Category Archives: Parenting

Are my children Trump supporters?

31 Tuesday Jan 2017

Posted by in Humour, Motherhood, Parenting, Politics

≈ 1 Comment

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Here is my evidence so far:

1. Placing restrictions on my reproductive rights
There’s very little as restricting on both one’s ability and will to partake in reproductive activities as expelling a whole human being from the reproductive bits in question, the following emotional and hormonal upheaval – and the consequent chronic exhaustion.

I’m pretty sure my Small People also have an inner sensor for the rare occasions such activities are contemplated, as they invariably choose those moments to cry inconsolably – or worse – visit.

2. Placing restrictions on my movements
I am not allowed, for instance, to move out of the line of sight of the smallest Small Person, who views any transgressions (such as weeing or making the tea) as highly suspicious, and an indication she needs to step up her surveillance levels to ‘limpet’.

3. Dislike of strangers
Neither child responds well to new people, especially if they look or dress a bit differently. They particularly disapprove of beards.

Red suits, sleigh travel and jolly laughter are also frowned (and screamed) upon – although this can occasionally be overcome by present-based bribery.

4. Conservatism and resistance to change
My kids like things to stay the same. Back like it was in the good old days – ie. yesterday. Woe betide anyone who interrupts their precious routine/regime. Miss one of the day’s expected milestones – like snack, milk or story – and you should expect…..

5. Meltdowns over perceived slights and wrongs
Today the Small Small was incandescent over the apparent injustice of my cutting up her fish fingers instead of leaving them whole – and hot enough to give her tongue second degree burns. If she could have taken to Twitter to vent her rage, she would have. She settled for throwing the offending fish fingers across the room and lying face down in the hall crying for 30 minutes.

6. They like building walls
They tell me they build the best walls. No one can build walls like they can. They know all about wall-building, and no, they don’t want any advice or assistance. (Their walls, are, by the way, shit).

Although to be fair to them, once they’ve built their walls they usually destroy them immediately afterwards.

7. They are certain they have all the best words
I am still trying to explain to the Big Small that no one is trying to hurt her ‘by a-liberate’. It’s either by accident or DELIBERATELY. This is a losing battle.

She may also be paranoid – also a Trumpism?

8. Gagging freedom of speech
Or at least screaming over it and/or conveniently refusing to hear it.

9. Approbation of and expertise in torture
I have now suffered five years of sound torture, psychological warfare and complex mind games. The worst thing, however, is their practice of unrelenting sleep deprivation.

On an average day I literally cannot remember my own name or speak in full sentences until I have imbibed at least four cups of strong coffee. I wear my clothes inside out to work. (They’ve stopped telling me out of either sympathy, embarrassment or fatigue – so now I find out halfway through the day when my bleary eyes can actually focus on the mirror in the toilets). I honest-to-God tried to feed the cat Cheerios instead of cat food this morning. Earlier this week I left my purse in the damn freezer.

Please send help.

10. Inconsistency
They back track, change their minds with alarming alacrity, and deny ever having held any other viewpoint despite all of the compelling evidence to the contrary.

“I wanted the pink cup! No the blue one! I said pink! Not that pink one! WHY AREN’T YOU LISTENING TO ME??? Bluuuuuueeee!”

11. Poor spelling
The Big Small is new to literacy, and not a fan. On the occasions she is persuaded to read and write, her phonetic spelling is definitely Trump-worthy. She recently put a label on a stuffed cat that read ‘ckety’ (kitty).

12. Repeating catchphrases
Less ‘America First’ and more:
“It’s not fair!”
“She started it!”
“I don’t like my Mummy!”
“Eeew- Diss-gust-in!”
“Nooooooooo!”
“More Peppa Piiiiiiiig!”

13. Pointing
Usually accompanied by “Dat one. Want dat one, Mama.”

14. They don’t believe in climate change
To be honest, they don’t really get the whole weather thing. If it’s raining out the front of they’ll go check round the back. This is consistently disappointing.

15. They peddle ‘alternative facts’ with aplomb
“I didn’t push her Mummy! I just moved her off the sofa with my bottom.”

16. They zealously protect their own interests
Which often leads to:

17. Indifference to domestic violence
Which they practice on each other at regular intervals. (Before attempting 15).

18. They like to grab me by the pussy
Well, ok, not the pussy, I admit. But the arm, leg, boob, hair and neck are all fair game, certainly. And then they just start kissing me. They don’t even wait. They can do anything.

I’m pretty just an object to them.

19. They believe if they behave in an extreme enough manner for long enough, they will either inure me to their misdemeanors or wear me down so I’m too tired to continue to protest them.
Sadly this belief is not without foundation. See no 9.

20. Wild hair
The Small Small, at least, still has some baby fuzz left. First thing in the morning it looks remarkably like a Trump quiff.

21. Pouting
Let’s just say that if my children were to walk into a wall, their bottom lips would hit it first.

22. They think Trump/s is/are pretty clever and amusing

23. Tiny hands

I rest my case.

I think it’s clear that my children are natural born Trump supporters and I am harbouring closet fascists right here in Sheffield.

Either that, or the President of the United States acts like a huge, orange child, and we’re all completely fucked.

Anyway, I plan to swap out ‘The Gruffalo’ for ‘The Communist Revolution’ this evening, just in case.

Remember, we must resist the children, however cute they may be when sleeping. They can take our freedom, but they will never take our… Never mind. They pretty much take everything.

Mumonthenetheredge

 

‘Go Away’ snow

13 Friday Jan 2017

Posted by in Humour, Motherhood, Parenting, School

≈ Leave a comment

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I’d love to be one of those happy clappy super-fun snow parents, but I’m not. It’s cold, it’s wet, it takes far more preparation than my small brain can reasonably be expected to organise, and it makes my life unnecessarily complicated.

I HATE the snow.

And I hate it more than usual on this particular occasion because it has exposed me as being more than usually stupid.

I didn’t take the predictions of snow very seriously yesterday. I looked at the weather forecast, you see, and saw it said 1 percent chance of snow. Ah hah! I thought smugly. Other people may be forecasting doom, but not so the trusty MET!

Unfortunately I seem to have confused the symbols for ‘percent’ and ‘degrees’. Yep. The actual forecast was for 1 degree temperatures in Sheffield, with a 90 percent chance of snow.

Idiot.

One of the things I hate even more than snow is NUMBERS. I’m a words girl. And lists or rows of numbers (as on a forecast) simply make me panic. Numbers jump about and do frightening things. Like add up, for instance. (Just not for me). I have genuinely once asked my husband why a pub we were in had an under 21s menu. (It was under 12s).

The numbers aside, I have to say that do I NOT find snow fun. I find snow stressful. I am the world’s worst driver – and that’s without extra steering and vehicular control challenges.

Because I cannot operate a car and look where I’m going at the same time, I drive an automatic – and because I frequently scrape and bump into inanimate objects and don’t know which way to turn the wheel in reverse, I drive an ancient rubbishy automatic that Dadonthenetheredge isn’t too distraught about me slowly trashing over a number of years until it’s worth nothing but scrap.

It is not a good car in the snow.

Dadonthenetheredge did get me some snow socks for it, but we both agree that I am more likely to end up running myself over in an East 17 tribute than I am to successfully apply them.

(Don’t worry Sheffielders, I’m wasn’t on the roads this morning. Other days I can’t vouch for, mind).

I also naturally WALK on snow in a terrified little old-lady shuffle, the one style of walk GUARANTEED to make you fall over and break a hip. Fact. I have tried to stride forth as normal, but as I have neither grace nor balance under normal traction conditions, for some reason I can’t make myself do it. My body literally won’t respond to my commands – which is a bloody weird sensation.

Fortunately a year or so ago I discovered those spikes on elastic bands, which have literally CHANGED MY LIFE. If anyone ever asked me about the greatest human invention, I would not dwell even momentarily on the wheel, iron, electricity, DNA sequencing, computronics, etc, I would cite rubber bands with spikes as the true pinnacle of scientific genius.

