they call it middle age for a reason, but I absolutely refuse to consider myself middle-aged until at least 50.

But it's odd because I don't feel any more sensible. I don't feel any more boring or more staid or more responsible. I was always fairly sensible and responsible to begin with, I suppose, and it's true that I have lost a little segment of information about what's current in music and reality tv, but that's only because I moved to America and stopped listening to 2FM, and because we happen to get most of our television from the Internet. I listen to the classical station in the radio because it has no ads and I like to think it calms and educates the children, not because I dislike popular music. I certainly haven't started gardening yet. Knitting is way out. (Not that liking gardening or knitting makes you old. They're just two things I always think I'll probably get around to wanting to do eventually, some day in the far distant future.)

Are all octegenarians actually experienced 25-year-olds with bumpy foreheads who have lost touch with popular culture and like to garden instead? It's not how I thought it would be, is all.

Nuggets of purest green

It's 11.15 (in the morning) and Mabel is 45 minutes into a nap. This is either a very good thing - nice long nap, but still early enough not to disrupt bedtime dramatically - or a very bad thing - coming down with some horrible lurgy that will afflict Dash and me too, all while B is away sampling the Waffle Houses and home-made paella of Atlanta. I mean, at a Very Important conference.

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The other morning Dash was singing to himself in the bathroom, as sometimes he does, a little ditty of his own creation whose lyrics went, "I am shorter than the Statue of Liberty, I am shorter than the Statue of Liberty..."

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Mabel, over breakfast: I don't like it when I stick my finger into my bellybutton.
Me, reasonably: Well, don't do it then.
Mabel, slyly: But I like it when I stick my finger into your bellybutton.
Me: [Sceptical look, because that's not happening.]
Mabel, with glee: Maybe I could stick my finger in Daddy's bellybutton...

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She's up again, and seems much happier, and in no way feverish or otherwise sick, so here's hoping it will all work out perfectly. Considering Dash is off school for the next nine days, it may be the last nap she takes in a while (it's very hard to get her to sleep when he's awake, and very hard to get him to leave me alone for long enough to do so), so it's probably just as well.

Coincidentally, blogging may be light in the coming week. May the force be with us all.

Aftermath

And now, it's fine. Yesterday was fine. B has gone on his trip and I'm no more than normally apprehensive about how we'll do without him, and that has a lot more to do with Mabel's newfound penchant for 3am sandwiches than her brother's behaviour.

When the crazy had stopped swirling, I was able to look at the lost evening and wonder what was wrong with me. Not with him - he was a kid whose mom was being mean, and he reacted accordingly. But sometimes, when he gets antsy, and I get antsy, I start to think that the only way I can deal with this is by coming down firmly, showing him who's boss, standing my ground, and expecting him to do what he's told because I'm the adult and he's the child. Otherwise, I will probably end up with a juvenile delinquent, because I was too easygoing a parent.

Today, I remember that that's not how I do it. And there are books to back me up on this. He's a human being and we can work it out together, the way human beings do. If I treat him with kindness, he'll respond with ... with... oh, I don't know... glee that he's getting away with it? Will he learn that I'm a pushover and that he can get whatever he wants by pushing? Will he, as Penelope Leach assured me, like me and want to please me? Do I want to raise a kid who just wants to please authority figures so they'll be nice to him? It sounds namby pamby, but if the alternative is being a sociopath, then I suppose I do.

Sometimes I hate listening to the experts. I would much rather listen to my heart and do what works for me and my child, today. I have to trust us both that it will work out for tomorrow.

Feeding time at the other zoo

It's very discouraging trying to feed children who don't want food.

Last night, in particular, I was discouraged. 'I have to leave the house for a minute and walk around outside so my head doesn't explode' sort of discouraged.

Most of the time, I make our (nice) dinner, I give them their (boring and simple*) dinner, and I try not to think about it. I've been through the guilt, the self-blame, the introspection, the angst, the Satter, the well-intentioned expert blogs, and I've pretty much arrived at, "They're fine; they'll be fine."

But hey, I'm their mother. The well of self-blame is infinitely deep, and whenever I choose to draw from it, a refreshing draught of guilt will be there waiting for me.

*They will not, on no account, no way no how, eat the nice dinner. Please do not tell me to offer them the nice dinner and nothing else. I know the theory. I've tried the theory. It does not work here.

Dash was having a large tantrum, the sort that begins with a simple request to do your homework before your TV show starts, and swirls into a galaxy of injustices that stretches out to bedtime and beyond. In the middle there was dinner, which I felt would make him feel better and help put things back into perspective, but he felt was just adding insult to injury. When he eventually decided to eat, there was something amiss with his sandwich.

Of course there was something bloody amiss with his sandwich. It's a peanut-butter sandwich made on horrible store-bought bread (wholegrain, at least, but still fairly horrible) and you've been having one for lunch and one for dinner for as long as I can remember because it's all you will eat. What's not amiss with that? How could he choose just one thing to be wrong with it? (The bread on one side was too hard, apparently.)

Simultaneously, Mabel, who had been alternately bugging and preaching to her upset brother, was rejecting her pasta and broccoli. This too was bringing me to the brink of tears, because for the previous two nights she'd been nursing a lot (yes, yes, despite the new regime) and I had realised it was because she was simply hungry due to not eating enough dinner.

(It's all very well to say, "They'll have dinner later, when they're hungry," but that doesn't account for those who have a dribble of nourishment - sweet, delicious, effort-free nourishment - on tap all night. Just enough to sate them for now, so long as they have some more in another few seconds. It's very efficient for the child, not so much for the cow. I mean, me.)

The day we went to the zoo I was fully able to blame myself: after lunch there had been popcorn, and a banana at 4.30, and apparently that's enough to fill Mabel up all the way to bedtime and beyond. But yesterday, she'd had two cheese sticks and some toast for lunch, half a banana at 2.30, and very little since. Why, oh why, was she not eating the pasta?

At this point I left everything in the capable hands of their loving father, while I took a walk outside, put freshly laundered sheets on beds, submitted a last-minute order to the Internet, and tried hard to decompress myself. (Their poor loving father who was rather tired and sore after running, you know, a marathon, the day before.)

We worked things out. I think B probably made Dash another sandwich (I didn't ask), sorted out the "But I have to have dessert" tantrum (somehow), and made some concessions on the matter of bedtime stories. I got Mabel to eat a piece of toast, half an apple, and two tiny yogurts. Everyone, eventually, went to bed. I had a glass of wine and a piece of cake.

