Run for your lives, it's...

The Lurgi!

We're in the very un-nerving position of knowing that our little potato is about to get sick - but not knowing when, and therefore having to make risky decisions about where to take him and who to let him lick talk to.

Yes folks, our little pumpkin was exposed to... the POX!! Chickenpox, of course, although now that I have read a library of evidence on the subject there is a relationship to the actual Pox - mind you, from the way people react you'd think he was about to contract the plague. So now we are in agonies of waiting and preparing and looking at him all fondly because he's so little and sweet and has no idea what's coming for him.

I have also just discovered that when one writes the word 'pox' more than once it begins to look sort of alien and unlikely and one has to go and look it up in the dictionary just to check it's not actually spelled 'pocks'. Chickenpox. Smallpox. The pox. Pocks. Pockmarks. OK now every word is looking weird, someone get me a martini and a lie-down.

Anyway. So last Friday we were at one of the 100 thousand birthday parties we've been invited to in the last few weeks to experience more levels of party-food and goodie-bag guilt. The little boy in question has a somewhat contrary relationship with the spud, in that they both get right up each other's noses which means that most of their interactions end up in mini-fisticuffs. At that age, this mainly involves some face-to-face crying action followed by kissing and making up, hand-holding, playing and more crying.

What I'm getting at here is that they spent quite a lot of time together. Close up. In coughing distance. And the other little boy did have a cough -the sort of cough in fact that small children get right before they break out in the pox which he gaily did the very next day. Meaning that he was spectacularly infectious at the time and it's fairly likely that the spud is poxy-in-waiting - although, crucially, not guaranteed.

Short of painting a big black X on our door and cowering inside for the next two weeks, I'm not actually certain what to do next. Yes, come Monday he could be covered in spots. Or Tuesday. Or perhaps Wednesday. Or not. Meaning that from Saturday he may be infectious. Or Sunday . Or perhaps Monday. Or not at all. Because, my Very Good Friend who has Gone Before says that her 4 year old was exposed to the pox many times before he actually caught it.

So - do we tell the nursery and risk them making him stay home next week Just In Case? Or, do we put all the children at risk (or not) by sending him in? Or what? What? WHAT???

I am SUCH a nice person that the thought of going up to the nursery in ten minutes time and not mentioning it to them is going to create in me absolute agonies of angst... I mean, I will be dancing on their doorstep and mumbling like a female Hugh Grant; but if I can't stop myself and it leaches out and they tell me to keep him home next week, how much more angsty will I be if I let down a client and lose a week of work when he's NOT infectious?

We've now been banned from all our birthday party commitments this weekend (so there's something to be said for honesty!) and so are going to be able to laze around the house all cakeless and guilt-free.

To the nursery I go...

Acts of retention

There's something about having a son that just doesn't get discussed among women. It's the elephant in the kitchen if you like - or rather, the elephant's nose.

While women are capable of doing pretty much anything, the care and maintenance of a penis is something that, while I'm sure we all have some pretty strong ideas on, we've not generally had to manage on a daily basis... minds out of the gutter please. This all changes with the advent of a baby boy into one's life and suddenly one has to think about things such as foreskins; pointing a willy so pee goes into nappy rather than belly button, dealing with the 'pee arc', cleanliness, avoidance of zippers and, most importantly, aiming wee into a toilet.

This last point is one on which one's husband should usefully be instructing however there are days in which no husband is available and it is only a Mummy and her little potty-trainer. Not to embarrass the spud overly I have to say that he has cottoned on to the big issues very quickly, however when it comes to the old 'point and shoot' he's decided to solve the problem of directional randomness by hanging on with a very tight grip. Now. Anyone who has squeezed the end of a hose or blocked a running tap with a finger will have a clue as to the outcome of this particular strategy... as in rather than resembling a little teapot (beyond the 'short and stout' part) he resembles a bottle of windex which doesn't only 'clean' the loo, but also the walls, the floors, his clothes and his fingers. It's not all good.