Even the magic grips, though, cannot help me with transporting the small people around in snowy conditions.

I live on the top of a big hill, above the snow line. The main roads might be totally clear, but getting up and down my hill is a bloody nightmare. Which means you look like a total twat when trying to explain to sea-level school/work why you can’t get in.

The Big Small is now big enough to go on foot, but the Small Small is still an issue. It’s too far for her to walk to school, too snowy for the buggy, too slippy for the sling, and not snowy enough for the sledge (which if it was snowy enough would go down the hill too bloody fast anyway).

How the Dickens are other people doing this??? Seriously, any top tips on moving small people in winter weather would be gratefully received!

Today I offered Big Small the option of staying home with me and the Small Small or going to school with a very kind neighbour. She didn’t pick me, which is damning indictment of my parenting, but evidence of a commendable sense of self-preservation, as we’d have all fallen out by lunchtime stuck at home together.

Let’s all hope the snow f*cks off until next year.

Although – given that it’s only January – I imagine the probability of that is less than 50 degrees….  

Mumonthenetheredge

 

New Year – true you

30 Friday Dec 2016

Posted by in Infertility, mental health, Miscarriage, Motherhood, Parenting, Postnatal depression

≈ 11 Comments

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I have always hated New Year’s Resolutions, because I have always failed spectacularly at them.

The trouble, I think, is that too often our resolutions are to change ourselves. A diet. An exercise regime. A new hobby. A new outlook. A new philosophy.

And change is hard.

It is even harder when the foundations upon which you are trying to build that change, are crumbling.

About this time last year, though, I started to think. Not about changing myself – but about trying to strengthen my foundations. Trying to find myself again.

No, no! Not that way. I didn’t feel the need to go on a pilgrimage to Nepal or to explore the wilderness’ of Borneo, to seek refuge with Tibetan monks or Swedish yoginis. Travel has never been my thing. (I get homesick after a week in Devon).

I felt the need to write.

I have always best processed my thoughts and expressed my emotions in text. Words are always where I have found solace, succour, sanctuary. It started with novels as a small child. Each book had a self-illustrated cover and back-blurb about it being one of my ‘best ever books’. Inevitably this escalated into astonishingly bad angsty poetry in my teens, and then became the focus of my studies and even my work.

Not writing had become – quite honestly – physically painful.

I didn’t lose myself because I stopped writing. I stopped writing because I got lost.

Parenthood was part of it. Miscarriage was part of it. Infertility was part of it. The physical trauma of ongoing procedures. The obsession of it, the tunnel vision. The all-encompassment. Sleep deprivation. The impact of all that on my relationship, my job, my friendships – the stabilising factors of my life. All the things I’d carefully constructed around me to allow me to cope, all of the things that had tumbled down around my ears one by one. And I couldn’t write any of it down because I got lost in the middle of it all. And by the time I realised how lost I was – by the time I could look up – I couldn’t find my way back. To the life I knew, to the ME I knew.

So last January I didn’t make any resolutions to change. I simply make a decision to try and be me – and do the things that make me feel like the best version of me. That would help me to think clearly again, explore hurts, expound on the ridiculous, and express – something. Anything. Everything. Whatever was blocking me from me.

And that’s where Mumonthenetheredge was born.

I worried – and still worry – that some people might think I’m trying to be the next Unmumsy Mum, Peter and Jane or Hurrah for Gin – or any one of the marvellous parent bloggers I personally follow and love, and who have blogging awards or book deals or millions of followers. I honestly don’t think I’m any of them. The point is – and has always been – to be me, to find me – not someone else. I don’t need to be the biggest, brightest or best fish in the pond. I just needed to to swim again. I just needed to write it all down.  

What’s more, if I was suddenly struck with notoriety and ostentatious success I would be both alarmed and terrified, and either run away or sabotage it, as that’s basically what I do whenever I’ve sniffed any kind of personal triumph or success, because yes, for unknown reasons I am apparently that fucked up. (I really wish I could blame this on some set of interesting personal trauma, but I can’t. I’m just a drama queen knobhead with astonishingly low self esteem, OCD, and a fulfilment phobia.)

Anyway, instead of just talking about it, or thinking about it, or persuading myself out of it, or second guessing it, or worrying what other people might think of it, I actually did it. I started a blog.

My first posts got about 14 likes. But gradually, people started responding. Not in vast droves, but in dribs and drabs. And whether placing value in the validation of strangers is sad or desperate or not, each one FELT like a connection. And suddenly I wasn’t lost. Suddenly I found something.

And I think – I think it was me.

Not all of it has been great. I’ve struggled with not feeling good enough. The posts that bombed. The friends I told about it who haven’t liked it, or haven’t found anything to connect with (I quote, and it still hurts). The people who have taken the piss when I’ve been vulnerable, or taken me seriously when I’ve been taking the piss. (Shout out to the guy who thought I seriously wanted to garotte farmers over the October clock change).

But actually, all of that, all of that I’ve needed, in a way. Because actually it’s good for me. I need to question myself. I need to check when I’m being an eejit. I need people to tell me to lighten up, or to knuckle down. I need to grow a thicker skin. To stop letting doubt freeze me. To stop being afraid.  

In many ways I’ve gotten off lightly – I’m sure if I carry on blogging the negative bits will get worse. But so far, so far the good bits have very much outweighed the bad.

Because it turns out the thing I needed most of all, was simply to know that I wasn’t lost alone.

Oh I’ve got people I can call on, but the truth is I don’t, not when I most need to. And even when I do I can’t really articulate what I want to say, or why I want to say it. It’s like I need to write it down to think it through. To process it. To understand my own narrative.

And like any story, it has two halves – teller and listener. And it is the act of listening that really brings life to any story – that really completes any narrative.

Writing wasn’t enough – I needed to be heard, too.

So I’d like to say thank you, to everyone who’s listened. Anyone who’s read something I’ve written, and liked it, or commented. I really, really appreciate it – more than you can know.

I would like to say a very special thank you to the people who’ve got in touch in private – especially after my Rainbow Woodlice post. I’ve talked to some wonderful women, also struggling, also lost, also trying to get back to themselves. One new stranger-pal in particular talked about needing to write things down to get them out – something I totally, totally get. So I told her how ridiculously easy it is to make a start – so easy even I could do it – and her first blog appeared on Selfish Mother the very next day. It’s a hell of a read. And for me that’s been a rainbow woodlouse in and of itself.

In fact, it’s been one of many.

Mumonthenetheredge has helped me connect with all sorts of people, in all sorts of ways. It’s helped me reconnect, for instance, with some old friends – people I’d lost a bit when I lost me.

Then there’s the wonderful group of mummy mates I talk to about writing, including a writer who works on a grander scale than I, and who is infinitely better than she thinks she is. There’s the brilliant Kate over at Little Sheffield (a fantastic resource for Sheff parents – go check it out) and the other pals who support the blog willy nilly, good or bad, and boost my Facebook ratings whether they’ve read the bloody thing or not, because they know the algorithms kill me if it doesn’t get out and about fast enough.

It’s also helped me find some other creative Sheffield types, of which  there are quite a few. There’s the poetry guys – check out Lyrical Events and Verse Matters, and then there’s the fabulous Sophie over at Imogen’s Imagination (seriously stylish retro hats and hair stuff) and lovely Lydia at Studio Binky (cute designs, cards and prints) and all the other Sheffield Etsy folk. These are all people who also need to create to be themselves, and I’ve found a foot-hole in a community I never knew existed, and I never knew I needed.

So if you are thinking about making a resolution this year, I’d implore you to make it about you. Not someone you want to be, one day. You. Now. And whatever makes you the most you. The best of you. The real, authentic, bone-deep you.