Epilogue:

Mabel was still up half the night, though the first time she woke, she went back to sleep very easily with only a story and no nursing at all.

Dash and I talked about yesterday on the way to school, and agreed that we'd have to work things out better in the coming days, because - oh yes - B is going to be out of town for six days, four of which are spring break/weekend days, so I'll have the kids all to myself all day - and night - and won't be able to storm out for a quick breather and to let someone else make the sandwich, or to have an extra hour in bed while Mabel gets up with Daddy, and now I'm, well, apprehensive about that.

And then I saw Mabel and her father off to school this morning (he's helping in the classroom today) and walked Dash to school, and came home all maudlin about the tragedy of sending my beloved children - my heart, after all - away from me every day.

It's quite confusing being me. I think.

Spontanaeity

It's the perfect spring morning here, after last week's excesses and the weekend's grey chilliness (or "normal" weather, as we Irish call it) and my washing line is crying out for some sheets to billow upon it in the mild breeze. White petals are falling from the pear trees, skittering along the road in eddies and waves, looking like a host of tiny racers surging forward at the start of a marathon.

Or maybe that's just the image that comes to mind because B was off running another one of those yesterday. Meanwhile, I stayed at home and forced the kids to watch TV while I made his birthday cake. This one, and I have to admit that I'm very close to getting myself a slice to go with my cup of coffee in a minute. Perilously close.

But, because grey days get me moving, yesterday we went to the zoo. (Hah. You know, I went looking for that post to link to because I remembered the title, but I had no idea that it was also about going to the zoo. Apparently I only have one activity in my repertoire. Maybe there's something hidden in my subconscious that links drizzle with zoo trips. Maybe it always drizzled when I went to Dublin Zoo to see the incongruous flamingoes and the sad polar bear.)

It would be lovely to have arranged to go to the zoo with some friends, taken our picnic lunch, and hung out with other people. But spontaneity is where it's at, when you have kids, and at least with two they can entertain/bug each other. I mean, if we'd arranged to go to the zoo and meet friends, the weather would have been either scorching or pelting, we'd all have slept badly, the Beltway would have been backed up, we'd have arrived late, we'd never have found a parking space, we'd have had to rush home after two barely sighted animals for Mabel's nap.

As it was, we all got up late after a pretty good night. I decided in leisurely fashion that I could probably manage a zoo trip before I mentioned it to the kids at the vital moment to get them enthusiastic - and therefore dressed quickly. We left under surprisingly little stress, in no rush because I knew Mabel would manage without a nap today. It took us one hour to get there, front door to cheetahs, including free parking in the side streets near the zoo (score!). We wandered pretty happily, and despite the sometime drizzle and Mabel's penchant for jumping in puddles wearing non-waterproof shoes, we saw a good selection of animals.

The highlight, again, was the orangutan who came and sat right up against the window to inspect the children ranged in front of her - clearly from her perspective, we bring the human zoo to her house for her entertainment.

Looking at that other post, I find I have to compare and contrast some other aspects of this zoo trip almost a year later:

• Free parking: I have learned and grown as a person, and my parallel parking was awesome.
• Mabel wet her pants in the car before we'd even got there, but luckily I had brought spares, and she did use the zoo bathrooms once, so we managed: surprisingly little progress on that front.
• More reptiles, no lions and tigers this time.
• Requisite fighting over statue to pose on:

We shared a popcorn, found the car again, and drove home basking in the glow of having done something, for once.

Too much, too soon

I'm not sure I can cope with summer, especially if it's starting now.

Yesterday, Mabel spent a happy two hours or so playing with a basin of mud at a neighbour's house. (It started as a mini sand box, I'm assured. Now it's a basin of muddy water, and the kids love it more than ever.) By the end, she was happily shoveling sand on a doll's hair for her 3-year-old accomplice to rinse off with the hose. "We're washing the baby's head," they said, clearly making poor baby pay for all those shampooings they had objected to in the past.

Sadly, I didn't get a picture of the baby's mud treatment.

So when I finally brought her home, she went straight into the bath to wash off about an inch of mud.

Today, I was persuaded that the easel should come out of its winter exile in the shed and that I should let Mabel and Dash paint when Dash came home from school. It started out excellently. Mabel painted an underwater volcano.

So did Dash.

Then I looked up from whatever I was doing, as Mabel's sing-song narrative penetrated my thick, thick skull. She was quoting from a particularly fun book we've had from the library recently: "So I take some red... and I paint my head..."

You can see where this is going. Straight back to the bathtub, that's where. Meanwhile, Dash decided to do some finger-painting and ended up with completely blue hands, that dripped up the stairs and all over the basin before being washed off.

The paint is going back in the basement. The easel is going back into the shed. I'm not doing summer.
Not yet.

Just a note

Mabel turned to me the other day and said: "Mommy, I am as-bo-lutely..." actually, I can't remember what she was absolutely, but I was charmed by her use of the word and her little stumble over it. It's pretty rare for her to mispronounce a word, really.

She did tell me a while ago that she likes ice because it's "refreshous" - but that's not a mispronounciation, it's a very intelligent word formation.

She's also taken to announcing, out of the blue and a propos of nothing at all, "Speaking of [whatever], I want [whatever else]."

I can't help thinking that, even though her early-talker status is no longer so obvious these days, her language is probably still a touch more, well, idiomatic than that of many other three-year-olds.

Dash came out of school a few weeks ago brandishing a note he'd written for me, that I had to read straight away before retrieving Mabel from the tree or moving the stroller out of the way of the exiting hordes of grade-schoolers. It said "I luv yoo", with a heart, and he was very proud of having written it without any help.

The next week he brought home a little note for each of us, that read "I luve you". I appreciated the addition of the silent e, and thought I wouldn't tell him about the u just yet. His father had no such qualms, and let him know, so that the very next day we all received our final verisons, with the correctly spelled message.

I'm keeping them all, but the first one is the specialest.

Dora's Long Night

You've got fourteen minutes. Go!

Oh, wait. I've got fourteen minutes. If it takes you fourteen minutes to read this, well, I suppose I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you had to take some time out in the middle to make dinner or advise a presidential candidate or paint your toenails or something.

I know you're clamouring to find out how it went last night. Did I fall at the first fence? Did Mabel submit to the will of her father? Did terror reign?

