The usual crap

Last week was what is known as a Total Cock of a Week. If you’re wondering where I was, I was being chewed up by the great big cockness of it all, frantically trying to claw my way out of its penile grip.  This is what I endured, in chronological order:

A migraine.  I battled it with Syndol then more Syndol then I gave up and prescribed myself gin instead.  It worked!  In as much as I passed out and when I woke up it was more or less gone.  Mind you, I don’t remember much after the second g&t, so I’m not sure it’s the most sensible treatment, but anything that blocks out the CONSTANT WHINING AND WHINGING of my offspring – whether through black-outs or otherwise – can only be a good thing.

Three days of hospital alert for the Girl.  That recurring cough she has?  It’s chronic cough-variant asthma.  So now I know that when she’s coughing and gagging and vomiting for three days in a row I shouldn’t be muttering will you stop fucking coughing under my breath, but should rather BRING HER TO HOSPITAL.

A stomach bug.  My apologies to everybody I met on the nursery run on Thursday morning who had the misfortune to be unable to avoid talking to me.

The Boy saying “What’s this?” at the same time as he pressed the panic alarm on the house alarm.  The house alarm for which I do not have the code, have never used, but the sound of which will haunt me for the rest of my life. Hell is not other people, people;  it is being stuck in a house with your three children – two of whom were asleep, one of whom was asleep for the first time in 48 hours - while the most FURIOUS alarm system in the world rages just over your head for twenty long minutes. I confess that I went a bit insane during those minutes;  I apologise to everyone I might have dementedly telephoned.

Cocoa on my hand.  Not the worst thing ever, and not entirely unexpected when I’m responding to the hot chocolate demands of various offspring. But somewhat annoying when, a few minutes later I’m upstairs changing the Baby’s revolting nappy and notice it’s still smeared on my hand and I, unthinkingly, lick it off, and discover IT’S NOT COCOA.

You see?  Cockness. 

Unexpectedly, the week finished on two high notes.  Firstly, we had old friends over on Saturday night; we drank and talked and I felt like a real person for the first time all week.  I also cooked this: 

which was as simple and delicious as it was pretty (it was prettier in real life - less porridgey)  Plain risotto – “plain” meaning a chopped onion sautéed in an enormous glob of butter until soft, rice added, a glass of white wine, then hot stock, then stir and stir and stir, more stock every so often, until it’s a great big soft gloopy mess, at which point you add a small mountain of grated parmesan and an obscene amount of butter – a dollop of homemade pesto, and a garnish of roasted tomatoes. 

Our friends left at midnight - I know!  - and, forgetting I had three small children to tend to in a handful of hours, I poured self another glass of wine and decided that midnight-half-cut-email-checking was just what I  needed.  And bizarrely someone had emailed me to say that I was mentioned in the Guardian, which must have been a mistake, but I took a peek and - ! - IT WAS TRUE!  Which was very very exciting;  not least because having a writer,  whose blog is one of your favourites and whose posts are often the only small glint of sunshine in a day over-cast with parenting, refer to your own as one of her favourites is... well, it’s great. 

It certainly beats licking baby-shit off your hand any day.  

On a Parenting Roll

I’ve been thinking alot recently about what I like most about parenting, and I realised it is this:  hearing my children laugh, preferably together, without my involvement. (Actually what I like most about parenting, if I’m honest, is getting through a  day without losing it COMPLETELY, the silence that descends upon the house at about 730pm, and that first mouthful of wine, preferably a good Meursault.  But apart from that, it’s hearing them laugh.)