Apart from a little collateral damage we are accident free on the potty training front - this is however helped enormously by the fact that currently we are only working with number 1. Our normally regular little potato has decided to hold on to his ass...ets for as long as possible and is now releasing equity only once every two or three days - normally in his sleep which is something he has not done since he was a few months old. This tells me that he is worried in some way about spending anything more than a penny in the facilities provided and is becoming retentive in the most literal manner possible. Talking to another mother who is potty training it turns out that her little boy is doing exactly the same which is somewhat reassuring however I am now looking for as many ways as possible to help my little accountant release his capital without losing interest... ba dum dum.

In the meantime we soldier on however if you fancy dropping round for a visit I may be putting you off for a month or so until business returns to normal.

Party politics

Birthday party season has well and truly landed. Since most of the spuds friends are children whom we met at various baby classes, antenatal classes and various other activities involving children calculated to be within a few months of his age, it is therefore unsurprising that they are all turning two around the same time.

This raises several problems in our little toddler world, questions surrounding birthday party presents; birthday party clothes; birthday party manners and dealing with birthday party sugar rushes. All these however pale into the paintwork when stood beside the big one... birthday party competitions.

I'm not talking the sort of competition where small children race giggling around a row of kitchen chairs. No, I'm talking about the unspoken competition between Mums which surrounds all aspects of Putting On A Birthday Party. Who bakes the best cake? Who lays on the best spread? Who has the nicest house? Who gives out the nicest party bags? Who, in other words, is the Best Mum. And, if you think I'm joking here, you are clearly Not A Parent.

We decided very early on in the stakes to opt out of all this madness by holding the spud's birthday in the park every year however at only the second go at this strategy we were rained right into our house... a house, I may add, which is in fact only a small apartment, which was not prepped with balloons or streamers or long tables laden with party food. Not that there's room in our place for a long table laden with party food but... well, you get my drift. We also opted not to go for any party bags - or at least, not until the spud is at an age where his friends will be expecting one. The result was that we had a sort of one-cheeked affair. Yes, there was cake and mmm... there was sort-of some nibbly bits and mmm... well we had the marquee up in the garden and... mostly, there was mud and chaos and over-excited children with nowhere to run. And beer, because the Frog and the Daddy of the spud's co-birthday party boy decided that there was Not Enough Beer and rather than purchase chocolates or fairy cakes or any sort of useful birthday party extras when they realised the whole shebang would be at our place, they just went out and bought so much beer that the jelly had to be exiled out onto the counter to go all limp before everyone arrived.

The problem is that now we have been to several other parties, it is clear that we have badly let down our little spud. Party bags are a must, even though parents stand around openly discussing that they simply eat all the treats from the bags themselves and only let their little darlings play with the kinder toys and the bouncy balls AFTER the danger of chocolate has been removed. Fairy cakes are also a must and even at two, games and entertainment should abound - toys, balls, a play table... Chairs, chairs come into it as well, apparently one should have enough chairs in the house. And table cloths, I've seen some good use of table cloths. And the Mum should look as though she's made at least some sort of effort in the face department.

At least we managed to hype the kids up on sugar to the requisite levels, but I'm guessing that that's the easy part. I don't know. Next time I'll be off to Frog's place to order lovely party bags but if anyone has any ideas on how to wow 'em at a three-year old's party, kindly leave them here for me to rummage through for next year.

Happy 2nd Birthday!

And here it is, the Spud's second birthday. Last year it was a lovely day and our plan for a picnic in the park went off without a hitch.

This year however it poured with rain and our little picnic of yesterday ended up being a massive mudfest. Inside our house. One should never give a mob of 2-year olds unrestrained access to a garden in a rain storm.

And here he is, my spud at 24 months old - or, now that he is officially a little boy - 2 years... which no doubt will soon be 'two and a quarter', 'two and a half' and so on until all those quarters go out the window and one starts lying about the actual year. It does seem to be protocol however that one's age is measured in months until one is two, however I did hear one Mum in the playground the other day announcing that her little pudding was '27 months' and you could see the rest of the Mums mentally wrangling those fractions around until we worked it out.

It's not being the mother of a 2 year old that's so surprising, it's remembering that I did actually have a baby, once. It just seems so unlikely now that he's here, all three feet plus of him, cloaked in his personality like a river of light flashing around the flat; so unlikely that he was ever tiny and helpless.