Whatever makes you feel the most like yourself, do more of it. And do it for you. Not your kids, your employer, your partner. Just you. If you can’t remember you, find the people that do and spend time with them to remind you. Avoid those that drain you, or bring out the worst in you. Spend time doing the things that are special to you. It might be something creative. It might be learning, or sport, or fashion, or music, or walking – or just laughing – or ANYTHING. Find it, and do it.

Don’t reinvent a new you for the new year – recognise and reinvigorate instead. Regenerate YOU.

Go get ’em tigers. Or woodlice. Or fish – big or little. It really, really doesn’t matter. Don’t compare yourself. Don’t compete. You don’t need to be the best. Just listen to yourself. Just stop for a moment, and think about you for a change. Nobody else.

Because come February you really can’t fail at being you – the true you. You are uniquely qualified. And you can rock the shit out of it.

And maybe you can join me in stepping away from the (Nether) edge, wherever or whatever yours may be.

Cheers all. Happy new year.

Mumonthenetheredge

 

When children stop crying

20 Tuesday Dec 2016

Posted by in mental health, Motherhood, Parenting

≈ Leave a comment

I have always been very good at hiding, probably because I’ve always been quite small (lumpy, but small), and good at fitting into tight spaces. When I was a kid I would fold up and shut myself away from everything when I got overwhelmed.

As an adult I hide behind a smile. In humour. In familiar, re-read books. In the comfort of my routines, my distractions. Away from the things and the thoughts that are too big and too scary for me to hold on to. Things my mind shies away from. Things that still make me want to curl up in a ball and forget.

Because If I look away, if I pretend they’re not there, they aren’t as real. And they can’t hurt me.

But looking away isn’t always a good choice. Sometimes we have to look. We have to make ourselves. Because if we don’t have the courage to see, to feel, to let it – whatever IT is – thunder through our bodies, buckle our knees and break our hearts, something even worse will happen. Something we can’t choose to avoid. Something that doesn’t have words. Something that will break everything.

So this is a post about coming out of hiding. About looking. And this week I stopped hiding from – and started looking at – Aleppo.

Oh God. I’m not in the mood. Yes, yes it’s bloody terrible, and horrific, but it’s Christmas, and I’m tired and busy and broken, and I want to be happy, and for my kids to know magic, and I can’t cope with much more, and I can’t do anything to help anyway because I’m too small and too far away, and how can I solve the world’s problems when I can’t even solve my own?

That’s pretty much where I’ve been. Avoidance. Abdication. Distraction. Distance. (All personal specialities). And it’s so easy to not look when you can fill your newsfeed with mum blogs and celebrity gossip, and turn off the 10 o’clock news because it’s bedtime, anyway.

Until the Big Small Person asked me a question, as small people are wont to do, that floored me.

I’m not always careful enough about my phone, you see. When I crack under the inane monotony of Mr Tumble, or the sodding Twirlywoos, or – God help me – the millionth episode of Peppa Pig, I get my phone out. And on this occasion Big Small Person eyes looked away from the big screen to the small one, and saw a picture. A picture I was scrolling past. A picture of a boy from Aleppo. You’ve probably seen it too – or many like it.

So I explained, in child friendly terms, that there were a lot of old, old fights in another part of the world far, far away, where different groups of people disagreed so much about so many things they thought it was worth a war. And the ordinary people living there got caught in the middle of their argument. Ordinary people like the boy in the picture.

“Is he hurt mummy?” She asked.

“Yes”, I said. “But he’s getting help now.” And I braced for more awkward questions.

I wasn’t expecting this one.

“But,” asked the Big Small, with small person logic, “if he’s hurt, why isn’t he crying?”

I found I couldn’t answer.

I was once accused of being an attachment parent. It made me laugh – not because I in any way disapprove, but because if I’d actually given my parenting that much thought I’d be considerably a better at it than I flagrantly am.

I have no particular parenting style or philosophy, but what I have always had is an aversion to screaming.

In common with proper attachment parents, I have always picked up my babies when they cried. I never really put them down, to be honest. I have spent nearly two years with the Small Small Person napping ON me for nearly two hours a day because she cries when I try to place her in her cot. (Feel free to judge me for my weakness – I do).

Meanwhile the Big Small is the world’s most sensitive child. We still sing her to sleep every night. She howls when someone so much as brushes past her, and at every minor injury or slight slight (hence, I suppose, her particular question about this particular boy). Although this is occasionally irritating, I’ve found the problem is best and swiftest solved with sympathy and cuddles. Because I don’t want her to have to toughen up, or suck it up. I don’t want her to learn to hold it in, or to hide away from the things she finds painful.

But most of all, though, I don’t want to have to hear her cry.

Whenever there is a cry – of any sort – from anyone, I rush to be there, to soothe. And I do so simply because I CANNOT BEAR THE NOISE.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, even before kids my sensitive ears (over compensating, I believe, for my myopic eyes) couldn’t stand their incessant caterwauling. But afterwards, Lord, afterwards it grinds on my soul like flaking, fungalled nails on an old slate blackboard. That grate. That weight. That excruciation.

As a parent I think this either happens to you or it doesn’t, but that noise is pure torture to me. It has pulled me up and out of the most exhausted newborn-phase coma, dragging me like a puppet on invisible, intractable strings straight through the heart and – if breastfeeding – through the nipples. It physically HURTS.

Even now they are older, my very worst parenting moments are still when both the smalls are screaming at once, and I am alone, and too powerless or too useless to help everyone who needs me, and I can’t give anymore, and I’m not enough, and I can’t handle the noise, and I feel like I’m going to shatter under the sheer, unrelenting awfulness of it. Sometimes I even cry, too. Sometimes I even scream.

I basically spend my time plotting and planning how I can minimise the day’s crying, and I count my good days in terms of hours of non-wailing harmony.

It never occurred to me that there was something worse than crying. Not until my daughter asked me that question, and the answer hit me like a sledge hammer.

That boy in the picture isn’t crying, BUT HE SHOULD BE.

He isn’t crying because he is in shock.

He isn’t crying because there is no one left to comfort him.

Because crying doesn’t work.

Because there is no help, no relief, no one to tell him it’s all going to be okay.

Because he knows that it’s not going to be okay.

Because it doesn’t matter whether he cries or not.

Because the sudden nightmare of his life doesn’t go away when he opens his eyes, or when tears fall from them.

Children are SUPPOSED to cry. It’s how they communicate before they can talk, or even think. It’s their voice. And we are supposed to help them. We are supposed to be there. We are supposed not just to look, but to respond. We are supposed to make it better. It is supposed to hurt us, and make us act. It is the most basic biology.

Tonight I know my Small Small Person will wake me up, because she is ill. And when that cry pierces the air and my slumber, as I stumble exhausted to reach her in her nice safe cot in our nice safe house in our nice safe city, I will be extra glad to go.

If you too are up in the wee small hours with a wee small person, console yourself with the thought they are still seeking comfort. That they believe you will make it better for them. That they still trust you, someone, anyone, to dry their eyes.

Because when I looked, when I really looked at Aleppo and at that boy, I saw my own children. And that silence, that terrifying silence, slayed me – far more than the noise of tears ever could.

I wish I could see him sob, hear him shriek and hold his flailing limbs through his meltdown. I wish I could tell him I’m there. That I’ll fix it for him. Shush in his ear. Rock with him. I wish he was making as much sound as his lungs could muster. I wish he was letting it all out, and being cleansed by it.

I don’t know where his mother is, if she still is, but if he is mine then I am her, too. And she is me – just somewhere, somewhen else. Not so very far away, after all. Her anguish at his quiet, her impotence, her rage, her desperation; they are all mine. They are all yours too.

And unlike me – unlike you – she cannot hide from it.

Tomorrow I am going to be festive, and Christmassy, and try and make magic for my kids. But tonight, tonight I am going to cry. I am going to cry because there are children in Aleppo who have forgotten how, and why.