And so it was honey-infused balm to my raging scorched ears on the school run today to hear the two of them, snuggled together in the bike trailer, giggling like two besotted lovers. The sun was shining, a gentle pollen-free breeze was blowing, and suddenly, the stresses of the morning were gone.  Not that the morning was any more stressful than normal:  the usual mad breakfast panic, intermittent screeching, pointless reasoning, search for wallet / keys / hairbrush, shoe-tying negotiations, protracted fixing of trailer to bicycle, ushering of children into said trailer, dash back into house to grab smocks / a banana / hair-band, tie kids in, see the state of their noses, dash back into house, grab toilet roll, dash back out, round up escaped children, tie everyone in again, realise I don’t even have time to blow their noses, chuck toilet roll at them, put on sunglasses and aaaaaaaaaaah! Off we go. 

It’s a fairly easy school run, and one I try to do on the bike when the weather is good.  Getting the trailer unfolded, put together and hooked up is a bit of a pain in the tits, as is the inevitable squabbling and bickering between the two kids, shoe-horned in on top of each other, but today was nice once we got to the park.  They started to giggle and laugh, and sounded so delightful that my heart fluttered a bit and I wondered if this is what parental pride feels like;  and then when others going past us were laughing in response, I thought:  Yes!  It is!  And I beamed at everyone, acknowledging my role in making their day just that little bit happier, with my giggling offspring sprinkling joy into their lives. 

The ride stops being as easy when you get to the end of the park, where there’s a particularly steep curb that the effing trailer just WON’T mount; I have to get off the bike and physically pull the whole contraption manually, and I look and feel like a moron, but today that didn’t matter because the sun was shining and my children were making me, and everyone who passed us by, happy.  I heaved and grunted and finally, with a judder, we were up.  Turning around to beam at the kids I saw, stretched out across the park behind us, as far into the distance as the eye could see, the entire roll of toilet paper, unfurled.  This, I realised, as I watched it flapping and whirling in the wind, while shrieking toddlers ran through it, dogs cavorted in it, and old ladies tutted and gingerly stepped over it, is where pride gets you.

Which brings us to the thing I like least about parenting:  no matter how fabulous everything seems, there's always some sort of carnage and chaos bubbling away under the surface. 

(Home) Work

The Boy is learning to read.  Every day he comes home from nursery with a new collection of word cards which we labour over for HOURS AND HOURS.  In fact the reason I have been late for nursery every morning this week is because I generally forget that I have to do this until 815am, at which point I have to bribe him with fizzy cola bottles to SIT STILL and CONCENTRATE.  (Fizzy cola bottles, like all foodstuffs made entirely from colouring and high fructose corn syrup, are, as you know,  great for concentrating.) It is torturous for both of us, and it transpires – not wholly surprisingly – that I’m totally crap at the whole homework thing.  Although not as crap as the Boy is. Take this morning for example. 

Me:  (Holding up a card which says ‘FUN’)  “What does this say?”

The Boy: (Bored, rolling his eyes) “Nuffing”

Me: “Look at it.  What is this (pointing at F) letter?”

Long Pause while he looks EVERYWHERE but at the card. 

The Girl: (Glancing over, momentarily, also bored) “Fuh...”

Boy:  “I WAS GOING TO SAY THAT!”

Me:  “Excellent. Fuh.  Well done both of you. Ok.  So – the next letter.”

Boy:  “Flower!”

Me:  “Look at the next letter.  What is this?”

Boy: (Looking up at the ceiling) “Ruh.”

Me:  “Look. At. It.”

Boy:  “Fox!”

Me: (Breathing deeply. Mentally calculating the distance until 7pm) “Do you remember the last word you did?”

Silence, as he looks at me with what can only be described as an Evil Eye.

Me: “It was ‘Suh – Uh – Nnn’.  Sun.  Look at these letters.  ‘Un’.  It’s the same.”

The Girl (Still bored):  “It wymes.”

Me.  “Yes, well done. It rhymes.  The words all sound the same except for the first letter. So we had ‘bun’ and ‘gun’ and ‘run’.  This starts with...?”

The Girl:  “Fuh”

The Boy:  I WAS GOING TO SAY THAT!

