The Gallery - One ordinary day of astonishing brilliance and banality

I've found this week's Gallery amazingly emotional. 

Tuesday 8th February 2011.  Scottish Borders.

0000*

0736
I know, I know. I'm going.  Out of bed.  B was up and out over an hour ago.  But just ten more minutes, please....? Oh, alright then.

0747
Oh sod it. I'm sure I look fine.

0757
Sunrise over the bypass.   Going to be a lovely day.

0758
First nappy of the day

0810
Wake up L!  She's overslept. Actually, we've all overslept. Now I've got to get them all fed and out in just over half an hour. How bad a parent would I be if I sent them to nursery with no breakfast?

0825
However bad it is, I'm not that bad.  No time for toast though

0854
Everyone out! In the car! Quick, quick, quick!

0915
Back.  Builders have been here since eight.  Pop round to see how they're doing with our new kitchen.

0922
Back inside. Dishwasher loaded. Breakfast table cleared.  What next?  Laundry.

0927
Five minutes for me. Tunnock's teacake and a cup of tea. Who says Scotland doesn't have haute cuisine?  Very proud of my mug too. Lidl's finest.  £2.99 each. Or £5 for two. We decided two was extravagant. Regretting it now though.

0936
Tuesdays are a working day (hence the nursery).  This is my orderly desk.  Aka kitchen table. And yes, I did raid the children's chocolate ten minutes after eating that teacake.  Apparently it's very good for the baby. Or something.

1322

Work half done.  As usual.  Leave it til later.  Meeting with builder and architect about pipes and ducts (eh?  Did they really think I'd have anything to contribute?) fully done. Girls collected, five minutes late as usual.  Right you lot, out. Go and play quietly while Mummy has some lunch. And if I hear any whinging or arguing it's straight to bed. Go!

1328 

Lunchtime. I know it looks disgusting but it was left over and in the fridge and not cheese on toast for a change (Nigel Slater Chicken and Bean Casserole if you're interested).  Actually it was delicious. 

Sneak in ten more minutes work before the fighting starts.  Little ones off to bed. Protesting.

1413

Remember the laundry.  And the dishwasher.

1423

Convince L, briefly, that she wants to play a "game".  Finish playing the "game" by myself.

1542

Play L's game.  She is a bird.  I am, apparently, a caterpillar.  I am required to wear the green spiral thing. Not a good look with a bump.

1601

Accede to a request for "big painting".  Wonder where "big painting" is going to be possible when we have floors we actually like.

1628

Big painting lasts about ten minutes.  Clearing up takes rather longer.  "Ticking" now the activity of choice.

1648

Universal whinging indicates imminent starvation.  I attempt to resist the lure of CBeebies and cook with girls hanging off three of my limbs.  Fail. Give in.  This is happening more and more often.  Feel guilty.

1722

Builders gone. Sneak out to inspect their handiwork leaving children eating, unsupervised. Bad parent. Builders still have a way to go but am unfeasibly excited by a big hole.

1725

Three empty plates equals one happy mummy.

1744

Tidy up time. Allegedly.

1837

B home.  Bathtime.  So much easier with two.

 

1854

Dry, dressed, into bed

1855

B is reading L's story.  I have A&S.  L chooses The House at Pooh Corner.  I have definitely drawn the short straw.

1938

All quiet from upstairs. Supper cooked and eaten. B out rehearsing.  Time to do that work I didn't get done earlier.

Decide I am feeling post-modern instead.

2312

B off to Rome at 3 am tomorrow morning (via Amsterdam as apparently you can't fly direct to Rome from either Newcastle or Edinburgh.  Oddly).  Packing time.  This is everything he needs (minus the sponge bage of course) for three days.

 

 

2359* 

All quiet.  So far.

Dull, wasn't it? Very like the day before, in fact. And, if my sister weren't coming to stay, very like today would be.  Very like most of my days, and, I suspect most of the days of many other women (and a good few men) nation-, if not world-, wide.