And I didn’t even notice until my five-year-old pointed it out.

And it is quite the most awful thing I have never heard, and could ever imagine.

 

Oxfam –  donate.oxfam.org.uk/emergency/syria

Doctors Without Borders – donate.doctorswithoutborders.org

White Helmets – peoplesmillion.whitehelmets.org/donate/peoples-million

Save the Children – secure.savethechildren.org

The Red Cross – redcross.org.uk

 

Bah Mumbug – confessions of a Scrooge Mother

16 Friday Dec 2016

Posted by in Humour, Motherhood, Parenting

≈ 1 Comment

merry-christmas

Christmas is overrated. There. I said it so you don’t have too. Yes, yes, it’s all sooooo magical, and it’s all about the children, and look at their little faces, yadda yadda blah etc.

But actually children make Christmas an awful lot of hard work, and when you own them there is an awful lot of pressure on Christmas to be super-mega-brilliant.

Well I crumble under pressure. And my kids act like feral animals under the influence of even small amounts of chocolate, over-excitement, shiny new things and flashing neon lights.

So I’m going to get my Bah Mumbug list of anti-xmas confessions off my chest.

 

  1. Real trees are stupid

Let’s start with the needle dropping thing, and the fact the branches are usually too limp to hang even a normal bauble, let alone the ceramic paint-a-pot hand/footprinted ones you are now obliged to get for each baby.

But what really annoys me about real Christmas trees is that they are all short and squat. Yes. I am going to BODY SHAME CHRISTMAS trees. And my reasons are both aesthetic and practical.

First off, they don’t fit in my long thin living room. Secondly, I already have enough short and squat in my life. I live short and squat everyday, and I do not need an overdressed foliage echo of my own existence sat in the corner as a reminder.

My fake tree is tall and rather elegant. Or at least it was, until I had to decorate it with children. Now it has lost any claims to taste it may once have had – again, very much like my good self.

Instead of co-ordinated and artfully arranged glass decorations I now have haphazardly applied tinsel in a range of interesting rainbow hughes, flashing multi-coloured lights, and sh*t Christmas drawings/crafts where my children have made no effort to use a realistic palette, have clearly failed to follow basic instructions, and haven’t even coloured within the lines.

The first year of having children old enough to ‘help’, I’ll be honest, I struggled with this. Now I’ve given up.

Another personal metaphor…

 

  1. My kids are sh*t at art, and if possible, even SH*TTER at Christmas art

There is A LOT of craft at Christmas. Most of it seems to have found it’s way onto my bloody tree (see above).

I always had visions of myself as a crafty mum, painting, cutting and sticking with my children. Turns out my children are terrible at art.

Obviously ALL children are a bit sh*t at art, having only just learned how to effectively operate fine motor control etc, but mine are particularly bad. I see others drawing recognisable people with facial features actually in their heads, and the traditional number (and placement) of limbs. In contrast, mine very much follow the school of Picasso. They may be abstract, impressionist proteges, but frankly I doubt it.

This used to give me a tic in the corner of my right eye, and I used to helicopter over them – leaping into to ‘help’ with pictures and projects and pretty much taking over.

Now I make myself a strong cup of tea, benignly tell them they’re doing a great job, and do my own version of whatever we’re making so I’ve got one thing that actually turns out nicely.

At Christmas time I am forced to endure more than their normal levels of creativity. Which are prolific. And horrific. And then aided and abetted by friends and family buying them craft-based presents.

Roll on bloody January.

 

  1. Elf on the Shelf is also stupid

I understand that it’s all about keeping the magic alive, etc, but frankly I’m more likely to attempt to resurrect Paul Daniels than I am to Elf on a Shelf.

Let’s start off with how incredibly creepy the ‘real’ Elf on the Shelf is. Does this not take anyone else back to doll-based horrors of the 80s and 90s? Why would you do this to your children??? A manically grinning doll, sent by Santa to spy on them, creeping around the house at night doing stuff. Brrrrrrrrr. ALL KINDS OF WRONG, ALL AT ONCE.

Then there’s the fact I already have two little devils running around spilling, moving, unravelling and ruining my sh*t. I do not need to personally aid and abet this.

Finally, there’s the effort. And I’ll be honest, this is by far and away my biggest barrier. I simply do not have the time, imagination or energy to get this done every day. And actually, that makes me feel rather disappointed in myself – certainly in the parent I always hoped I’d be.

And if I don’t understand or can’t do something, I will therefore deem it ‘stupid’, and continue to judge it in some sort of public online forum, because that is the modern way.

 

  1. Nativity plays are rubbish

Look, I know I’m supposed to go all gushy and gooey over the nativity play, but I can’t be alone in thinking they’re usually pretty awful affairs, right?

I mean, the production values are ropey, the costumes are shoddy, the acting is – at best – wooden, no one’s ever learned their sodding lines and they’re either projecting too much or not enough.

I’m also not sure anyone really understands their motivation for the role of ‘third star’…

In all seriousness, at most nativities you mostly get to watch the teachers doing an over-animated version of all the singing and actions and some poor, overwhelmed kid having a meltdown. Usually mine.  

The Small Small Person is as yet too small for this stuff, but I think it’s safe to say that RADA are probably not going to call for the Big Small Person any time soon. Luckily the most emotion she conveyed this year was at the side of the stage, where her squirming boredom took me right back to my own experiences of assemblies and concerts, the parquet flooring grinding into my sitting bones, and the agony of waiting literally rolling my head on my shoulders. Horrid.

Just for enduring this she got the biggest hug at the end and I told her she’d been absolutely brilliant.

You see I am not completely cold-hearted! I cried at the first few school drop-offs, for instance, and I would even go as far as describing a tot’s ballet production the Big Small took part in as womb-clenchingly cute.

But I’m afraid the nativity just doesn’t float my boat. It feels as if there’s too much obligation to get everyone on stage en masse, and too little actual joy.

Also I’m too short and squat (see no 1), so I can never see a bloody thing over other parents’ heads anyway.

 

  1. I hate wrapping

I am officially the world’s worst wrapper. I can’t get the folds right, and every end of every present of every single shape looks like it’s got a pair of socks stuffed down it. My own hair or cat fur is always caught underneath the tape, and I never have any labels so I write on them in felt tip, which usually smudges.

You’re welcome, gift receivers!

Last year, as a particular highlight, I was tearing sellotape with my teeth and actually sellotaped off the top layer of skin from my bottom lip. It hurt like b*ggery.

At least now I can blame the sheer wretchedness of my wrapping skills on the children wanting to ‘help’. Children never actually want to help, btw. The reality is it’s usually just me, at midnight on Christmas Eve, getting backache, soul ache, and lip ache on the living room floor.

Sounds like it ought to be way more fun than it actually is. ;(

 

  1. I hate unwrapping

Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE presents! I even love the middle-aged mum presents that I’d have hated 15 years ago. Like handheld vacuum cleaners or slow cookers. Wooooooo! This year I’m hoping for new pjs and a hot water bottle. Fingers crossed!

No no, I mean the unwrapping on behalf of Small People. Parents will know immediately where I’m going with this.

At some point in the past, master criminals must have made a point of stalking toy aisles with nefarious intent, slipping toys out of their packaging and selling them on for HUGE profit. Big toy companies must have gone bust, the economy must have faltered, life in the UK must have been on the brink of collapse.

Because there is simply no other explanation for the excessive security now deemed necessary for bits of plastic retailing at £9.99.

All toys are now strapped down with so many plastic tags, wires and zip-ties they look like kidnap victims, or willing participants in some pretty heavy-duty bondage. (I imagine). Cars, dolls, pianos, action figures – all get the same treatment. And then they are then wrapped in more stink-wrap plastic and sellotape for good measure.

