Anger management

I know I've said that I'll throw a party when Mabel's last tooth* comes through, but in a way I'm a bit apprehensive about it. Because once that happens, I won't have anything left to blame her shocking behaviour on, and I might just have to accept that she's a terrible, horrible, no-good child.

This morning, for example, in between my taking the old pull-up off her and putting on the new one, she ran off (par for the course) and I found her standing almost on the shaggy rug in the front room, peeing on the floor. I went to pull the chair out of the way so I could yank her all the way off the rug, but it appeared that Monkey had just tied the chair to the coffee table with some IKEA string, so I couldn't even manage that. They conspire against me, you know. (B too. I'm sure he was the one who procured the string.)

To be fair to her, while she can certainly poo in the toilet if she feels like it (key point there), I don't think she can really control the wee yet. But she could have done a better job of looking sorry about it: instead she laughed uproariously and thought the whole thing was hilarious. And it's not as if I was putting on my crossness about this and trying to hide a laugh myself - I was genuinely annoyed, and she hadn't even the common decency to look remorseful.

This evening I had her in a special-event unscheduled bath while Monkey was at soccer practice, thanks to a lot of ice-cream** drips and climbing a tree, and I was just taking the opportunity to clean the bathroom a bit when she dumped a jugful of water over the side. I was so annoyed that I grabbed the jug and retaliated by giving her hair a quick dousing before taking her out of the bath. My (possibly after-the-fact) justification was that she needed a hair-washing, or at least wetting, and I needed to get her out as quickly as possible as punishment for the water over the side. But really, I was just angry and knew she'd hate it. Which she did, loudly.

It is perhaps the case that my daughter and I will have a clash of tempers once or twice or daily in our relationship, as she gets older. I maybe need to get hold of myself and remember that I'm the adult in this situation.

What do you think? Was it a contravention of gentle parenting? Did I act vengefully out of temper? Did she deserve what she got? Or is it, in the scheme of things, a mere blip? All of the above?

Or maybe, once the last tooth comes through, this will all be in the past and we'll metaphorically frolic through the daisies together ever after. You think?

* I should clarify that I'm never sure whether she's teething or not, but sometimes she just darn acts like it. I don't want to dose her up when she says plainly "No, my teeth don't hurt," but I do wonder if she's just not recognising the pain for what it is.

**We got the ice-cream at IKEA, where, as suggested, I asked to see the ingredients. The nice guy behind the counter happily gave me a folder with the information, which told me that it has "corn syrup" but not "high fructose corn syrup". So that's okay. Maybe. Am not really any wiser, to be honest. But it's still better than the Trix with all its additives and colourings as well as the HFCS. And he only charged me for one because I asked him for two really small ones, so that's got to be good.

Fickleties

It may have escaped your notice that it's September now. September, when I was going to be all gung-ho about the winding down on the nursing, the ramping up on the weaning, the getting serious about sleeping and all that jazz. I certainly noticed. But now that we're here, much as I predicted, I can come up with lots of lovely excuses. Teething, still going on, for instance. And the fact that the busyness of the new term has cut down on nursing anyway. And mostly I'm just not in that place any more where the incessant demands are driving me nuts, so I can afford to be all zen and "oh, she's my last baby, who cares how long she needs to nurse" about it.

So there's that.

And then there was also my great and efficient house-cleaning plan. That just totally didn't happen. Maybe some day when I have big oodles of child-free time every day, I can happily devote 20 minutes regularly to swiffering, dusting, mopping, disinfecting, and whatever, but right now housework is still very much on an ad-hoc basis. When the mood strikes, when I have a few free minutes, when people are coming over, when the children demand to hoover (true story), or when I happen to look inside the shower with my glasses on - this is when I clean. It seems to work okay, so far.

If changing one's mind is a woman's prerogative, I'm clearly oozing oestrogen. This blog is evidently a repository for plans that never come to fruition, things that do not come to pass, the best of intentions gone awry.

On the other hand, these two seem to have worked out pretty well, so maybe it's not totally a lost cause.

Musical beds

That house. The one I saw. We put in an offer today. Who knows what will happen now.

I am determined to go to bed early tonight, after last night's non-sleep-apalooza. Usually when I'm woken at 3am or whenever it is (I can't see the clock without craning, once I'm sleeping with Miss), I'm quite alert - no doubt from however many years it is now of being woken around then by one or t'other. But last night when I moved my arm and it was enough to make her splutter awake, suddenly totally bunged up with an insta-cold, it was only one-something, and I was still in the depths of wanting to be asleep. The exciting new nasal-congestion issue meant it took forever to get her back to sleep and I had to sit up (horrors!) to do it, so she could nurse and breathe at the same time (always a plus). And then gently ease us back down to a horizontal position an inch at a time, ending up with her head elevated on the pillow and mine falling off the back end, ensuring that I couldn't sleep myself.

It felt like 15 minutes later when Monkey appeared on the horizon. Every morning in the grey light I register the pad, pad, pad of his feet through my shallow sleep and raise a grim hand in warning to make sure he knows where his sister is and not to wake her, and hopefully to convey that I'm not at all pleased to see him and would be a much nicer mummy if he would just wait an hour or three. Then he slides under the duvet on my other side and says in an all-too-shrill whisper, and as if I didn't know, "Please may can I have morn-side?" (May can is his ultra-polite asking. I think it's because his father taught him please may I and I went with the simpler - I thought, for some reason - please can I, and both stuck. Sort of.)

His appearance has been getting earlier lately, from a very reasonable 6.30 to 7.00 a while ago to hours with 5s in them lately. This morning I looked at the clock, saw 4.30, and ushered him straight back to his own bed. But then I had to stay there with him, which I did for about half an hour and then, though he still wasn't asleep, I reckoned he should drop off so I left with a quick pat and an excuse about getting back to the baby. I crawled into my own bed once I'd ascertained that Miss was fine, and had 15 minutes or so of trying to get warm when pad, pad, pad, he was back. Lather rinse repeat. This time I fell asleep in his bed and was woken by B telling me very quietly that Miss was awake and looking for me, so then I had to go back to her, long-windedly put her back to sleep... or did she even go back to sleep? Maybe at this point it was 6.30 and I let her get up with her father and took myself back to bed, finally, for an hour's lie in... it's all a blur.

It's probably a blur for you too, in the unlikely event that you're still reading this, and you're no doubt wondering why I let my children walk all over me like this and why their father can't lend a hand. Honestly, I prefer him to get a solid six or seven hours and then be able to get up early with them than to disturb him during the night, when he's usually a lot more comatose than I am and finds it hard to get back to sleep once woken. And really, it's not normally this way: Monkey has been sleeping through the night very reliably for almost two years now, and Miss is having a particularly bad time just now with the stuffy nose and the five - yes, five - teeth she's working on. I just found a molar poking through this evening. The other molars are all right there, bumps under the gum, and the last incisor is so close I can practically see it, but it refuses to break through. Poor girl.

So today I forwent Monkey's nap, at great personal expense (oh all right, I mis-timed our walk and he was still awake at the end of it) and he was in bed early and I hope hope hope this will be enough to break the pattern and get him to sleep a solid twelve hours. Eleven? Ten? What are the chances? Tune in tomorrow to find out.

Also to see whether we're home-owners.