Actually, I'll tempt fate right now by saying it went pretty well. Better than I could have imagined, though not magically well or anything. There was a moment when she'd slept a microsecond longer than usual after going to bed, when I thought maybe she'd decided it wouldn't be worth waking up at all, and she'd just sleep through to 8am instead - but then she realised that if she did that, I'd be up every hour checking her pulse and holding a mirror and a tiny flashlight in front of her nose to see if she was breathing, so she decided to spare me that. Thoughtful child.

So Mabel went to sleep, as is fairly usual for a day she has napped, at 8.30 last night. I nursed her to sleep, though there were also two batches of stories and one ritual-sending-away-of-Daddy before she was actually out. She slept until 10.30, maybe even 10.45, and woke, as usual. B went in to her. We've been doing this for a while now with the first waking, so it wasn't a surprise, and sometimes she falls back asleep while waiting for me to come after he's persuaded her to lie back down, because that's all he's good for as far as she's concerned. (She doesn't know about the paying-bills part yet.) But last night, probably because we'd talked about how the mumeet would be not forthcoming during the night, she wasn't falling back asleep. B passed the metaphorical baton to me and I squared my shoulders against the coming onslaught as I entered her room, who knew when or in what condition to ever leave again.

But! Miracle! She asked for mumeet, was told there would be none, and after some fairly rudimentary protests, lay down and said I should tell her a story instead. I got two-thirds of the way through Goldilocks, adding some long pauses for dramatic effect, and lo! she was mostly asleep again. I had to wait quite a while before she was asleep enough for me to actually leave, but it was much, much easier than I had been expecting.

The same thing happened at 1am or whenever it was she woke next. I didn't bother sending B in, because (a) he was fast asleep, and (b) what was the point? If she knows I'm in the house, she's going to want me to be the one with her, even if I deny her what she wants most. She has to hear it from the source, I suppose. This time, again we had the formal protest, but half of The Three Billy Goats Gruff was enough to get her back to sleep. (I don't actually know what the biggest billy goat said to the troll, or what the troll said to him, because I didn't get to that page of the book when I read it to her at school yesterday, so it was good that she fell asleep before my ignorance was exposed.)

The third time - and to be honest I can't even remember if I went back to my own bed before this one or just stayed where I was - she was more insistent, more upset, and louder. She was still awake after two long and involved Dora and Diego stories (and I have to say that even half asleep in the middle of the night, I can compose a more logical and interesting Dora story than the ones we've had from the library), so I made an executive decision to call it a night and give her what she wanted. "Five seconds," I said, but that never works with her the way it used to with her brother, so it was a very long five seconds on one side, and an actual five seconds on the other, and she went back to sleep.

The next time she woke it was probably 7.30, I could see daylight at the side of the curtain, and I let her have her way with abandon.

Tonight, we'll see what happens. I was proud of us both - but mostly of Mabel, to be fair - for getting as far as we got last night, and I don't regret giving in when I did. If I don't nurse her between bedtime and 3am, that's still a huge step forward from where we were, and we'll get to where we're going in the end.

Batten down the hatches

Pull up a chair. Have some cheese. I've got the whine.

I can tell already this is going be one of those posts that gets the "Best intentions" tag. That one goes on plans I make and tell you about so that you can all point and laugh two weeks later when things go horribly, predictably awry. Or the next day, even. But if you never even try, you definitely won't get anywhere, I suppose.

Two nights ago was a bad night for Mabel. I happened to look at the clock at the relevant times and discovered that I left my own bed to go to her at 12.00, 2.00 and 4.00. I came back to my own bed at 1.00 and 3.00. And I wouldn't like you to think we were all sleeping soundly from 4am until reluctant waking up at 8.00. No, she was probably latched on again from 5.00 to 6.00 or so, before getting up and leaving me in blessed, blessed peace, around 7.00.

To be honest, that was pretty standard except that usually I don't stay awake enough at 3am to do anything as active as bothering to get myself up and trot down the hall to my own bed. But sometimes she's hogging the whole (twin) mattress and the call of the cool sheets on my side of the big (queen) bed is a siren song. I know I'm lucky to be able to be able to go back to sleep - usually - pretty quickly every time - this situation couldn't possibly have persisted if that wasn't the case.

Last night, then, there was something in the air, or the water. Maybe there was a full moon. Maybe it was because of the equinox. More likely it was the incipient thunder, but a lot of people on my Facebook feed this morning seemed to be complaining about how badly their kids had slept. Dash, my great sleeper, woke twice with a bad dream. The first time, I had just come back from Mabel and was able to lie down with him for a few minutes until he dropped off again. The second time, I had to call in reinforcements because I was already dealing with Mabel again, so I'm not sure how long that took. (There was a third time, but apparently I dreamed that one. I could have sworn I heard him call out, heard him get out of bed and come down the hall, and I was already flapping a hand at him to warn him not to wake his precariously asleep sister when I opened my eyes and found he wasn't actually standing beside me at all.)

Mabel, having gone to bed early at 7pm after no nap, had woken as usual at 9.45 and gone back to sleep easily enough. Then she woke around midnight and - well, it all gets fuzzy, but at some point much later it felt like she'd been latched on all night and it crossed my mind that perhaps she was hungry. "Are you hungry, Mabel?" I asked. She nodded. "Mummy, I'm huuuungry!" You could have told me two hours ago and saved us all that not-sleeping, you know? I went downstairs and got her a waffle. At least it was only 3.15 and not 5am as I'd feared. She gobbled up a frozen waffle in the dark, whispering something about Goldilocks and the three bears to her doll as it went, and of course then she was wide awake, wanting water and stories and Daddy and to go downstairs and play there...

I got her to lie down and have some more mumeet and she was out in pretty short order. So we all went to sleep ... until the thunder rolled in around 5am and the rain around 6 and though the kids were asleep, I heard it all so I don't think I was, entirely.

Coming back from school this morning, I told Mabel that mumeet at night was going to have to stop. That I would gladly let her have some before bed, and again when she wakes up in the morning, and that someone will go in and lie down with her to help her get back to sleep, but the all-night buffet is closing down. I asked her if she'd rather Daddy went into her or I did, when she woke in the night but wasn't getting mumeet, and she opted for Daddy. I think this is because she expects Daddy to read her stories at 4am, and she'll get a bit of a shock when all he wants to do is turn over and go back to sleep.

I was surprised that she agreed, and I know she'll be eating her words tonight when I try to enforce it, but it had to happen some time, and we'll see how it goes. Maybe two bad nights in a row have worn me down enough to help me stay strong in the face of full-force Hurricane Mabel. Maybe our success with cutting out daytime nursing will convince both of us that I can say no and she can learn to live with it. But it's going to be hard, and there will be tears, and I just hope we don't wake the neighbours.

