One of the nice things about having a larger than average age gap between children is watching your youngest go through the same experiences that your eldest did. Seeing The Baby doing the things that her big brother did five years ago not only gives me a chance to enjoy these stages all over again, but also sends me into a warm, fuzzy state of reminiscence as I remember what The Boy was like at the same age. Continue reading
The above picture shows the miscellaneous pile of Stuff I have just cleared off my bedroom floor: Stuff deposited by my children over the past 24 hours or so. It includes a broken pirate ship (The Boy), a bath book (The Baby), a Primary Times mag (Boy), a rubber (Baby) and a tyre from a toy monster truck (owned by The Boy but appropriated by The Baby), among other things.
I know I’m not alone in having children who are obsessed with Stuff, but at the moment, I feel like I’m drowning in it. By Stuff, I mean random and mostly useless objects that don’t have a designated place to live and so get dumped on the nearest flat surface. A quick look around the lounge right now reveals a notepad, a whistle and a packet of Fruit Pastilles on the windowsill, a book (Stories for Six-Year-Olds; yep, The Boy has incriminated himself there) on the arm of the sofa and a sun hat in the middle of the floor, and that’s *after* tidying up. I know there is also a roll of Sellotape on the stairs and a baby shoe wedged down the side of the kitchen bin – a location that will elude me when I’m searching everywhere for it in the morning. Continue reading
The Boy has been a proper pickle at bedtime for a while now. I’m fortunate in that he doesn’t come out of his room or call out for me; on the contrary, he’s as stealthy as can be in an attempt to avoid being caught red-handed. It’s all because he can’t resist reading after lights-out. Every evening, I sneak upstairs to find him under the covers with a book, squinting in the darkness.
We’ve tried pretty much everything to get him to go to sleep at a semi-reasonable time. We confiscated his bedside light after a run of nights where I found him flat out with book in hand and the light still on at 11pm. Then we confiscated the torch that he denied all knowledge of having in his room – despite the fact that it was in bed with him when I checked on him before going to bed myself. We tried withholding pocket money, giving extra pocket money for going to sleep nicely, threatening him with missing days out/parties/playdates because he’d be too tired, but nothing will come between The Boy and his books. Continue reading
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The Baby is a chatterbox. We had an inkling that she would be from about six months, when she started babbling with gusto. And now, at 15 months old, she doesn’t stop talking. Not all of it makes sense, of course, but a lot of it does.
She says ‘hiya’ and ‘bye bye.’ A lot.
She says ‘uh-oh!’ if someone drops something on the floor. Just to point out their mistake.
She tells us when she wants to go upstairs, outside, or on the slide. When she’s at the top of the slide, she shouts ‘go!’
‘Slide! Slide!’
She can name a veritable menagerie of animals, and make their corresponding noises, including a very good ‘clip clop’ sound whenever we walk past the stables on the school run. Continue reading
I’m going to let you into a secret. A secret that is, it seems, as shameful as admitting that you enjoy kicking kittens, or would rather eat vegetables than chocolate.
Here goes…
I don’t like travelling.
I know, it’s terrible, isn’t it? But it’s true. When all my sixth-form friends were pondering their gap year options, I just couldn’t wait to get to university. When, on the forums I frequented at the time, fellow wedding planners were booking their honeymoons to Australia, Borneo and NYC, I was looking at the Thomas Cook brochure for the Dominican Republic. And now, I see my friends taking their children to Florida, the Jordan, Namibia, while the furthest I’ll go with mine is the Med.
Don’t get me wrong, I love holidays. But for me, a holiday is about getting somewhere as quickly as possible and staying there – with perhaps a day out or two. On top of that, I have *absolutely* no idea where I would start with booking an unpackaged holiday. I wouldn’t even know how to rent a car at my chosen destination, let alone book a flight, source a suitable, uninfested apartment and transport a family of four between those two locations.
My lack of wanderlust makes me feel incredibly unsophisticated and unworthy. As far as I can tell, admitting that you don’t like travelling marks you out as the worst sort of ignoramus. But I can’t help it. And my family is no better. Both husband and son travel incredibly badly, and given the performance The Baby puts in when strapped into her car seat, I’m guessing she’ll be no better.