Me: (Looking out at the garden and wondering how quick Death By Foxes would be;  surely quicker than this?) “It starts with Fuh. So can you tell me the word?”

The Boy:  “FROG!”

The Girl:  (Not even looking up) I’s “fun” Mummy.  Can I have a fweet?

The Boy: (Voice quivering with injustice) "WHY DOES SHE GET A SWEET AND I DON’T???

AT that point I looked at my watch and realised I had set a new record by losing the will to live before 830am.

Clearly, the Girl will be reading before the Boy.  But let’s hope she continues to be a dud at spelling.  Today – after a particularly, um, colourful, drive across London she asked me:  “Mummy, why you say 'C’Mon You See-you-en-tee'?”

If only they made adult word cards.

Parenting Parodies

Before parenthood  I used to sneer at badly-written tv and film scripts involving conversations with children.  They all seemed so contrived – unimaginative parodies of parenthood, involving poo or wee or dirt or nonsensical lies.  Not that such conversations don’t ever happen, I reasoned, but do they have to make the stuff she says to the child so obvious and clichéd?

Fast forward a thousand years and it goes without saying that I have now become a parody of a mother of young children.  I actually cannot believe some of the conversations I have, or the things that come out of my mouth.  For instance (random example from the past couple of days):

• “Sweetheart, can you stop picking your nose with that plastic bag please?” (The response:  “I’m NOT picking my nose.  I’m picking MY EYE.”)
• “PLEASE take your bottom out of her face. Thank you.”
• “Hand out of your bum.  Out. Of. Your. Bum.  OUT OF YOUR BUM!”
• (On the phone to the doctor’s)  “Thank you... sorry, just... yes... sorry...  (WHAT?  WHAT DO YOU WANT?   Can you just LET GO of my LEG...)  No, sorry, just talking to my... (Go Away.  AWAY!  INTO THE KITCHEN...) No, not you, hahaha... (AWAY!)”
• “Every time you kill an ant, an elf tells Santa.”
• “Right.  The next time one of you sticks mud in the other’s nose, you’re being sent to bed.  OR THEIR EAR...”
• “I know you were bursting, darling, but next time try to get up on the toilet, ok?”
• “I mean it, dogs do NOT like having their bums poked.  Put his tail DOWN.”

To his credit, and my salvation, the Man has also become a parody: Working Father  Who Becomes Hands-On at Weekends.  Swimming on Saturday mornings (Mummy stays at home with the ignored one-in her bouncer, the Times, and Graham Norton on Radio 2.  My favourite time of the week);  the park on Saturday afternoons (Mummy sometimes joins, but more often than not, not.); the bakery on Sunday mornings  (Mummy places an order from beneath the duvet);  and now: Sunday Lunch.   (Mummy watches, twitching, and muttering things like “put the kettle on now... the kettle... you need hot water for the stock, put the kettle on. The oven needs to be pre-heated... if you don’t put it on now the entire timing will be off...” etc).

I know that most people have Sunday lunch ritual, but we’ve never made a thing of it.  Until last week when the Man decided that we should, and took it upon himself to create a new weekly tradition: proper cooked Sunday lunch.  No eggs.  No cereal.  No bagels.  A meal that takes at least an hour to prepare, and uses, wherever possible, every single pot and pan in the house.   A meal that the Man is going to make.   A meal that MUST be accompanied by wine.  (I like both of these latter rules.)

He set off last week, a child under one arm, a very long list under the other, having consulted Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals.  I was somewhat trepidatious – the last meal he cooked from this was on my 40^th birthday, when I was banished from the kitchen (with orders to fuck off and stop muttering) and slunk away with a  bottle of champagne.  It took him TWO AND A HALF HOURS, by which stage I was pissed, so really, he could have served me anything, but as far as I can recall, it was very tasty. This time, I managed to stay sober, hardly interfered at all, it only took about an hour, and was really very delicious indeed. 