Victory! (Um, victory?)

Mabel got a new baby yesterday. "What, woman?" you ask. "Have you no sense? Have you no willpower? Have you an infinite amount of space in your house - and your heart, [sob] - for more babies? When will you say no?"

Don't worry. This was a special baby. This was her potty-training sticker-chart baby.

Some time back in January or so, I had a brainwave. Which I didn't even mention here, for fear of having to eat my words yet again. I told Mabel that when she saved me enough money on pullups by wearing underpants, we could spend that money on a baby. Some rough calculations led me to believe that if a box of Pampers at Target costs $20, then half a box costs $10. (With me so far?) And there were many attractive babies in the toy aisles that could be purchased for such a price. Including the one Mabel had just set her heart on.

It appeared that she was using about three pullups a day (night-time was off the table at this point). So to save 30 pullups, or half a box, should take only about ten days of solid underpantsing. It worked like magic for five days, but then the novelty started to fade. She'd wear underwear at school and then not take off her naptime pullup all afternoon. I let it slide, especially as we were off to Ireland and I really didn't want to try getting her to go commando on a plane or during days of jetlag again. Every now and then she'd wear underpants for a whole morning or a whole afternoon, and we'd add a sticker to the chart.

At some point during our trip away, I think, she started pooing in the toilet whether she was wearing a pullup or not. I was, you can imagine, pretty happy about this development. We were given some hand-me-down (but very clean) underpants from a friend, and Mabel suddenly loved them. Hey, whatever it takes.

So on Friday, the last sticker went into its place on the chart, and Mabel was pronounced officially potty trained. We went to Target yesterday morning and she's now the devoted mother/big sister of Princess Bonny, who came with a tiara and a "baby list" (that is, an ad for all the other baby princesses you can buy). She's meant to be Aurora, the Sleeping Beauty, but Mabel says (scathingly) that Sleeping Beauty doesn't have a tiara, and she thinks Bonny is a prettier name. Take that, Disney Corporation.

She's also wearing a pullup right now, and plotting her next sticker chart. Clearly, I have triumphed.

Be the hokey (Irish names)

In honour of the day that's in it, or almost in it, I thought I would provide some oft-needed information. Here's a quick run-down on some popular Irish names, and "Irish" names, that you might encounter.

Irish names that people in Ireland actually give their children

Girls

Aisling
Pronounced "Ashling". Means a dream, but not just any old dream. Specifically, the dream of Ireland personified as a beautiful woman.

Aoibheann
Pronounced "Eve-Ann". Means beautiful.

Aoife
Pronounced "Ee-fah".

Caoimhe
Pronounced "Kweeva" or sometimes "Keeva".

Ciara
Pronounced "Keera". If you want to pronounce it "Kee-ara", then spell it Chiara and call it Italian. If you want to pronounce it "Sierra", you're probably some sort of pop princess.

Emer
(Or Eimear.) Pronounced Ee-mer, not eh-mer like United Arab Emirates.

Gráinne
Pronounced "Graw-nya". Irish form of Grace.

Maedhbh
(Or even Maedb, for the purists.) Pronounced Maeve. Could also be spelled Maebh or simple Maeve.

Niamh
Pronounced "Neev" or, more correctly, "Nee-uv" with two syllables.

Saibh
(Or Sadhbh.) Pronounced "Sive" to rhyme with five.

Saoirse
Pronounced "Seersha". Means freedom.

Siobhán
Pronounced "Shiv-awn".

Boys

Daragh
Pronounced "Dara" with a flat a as in the first of animal, or possibly "Darra" with a less flat a as in star. Some people will claim that Dara is a girl's name and Daragh (or Darragh) is the boy's version, but then you'll walk out of the room and meet one who works it the other way around.

Eoghan
Irish spelling of Owen. (A variant of John, and of course Seán.)

Naoise
Pronounced "Neesha". Can work for a boy or a girl.

Oisín
Pronounced "Usheen". Like Usher, but with an -een instead. No relation to hoisin sauce.

Pádraig
Pronounced "Paw-drig" or maybe "Paw-rig". The Irish form of Patrick. Because Patrick isn't Irish enough, you know.

"Irish" names that people in other countries like to give their children

Girls

Caitlin
I have to tread carefully here, as I have a good friend with this name. But many people are unaware that it's simply a back-formation of Kathleen. The name Kathleen in Irish is spelled Cáitlín, but pronounced Cawt-leen, which sounds a lot more like Kathleen than the pronounciation Americans have given to the spelling. Have you considered Kate-Lynn?
 
Colleen
This is the phonetic spelling of the Irish word "cailín", which means "girl". It's no worse than calling your child Nina, I suppose, but really, it's just a noun. Maybe if you were surprised that she wasn't a boy.

Erin
Erin is the Irish word for Ireland. It's like calling your daughter America. Again, many people do. I even know native-born Erins in Ireland. But it's also a brand of tinned foods and ready-made gravy, so you might want to take that into account.

Shannon
The Shannon is the longest river in Ireland. If you'd quite like to call your daughter Amazon or Mississippi or Danube, but you want an Irish air, then go for it.

Boys

Kelly
It's a last name. And a shade of green. It's not a first name in Ireland, for a boy or a girl.

Shawn
Don't spell it this way. Spell it Seán or just call him John. Please.

A few real Irish names that travel well

Boys
Aidan
Conor
Cormac
Fergus
Killian (or Cillian, but then you have to tell people it's not pronounced Sillian)
Liam
Patrick

Girls
Fiona
Maeve
Orla
Tara

Do you have any more to add to my lists? Any mystery names whose pronounciation I can clarify for you? Have I mortally offended any Erins out there?

If you'd like to read more about St Patrick's day at home and abroad, may I suggest:
Cultural exchange of information

Green Gables

I really like those mornings when I can say yes to my kids. Everything is so much easier that way, but so often we're all in a rush and it has to be done Right Now and there's no time for letting them smell the roses, literally or metaphorically.

They have to be mornings, mind you, because by the afternoon everyone's that much more frazzled and less willing to give and take; the demands are less reasonable, and my temper is certainly shorter. And realistically, it only happens with one child at a time. But still, I'll take what I can get.