So shoot me. We’re not as uncultured as our propensity to picking holidays from the Thomson brochure would imply. We’re bright people, we read, we talk, we watch QI, for goodness sake. We just don’t travel (unless you count Center Parcs…).
This all makes this week’s Gallery a bit of a challenge – especially as I prefer to photograph people than landscapes – but I do have evidence that holidays in the UK can be good. Not as good as Africa or the Middle East, for sure, but good enough for us.
Isle of Wight, summer 2011
Sunset at West Bay Club, summer 2011
Isle of Wight Steam Railway, summer 2012
Tomorrow morning, when The Boy goes to school, instead of his bookbag, he’ll be taking this:
They’re off to the seaside, you see. On a coach. And the sun is going to be shining.
He’s just a bit excited.
The Boy is very lucky that in that his teacher this year seems particularly keen on school trips. So far, his class has been to the V&A Museum of Childhood in London, the pantomime, and Stevenage Museum for a Victorian day. Tomorrow’s outing to Southend-on-Sea, however, sounds like it’s going to be the best yet. They’ve been learning about the seaside in their literacy and geography projects, so the trip is meant to tie in with their classwork, but frankly, it sounds like an excuse for a bit of a jolly to me. It’s been planned at the very last minute, to take advantage of the good forecast for this week (the letters only came home yesterday), but the short notice is no bad thing. The Boy is bouncing off the ceiling already; imagine if he’d had weeks to look forward to his trip.
It sounds like a wonderful day out, but I always feel a bit anxious when They Boy goes off on a school trip. As far as I can remember, the most adventurous trip I went on at primary school was to Bristol Zoo – and that was in Year 6. I don’t remember any trips at all in what is now Key Stage 1, although we did walk to the park for a whole-town centenary celebration when I was about eight or nine. The Boy is only six, and the thought of him being out in the big wide world without parental supervision is a bit nerve-wracking.
What if he wanders off and gets separated from the group? Or dashes into the road in front of an oncoming car? What if his coach is involved in an accident on the motorway? You seem to hear about school coach crashes on an alarmingly regular basis – or is that just because my mummy radar is hyper-alert to those stories?
Okay, I’m thinking of the worst-case scenarios here. It’s far more likely that any disaster to befall The Boy will by relatively minor; falling over into the sea, for example, or losing his glasses, or (by far the most likely option) throwing up on the coach. Note to self: must tell teacher about his propensity to vomiting in transit.
But while I’ll be giving The Boy a pep-talk about staying with the group, behaving himself on the coach, listening to instructions and telling the teacher is he feels sick, I know that the odds are stacked in favour of them all having an amazing day out. I’m really quite envious. On the agenda – apart from the coach trip, which is bound to be a highlight – is a train ride along the pier, a picnic, making sand sculptures, collecting shells, paddling, and having a ride at the amusements. Oh, and to top it all off, they’re going to stop for ice cream, too.
I wish my Year 1 teacher had been like The Boy’s.
In just under three months time, we’re taking The Baby on her first foreign holiday, which means we need to apply for her first passport. So today, we had the delightful experience of taking her to get her passport photos done.
I knew there wasn’t a hope of getting her to sit in a photo booth, and neither did I think there was much chance of me being able to snap a picture that would pass muster. So – just as we did with The Boy when we got his first passport – I decided to take her to a photography store to get her pictures taken. I figured they’d be best qualified not just to take a suitable photo, but also to make sure that the finished product met the official criteria.
It was not a resounding success.
The store was packed when we got there. Packed. And when we finally got to the front of the queue, it was our misfortune to be greeted by a young girl wearing a badge saying TRAINEE. ‘I’d like to have my daughter’s passport photo taken, please,’ I said.
‘Okay,’ she replied. ‘I *think* I can help you.’
Off she shuffled to have a long conversation with her manager. I assumed she was asking her superior to take the photos, but she then drifted off to stare vacantly at another customer, who was having trouble with the photo printer, under the pretext of ‘helping.’
The Baby was already getting grumpy by the time the girl came back, went behind the counter and produced a camera and a white cushion. ‘I’ve never done this before,’ she admitted, as she lay the cushion on the floor in front of the window.