Although in the spirit of parodying a nagging wife, I would never tell him that, of course. 

Fish Tray-Bake

You need:  For 4 (2 adults, 2 children, and – hurrah! – their lunch the next day)

• Olive oil (any type)
• 4 salmon fillets
• Large raw prawns (as many as you want per person)
• A bunch of asparagus
• 1 lemon, quartered
• Handful of basil
• 1 tin of anchovies (Feel free to skip this ingredient.  The Man DIDN’T and so I had to scrape fishy grey sludge off my food.  Uuuuuuugh.)
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 4 tomatoes, chopped

PREHEAT THE FUCKING OVEN to 200c.  (And if you’re making potato salad to go with this – which I recommend – you need to out the kettle on.  NOW.)

Put a glug of olive oil in the bottom of a large roasting tray (or oven-proof dish) and swill it around.  Lay the asparagus, prawns  and the fish, skin side up (if relevant) on the tray, then add the lemon quarters, basil leaves, garlic, tomatoes, and 4 chopped anchovy fillets (if you want to revolt everyone at the table).  Drizzle over some more olive oil, salt and pepper, and stick in the PRE-HEATED oven for 17-20 mins.

Meanwhile decide what you’re going to eat with the fish and prepare.  We had new potato salad, pea & mint puree and spinach salad.  If you’re having potatoes, you’ll need to start cooking them before the fish, which gets cooked really quite quickly.  Nice bread would be a good carb alternative.

Serve the fish as soon as you can once it’s out of the oven.  Refrain, as much as possible, from telling your offspring to stop picking their noses / bums / ears etc at the table. It's a boring parental habit, which you've probably picked up from a crap film or tv show,  and they never listen anyway. 

This Little Piggy went on holidays

Once upon a time in a far-off land, not very long ago, there holidayed three little piggies: Boy Pig, Girl Pig, and Baby Pig.  Boy Pig was big and handsome, but also a bit energetic and, um, “spirited”. Girl Pig looked as if the several pounds of butter she scoffed every day wouldn’t melt in her mouth, but in fact had a mean streak.  She also liked putting her hand in her bottom.  Baby Pig looked very much like a pig, but with twinkley eyes and a big fat gummy smile. When she wasn’t smiling she was roaring for food. 

One day Mummy Pig announced that it was time for all the pigs to pack their bags and go home, whereupon the pigs snorted and wailed and stamped their hooves.  When it came time to leave, Mummy Pig realised she would have to choose which small piggy sat with which big piggy.  

Mummy Pig hesitated.  She had seen films about choosing one offspring over another and knew that the wrong choice could result in terrible fallout.  She looked into Boy Pig’s defiant eyes.  She knew that choosing him as her travelling companion would mean many hours of menial servitude: fetching, fixing, rearranging, unwrapping, feeding, and settling.  She also knew that not choosing him would result in many hours of sulks, rolled eyes and whinging.

Then Mummy Pig looked into Girl Pig’s eyes.  There, along with sweetness and humour, she saw the evil sparks of mischief and manipulation.  She foresaw an hour or so of fun and giggles, followed by a long night of wriggling, fidgeting, whining and being kicked in the stomach. 

Finally, Mummy Pig peeled back the rolls of face-fat and looked into Baby Pig’s eyes,  Hunger and greed aside, all she saw was love, adoration and exhaustion. 

Mummy Pig decided to risk the inevitable emotional carnage that her choice would bring.  She told all of the little piggies that she loved them equally, but that some love was more equal than others, and in this instance, that love was for Baby Pig.  Blocking her ears and her heart to the squeals of disbelief and protest, she skipped off to the magazine shop and tempted fate by buying not one, but two pieces of utterly crap magazines.  Then she bought an eye mask and some ear plugs.  She hesitated beside the stall selling those stupid neck pillow things, but decided that that was step too far, even for her. Then she swooped up her charge and skipped onto the plane, as fast as her piggy legs could follow her.