Mabel doesn't have school on Thursdays, and we had no particular playdate or appointment planned for today. I thought we might take a look in Old Navy to plug some of the gaps in her summer wardrobe, and pick up a few things at Safeway, but we were in no great rush. After I'd walked Dash to school - leaving Mabel at home with B - I asked her if she wanted to choose something to wear today. She happily came upstairs, chose a pair of underpants, picked out a skirt and her butterfly t-shirt, and put them all on. No drama. No chasing. Just a perfectly reasonable child. Sunshine and flowers all the way.

She watched a little TV while I hung the washing on the line, we got a few things together, and left the house. She added a fluffy bunny and a small doll to my bag of stuff, as well as deciding to bring her scooter in the car, but these were easily accommodated. See, it's not just that she was being reasonable, but also that I was. There's no need to deny her small requests that don't make my life any more difficult, but sometimes, when I'm feeling pissy, I suppose, I just feel that the Good Parenting approach is to say no at all times. Because if you do what they want, they start thinking they can have everything.

That's not really true. If you do what they want, when you can, they're more likely to listen to your explanation when you really can't.

When we got to Old Navy, Mabel spent the first five minutes ecstatically greeting her friends the mannequin family at the entrance, hugging the girl who is just her size, adjusting her cardigan and shades, and patting the mannequin dog. Sometimes I have to hustle her away, but today I just let her enjoy herself for a little while. When it was time to move on down the store to where the clothes I wanted to look at were, she was content to come along. She tried on some sandals while I riffled through the clearance racks, and was generally easy to manage and a delight to have on the trip.

As I paid, she looked at the toys near the checkouts, and united a teeny tiny giraffe key-chain with its larger "Mummy giraffe". (She hates to see a family split up.) Before we left, she showed me a little doll and said, so nicely, "Maybe I could have that for my birthday or Christmas." "Maybe," I agreed.

Then we skipped Safeway and just went to meet some friends at the playground, because the weather's too nice for shopping, and who needs dinner anyway? You're just going to need it again tomorrow.

As low-key, simple, do-nothing mornings go, it was a really nice one. I know that well-rested and a.m. have a lot to do with Mabel's behaviour - and my own, probably - but again I'm reminded of what Anne Shirley once observed about people - they have two handles, a hard one and an easy one. If you can figure out the way to pick them up with the easy one, everything comes out so much better. I need to work on finding my kids' easy handles more often.

Shapely ankle

I have this friend with great legs. I have lots of friends with great legs, of course, you're one of them, naturally, but I just happen to be talking about this friend in particular today. Not that they're a problem, or anything. They work really well and they look great in skinny jeans, and leggings with tall boots, and even short skirts, were she to wear short skirts, which I must admit I don't think she does much. Maybe she does. I don't see her that often. I don't want to misrepresent anyone here.

Anyway. I only see her now and then because she lives in Ireland, but whenever we're home we try to visit, because in addition to her great legs she has a lovely house with a big bright kitchen extension and lots of toys for the kids to delve into, and three boys as well. And she has a really good sense of design, style, a good eye, whatever you like to call it. And she's a friend, so it goes without saying that she's a lovely person and an excellent conversationalist.

So we go to see her, and the next day, subliminially like, I wake up and think to myself, "I really must go shopping. I need to buy some skinny jeans. Or some leggings and long trendy tops. That's what I should be wearing. Why am I still wearing these bootleg flarey things? It's the second decade of the twenty-first century, for heaven's sake!" And it barely registers that I'm thinking this because I just saw my friend with the excellent legs and the eye for style sporting something like that and making it look like a million dollars.

Because my legs, while Fine, are not quite up there at Great. I have a shapely ankle, no doubt - Mr Darcy might even have been pleased with it - and my bosom can heave with the best of them, but my legs - well, if you were drawing them, you'd have to say that they go out at the top. I know most people's do; to be honest, if your calves were fatter than your thighs you'd probably have more of a problem than I'm talking about here. But mine go out just enough to make the wearing of the bootleggy flarey jeans of which I am so fond the other 362 days of the year, or so, make perfect sense.

So then I go shopping, and prowl around Debenhams and Next a few times (because they're tantalizingly, wallet-tinglingly close to where we're usually staying), and by the third exploratory trip for a scant twenty minutes stolen from Mabel's naptime I'm throwing caution to the winds and declaring that I have to buy something, anything at all, to make a change from the Gap jeans and Old Navy t-shirts that make up most of my wardrobe here in the US, where a non-churchgoing stay-at-home mom just doesn't ever need to dress up for anything more than a four-year-old's birthday party, and even then you don't want to look like you put too much thought into it for fear people will call CPS and tell them you were neglecting your children while you put on dangly earrings and shiny eyeshadow. The low-effort look is key, I mean.

Gosh, was that all one sentence? Sorry about that. Hope you fitted a breath in somewhere. You'd think someone would call in an editor or something, wouldn't you?

So I finally buy something uncharacteristically patterned or shaped, or for full price and not from a clearance rack, because it's my Irish money and bears no relation to the amount I would normally balk at paying over here in America, where I like to spend no more than 10 bucks on a t-shirt, whether it's for me or the three-year-old. And then I get back to America and I try it on and look at myself critically in the mirror and wonder whether I can pull this off nonchalantly as just what I'm wearing today, isn't it cute? thanks! or if it looks like I'm doing something Weird and Trendy and, I dunno, trying to pull a divorced daddy at the playground or something.

It's all in the attitude, I know. I wore my orange patterned tunic top over my capri jeans today and a couple of people said it was nice and most people completely ignored it, which is just about the level of input I was hoping for. But I'd better not get uppity and start putting on jewellery as well. Don't call CPS just yet.

Boing

Spring has apparently sprung. Perhaps the run-up happened while we were in Ireland, but I'm not the only person who feels that it's indecently sudden for 80-degree days to be happening. I like warmer weather, but I don't really want to bust out the sunhats and the factor 50 just yet.

Still, today I was wearing sandals and tonight the inaugural painting of the toenails will occur. It's time to see which of the kids' shorts still fit them, and where the gaps are in their summer wardrobes. (Shorts: they last forever. No knees to go through, and the torso still fits for years, so if they're below the knee the first year, they're on the knee the second year, and might still work above the knee for a third year, if your children are my children. Mabel, today, was wearing what started out as 18-24-month capri pants. They're just right on the bum (if she's wearing underwear), not yet too short in the rise, and are now pedal pushers.

I'm not saying this is it and we're into summer now - at least, I hope not. This week is a warning shot across the bows, so that we remember all the things that need to be done - summer-camp research, beach-house booking, new-sandal acquisition, perhaps - and get around to them in seemly fashion.