It soon transpired that she was expecting The Baby to lie patiently on this cushion while she took a photo. The Baby is a lively 15-month-old who absolutely Does Not Do Lying Down. You can imagine her reaction…
‘I was sort of expecting you to take her photo sitting up against a white background,’ I muttered, as I tried to pin a seriously annoyed Baby to the floor.
‘Oh,’ said the girl. ‘Can she sit up by herself, then?’
Sigh.
After consulting her boss again, the girl decided that yes, she could take The Baby’s photo sitting on a stool against a white background, as long as I promised to hold onto her (health and safety and all that). So she pulled down the background and I plonked her on the seat, holding her legs while DH stood behind the camera and tried to attract her attention.
Of course, when you’re 15 months old, everything is more interesting than having your photo taken. The Baby was positively owl-like, swivelling her head this way and that every time someone walked through the door, or a printer whirred, or the till beeped. Photo attempts one, two and three failed miserably. She was either looking down, looking sideways, or screwing up her face in an emergent strop.
DH and I swapped places, and I stood waving at her and calling her name. Photo four was taken, and the girl decreed that it was okay. I looked at the camera screen. It was *okay* – but The Baby was looking off to the side.
‘Are you sure it’s going to meet the criteria?’ I asked the girl.
‘I don’t really know,’ she admitted.
By now I was despairing. The whole point of taking The Baby to have her photo taken by a real live person was to avoid the will-it-or-won’t-it-pass thing. When I had The Boy’s first passport photo taken, the man had the checklist pinned up on his wall and instantly knew whether it was suitable or not. Here, however, a guess seemed to be sufficient.
As I insisted that I wasn’t going to pay for photos that might not be acceptable, the trainee went to show her boss the picture. His verdict? No, it probably wasn’t good enough. So back The Baby went onto the stool, thoroughly disgruntled by now. By my reckoning, we were two minutes away from full-blown tantrum, but thankfully, the next shot looked more or less okay. The Baby’s mouth was slightly open, and she wasn’t looking directly at the camera, but frankly, I had Had Enough. ‘I’m sure that will do,’ I conceded, desperately hoping that it would.
Back home, I’ve looked up the passport photo criteria, and it looks like we *should* be alright; under-fives don’t need to be looking directly at the camera or have a neutral expression. It would have been a heck of a lot easier if the girl in the photo store could have told us that; we could have used one of the first few images instead of having to shoot and re-shoot around until The Baby was on the verge of meltdown.
But we got there in the end. It’s not the best of photos, but, well, passport photos never are, are they? Let’s just hope we don’t get turned away at Passport Control…
The other day, I blogged about how I’m not a morning person – but my children are. In a former life, 7am was classed as an early start; now, it’s a veritable lie-in.
I shouldn’t be surprised, really. Because right from day one, my children *have* been morning people.
The Boy was born at 7.35am. It was a long, tough labour. I was suffering from an acute ear infection when I started contracting, so I spent the entire labour in (almost) as much pain from my eardrum as from my uterus, and 50 per cent deaf, too.
I was group B strep positive, so was admitted to hospital and hooked up to a drip as soon as I was 3cm dilated. It took another 56 hours before, with the ‘help’ of syntocinon and ventouse, The Boy was dragged out by the head, at exactly the time I would usually have been hauling myself out of bed to get ready for work. My first photo with my firstborn child ranks as one of the worst ever taken of me, but after two and a half days of hospital-based labour, the camera (sadly) wasn’t lying.
The Baby’s birth was somewhat different. Free this time from group B strep (hooray!) I was cleared to use the birth centre, and determined to stay at home for as long as possible. So when I felt the first twinges at around 5am, two days after my due date, I was confident that labour was starting – but also that it was in its very early stages.
It was probably my biggest error of judgement ever. To cut a long story short, I got up, had a bath, realised the contractions were coming every 90 seconds, got out of the bath, got DH to phone the birth centre, threw the phone back at him when he tried to make me speak to them, gasped that I needed to push, and ended up with two on-call midwives delivering The Baby onto my own bed at 8.22am, in an entirely unplanned home birth.
So while I hate mornings – always have, always will – my two beautiful children clearly set their own agenda from the moment of birth. And while I’ll admit to selective deafness and hiding under the duvet before 7am, I’ll also concede that if I *have* to get up in the morning, then these two are the best motivation a girl can get.
This is my entry to The Gallery: Morning. Read more blogs here.
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