Ten hours later those same piggy legs, now stiff and sore from the weight of Baby Pig, and likely riddled with clots, limped out of the plane into the howling wind and rain of west London. In her piggy paws she held a frenzied Baby Pig, wide-eyed and manic with exhaustion, having refused to sleep AT ALL for the entire duration of the flight, and likely nursing a sore, screech-raw throat.  

Beside her stumbled the Boy Pig and the Girl Pig, both rubbing the sleep from their tired piggy eyes, having behaved more or less impeccably throughout the night (except for the part when the Boy Pig got pissy when he was woken up and started to shout loudly at Mummy Pig, telling her that it was HER FAULT for bringing them all on holidays, and furthermore, “WHY DO YOU ALWAYS GET TO MAKE THE DECISIONS, HUH?”). 

After many hours waiting for their bags, all the piggies got into the piggy car, and gave great squeals and snorts of joy when the car battery was dead and no amount of piggy swearing would get it to work.

Finally they got home, and the little pigs took turns in staying awake so that they could each drain Mummy Pig of every last vestige of youth and energy she possessed, and they all lived happily ever after. Except for Mummy Pig who swore she was never leaving the house again. 

The End. 

Bitching and Moaning

I happened upon a blog the other day called Reasons My Son is Crying (or maybe Why Is My Son Crying?  Definitely something about a son crying) each post of which comprised a photo of a crying toddler and a caption (“I won’t let him eat my credit card”;  “He put his shoe on the wrong foot” etc).  I thought – I could do that.  Mine would be called:  “Why is my Son Bitching and Moaning?”.  The problem however is that there isn’t enough space on the entire internet to accommodate all of the reasons my son bitches and moans.  He bitches and moans about anything and everything.

Random examples of things which pissed him off yesterday are:

• His cereal being soggy
• His cereal being too milky
• His cereal spilling on the table
• His shoes being “ridiculous”
• His shorts being too long
• His shirt being “stupid”
• His head being itchy
• His feet being itchy
• Me telling him not to touch the cactus
• The place where the cactus thorns stung him being itchy
• The Girl looking at him funny
• The Girl laughing
• The Girl running too fast
• The Girl singing
• The Girl not singing
• His pyjamas being too tight
• The toothpaste being “spicy”
• The bed being too soft
• The floor being too hard
• The bones of my hand cracking his head open

(Only one of the above isn’t true.)

So you can imagine my delight in breaking the news to him this morning that tonight we leave hot, clothes-optional, swim-after-breakfast, ice-lolly-after-lunch, sand-removing-shower-before-bed Florida. On the plus side, with any luck I won’t be able to hear his bitching and moaning over the sound of the driving English rain.

Feeding the Monster

I’ve just woken up from a nap with the Girl.  Actually, it’s incorrect to say I’ve “woken”, which implies sleep;  I slept in as much as one would sleep if they threw some heavy rocks into a tumbledryer, climbed inside, then set it on high. She is particularly annoying to sleep with, falling silent for minutes at a time, lulling me into a false sense of slumber then... Mummy?   MUMMY!  COME ON!  WAKE UP! I need a POO / WEE / BITSTIC, complete with finger in eye / nose, foot in groin / stomach / armpit. 

The reason for this daytime nap – alas, no longer a staple in our house for anyone other than the Baby – is twofold.  The grownups are knackered from sharing a room at night with the Boy, who rumbles away on his air-bed at the foot of our real one, like a tiny Mount Vesuvius - snorting and hiccupping and growling through the still night air.  Particularly annoying is his soporific (for him) tendency to thud-thud-thud his foot on the mattress for half an hour at a time, occasionally alternating with his head, both of which bounce the entire bed up and down across the room. 