It takes 20 minutes with two pairs of scissors (industrial and nail) and a fresh-bladed stanly knife to free anything. All the while your children have gone savage under enforced delayed gratification, given tantalising glimpses of toys they can’t play with – and snippets of words they can’t say.

Once child and toy ARE united, you then have to dig in the garage for the screwdriver set, only to find out the toy takes 5 billion batteries in a size you don’t have anyway.

I’ve googled the Toy Heist Crash, but as I can’t find anything on it I can only assume toy packaging designers hate all parents.

B**tards.

 

  1. I’m coming to hate Santa

Yup. I went there. #sorrynotsorry.

Santa has made me into a big, fat liar.

I’m afraid I was #soblessed in the Big Small Person with a person in turn blessed with unusual incredulity and skepticism. (This is particularly galling as I myself am horrifically credulous, and even downright gullible).

When she was only 3, I was answering detailed questions about how Santa came into the house, why the fireguard hadn’t moved, and how he could use the catflap without a special collar like the cat?

IT’S MAGIC, OKAY DARLING?

Ffs.

This year, at 5, she’s looked me right in the eye and told me she knows he isn’t real (damn you Big School!) and that it’s the parents leaving the presents, and that it’s okay, she won’t tell anyone else, and she’ll know when she’s a grown-up anyway.

“Tell me the truth, Mummy.”

I can’t help but feel she’s too young for this conversation, but that left me directly lying to her face.

This made me much more uncomfortable than I expected it would, given my fondness for hyperbole, stint in PR, and tendency to edit my own life-narrative in order to appear less of a kn*bhead to myself.

It’s already become a tangled web of lies as she continues to present me evidence of his non-existence, and tries to trip me and her father up in our mistruths. It’s exhausting. And possibly morally reprehensible. But mostly exhausting. 

Santa in general is fraught with issues. There’s the fact he gives a slightly different service to every family, looks different at each grotto and in each film, and then – like the Elf and AXE MURDERERS – sneaks into houses in the dead of night. Should we really be overriding our children’s natural instincts (and our own instructions) not to talk to strange men, sit on their knees, let them wander around their bedrooms at night, or accept presents from them? I don’t know.

For this year I’ve gone with the ‘don’t believe, don’t receive’ defence, but the kid isn’t actually that bribable. (Also unlike me).

Santa, I think your days might be numbered, love. 

 

  1. Turkey is just slightly uglier, less tasty, chicken

You know it. I know it. From the betrayed look on their ball-sack faces, even turkey’s know it.

If you want to eat a Dr Who monster’s pale, dry, crumbly flesh, that’s quite your own affair. I’d prefer to stick with a nice juicy, greasy chicken.

Only I’m not going to, because it’s not traditional.

So I’ll be eating turkey, but all the time I’m doing so I’ll know it’s just crap chicken. And so will you.

 

  1. Christmas jumpers are stupid

Here’s the thing: I LOVE Christmas jumpers! The brighter, brasher and more garish the better. I know this is wrong, but I am fatally attracted to them. And I therefore don’t own any.

This is because I know that once I start down this route, it will spiral out of my control and it won’t stop at Christmas.

I fear, you see, that I am on the brink of descending into a full blown case of what I’m calling ‘Timmy Mallet syndrome’. I blame the children. Basically, if I see clothing adorned with cute, cuddly animals, or even in their favourite shade of pink, I want to buy it.

Children are NOT a good enough excuse for dressing like a children’s TV presenter. Hell, even BEING a children’s TV presenter isn’t a good enough excuse for dressing as a children’s TV presenter.

I must resist. For the sake of my horrified pre-child self, I. Must. Resist.

And so should you.

 

Despite my Scrooge tendencies, I will admit there is also much to LOVE about Christmas! The excuse to eat interesting cheeses, MULLED WINE, opaque tights, sparkles becoming acceptable day wear, MULLED WINE, time off work, lindt chocolate season, and of course, just looking at their little faces when they open their presents.

After all, it’s all about the children, really, isn’t it?

Happy Christmas. 

Mumonthenetheredge

The 12 days of Christmas (parent edit)

11 Sunday Dec 2016

Posted by in Humour, Motherhood, Parenting

≈ 2 Comments

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On the first day of christmas my children gave to me:
A stinking f**ker of a cold.

On the second day of Christmas my children gave to me:
Rubbish Rudolph handprints,
And a stinking f**ker of a cold.

On the third day of Christmas my children gave to me:
3 broken baubles,
Rubbish Rudolph handprints,
And a stinking f**ker of a cold.

On the fourth day of Christmas my children gave to me:
A tinsel tug of war,
3 broken baubles,
Rubbish Rudolph handprints,
And a stinking f**ker of a cold.

On the fifth day of Christmas my children gave to me:
5 LATE SANTA CLAUS REQUESTS
A tinsel tug of war,
3 broken baubles,
Rubbish Rudolph handprints,
And a stinking f**ker of a cold.

On the sixth day of Christmas my children gave to me:
6 seconds peace,
5 LATE SANTA CLAUS REQUESTS
A tinsel tug of war,
3 broken baubles,
Rubbish Rudolph handprints,
And a stinking f**ker of a cold.

On the seventh day of Christmas my children gave to me:
Advent calendar meltdowns,
6 seconds peace,
5 LATE SANTA CLAUS REQUESTS
A tinsel tug of war,
3 broken baubles,
Rubbish Rudolph handprints,
And a stinking f**ker of a cold.

On the eighth day of Christmas my children gave to me:
Festive Peppa-Pig loops,
Advent calendar meltdowns,
6 seconds peace,
5 LATE SANTA CLAUS REQUESTS
A tinsel tug of war,
3 broken baubles,
Rubbish Rudolph handprints,
And a stinking f**ker of a cold.

On the ninth day of Christmas my children gave to me:
9 stir-crazed injuries,
Festive Peppa-Pig loops,
Advent calendar meltdowns,
6 seconds peace,
5 LATE SANTA CLAUS REQUESTS
A tinsel tug of war,
3 broken baubles,
Rubbish Rudolph handprints,
And a stinking f**ker of a cold.

On the tenth day of Christmas my children gave to me:
10 sprout-based tantrums,
9 stir-crazed injuries,
Festive Peppa-Pig loops,
Advent calendar meltdowns,
6 seconds peace,
5 LATE SANTA CLAUS REQUESTS
A tinsel tug of war,
3 broken baubles,
Rubbish Rudolph handprints,
And a stinking f**ker of a cold.

On the eleventh day of Christmas my children gave to me:
11 (billion) “What’s in this one?”‘s
10 sprout-based tantrums,
9 stir-crazed injuries,
Festive Peppa-Pig loops,
Advent calendar meltdowns,
6 seconds peace,
5 LATE SANTA CLAUS REQUESTS
A tinsel tug of war,
3 broken baubles,
Rubbish Rudolph handprints,
And a stinking f**ker of a cold.

On the twelfth day of Christmas my children gave to me:
Ingratitude and whining,
11 “What’s in this one?”‘s
10 sprout-based tantrums,
9 stir-crazed injuries,
Festive Peppa-Pig loops,
Advent calendar meltdowns,
6 seconds peace,
5 LATE SANTA CLAUS REQUESTS
A tinsel tug of war,
3 broken baubles,
Rubbish Rudolph handprints,

AND A STINKING F**KER OF A COLD.

Mumonthenetheredge

9 things I have learned in my first school term

08 Thursday Dec 2016

Posted by in Humour, mental health, Parenting, School

≈ Leave a comment

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Well, we’re a term in and the Big Small Person has settled admirably at Infant School. But she’s not the only one getting an education – the start of school is something of steep learning curve for parents too. Especially this one. So I thought I’d share a few things I’ve learned in my child’s first term…

 

  1. The book bag is an official channel of official communication

I mean, who knew?? It comes somewhere on the Official List of Communications between Letters, Email, and Carrier Pigeon. No b*****d has ever shared this list with me.