So, what to write about my new two-year-old that will do him justice? Clearly, I as a mad woman lost in the thrall of Motherhood have absolutely no sense of scale when it comes to my son so anything I write here is completely suspect so... what do I say? The facts? The fiction? How about a simple blurt...

At two, the spud has friends he gets so excited to see that he gasps and can't breathe for a second. He's really trying to be potty trained and now he's also really trying to speak. He can recognise a letter or two of the alphabet and the number one and he loves his trains, although he loves the computer more. He gets very put out if I refuse to read him at least three books at bedtime and last night after only two, my little exhausted bean fell asleep murmering 'booh... booh... booh' under his breath. He has nightmares and sometimes has to come in to sleep with us - we find him sitting in the corner of his cot, pointing at something outside. We don't know what it is yet, but until I can banish it he will sleep with us and be immediately happy. He loves to laugh and a fart joke will get him going every time. He loves to dance and to play 'ringa ringa rosie' and to spin around until he's dizzy and fall down. He loves to cuddle and snuggle and likes to climb under the duvet and put his head on the pillow, close his eyes and snore loudly and fakely until he makes himself laugh. He loves to watch me cook and will eat anything if he's seen it in the pan first. He loves to run and to climb and to swing and he loves to sit in his room surrounded by books, pointing seriously at things and muttering to himself. He looks like the spitting image of his Dad and he ignores me about the same amount as well... seeing the two of them together is heart-attack inducingly sweet and fattening.

Two years on from this and I can't remember a damn thing about life before my little spudlet. Happy birthday, baby boy, and many more to come.

...this little piggy

Each day in this wonderful world of motherhood, my son gives me a little present. Or, at least, that's how I like to view these things. Sometimes, it's a raisin from his snack bowl. Sometimes, it's a new word. Sometimes it's a little kiss. Recently, it's been a smack on the back of the head. Giftwrapped, of course, with a giggle, although I do rather wish it had been bubble wrap.

It's all change with the spud at the moment as we are moving him on from his childminder who, lovely though she is, is being targeted by her crack-addict neighbour and we suddenly didn't feel quite so comfortable dropping off our little bean at her house. I know, I paint a lovely picture of Brixton normally but these things happen. She is hopefully receiving some support from social services who have been dragging their heels for months however, currently our little bear is with an interim minder and shortly after that will be enrolling in a new nursery.

The new minder is also very lovely and has the added bonus of looking after one of spud's very best friends - however somewhere along the line this little angel began a hitting phase and the spud is very keen to emulate her, resultantly blows are raining down all over the place these days and one can't sit still without coming under serious threat of a beating. He hasn't quite got the hang of the whole hitting thing though. Apart from the fact he hits like a girl (well, he has learned from one), he seems to think that hitting is supposed to be a gleeful romp through joysville and will happily squeeze behind one on the sofa and administer a light but regular whopping to squeals of laughter, until he is forcibly removed from one's vicinity. If he could concentrate on my shoulder muscles I wouldn't mind so much but the arc of his swing lands on one's kidneys and so for now, he Must Be Stopped.

It's not all S&M round here though. He's very in to being clean and spends significant amounts of time tiptoing on his little step in the bathroom, washing his hands. He wipes down tables and can spend a happy 10 minutes brushing his teeth while sitting on his potty. To add to this, recently we've had a whole slough of new words. Not that he's going to be giving his friend Einstein a run for his money any day soon but there are new nouns entering his vocabulary all the time. Today it was 'stairs' ('dair'), yesterday it was door ('door' unnervingly), he said 'car-key' with deep joy today and he's managed 'boo' for 'blue' as well.

This last was because he can't yet say 'nail polish' so he opened the bathroom cabinet and stood in front of it pointing at the bottle and saying 'boooo.... Mummy.... boooo.... Mummy BOOO! BOOO!' until I took down the bottle of blue nail varnish and, er, touched up his toes. Well, they were getting a little chipped. I tried to only do one but after I did it he pointed at the next one and the next one and... the note from his childminder on Tuesday read 'Charlie didn't want to get his hands dirty painting'; Wednesday it read 'Charlie planted a seed but he didn't like getting his hands dirty and today, it read 'Charlie didn't want to get his hands dirty playing with the clay so he showed the others his toes while they played'.