The children in turn are knackered from yesterday’s major excitement:  the Man took them to Disneyworld. The major excitement was  mainly mine – I got a day with only one child (the easy one), while he had a 2-hour car journey (each way – ha!) followed by 2-hour queues for 2-minute rides.  (In total they were there for TEN hours and went on FOUR rides.  They arrived home late, the Man quietly seething and cursing Walt and Mickey and Donald under his breath, broken – and broke - from the experiences of keeping two small children entertained in queues in the heat).

I, meanwhile, had quite a pleasant day, devoting myself wholly and enthusiastically to the role of obesity enabler.  The Baby's rotundness has now reached epic proportions, which I LOVE.  I love the wobbles and the rolls and the creases and the deep crevices; I love that she is bursting out of her 9-12 month old onsies (she isn't even 6 months yet), and will now only fit into a smock for a 2-yr old which, rather obscenely, makes her look like she’s wearing a maternity dress. To facilitate – nay, encourage – this extreme plumpness, I spent most of the day cooking for her. By “cooking” of course I mean standing over the bin peeling vegetables  then steaming the bejaysus out of them, before pureeeing every last remaining taste from them.  Mind you, the Baby doesn’t seem to care that her food has all the taste and texture of boiled cotton wool.  RARRRRGGGHHHH she yells, face covered in something green or orange or beige, grunting and grabbing and FURIOUS, which I take to mean FEEEEED ME.   And so I do.  Today she had sweet potatoes, carrot, mango, banana, and peas (not all at the same time, I should point out).  The peas in particular were a pain in the arse – no amount of processing would render them smooth.  I toyed with the idea of pushing them through a sieve, but it turns out that my love for her does in fact know some bounds.  It also crossed my mind that perhaps I could have peeled (shelled?) them, but ditto.  And anyway, what sort of a mad person peels (shells?) a legume?

Yotam Ottolenghi, that’s who. His recipe for hummus calls for the peeling (or shelling, or whatever the flip you call the thing you do to take the tough exterior bit – the skin?  The shell?) off the chickpeas*. And given that I’m now surgically attached to my blender, and that decent hummus is impossible to get in American supermarkets, I found self looking at a tin of chickpeas and a jar of peanut butter the other night (because who ever has tahini lying around?), and had a ta-da moment.  Before I knew it, I too was shelling some flipping chickpeas and whizzing and stirring.  I have to say that all my hard work resulted in a really light fluffy hummus, but to be honest, it wasn’t really worth the 15 minutes it took to shell them, which could instead have been spent shovelling food into the baby (or gin into me).

(*it also calls for the use of dried chickpeas.  And tahini.  Both of which instructions I’ve ignored.)

(It goes without saying that that isn't my own photo;  I pinched it off the Guardian's Felicity Cloake. Who, I should point out, does NOT shell her  (dried) chickpeas.  Or use peanut butter.  Silly her.)

Pretend hummus (but none the worse for it)

For a large tub, you need:

• One standard tin of chickpeas, drained
• A heaped tablespoon of PROPER peanut butter (none of your Skippy nonsense here.  Ingredients should read: Peanuts and Salt.  If you see the word “sugar”, STEP AWAY FROM THE JAR) 
• Extra virgin olive oil
• A lemon (juice only)
• A clove of garlic
• You might also need some water

Bung the chickpeas – peeled or otherwise – the peanut butter and the garlic into a food processor (or blender) and blitz to a thick paste. 

While the motor is running, gently pour the olive oil in; how much you use depends on what consistency you want.  As a starter tho’, pour for a count of three.  Then add the lemon juice, blitz some more, then taste.  You’re checking for texture and flavour.  If you like your hummus very lemony, add more lemon (obviously).  If it tastes fine, but isn’t as smooth as you’d like, dribble in some water, a tablespoon at a time, while blending.

Keep stopping to taste, adding a bit more garlic, lemon, oil or water until it’s just right (as a bear might say).

Serve to knackered children and knackered  parents.  But not to beach-ball babies. Give them boiled - and pureed - cotton wool instead.