Meanwhile I should probably stop complaining about the heat, admire the burgeoning blossom, and appreciate the fact that lots of good outdoor time today has given me a peacefully slumbering Mabel, even if I did have to wash a layer of grime off the soles of her feet before bed, because shoes in warm weather are not a thing she agrees with.

Wherein I confess how ill-informed I really am

If we didn't have children, I'd be a lot better informed. Or, perhaps, if B and I went on more dates - but not ones to see a movie.

Backing up to explain my point. (Beep beep beep.) I'm not good at politics. My brain tends to curl up in a little ball (even more, I mean) and sing "la la laaaa" when people talk about politics. I don't know why, but it's always been this way. When I read the newspaper, in hard copy or online, I scan the headlines and look at the pictures, and then skip to the Style section. I am much more likely to retain a quote I saw in passing about Christian Louboutin's red-soled high heels than who has dropped out of the Republican race and who's still in the running.

(Partly, and I have to parenthesise even more here in a whole paragraph of its own, this is because they all have stupid pretend names that I can't distinguish from one another. I mean: Mitt (short for Mitten?), Newt (short for Lizard?) - what's the difference? I only discovered this morning that Rush Limbaugh is not actually another candidate - he sounds like a candidate, doesn't he? And I know Rick Santorum because of the Dan Savage thing years ago, but I still have no clear idea of how their policies stand or what they're like as people. Admittedly, this is because I don't read the articles, but it's also because even if I did I'd forget whether I was reading about Mitt or Newt or some other guy. As far as I'm concerned they're all crazy right-wing Republicans, and that's all I need to know. Surely none of them will ever actually get into power.)

The average member of the Irish general public knows a lot more about the American political situation than I do right now. This was made painfully clear when B's uncle asked me while we were in Ireland what I thought of the candidates, and I really had nothing to say. I mean, I still have nothing to say. What is there to think, other than that no reasonable person would vote for any of them? Do I really have to waste time finding out more? I tried to fall back on a joke, saying that I look to my husband for guidance in such matters, but unfortunately I was seated on the side of the uncle's deaf ear, and by the time I'd repeated it clearly, it made me sound like just the sort of wife these candidates seem to want me to be, which I promise was not my intention.

But the thing is that B is one of the few people (as well as all of you, now, but you don't exist in real life, do you?) to whom I'll admit the depths of my ignorance on subjects like this, and let inform me of all the things most people know already. He's very good at explaining things from first principles, which usually leads to more information than one needed, but in this case is exactly what I want. I mean, I know the basics of Democrats v Republicans, and which one Obama is and which one the Bushes were, but beyond that whatever you can tell me is probably good information. And I respect B's principles and we have pretty much the same views on things, so to be honest, if he told me how to vote I'd probably find after doing some research that I came to the same conclusions.

And then, of course, there's the fact that as non-citizens, neither of us do have a vote of any type in this country. As non-residents, we don't have a vote in our home country either, as Ireland does not do postal votes. But there's an unofficial online voting campaign that has happened for the last two elections, and I have researched the candidates running in my home constituency and decided who I would vote for there. Exercising my right to vote has always been important to me, even if all I could do for sure was to help try to keep the obviously crazy candidates out of power.

So when I see headlines like this one (pulled from my Facebook feed just now): "Alabama State Senator Proposes Legislation to Prohibit ‘Women and Non-Whites’ From Voting," I go, "Oh, come on," and don't click it because I don't even want to validate its existence by reading about it. And, I suppose, as a married woman for whom another pregnancy would not be a wholesale disaster, I'm in the happy position of not feeling too immediately personally affected by all the utter bullshit that the old white men are trying to come up with right now. But I have a daughter, and if the US turns out to be more backward about women's reproductive rights than even my home country,* I'm going to have to start paying attention.  

(*Did you know that abortion of any kind is still illegal in Ireland? (Read this. It's an eye-opener.) Before 1985 you needed a prescription to buy a condom there. Divorce came in in 1996. Most of the schools are run by the Catholic Church... all this I'm used to, this I can deal with, though it's far from ideal.) 

Which brings me to today. Today I put on what I believe are called "dress trousers" - that is, the sort of thing I used to wear to my semi-casual workplace, and a necklace (and also a top and a cardigan, and a bra too, but I'm just not mentioning that because I do usually wear a bra and also a top, as opposed to the other things which are less frequently disported these days) and boots with a bit of a heel, and tried to look like a responsible adult, because B and I went to talk to a lawyer about doing that ultimate responsible adult thing of making a will. (Finally. After meaning to do it for six years or so now. I know, I know.) I suppose I could have gone in my jeans and my sneakers just like any other day, but I felt the need to be in my "professional" guise. It's funny, it had been so long since I'd dressed that way that the word that came to mind when I looked in the mirror was "mannish". I changed my cardigan for a lighter colour, put on the jewellery and some lipstick, and hoped for the best. I think it was just the unfamiliar silhouette that wierded me out.

Anyway, we dropped the children to their respective schools and went to meet the nice man, who turned out to be the perfect conjunction of older enough to make us feel like he knows what he's talking about, and not so old that we felt he'd be better engaged polishing up the codicils of his own will rather than ours. As we left, he congratulated us on doing the responsible adult thing. I felt like wailing, "But we're nearly 40!" At what point do we actually become responsible adults in the eyes of the older generation?

And then, since we still had half an hour to kill, we went and had a coffee date at Starbucks and pretended to be having a business meeting like the other businessly-dressed people there. I have no idea when the last time I sat and had a coffee in public with my husband without fielding constant demands for chocolate milk and lemon pound cake was, and it was very nice. It also enabled him to give me a quick overview of the Republican candidates, and a quick update on the fact that Rush Limbaugh isn't actually one of them.

As soon as we got Mabel from school though, the discussion was peppered with "Mummy!" and "Stop talking!" and "When I was in the sandbox I looked for Anne but I couldn't find her..." and "Nobody is allowed talk!" and other such imperious demands. Which is why we don't usually get to have conversations.

Now, where's that babysitter's e-mail again?
___

Note: I hope I haven't offended anyone with my offhand dismissal of all Republican politicians as crazies. Your views are your own, and mine, as I am pointing out, are all but non-existent. I'm trying to remedy this, so that I have actual opinions the better with which to offend you. I mean, other people who aren't reading this.

Nemesis, apparently

From where I'm sitting at the kitchen table I can see five, no, six baby dolls of varying sizes and skin tones sprawled on the family room floor. Plus one Barbie, face down in the carpet. There may have been some sort of massacre. There's also an open Pooh Bear laptop beside a pair of binoculars, as if dropped in haste by a spy who was disturbed at work. We had a playdate this morning. The victim of the massacre, in truth, was mostly me. (Fine. I.)