So why did I find it emotional?  The problem is, taking the pictures made me think about what I was doing, rather than simply getting through, getting by, getting on.  And I realised how mundane my life is. How full of little, unimportant, repetitive tasks.  How full of "must do this" and "no, not now" and "in a minute". And how, when I do have half an hour to spare, how little time I actually spend interracting with my children, sitting down and playing with them, doing what they want to do when they want to do it.  They asked to do painting, but I can't honestly say I'd have agreed if I hadn't known it would be a good photo.

It makes me want to weep.  I'm not sure how I got here.   I'm not sure I'm being the mother I want to be. I'm not sure, sometimes, that I'm living the life I want to live, even if I'm also not sure that being in London, being a lawyer, being stuck on the tube, or in a meeting, would feel any less dull, less mundane, less banal.

But when I stopped feeling self-pitying, I also realised how happy some of this quotidian life makes me. How amazing my children are.  How lucky I am to live in this beautiful place, in this beautiful house (or it will be).  How incredible it is that I have the choice to work when I want to, and am not tied to the nine to five, Monday to Friday.

So although it was dull, and it was pedestrian, it was, and is, also my 24 hours. My day. My life.

*Actually, that's artistic licence.  It was actually about half past ten, but midnight (or indeed one minute to midnight) isn't a time of day I voluntarily see very often anymore. I can't imagine it looked much different to this though.

Does having children make you happier?

I get my girls back tomorrow.  I'm looking forward to it.  In fact, I'm really looking forward to it. 

But I've also really enjoyed this week.  And if I'm honest, I haven't really missed them.  I have loved my millinery course and I have loved doing the sort of things we used to do before we were parents.  We have done something every night this week: we have had dinner with our neighbours, who (like the song says) have become good friends in the five years we have lived here, we have been to the cinema, we have had friends round for dinner, we've even been to the opera... 

That's normally about six months' worth of activities and we've done it in a week.  And it's been fun.

But more than what we have done, what strikes me is what we, or in fact I, have not done.  I have not been provoked to murderous, blood-boiling, rage.  I have not raised my voice.  I have not been worried.  I have not had to repeat myself fifteen times.  I have had to deal with nobody's bodily functions other than my own. I have cooked no fishfingers.

I have been calm and rational and content.

And so I have been wondering whether I would actually have been happier had we never had children.

Now, I can't actually answer that question.  Because I do have children. And a week without them doesn't mean that I have really been without them. I am a mother.  It is part of who I am, and it tempers everything I do and think and say.  My girls came from me, and although I no longer physically carry them with me, they are, nonetheless, always present.  I can no more understand what it would be like to be without them than I can, really, understand what it would be like to to be an elephant.  I can empathise, or sympathise, or imagine, but I can't understand.

So I looked it up.  If you Google my question you get sixty-four and a half million hits (this may actually be the real sixty-four million dollar question) so I'm clearly not alone in wondering.  I clicked on a few of the first to come up....

"Parents experience lower levels of emotional well-being, less frequent positive emotions and more frequent negative emotions than their childless peers,"

says Newsweek.  The Times agrees:

"numerous scholars have found evidence that parents often report statistically significantly lower levels of happiness, life satisfaction, marital satisfaction and mental wellbeing compared with non-parents."

Which seems pretty straightforward really.

But then I think.

And I think that what I have been this week is content.  And then I think about spending time with my girls, worrying, frustrating, annoying as they can be.  And I think about all the millions of moments we have had and hopefully will have with them.  And about just one, unexciting, ordinary moment in the northbound services on the M6 toll road about four weeks ago.  7.30 am.  Been up since 5.  Sun streaming through the windows.  Mmm Bop on the cheesy service station speaker system.  All three of my girls crawling around, giggling.

And I knew, in that moment, sublime happiness.  Us, and our girls, and the sunshine and the cheesy pop.

And I think I wouldn't swap those moments for a lifetime of contentedness.

I think.