Oh yes, no problems with my son.

Flock of Seagulls to Haircut 100

Random musings from a random week.

Time is flying a teensy bit too quickly for me at the moment and I'm not talking about the sudden onset of childhood in my baby but rather the sudden onset of Thursday, which seems to be the only time I have to sit down and think. It's because I sneakily have Friday and most of Monday off every week and trying to cram work into the other three days just makes them melt away.

Unlike my midriff. As I don't have time to exercise (hell, I don't have time to brush my hair most days) I've attempted a sort of cack-handed diet consisting of a big healthy breakfast, a light lunch and then... well then it all falls to bits as firstly I join the spud in his pre-bedtime snack which alternates between fruit and icecream and then after dinner I fill up on dessert, which alternates between icecream and, well, more icecream.

Mmmm ...icecream... I'm surprised that the word hasn't entered the spud's repertoire as he knows EXACTLY what comes out of an icecream van, which cafe's in our area have an icecream counter and that, if he stands in the kitchen and points at the freezer shouting 'tha! tha! tha!' for long enough,I will break down and join him in a bucket of the stuff. He knows my weak spots, does my little spudling.

It's not all ice-cream. Sadly. Recently he's come out with a new word - 'ggeh' for 'egg', which actually means 'soft boiled egg and soldiers please Mummy' (or at least that's what I like to pretend. It probably really means 'Woman! Make me an egg NOW!'). Either way, he has been quite addicted to boiled egg and soldiers since Mum introduced them to him. He can now open the fridge and pretty much reach everything in it and yesterday, in the middle of refusing his dinner, he demanded 'Ggeh! Mummy! Ggeh!' got down from the table, went to the fridge, tiptoed down an egg and, before I could grab it from him with visions of egg all over the flat, he walked to the cupboard, pulled out the small saucepan, put the egg into it and handed it to me to put on the stove. Once it was cooked he ate the entire thing along with TWO slices of toast soldiers and then went on to finish the rest of his dinner, as though I'd made him a dinner deal that he had to honour.

We make deals like that over icecream normally. If he refuses dinner I can get him to eat at least half by promising him icecream - and sometimes he'll eat the lot if I give him a spoonful of icecream in between his peas.

I know that this would make most nutritionists shake their heads in despair but as his main snacks are raw veggies, fruits and seeds I'm not going to worry quite yet. Plus, it's difficult to refuse him when it is such a simple joy to sit next to each other eating our icecreams and giggling together over the drips, or to lie in the grass getting sticky and using our cones to point out planes.

They say childhood is fleeting but I don't know... I've managed to stretch mine out for more than 40 years and thankfully, I have an excuse to drag it out just that little bit longer now.

A snip in time

Well, it's happened. The spud has had a haircut.

The balance of comments on my previous post suggested, or rather, my READING of them suggested that we leave the spud with his curls until such time as they become unmanageable. This tallied with my own desire, which was to never ever ever cut his hair ever ever so he could be strong like Samson to prioritise his comfort above all things. Ahem.

That his hair was reaching critical mass became painfully evident on Tuesday when - and to my chagrin I do not have a picture of this - his childminder delivered him to me with his hair in a perfect little topknot on the top of his head as it had been blowing in his eyes all day. When I say 'perfect little topknot', what I mean is that all his hair, every last bit, was captured in a hair elastic on the top of his head and he looked... like... er... a little girl.

Swiftly, I got the message.

Tuesday night, while the spud was happily playing in his bath, the Frog cut off his lovely locks and, it appears, with them went a whole host of conceptions I had obviously been building up in my twisted little motherhood brain about him being, oh, I don't know, the second coming, the light of the world, you know, All That Stuff. He got out of the bath and suddenly, I was incontrovertably the mother of a small boy. No wonder a good hairdresser costs the earth - if a few curls can turn an ordinary child into an angelic cherub, just imagine what a good haircut could do for the likes of me?

The spud of course doesn't know that a massive, radical change has happened to him. He continues to make the same faces but to be honest, they look a little strange now, as though some other, older child has stepped in to imitate him.