The book bag must be checked everyday for important paper messages hidden amongst the other random crap your child decides to bring home (see no 6). It is never, ever used for books. Fool. Apparently this is something other people just know ‘naturally’, but it took me a good month to catch on because I am completely clueless.

 

  1. It’s more expensive than it looks

Were you looking forward to a financial break when your first born hit full time mainstream education? LOL! Sweet. Now not only do you have to figure out the before school/after school/childminder/friend-swapping/play-dating/school club/holiday care drop-off and pick-up MADNESS, you have to pay through the nose for them, too.

And you will also spend a small fortune in loose change for non-uniform days, bake sales, harvest festival donations, school trips, and other random bobbins. All of which must be supplied direct to the office in envelopes you don’t own and can never remember to purchase. No, you cannot just write an upfront cheque at the beginning of term. Nor is there a Direct Debit option. I asked.

If you are the owner of a baby, take my advice – stock up on your stationary, and start saving your small change now.

 

  1. You won’t have a scooby do what they do all day

Yep, this old chestnut. But it really is a violent contrast after nursery, where you get to shoot the breeze with the staff about your darling little one at some length – and even get a written daily report of their consumption, bowel movements, play pals and activities.

At school you get 15 mins facetime with the teacher each term. It’s weird.

You will also get nothing out of your child. Literally – “nothing”. Or “nobody”. Or “Mummeeee, stop asking me all of these stupid questions! I don’t want to talk about this now!” (Uh huh, the attitude turns up a good notch, too).

I’ve even tried all the inventive questions you’re supposed to ask, about what their teacher said to them today, what made them laugh, what was so-and-so doing at lunchtime etc etc.

Nada.

Occasionally bits will slip out accidentally as they are trying to keep you talking at bedtime, or when playing schools with teddy bears. But that’s your lot.

This is a well documented phenomenon, but suddenly being completely blind to 35+ hours of your kid’s life is pretty damn discomforting. The only thing more discomforting is actually getting more face-time with the teacher, because it means your kid has been a little turd. The long journey from the collection point into the classroom when you are called in after school is your new Walk of Shame. The old one was waaaaay more fun.

 

  1. The school gate is a whole nother level of social anxiety! Yay!

Dadonthenetheredge, my greatest supporter/detractor, has a word to describe my behaviour in social situations, especially new ones. That word is ‘intense’.

The school gate is not a good place for ‘intense’.

Having run the gauntlet of Mummyland groups, and nursery, (plus, you know, school, university and work) you might think I would have developed intensity-dampening strategies, or at least the ability not to care.  Neither of these have yet occurred. Instead I simply continue to be just slightly inappropriate, incomprehensible or, at best, inconsistent, and then obsess about each interaction after the fact.

But this isn’t your own, personal, run-of-the-mill social anxiety. Oh no no. Because this is school. This is the beginning of your child’s real social life. The impressions and connections they make here will colour and shape their lives as they move with their peers through the education system over the next 14 years. So now you get to have social anxiety on behalf of your CHILD, which is a billion times worse. Why weren’t they invited back for a play date? Why didn’t they get that party invite? Why didn’t so and so want to sit with them at lunch? What did they do? What did YOU do?

You obviously want your child to make friends at school, and that means EXTRA pressure to ingratiate yourself with parents – or at least make the effort to appear normal – lest your own personality foibles impair your child’s social success.

My intensity does NOT do well under pressure.

To counteract this, I have taken to putting on real clothes (as opposed to maternity yoga pants) and actual make-up for pick-up time, so I appear to outsiders to be a functioning member of society. I also chant my ‘Do not be intense and weird’ mantra under my breath, plant a maniacal fixed smile on my face and try not to look too dead behind the eyes.

I’m pretty sure it’s working a treat.

 

  1. The administration is EPIC

Oh God. The admin.

It started with a school letter before school even started, littered with so many dates, rules, meetings and events I literally couldn’t make head, tail or any other random anatomical sense of what was going on – and subsequently missed half of them.

This is why I know F-all about PTA activities or phonics. Probably.

This initial and epic four A4 sides of dense communications was followed by an actual list of dates, not, it turns out, exhaustive. (I missed Children In Need non-uniform day for instance – exactly the kind of shite which tortured and haunted my own childhood. Insert flashback).

Let me make it clear that I am a grown woman literally afraid of her own post, and who considers his willingness to act as my personal secretary Dadonthenetherdege’s most attractive quality. In fact I count post as one of my natural foes, alongside spiders, Baileys (although I didn’t know this until I was 16 or so), PE, and deadlines. ***Shiver***.

So having to deal with the sheer breadth and girth of correspondence on behalf of the Big Small Person has been… somewhat challenging. I mean I’m barely keeping my own sh*t together, here.

You are not, by the way, allowed to SHARE the administrative burden. Schools will accept only one contact per child. This has annoyed and alarmed Dadonthenetheredge, who – for some reason – mistrusts my organisational capabilities. Which in turn makes me unjustifiably indignant. (Not enough to actually organise myself, though, needless to say.)

And it is not just the paperwork via book bag, for schools have now gone 21st century on us, and have a dastardly system of texts, websites and apps they can also bombard you with. I once received 6 text messages in one day. And there are 3 billion websites to sign up for and remember passwords for. The general school website. The payment app. The event booking app. The homework site. The specialist maths site. The class page. The phonics site. Oh, and then the FB parents and class pages. And the emails. From school, after school club, and activity clubs.

I was going to expand on this list for comedic effect but I’m too busy hyperventilating having typed it out.

Only today, on visit to the school office with various tardy permission slips and envelopes of money, the nice Office Lady tapped me consolingly on the shoulder, reminded me of another form I had forgotten, and told me she’d put an extra copy in my book bag because she knew I wouldn’t read the email.

We’re not even at the end of the first term in a pretty big school and this woman knows me by name, knows my child by name, and knows about my post allergy and gaping administrative blind spot. I spend considerably more time with her than with my child’s actual teacher.

Far from being embarrassed, I’m actually hoping that by Year 1 I can take her in correspondence from home about banking, insurance, mortgages and all the other crap that melts my tiny brain, and she might help me sort the rest of my life out too.

 

  1. Your child was NOT a prolific artist at nursery.

Although I have seen some evidence of actual learning, as far as I can make out, (which isn’t far, see no 3) the Big Small Person spends most of her time at school scribbling on, cutting out, then sticking, stapling or paper-fastening bits of paper together (I had no idea paper-fasteners were still a thing), and finally bringing them home and insisting they be preserved for posterity.

There is no way posterity can cope with this volume of ‘creativity’. Certainly I can’t.

The Big Small person hadn’t reached 2 before I had learned to coo adoringly over every painty splodge that came home from nursery and then surreptitiously discard them in the recycling (well buried – to do otherwise is a rookie mistake new parents only ever make once).

I’m not a monster – I keep seminal pieces in a memory box under the spare bed, but if I did not cull we would literally be living around stacks of child-art like those people you see in Channel 5 hoarding documentaries.

I actually think disposing of these items behind her back is a kindness, and I’ll explain why. My own parents recently cleared out their loft, and in a visit to Sheffield bought with them boxes of pictures by me, proudly adorned with my name and age, and returned them to my keeping.

There is nothing that expresses rejection quite as eloquently as giving back painstakingly crafted, personalised gifts you no longer have any use for. THIS IS NOT OKAY PARENTS. I actually think they may be trying to break up with me.

Either that or they’re getting old and don’t give a f*ck about other people’s feelings anymore. I can’t wait for this stage of life – see no 4.

 

  1. I am a rubbish, rubbish, teacher

Speaking of my parents, I remember the horror of being taught to drive by my Dad, who would insist that my inability to consistently reverse around a corner was wilful incompetence, rather than chronic spacial unawareness and general ineptitude. I swore then I would be a model of patience and tranquility when guiding my own children.