Grammatically correct

It is half past eight.  L is two and a half.  She is also jet-lagged.  She should have been asleep hours ago, but I am forgiving her because of the jet-lag and ignoring the fact that she is actually having a rather noisy "picnic" in her bedroom.

But I couldn't ignore this:

"Dingle Sheep and I need a poo".

Proud? You bet.

Picture from Agnesandcecil.co.uk.  Thank you.

I love you Mummy...

... and I don't want Daddy.

L is going through a phase.  And it's a phase that's making all of us miserable (including S&A who don't like crossness and crying - who does?).

To put it simply: she doesn't want Daddy. Ever.

The other morning, when we woke up, B was first in to her room.  L took one look at him, screamed "Go away! I want mummy!" and slapped him in the face. This is not an isolated incident.

Let me put this into context.  B is an awesome father. A friend of mine was telling me this morning about something she'd read in a (nameless, sorry, I didn't catch a name) blog about whether you married a good husband or a good father. I'm either really lucky or really good at choosing, because I got both. B is amazing. he's hands-on, patient (mostly) and prepared to be climbed on, puked on, and generally run ragged.  Even better, he works from home, so he's here all the time.

But L doesn't want him.  In the end I refused to come downstairs until she decided to be nice to Daddy, and eventually that worked. But it's horrid. I don't like being cross with her; she can't, surely, like screaming and shouting; and it's really, unbelievably, hurtful for B who utterly adores her.  It's also knackering for me, because guess who has to put on all the pairs of shoes, get all the cups of milk, read all the stories, fetch all the toys that she's left elsewhere, push all the pushchairs and, of course, empty all the potties...?

I realise it's just, as I said, a phase, and somehow I found it heartening to discover during a whingy phone call that my friend LC is going through the same thing with her daughter, so it's clearly not just us.  But this really isn't one that I, or B, want, or have the heart, to wait out.

ps. I started this yesterday, and never got round to posting it.  Of course last night, she and B were absolutely best of friends.  Just by force of circumstance he ended up doing her bath while I was with A&S, and they had a wonderful time during that, and stories and into bed.  I heaved a huge sigh of relief, only to wake up to her demanding Mummy again this morning....

How to lose friends and alienate an entire Boeing 747

First a word of warning: If you are flying to Vancouver this Christmas and are planning on sitting in economy on the daytime flight on 19 December with BA you might want to change your flights.

(voice of doom)

Because we are going to be on it.

And when I say "we", let's not forget that that includes two just-one-year-olds and a partially potty trained toddler.

By way of background, and before you think I'm insane or ridiculously extravagant to be even thinking of doing such a thing, my brother and his wife now live on Vancouver Island.  We haven't seen them (obviously) since they went in August and I'm missing them.  Plus (and here's where the not ridiculously extravagant bit comes in) if we go now, when S and A are under 2, we don't have to pay for them.  This is a big deal, so with trepidation and gritted teeth, we've booked.

It's going to be amazing.  Be prepared to be jealous, because my lovely parents have booked a chalet in Whistler for the first week and then we've got a few more days with S'n'T (brother and sister-in-law) in their house.

But first we've got to get there.  I think that I've done everything right so far.  I've pre-booked the seats, so that B, L, I and my very long-suffering sister are in a block of four, with S&A on the drop down bassinet/bouncy chair things in front of us (my parents, wisely, are flying business). I've checked whether I can take "proper" milk through security (I can't, so I think I'm going to have to come up with some scheme involving empty water bottles and a rather odd request at Pret). I've got L excited about the flight and being able to watch lots of telly (all normal rules clearly out of the window). My friend KH is going to lend me her flying bag of goodies (she's South African and has done this lots with her 2-year-old).  I've got a shopping list of stickers and new books and colouring pens...

So that's L sorted.  But what about S&A?  They'll be just one.  Very active, very mobile (though not walking) and very likely to get very bored very quickly.

I've already decided I'm going to have to

a) dress them identically in the hope we can play on the cuteidenticaltwins thing and
b) apologise in advance to the entire plane in the hope that that draws their fire.