After lunch, such as it was, being a catch-as-you-can meal of bread and butter, or blueberry muffin, or bagel, I was hounded by the screaming hordes that comprise my two adorable, well-behaved children to such an extent that I fled upstairs with my book, and told B to take them away and put them in front of the TV, if he had to, to keep them off me.

He's taken them out to find a geocache now, a nice activity that keeps the three of them occupied and at least one of them interested for an hour or so. (It's like a treasure hunt using a GPS.) I greatly appreciate the peace and quiet and have no intention of picking up any of the mess, though I did put away some laundry.

Sometimes, though, I do wish that children didn't have to be constantly entertained so. I long for the day when they will just curl up with a good book and let me do the same. I look at them leaping around the house, from sofa to armchair like mountain gazelles who embrace the possibility of concussion (again) with every bound - "But Mummy, I didn't fall"; ergo, I never will - and with a sinking heart I know that someone has to take them at least outside, if not actually Out to a place where they can do that sort of thing in the fresh air and over a nice covering of soft woodchips.

Where do they get all their damn energy? (From their father, of course, who got up at 6am to run sixteen miles today.)

Disappointment

The boy across the road, who is in second grade, said as he passed us on our way home from school today that he'd play light sabers with Dash. "As soon as I've done my homework," he told us.

Once we were home, after a quick milk-and-cookie (and can I just say that I'm thrilled to see my kids both drink a glass of milk and eat a homemade cookie, because so many things would have stopped Dash from doing that simple thing a while ago - he would only drink milk if it was chocolate; the walnuts I snuck into the cookies would have sent him running a mile), Dash hooked his light saber to his belt, donned his bike helmet for protection, and we all went out to wait for M to finish his homework. (Dash doesn't have homework on Fridays.) After twenty minutes, Dash was lying on the chilly grass, Mabel was climbing the rhodedendron, and I was getting cold. I suggested we go inside again and watch out the window to see when M would be ready to play. Dash reluctantly agreed.

After another half hour or so inside, with Dash bugging me to look out the window every minute (while I told him to go and look out the lower window in the other room, but he was afraid he'd be missing something if he didn't have the full range of views), Dash suddenly announced "He's coming out!"

Hooray. "...with his dad and his brother. His dad's getting into the car..." Dash continued. I looked out the window. There was no sign of anyone, except the kid's mother coming outside with something that the others had evidently forgotten, and deciding not to get into her car and drive after them with it. No sign of M.

"I think he's gone with his dad, Dash. I'm sorry."

Poor Dash was quietly crushed. I could tell because he didn't say anything. He didn't cry, but all the excitement had drained away and he was just a kindergartener who wasn't getting to play light sabers with a second-grader again today.

There's always tomorrow. I hope M comes out to play tomorrow.

Skeered

Our fearless leader (Mabel, that is, who is our leader only because she is The Boss of Us All) is just a tiny bit less fearless these days. In fact, I think I'll go out on a limb and call it a scared-of-things phase.

She's been all "I don't wanna go to school" for the past two days, which has got her exactly nowhere but school, but for all her teacher assures me that the drama is for my benefit only and she's fine once she's in (which I believe), it's increasingly hard to get her there. Putting a three-year-old into a carseat and taking her out again, and getting her to wear shoes and socks nevermind a coat, is much easier with co-operation, you know? Even a petite and bijou three-year-old like this one. On Tuesday once we'd arrived, I unclicked her carseat but each time I tried to pull an arm out of a strap she'd hook the other one back in more firmly. She obviously didn't feel that being already in the parking lot was any reason to stop the protest.

Hand-in-hand with that goes the old favourite "Carry meeeee!" that I'm hearing far too much at the moment. In addition to which, in the last day or two she has professed to be scared (sorry, "skeeered") of:

• the clock in her room
• the space under her bed
• the space beside her bed where the mattress just fails to meet the wall by an inch or two
• a wriggly thing she found outside that wasn't a worm
• spiders
• her dreams

Poor terrified child. It's a necessary phase, I suppose, and shows an expansion of her understanding to hold all those things that are unknown, as well as known. She'll settle down again soon. In the meantime, I'll probably be carrying her a bit more than I should, and bringing her scooter along as much as I can.

Thrifty

I really have to bake something, because I have a playdate coming over this afternoon and it is my God-given duty to provide my friend and her children with something unhealthy but not chocolate to reject/eat, and I spent the morning at the thrift store where I not only picked up some great clothes for Dash to wear some day when he fits size 7s and 8s - so in about five years, then, but I don't care because I got him a very nice Hilfiger shirt for five bucks - but also became a VIP member and started a rewards card, so I think we can say I'm really hardcore now. Now that Mabel's taking a nap, which will only be one hour and no more, I promise on my honour as a mother, I have blogging and baking to do both, at once and simultaneously together at the same time.

I seem to have decided, without actually noticing it happen, to start making all the recipes that I pinned to my Food board on Pinterest instead of just drooling over them, so suddenly I have roasted vegetable soup halfway made and am committed to making kale and quinoa salad with cranberries, of all things, for dinner, or lunch, or some meal when we will feel like eating healthy stuff and I'll be all smug and also boosted in necessary vitamins and minerals and protein and not meat. (I should also mention that I made these sweet-potato and bean burgers the other night and they were quite delicious and I highly recommend them, and who knows, even your children might eat them, not that mine gave them a second glance but I'm sure that's my own fault for doing something wrong at a very early stage in their vital development. Probably that time I dropped them on their heads. Stomachs. Whatever.)

The reason I went to the thrift store was because I had this wonderful idea. Like everyone else in the Western world who has children and lives within 500 miles of IKEA, we have a lot of colourful plasticware, and it's starting to bug me. It doesn't dry properly in the dishwasher, and the plates are getting all scratched from cutting crusts off sandwiches, and despite assuring you all that we had given up sippy cups about a year and a half ago, we haven't really, though technically we have because we mostly use straw cups instead, but it comes to the same thing.

When we're away from home and the kids have to use real crockery and proper glass glasses, nothing terrible happens except that I'm more careful about not letting them wander around with a drink in hand, which is probably a good thing. So I thought, inspired partly by my friend Mrs Quimby who once mentioned that she lets her girls use little thrift-store creamers (milk jugs, that is) to practice pouring, that I would acquire some cheap china and small chunky glasses, and let the kids use those instead of the plastic. They'll think it's exciting, I'll think they're getting civilized, it's a win/win.