Turns out, not entirely unexpectedly, I was a) wrong, and b) a bit of a knobhead. This seems to have happened quite a bit as my pre-child preconceptions have been replaced by cold, hard, post-child realities.

Perhaps it’s the sleep deprivation, possibly it’s genetics, conceivably it may be the Big Small Person’s natural instincts to press each and every one of my freaking, c*ck-wombling buttons.

Whatever it is, I find I simply cannot keep my temper when the little sh*t claims it can’t read the word ‘cat’ by the end of a book about cats, heavily illustrated with cats, where we have painfully sounded out and read the word ‘cat’ at least 10 f***ing times per f***ing page.

AAAAAaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrggggghhh!

If you are reading this and you are a teacher, I take my hat off to you. It is not my forte, and I am far more like my Father than I had realised.

Could be the beard.

 

  1. It’s quiet

I sort of knew this one was coming, which is why I overfilled my first few weeks with activities to stave off my new reality.

And then one day it was just me and the Small Small Person, and I didn’t know what to say to her.

Because for so long I’ve had the Big Small Person filling every available conversational space (and most unavailable ones) with speech, squeaking, squawking, or screaming. Sometimes ALL AT THE SAME TIME. (She may not be able to read, but by God, the kid can communicate).

In many ways I’ve enjoyed the one-on-one time with the Small2, who has been basically dragged round after her sister for her entire life, but she’s still not much of a conversationalist. I’ve had to relearn the art of the parental monologue, which never came particularly easily to me in the first place. (For the uninitiated, this is where you basically talk to yourself all day to encourage your offspring’s oral development, receiving nothing, indecipherable nonsense, random tantrums or the occasional repetition from your partner in ‘dialogue’).

Since the Big Small learned to talk I had clearly forgotten this horror, and have often wished for blessed silence, and even for the opportunity to actually monologue again (or frankly to say anything that might be heard and heeded). Be careful what you wish for. Because now I realise I miss the noise terribly.

 

  1. The days are short

Luckily it turns out that 9am to 3.30pm isn’t actually very long. Certainly I can’t seem to achieve anything terribly worthwhile once I’ve fitted in Small Person meals, snacks and naps. If we’re lucky we’ll get to the shops, park or a playgroup, but that’s about it. I’m still getting used to having my days curtailed and restricted in this way, but I’ve not yet forgotten to pick the Big Small up – I’m told this will happen eventually.

Fortunately the nice Office Lady already has me on speed dial, so I will be able to dash madly across Sheffield, apologise profusely to the child, ply it with guilt-chocolate when we get home, and tearily and dutifully check the book bag for correspondence (like a proper parent). #secondtermgoals.

 

Mumonthenetheredge

Five things I learned on a trip to Yorkshire Wildlife Park

22 Thursday Sep 2016

Posted by in Humour, Parenting

≈ Leave a comment

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I wish I could start this list with number 1 being ‘To manage my own expectations of family days out’ but I’m afraid it’s a trick I’m yet to learn. I’m an obsessive planner, and I like my fun to be organised. If there isn’t an itinerary I’m basically not going to enjoy myself, okay? Unless you feed me alcohol. Not really zoo compatible.

Small children, are, of course, allergic to planning. And mine essentially seem to enjoy being miserable precisely when I’ve gone to most effort to ensure we’re going to have an awesome brilliant day of memories. Knobheads.

Add this to Dadonthenetheredge’s own natural barriers to wearing remotely suitable clothing or footwear for any given activity, and his inexplicable hostility to having his down time mercilessly driven to within an inch of everyone’s lives, the day was fraught with risk from the outset.

Fortunately, every time I do persuade Dadonthenetheredge and the small people to embark on a glorious family outing, I do learn something from the experience. Sometimes the things I learn are even vaguely useful for the future. So I thought I’d share five things I learned at Yorkshire Wildlife Park.

  1. Weather forecasts are wank

Look, all I ask is that people at the Met office please predict the very future with some degree of puffin-twonking accuracy. Is the act of efficient and effective prophecy really, really that difficult? Zip it, meteorologists, I don’t want to hear it. You told me it wasn’t going to rain until 3. I therefore do not expect the heavens to open at 11.

In hindsight leaving the waterproofs in the car was a rookie parenting mistake. Which only made me crosser. Lesson re-learnt. It doesn’t matter how heavy the bloody picnic is – add them to the sodding (sodden) bag.

1.5 Related to 1, it turns out my cag in a bag isn’t as waterproof as I had hoped.

Ggrrrffttt.

  1. The zoo paradox IS REAL

Obviously you don’t want to go to a zoo where the animals are trapped in tiny cages, rocking and miserable. This will trigger not only your own personal discomfort and impotent guilt, but possibly awkward conversations with small people.

Yorkshire Wildlife Park is not like this. It is a conservationist type of zoo, with large enclosures stuffed with environmental enrichment.

By which, of course, I mean many of the animals are far, far away and obscured by logs/trees/mounds/ditches so you can’t bloody see them. Certainly if you are under 5, you don’t have the mental or optical focus to look at and appreciate tiny slivers of distant wildlife through copious foliage. Sorry, enrichment.

While most of me knows that this is OBVIOUSLY what’s best for the animal, the rest of me wants you to dress them in tutus and make them dance for my children’s amusement.

Ta na! The zoo paradox.

  1. It is not furry in a wallaby pouch

This is sort of the opposite of the zoo paradox. This is what happens when you get too close to the animals, which you can also do at Yorkshire Wildlife Park. You can actually go into the enclosures with the lemurs, and with the wallabies.

I have always loved marsupials – I mean what’s not to like? Those cute fluffy little babies peeping out from their pouches, safe and snuggly in their little furry homes, always hugging their Mummies. Sooooooo cute!

No.

I have now stared at point blank range into the pouch of a wallaby (when her baby had hopped off elsewhere) and I saw things I’ve not seen since I first battled to insert a tampon, with the aid of nothing but pubescent flexibility and a Holly Hobbie hand mirror.

Yep. Basically it’s a pink fleshy vagina in there.

Now look, I’m not in the least little bit offended by vaginas. I’ve got one. I rather like it. It’s so far proved to be both useful, and indeed rewarding. But I have always questioned the aesthetic of the design (not to mention the inadvisable proximity to the waste outlet), and it was the SHOCK more than anything else. I mean, who knew??

What’s more, this one looked somewhat raw. I’m not sure what the baby had been doing in there, but it made me very glad that once the Small Small Person was out, I didn’t have to stuff her back up there for safekeeping. (There are occasions, however, when she’s so incredibly clingy and pawy I have to question whether this isn’t actually her end goal).

It was a reminder that there are in fact some advantages to the zoo paradox, because in reality animals (like children) tend to be pooier, fleshier and generally ickier than one supposed when one was able to maintain a decorous distance.

This may not be one of the day’s lessons that will come into much use in the future, but basically if I have to have my rose-tinted, marsupial-loving illusions shattered, so do you.

  1. Slides best beasts (if you’re under 5)

It turns out my delightful children couldn’t give two flying fuck-a-roonies about any of the wildlife, so it’s a bloody good job that Yorkshire Wildlife Park anticipated this and is well equipped with other small person entertainments. Most of these are slides, and most of them are pretty awesome. (Apart from the one that gave me a friction burn on my arm. YEOUWCH).

In the end I was forced to try and go with the flow (not my forte) and to forget that my local park, also endowed with slides, doesn’t charge the same entry fee. Instead I shifted my focus to attempt to get as many pictures as possible of my disinterested offspring in the vicinity of wild beasts as proof for later life that we enjoyed family days out together, dammit.