This older child is also amazingly tall. This morning while lying on his changing table having a new nappy installed he casually reached up with his feet and turned on the light, a switch which, the last time I recall, he had to stand on tiptoe on the table just to reach.

Am I nuts? I put his trousers on this morning, a pair which I thought I had to roll up three times and they don't need rolling up at all. They're for 3 years olds. What the hell are those scissors made of anyway?

Going Potty

Hi folks! I'm just online today to crow about two things. Yes yes, that's right, the title gave it away but I'm going to tell you anyway. Ahem.

Firstly, I am as you can see able to access Blogger again -magically my access came back and everything is well, meaning that all my favourite blogs will be getting a vist or two in the next week (there are so many, how can I keep up?!).

Secondly (and how I've managed to keep this as second in line I have no idea) the spud demanded to use his potty last night and then... used it! Hooray! He may not use it again, I screamed so loudly and so happily that he nearly pooed on the floor poor little bear. There he was doing a little wee and then the trumpets went off and his Mum squealed and danced and kissed him on the cheek and shouted for his Dad and there he was, all little and vulnerable looking as though he just might not bother again.

Still, today although he refused the potty, he pointed at the loo and stood all manly beside it but when he realised that he would never clear the rim he got all put off and walked around clutching himself for ages afterwards until he was finally able to let go. In the bath. Well he's not quite two yet.

That's that. I'm off camping for the weekend, wish me well. I'm leaving my spudlet and his frog sire alone together and while most women when leaving their husband and two year old behind for the weekend would expect to come home to a house full of unwashed dishes, smears and trainsets, I'm most likely going to come back to an apartment which has had everything Put Away. The spud will be filthy, snotty and won't have had his face washed since the moment I left... but the house will be frighteningly tidy and in need of a woman's mess touch to bring it back to life.

A slip in time...

**NOTE** I cannot access any Blogger sites at all from home including mine, yours, if you’re on blogger, or my link to your site if it’s on this page... I’ll come by when this gets sorted out but for now am posting via work
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Today was THIS kind of day...

On Mondays the Frog and I split the day and I get the afternoon shift. I pick spud up from the Frog’s studio after lunch and he, the spud, that is (although what my Frog gets up to in his studio without us is anyone’s guess) generally falls asleep on the way home, allowing me an hour or two to potter about. This morning I was up to my elbows in a shirty email to a client when my alarm went off. At this point, sitting in my cellar bunker, I usually have a vivid visual image of being me, only me in a massive underground bunker with a broadcasted, Thunderbirds-style countdown ‘Ten Minutes to pick up the Spud... whoop whoop whoop... Nine Minutes and Fifty seconds...” and so on.

Just indulge me.

Anyway, so I dashed off my shirty email and ran up the stairs, collected my bag, keys, phone and just then, the Frog rang to chivvy me along. And I forgot that the final step in my process was to put on my shoes. Just far enough away from the flat that going back would have meant being late, I thought to myself: ‘Hm’, I thought, ‘My sandals feel comfier than u... oh bugger’.

Yes, sadly, it was that kind of a day...

My next stellar move was to soothe my spud at around three after a nasty wake-up (any wake up is nasty if you're a spud) by lying him on the big bed and stroking his back. We woke up at ten to five. While I thought it was me who had a lot to do, I was sadly misinformed. The spud dashed off while I was straightening my face and he came back lugging the Argos catalogue – no mean feat for those of you who don’t know it, this is 1000 pages and bigger than our local phone book and needs to be dropped at least three times.

He leafed happily through it pointing and making noises until suddenly he had an important phone call. Unbelievable. One second he was pointing at a shaver and going ‘Oh!’ and the next he was clutching his hand to his ear and saying ‘Ohhhh.... ohhhhh... wow.... hmmm... hmmm...’ and he wandered off talking into his hand and completely ignoring me. I cannot think WHERE he gets it from, honestly...

Anyway, after that I got the message that my day had been trying to post through my mental letterbox and we spent the rest of the afternoon blowing bubbles in the garden and cooking his dinner together. No phone calls, no emails, no hard shoes. I think it’s time I cut a few of the urgencies out of my days and started paying a little more attention to the gentler things in life. Like my slippers. And naps. And my spudlet.

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