So I did, and we will see how it goes. I just hope I can figure out how to get the permanent-marker prices off the tumblers before we start using them.

Divulge

But first, a joke:

Two old fellas in a Dublin pub, staring morosely into their pints.
"I'm writing a novel," says the one.
"Neither am I," says the other.

Or maybe it was Brendan Behan and James Joyce, and for all I know it really happened.

So here's a secret. In the past year or so, I have written the grand total of three - count 'em, three - short stories. I know they qualify as short stories because I looked up how many words you need, and we're certainly not heading into novella territory here. They're a little longer than flash fiction, perhaps, but not much.

It takes me a long time, what with not having much of that in the first place, and all this blogging you people demand that I do, and the fact that I have to stop and wait for the muse to tell me where to take things and sometimes the muse is busy washing her hair or touring China so she doesn't get back to me for a while. But I sort of love it. (Or, like exercise, I love having done it.)

The process, though. The process is interesting. Take this last one I finished, for example. I started it on a whim, and loved the beginning. I loved the beginning - the fairytale tone, the romantic setting - so much that I didn't really want to take it anywhere. Because as soon as you start sending a character down a path, you make a change to them. They become someone more concrete, more real and more flawed. The glorious endless possibilities of the blank page are closed off to them one by one, as words fill up the space, making them do specific things. You feel you're not living up to the potential you gave them. How can they be ethereal creatures of delicate magic if they also have to be plodding people who go to school and try to make friends? But I don't want to write elves and sparkles, and I don't want to write tragedy and deep suffering and high literature: I want to write something more like a whimsical take on reality, to entertain and distract.

And then, once it's done, I thought, I'll leave it alone for a while and come back to it with my editor's hat on, and rip it to shreds. When I don't love it so much, when I can see the cracks and the creaks and what I would say to a stranger. Because I'm a good editor, even if I don't have a lot of experience with fiction. I have to trust my own opinion even on my own writing, if I can just get a bit of a remove from it.

It didn't work that way. I re-read the story last night and it was as if every move, every word spoken was carved in stone. It had become history, and to change it would be to betray what had really happened. I couldn't find a thing to rip up. I have no idea if this is because it really is perfect (not so likely) or because no matter how long I leave it, the words came out of some space in me that won't bend to my editorial dictates.

(This is why the world needs editors, people. Stop thinking writers can edit their own work. Two functions. Two people.)

Funny old stuff, writing. I don't know what to do with my stories next. But I should probably start another, just to see if I can do it again.

Peppa Pig

As is always the way, the kids watched a mite too much television while we were away. Staying in other people's houses with few toys, getting over jetlag, being ignored while adults talk, refusing to get dressed - such things lend themselves to every trip having its own signature movie or TV program by the time we're done.

Last summer, it was Megamind and Monsters V. Aliens, two movies we had access to that got played over and over. This time, I think it's the entire Nickelodeon Jr UK cartoon ouvre, complete with fascinating ads for wonderful toys and highly efficient cleaning products. Every five seconds - it seemed - a wail would emanate from the sitting room: "Mummy! Can I have the HotWheels Double Dare Snare?" "Mummy! Can I have the baby that pees?" or, in unison, "Mummy, can we have Oogly booglies?" (Whatever.) The fact that the answer was always a resounding and instant "No" didn't deter either of them in the least.

Mabel had a running list going of all the things she wants for her birthday and Christmas: the baby that goes to sleep, and the baby that pees, and the mermaid dolls that change colour, and the Lalaloopsy doll, and several more that I've happily forgotten now. Dash was so mesmerized by marketing that he demanded we buy Fairy Platinum for the dishwasher (and was delighted to find we were already using it).

On our journey home, Mabel had a huge crazy fit of the screaming no's just as we went through immigration. They do US immigration in Dublin for transatlantic flights, so I couldn't even blame the journey - it was only noon and our oddysey had barely started. It's going to be a long day, I thought to myself, as I gritted my teeth and presented my fingerprints to the scanning machine. Luckily for everyone on the plane, she regrouped and was fine for the long flight, and even made it intact to the short hop at the end, though it was way past Irish bedtime by then. I fished some stickers out of her backpack and she busied herself for quite a while with a strip of sticky paper while we waited for takeoff. She would stick it on the wall beside her and pull it off again, saying "Sparkling! Look, Mummy, now it sparkles!"

For a few minutes I was afraid she was going all Edward-and-Bella on me, but then I listened to some more of her monologue. "You stick it on, and you pull it off, and now it's all clean and sparkling! See how it shines?"
"Mabel," I asked, "Have you been watching the Pledge ads again?"
"Yes."
Then she continued: "Command stickers. They stick and then they come off cleanly." R-r-r-r-rip.

Tendrils

Okay, so Dash is back at school, B is gone to work, Mabel is taking an early nap (because she was up at 4.15am - thank you, time difference), and I have a cup of tea. I suppose I'm meant to get back to blogging every day or something.

But I can't bake anything until the fridge is fixed, and the man to look at it is only coming now in a few minutes or two hours depending on where in his window he deigns to arrive, and I've just finished the last of the delicious homemade choc-chip oatmeal cookies that my lovely friend brought to help ease in the transition back to being USAians, and I don't know what you want me to talk about.

Way back three weeks or so ago, I had nothing to blog about. Now my brain is full of this and that, deep thoughts and shallow, and I'm not sure yet how - or if - I want to corral them into segments to talk about here.

Three of my friends have announced pregnancies in the past month or so. I'm absolutely delighted for them, and there's nothing more reassuring or lovlier to hear about when you're dealing with death than the prospect of tiny new thrilling life. I don't feel the urge to join in, mind you.

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Readjustment is quick. The no-man's-land of being between homes is confusing to the soul, when each feels like the only possible reality and perhaps we have both and perhaps we have neither. Coming back to a cold, slightly musty house, with rooms that are too big and do not embrace you with your own history is disorienting. Leaving the soft air of Ireland to find torrential rain on the other side of the Atlantic is not welcoming. It's hard to turn your back on the comforting phalanx of elders, people who will stand behind you and look after you and feed you dinner - because you are the babies of the family, after all - and come home to stand on your own feet, a small (but perfectly formed) team of two functioning independently for your own babies, fixing your own damn fridge, making the world go round, again.

It will take a few days for the rambling threads of my consciousness to follow me back over the ocean and make sense of who I am, again.