But what else? How on earth do you entertain two one year olds for ten hours....?

I just smacked my daughter.

There.  I've said it.  I've put it out in the world.  I honestly don't know whether I'm expecting vitriol, empathy or the "knock, knock" on the door of the socialservicesautomaticallygoingtotakeallyourchildrenawaypolice that I torture myself with every time I'm a bad parent.

I never thought I'd be writing this.  I never thought I'd need to.  And anyway so much other stuff has gone on this week I thought I'd be writing about that.

But I'm not.  I'm writing about how I hit my daughter.  And left a big red hand print, with white bits between the marks of my fingers, on her perfect, naked, 2 and a half year old bottom.

She bit me, you see. B has gone out for a  pre-stag dinner (he can't go to the actual stag which is tomorrow) and so he was getting ready while I was in charge of the bath. I was trying to carry S into the bathroom and L wanted to be carried too. I can't really manage them both at once any more, and I told her that.  So she bit me.  Hard. On the shoulder.  There's a red mark there too, and the white imprint of twenty tiny teeth.

Years ago, I taught for a while in a school in Nepal.  Corporal punishment was the norm there and I was horrified.  I swore to myself I'd never hit a child.  But I did. Because they expected it, and when they discovered that I wouldn't hit them, they acted up. So I did.  But it escalates.  You start off doing it lightly and then they realise it doesn't hurt, so they do whatever it is they were doing again, and then you get angry and before you know it you've hit a child hard in anger.  And they're still misbehaving.  So I learned, quite quickly, that it doesn't work to hit a child.

Yet I have. And I did it consciously.  She bit me, I yelled in shock and pain, I paused, and then I smacked her.  I don't know that I thought it through, but in that pause I could have stopped myself and I didn't.  I think, if I try and analyse it now, I wanted her to feel as shocked as I was.

And the really frightening thing? It worked.  She cried, but B came downstairs and picked her up and she said she wanted to say sorry to Mummy.  So she came into the bathroom where I was bathing A and S and she apologised.  We talked about how biting was a naughty thing to do, and then she was lovely.  We had the best bath- and bedtime we've had in weeks. No complaining, no whinging; lovely stories, lovely cuddles; lots of giggling and very proudly putting her own pjs on; "I love you Mummy".

I realise that the reason it worked, if indeed it did work and wasn't just a coincidence, was the shock:  I suspect that she doesn't actually understand what happened.  So there's no point in doing it again, even if I wanted to. Which I don't. I'm hoping and planning that in twenty years time I'll be able to say "I only hit you once, you were two and a half and you bit me."

But then I never hoped or planned to hit her in the first place.  And yet, I don't feel that guilty about it either.

Separation anxiety

I said yesterday that work were very understanding about this whole beingamother thing.  Well, second test today.  A is ill.

So this means two things:

1.  I am at home (again) on a day when I should be working; and (more importantly)
2.  A and S are spending a day apart.  For the first time ever.

They are nearly 11 months old and they've never spent more than half an hour apart in their lives.  B left with S and L about ten minutes ago and so far so fine.  A is pulling herself up on the DVD player (favourite trick) and babbling away to herself (she's not very ill, clearly); she doesn't seem to have noticed, or maybe doesn't care, that her sister isn't here.

But I do.  I feel like I've done something simultaneously unimportant and momentous.  One of them is ill, the other isn't so clearly one should go to nursery and the other should stay at home. I didn't even think about keeping L at home because A is poorly, so why should it be any different for S?  What's the fuss all about?

At the same time, this is a very important moment in their lives and as a result I am feeling very wobbly about it.  I try to avoid parenting books, but one of the twin mantras I've absorbed over the last 18 or so months since I discovered I was having identical twins is the importance of giving each of them their own identity.  And a  big part of that must be allowing them to realise that they can, and should, be able to spend time apart from each other.  This is the first hurdle on the road to independence from each other and, dare I say it, from me.

So it feels like a big deal.  It could go one of two ways.  They (or one of them) will be fine. Or they won't.  Watch this space...