  1. Beware of baboons

Some of the fabulous slides at Yorkshire Wildlife Park are hosted in a frankly brilliant play centre. (We spent some time here because of the arse-bombling rain. See no 1). Forget your primary-coloured plastic-padded climbing frames; this is a wooden wonderland with tunnels, ropes, swings, bridges and fake grass. It’s basically like a giant zoo enclosure itself.

This feeling is intensified by the fact it shares one glass wall with the baboon enclosure next door. The problem is, their enrichment is SHIT in comparison with the play centre. (This is the first and only sign of animal cruelty/baiting/torture in the whole Park).

Judging from the icy death stare levelled at me by one baboon inhabitant, they know they’ve been shortchanged. And believe me, friends, they are NOT HAPPY. There was not just death in the depths of those eyes: there was the promise of vengeance. Annihilation. DOOM.

I don’t know if you’ve seen Plant of the Apes. (To be honest I don’t know if I have). But I’m pretty sure this is how it starts. If those baboons ever make a break for freedom, Doncaster is fucking screwed.

The beady-eyed evils I received so unnerved me that I finally surrendered to the moaning of my ungrateful family and consented to let the ‘fun’ end ahead of schedule. We left. Hastily.

Look, all I’m saying is that now summer is mostly over I’m going to let my personal body hair grow out for a bit, and save up the blue and red face paint for my arse cheeks, just in case the worst should happen.

I can only suggest you do the same.

 

Mumonthenetheredge

Goodbye baby, Hello Big Girl

12 Monday Sep 2016

Posted by in Motherhood, Parenting, Poetry, School

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Well, it’s finally here. The Big Small Person starts school. And despite my best intentions (and indeed my disgust) I’m an absolute WRECK. I know it’s just school. I know it’s exciting. I know she’ll be fine. But if I’m going down, dagnammit, I’m taking you all with me. Through the medium of mediocre poetry…

 

Goodbye baby, starting school
Decked out in uniform –
So big and strong and different
From the baby that was born.

Goodbye baby, four years old
So small and yet so wise.
I still see you as my baby,
Through your gingham disguise.

Goodbye baby, off you go
To start a brand new chapter.
I’ll be here, my mind aspin
With memories I can’t capture.

Goodbye baby, always active –
Finding your new groove.
But I know the flutter deep inside
Of your first flickering move.

Goodbye baby, whose tiny foot
Once fit inside my palm
Whose soul burned mine forever,
Both tinder and then balm.

Goodbye baby, suddenly
Turned into a young girl.
Whose pudgy thighs and gurgles
Disappeared in life’s cruel whirl.

Goodbye baby, and forgive me
For I know you still exist!
But time is moving far too fast
One blink, and so much missed.

Goodbye baby, my chest hurts
With pain and joy and pride.
I told the world I would be fine,
But now I know I lied.

Goodbye baby, you ARE ready –
It’s me lagging behind,
Astounded by your beauty
And the quick twists of your mind.

Goodbye baby, please don’t cling
I don’t think that I can bear it.
You’ll love it here, I know you will –
Like I know that I can’t share it.

Goodbye baby, I will smile
And keep the tears inside.
Because this is yours – it isn’t mine
I’m just here for the ride.

Goodbye baby, don’t be scared
It’s new, but that’s okay.
Those butterflies are helping you
Feel light enough to play.

Goodbye baby, I see you
Put on your bravest face,
And battle with your body
To keep the mask in place.

Goodbye baby, I am sorry
You have my fears and woes.
They’re heavy, but I promise
You’ll have highs as well as lows.

Goodbye baby, feeling wobbly
Just always think of this –
The brand of love you wear all day,
From every goodbye kiss.

Goodbye baby, good luck too
But I know you’ll find your path –
Because you are bold, brave, kind and true
With sunshine in your laugh.

Goodbye baby, go explore
And laugh, and learn and TRY
You’ve crawled and walked and run along,
But now it’s time to fly!

Goodbye baby, time to go
And learn to change the world
As step-by-step and thought-by-thought,
Your potential is unfurled.

Goodbye baby, please be kind:
Be the best you you can be.
I can’t wait to hear about it,
Counting down to half past three.

Goodbye baby, I LOVE you.
Remember on weekdays,
That part of you lives in my heart
And me in yours, always.

Goodbye baby, once for all
Because when you come back home
You’ll be my babe in arms no more,
Less mine and more your own.

Goodbye baby, please just promise
You won’t grow up too fast.
I still need my baby in my arms,
And not just in the past.

Goodbye baby, hello big girl –
Look back once in awhile.
Because I’ll still be here watching,
Just waiting for your smile.

Home Judgement Teacher Visit

06 Tuesday Sep 2016

Posted by in Humour, Motherhood, Parenting

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Has anyone else with a new school starter got one of those Home Judgement Teacher Visits this week? These are a bit like the Home Judgement Midwife Visit you get when you’re pregnant, basically to check whether your abode is fit for infant/Small Person occupation.

Anyway, the Home Judgement Teacher Visit is now a THING, which I gather happens across the country, not just in Sheffield on the Nether Edge.

I’d convinced myself I was totally fine and cool with this, until I remembered that I’m pretty much never totally fine and cool about ANYTHING, and that my visit takes place VERY SHORTLY.

Oh, I know it’s all about smoothing the transition for my child, etc etc, but I STILL feel like I have to frantically prove my worth as a parent.I have therefore found myself making the following To Do list for today, by way of preparation. Feel free to use it yourself, if you too have to endure a Home Judgement Teacher Visit this week.

  1. Reduce debris and increase visible floor-space by creating skyscraper piles of miscellaneous crap.
  2. Apply hoover to newly exposed carpet.
  3. Fail to find air freshener and spray old perfume around house instead.
  4. Open windows to reduce lung-clogging, boudoir musk.
  5. Run baby wipes over toilet and check bowl for residue/s.
  6. Ban everyone from further toilet use.
  7. Realise Big Small Person may wish to show off its room, and throw everything into wardrobe.
  8. Inform Big Small Person large monsters now live in wardrobe and they MUST NOT OPEN IT.  
  9. Make a note to deal with this fall-out before bedtime.
  10. Locate educational jigsaw-type toys from the bottom of toy box, and assemble neatly on table.
  11. Attempt to prevent Big Small Person from throwing these novel items around in excitement.
  12. Attempt to prevent Small Small Person from eating them.
  13. Run dishcloth over both children in lieu of flannel, which keeps inexplicably going missing (Baby?).
  14. Ignore complaints they now smell of old cabbage.
  15. Consider spraying children with perfume.
  16. Change stained clothing and make futile request that children not dribble, draw or splodge on themselves for at least the next two minutes.
  17. Park them in front of TV in desperate attempt to achieve 16.
  18. Locate remote to switch TV off as soon as doorbell goes in case of screen-time based judgement.
  19. Promptly lose TV remote.
  20. Check for teabags and fill kettle.
  21. Try and find biscuits which aren’t made by Organix and don’t taste of cardboard.
  22. Dig through miscellaneous piles of crap for child artwork, to display on fridge.
  23. Battle magnets for a wasted 20 minutes, swearing under breath and getting a bit of a dab on.
  24. Brainstorm list of Qs for teacher, including what to take on the first day (PE kit? Does this involve plimsolls or bare feet? Change of clothes? Snacks?)
  25. Consider how to broach the fact the Big Small Person still refuses to wipe it’s own bum, and my own personal fear of skid marks, (the biggest worry for all new-starter parents after nits and worms).
  26. Frantically try and get the Small Small Person to nap, so it’s not too much of a dickhead and allows adults to momentarily converse.
  27. Do final sweep of the living room for cat sick, errant slut-Barbies (why do they all end up looking like this??), and stray cheerios.
  28. Dismiss the idea of medicating social anxiety with wine before lunchtime.
  29. Repeat, repeat, repeat: I shall not be intense and weird; I shall not be intense and weird; I shall not be intense and weird.

I mean, what could possibly go wrong???

Good luck, folks.

Mumonthenetheredge