Poo - viewers of a sensitive nature may find some scenes distressing

I'm not sure what the dictionary definition of "potty-trained" is, but assuming it's along the lines of "has control of bowel and bladder movements and can relieve oneself when and where one wants",  L is potty trained.

It's just not working out quite how I'd like.

We did it in June - we were staying in a house with a downstairs loo and no carpets so it seemed wise.  She was great.  We cracked the wees pretty much straightaway with the help of some haute couture Iggle Piggle pants, and the poos seemed fine too.  She's still in a nappy for her nap and at night so the fact that we occasionally had a poo in a nappy didn't seem to be a problem.

Only now it's the end of October, and we don't seem to have got any further.  It's not that she can't control it,  she's in 100% control (which I think maybe the driving force behind it), it's just that she does her poos where and when she'd like (in her nappy, five minutes after I've put her to bed) and not where and when I'd like (on the loo, at a time of her choosing).  Oh and yesterday she tried to clean herself up too....

I've resorted to the parenting books (not normally my preferred reading unless I want to feel more guilty than I already do), and they say helpful things like "it is important to find out the reason your child is doing this".  How do you do that with a 2 year old?  L is pretty articulate, but I don't think she knows why she's doing it, much less has the vocabulary, or self-awareness to put it into words.

We've had lots of conversations about it, so she knows that she's a big girl, and big girls use the loo and she knows that babies use a nappy, and she's not a baby, and that her friends use the loo; and she agrees and smiles and goes on her own merry way.  We even resorted to bribery:

Me: "L, what could I give you that would make you do a poo on the loo"
L: (thinks hard, for the most outlandish and exotic thing she can imagine) "a lollipop"
Me: (very relieved, having been slightly concerned at having to explain acquisition of a puppy to non-dog-loving husband) "well, as it so happens I have a lollipop downstairs, if you do a poo on the loo, you can have a lollipop"
L: "I don't want a lollipop".

Right.

I know, because I've learned this over the last 2 1/2 years, that this too will pass, and when she's 15 she won't still be in nappies, but I just can't see how. Presumably at some point she will just decide that she's ready, but oh, don't I wish she'd do so soon!

Baby weight

Not mine.  S and A's.  They're ten months old and I'm worrying about their weight...

When they were born, they were seven ounces apart.  Whenever I've had them weighed A has been heavier, but never by much.  The last time was at their ten month check. To nobody's great surprise, A was still heavier, by 11 ounces.  Which isn't much, even if you only weigh 20 pounds...

They're identical, so I could sit here wondering why A is always heavier, but it's not very complicated:  she eats more.

Now if I had just one baby and she ate like A, I'd think "great, she eats plenty"; and if I had just one baby and she ate like S, I'd think "great, she eats plenty".  But now I'm fretting about how much A eats.

Why? Because I really, really don't want her to be "the fat one".

Neither B nor I are what you might call slender, and we both come from families where doctors look at you slightly disapprovingly and say "well, you could do with losing....", so none of my girls is ever likely to be naturally slim.  But that's fine. It's taken me a long time to accept that I'm ok as I am, extra half stone or no, and I am adamant that one of the things I most want to teach the girls is to have the mythical healthy relationship with food:  to eat when they're hungry, and not eat when they're not, and to be happy with the way they look.

And it seems to me, that if you've got a pair of identical twins and one regularly eats more than the other, that's going to show, and then that's going to become the distinguishing feature.  And I'm not sure how you teach a girl to have my idealised "healthy relationship" with food if she's constantly referred to as "fat" for being a few pounds (or ounces) heavier than her sister...

But then nor do I want to put a ten month old baby, or indeed a child of any age, on a diet.  So I guess I just have to let nature, and their natures, take its course.  And hope I can give them both the confidence just to be who they are.  Help!

Nursery v. Nanny

Of course it could be argued that part (or all) of today's problems are caused by our (admittedly unusual) decision to send three children to nursery rather than get a nanny.  If there were a nanny, L wouldn't have to go anywhere so wouldn't kick up a fuss (this is ignoring the fact that she's two so is perfectly capable of kicking up a fuss about being given the wrong pair of socks, much less being left with a nany), and S & A could stay home with the nanny and their conjunctivitis, while Mummy swans off to her Proper Job.

Which is perfectly true.

So did we make the wrong decision?  I'm still not sure.

L has been in nursery for over a year now.  She was there when I went back to work before I had A and S and we kept her there for a couple of days a week when I was off with them.  She loves it, she has lots of friends and she does stuff there that I just wouldn't or couldn't do with her - I can't play pass the parcel with just her and me, and I won't upend a tin of beans on the floor and let her squish her feet in them (maybe I'm a bad mummy, but...).   Despite this, when we first started thinking about childcare for three we just assumed we'd get a nanny.

We did the whole advertise, interview, offer the job, get turned down, advertise again, offer the job thing and found someone lovely and experienced.  Not Mary Poppins, but nearly.  And then I changed my mind.

Weirdly, although nursery is more expensive, it was sort of about the money.  Nannies in London want £10 net an hour.  That sounds not unreasonable until you realise that you also have to pay her tax and national insurance.  When you've done that you actually end up paying £14 an hour. Or £140 a day.  Plus heat and light and food and activities...  Even ignoring the latter, if I were to pay my nanny £10 net an hour, I worked out I would be earning £5 net an hour.

Somehow I just couldn't get my head around the fact that my nanny was going to be taking home twice as much as me for doing my job.  And when I thought about it it did feel like my job and I suddenly couldn't bear the idea that there would be someone else in my house looking after my children.

Which is a silly and emotional reaction, but there it is. 

So we approached the nursery, who've come up with a fantastic deal. I can't reproach them as they've been great.  They're still more expensive (I'm earning £2.50 an hour - about which inevitably more later) but we do feel that the girls will get more from the nursery than they would from a nanny.  If I were a marketing nonsense person I'd talk about costs and benefits.  There's a greater cost but I think the benefits are greater.

But, as I'm rapidly discovering, there appears to be a downside too.

It's not going as well as I thought it would.

Here we are, day 2.

If you'd asked me, three days ago, what were the things that I thought could potentially go wrong with this whole workingmumof3 thing I'd have said:

• I might not like my job any more; or
  
• One or all of the girls might get ill and then I can't go to work because I have to stay home and look after them; or
• One or all of the girls might be difficult about nursery

We haven't quite hit the jackpot yet, but by 6pm yesterday we'd got two, maybe two and a half going strong...

Work was ok, dull but ok. My big boss is on holiday so there isn't really much for me to do at the moment which is probably a good thing as I think I've forgotten most of what I ever knew.  It was nice to see people, but I can't say I was filled with delight at being there.  It was just a job. 

So that's maybe half.

And the other two we've got right on the money: L is acting up big time; she refused to come home from nusery last night and refused to go there this morning.  She made her feelings clear as only a two-year-old can.  And A and S have conjunctivitis, are on antibiotics and not allowed in the nursery.

So hence here I am, 10 am, day 2 of my resumed career, sitting at home on the sofa with flip flops on.

If this is Plan A, what's Plan B?

When you're standing in the queue in M&S with three screaming children, and you haven't got any spare nappies or snacks and you then realise they're going to charge you for a plastic bag, you don't mind, or at least not much, because it's for Plan A.

Because there is no Plan B.

Which is kind of a problem from where I'm coming from...

Plan A: Go to school, go to university, get a degree, get a Proper Job, find a lovely man, get married, get a house (not necessarily in that order), get pregnant, get pregnant again, get twins, get back to work, get juggling, get tired and stressed and confused about whether this really is it.

Or Plan B: ...

Erm well, that's the problem, there doesn't yet appear to be a Plan B.

So here I am. Starting a blog in the hope, probably faint, that it will be my first teetering, tentative step on the path to Plan B. Whatever that may be...