You've Got Your Hands Full

Friday 23rd January

Im still trying to get used to the idea of only having one child at home while the others are at school. This is an average thing for other people but its strange for me because up till now I've done more 'group' parenting. I know I had one child for a year before being struck with the deadly plague again (also known as pregnancy) but at the time it was more like a hobby than a huge lifestyle change - Turtle just rolled with whatever we did and we had a massive base of people that could babyist him or keep an eye on him while we were running an event or whatever. I even took him to work with me for a while.

Anyway, as soon as the other two entered the scene, en vitro, everything changed and I went from 'person' to 'mummy' and then stopped all normal activity, like shopping, meeting up for lunch, sitting in church - anything that involved going out of the house to somewhere that didn't have plastic balls or bright foam padding. And at home, there were two modes we existed in. One was full volume, everyone running round like insane maniacs, playing or getting dressed or eating, and the other was complete silence, when they were either asleep or watching TV, in which case I had to tiptoe round to get housework done in case I disturbed the delicate balance of calm.

So I'm finding it quite refreshing to experience doing my daily jobs with a child in tow can actually work sometimes. I can go out and into the real world, and fit into most shops now I don't have a double pushchair with a buggy board attached, and as long as I don't stay still for longer than 30 seconds, and keep bribing him with food, Baby is quite placid.

Yesterday I was putting laundry away in the bedrooms, and after using my stern voice several times (which he then started to copy with a vigorous shake of the head and a 'nah!'), I managed to convince Baby to stop pulling things back out of the drawers and put them back in. After a while, he was actually getting things from the clean laundry pile and toddling over to put them away too. I was very impressed, and wonder how I can harness this interest in housework and keep it sustained until he is eighteen.

Of course, it's a bit of a pain having to go to my husband's underwear drawer whenever I want a t-shirt, but I think it was worth it for a bit of help around the house.

Friday 16th January

It's been a full-on week in the accident book department.

On Monday we had the standard 'Your child (Crash) has recieved a bump to the head. Time and place: lunchtime, school yard. Help administered: cool compress applied to the forehead. Please look out for any signs of the following symptoms: nausea, dizziness, eyesight loss, death...' We get that note quite regularly, it's no biggie.

On Tuesday it was similar. 'Your child (Scooby) fell and grazed his knee. Time and place: lunchtime, school yard. Help administered: cool compress applied to the area (yes a wet paper towel does heal everything). Please look out for any signs of the following: continual bleeding, infection in the wound, gangrene, falling limbs...'

On Wednesday, we had a first because it was Baby's turn. I'd left him in a creche while I attended a 'Positive Wellbeing' Course (yes, I will do anything to avoid sitting inside looking at my housework) and I got called through after fifteen minutes to some ashen-faced rookie childcare staff and a sobbing bleeding child. "We don't know how it happened," they said, pointing at the little table. "We think he was just trying to move the chair so he could get to the jigsaw piece." I know exactly what will have happened. After trying all the door handles, cupboards and anything else that looked like an escape route, he will have turned his attention, not towards the oodles of toys that the other children were blissfully playing with all over the room, but to finding what he could clamber on, climb up or experiment with. My bet is that he was standing on top of the chair, trying to straddle it to get to the table, and he fell and put his teeth through his tongue. The poor ladies were distraught that they had allowed my child to be broken on their first watch, but I was very nice and understanding. In fact, I think I gave them more sympathy than I may have done the actual child.

On Thursday we got a step up from the usual note at the end of the day - I got an actual phonecall at eleven o'clock asking me to come into school to pick Scooby up. Apparantly as he was daydreaming trotting around the little yard he was unfortunate enough to run directly into Hope, fall down and bang his head on the floor. Fortunately he didn't scrape his hands or knees at all. Unfortunately this meant he caught the brunt of the impact on his forehead and his nose, which (surprise, surprise) exploded on impact. All of which was exasperated by the fact that Hope, who is easily the largest child in the infant sector, also fell over and rolled on top of him. I bundled his poor sorry little body home and gave him some TLC for the rest of the day.

Then on Friday, just as we thought the injuries couldn't get anymore unexpected, Crash arrived home with the following note in his bag; 'Your child today (wait for it...) bit his own arm. Time and place: 2 o'clock, singing practice. Help administered: cool compress applied to the area. Additional notes: discussed Crash's feelings about the incident back in the classroom.'

What the...? I bet they've heard some excuses to get out of singing practice before but I doubt anyone's ever used that one until now.

Thursday 8th January

I really really can't seem to get up. Because the Christmas holidays were kind of here there and everywhere, we rushed for half of it and lounged around for the other half. We had so many busy days and late nights that the kids keep sleeping till about 8.30am. This was great when we had nothing to get up for, but not so great now. In the last four days, me and Richard have set at least two alarms every day for 7am and have failed to get up until 8. The problem is that the house is so cold, the sky is so dark, and between 6am and 7am every morning several warm bodies come and crawl into our bed, drape over us and fall back to sleep so that by the time the alarms go off, we are all so snuggly warm that we fall back asleep too without realising it. The other problem is that because we did this on Monday and still managed to leave the house forty minutes later and get to school on time, it hasn't really given us the incentive we needed the next day to get up any earlier. And so on, and so on.

Thankfully, I have not made any new year's resolutions this year, so they can't be broken. However, what I have done is to try and develop a new good habit every month so that bit by bit we begin to see some semblence of order in this house without setting ourselves unreachable targets.

So, how does getting up at 8 o'clock every morning fit into this? Well, yeah. It doesn't.

Sunday 4th January

My dad asked me today if I'd stopped blogging because there was nothing happening in my life. After I picked myself up off the floor and wiped away the tears of mirth, I explained that there was plenty happening - that was the whole point. When faced with the decision between blogging, cleaning, Christmas cards, spending time with the children and desperate late night shopping on the internet, blogging seemed to pale into comparison really.

So, for a quick recap, we had a great Christmas. It was mainly sponsored by Star Wars (Turtle), board games (Scooby) and Meccano (Crash). We spent a lot of time going up and down to Preston, where we also spent New Year, and had some friends to stay in between the two festivities. Just when we thought we were all present-ed out, it was Turtle's seventh birthday today. It was also Star Wars themed, from pyjamas to toys to jumpers to bed sheets, making him a mainly excited but partially grumpy boy (owing to only wanting to go home and not wanting to go to church because his toys weren't there). And unfortunately they have to go back to school tomorrow. It's sad, I know, but all good things have to come to an end.

Just in case the suspense really does kill somebody, here is the entry I was going to put next (before Christmas stuff got in the way)

Sunday 14th December

We woke up this morning rather rudely to vomit. Crash got into our bed and announced "I feel shick."

There are good reasons why I allow used coffee mugs to linger in our bedroom longer than deemed normal and this was one of them. I caught it all [smug face].

We were then faced with that parental dilemma - do we now quarantine him to save the others (who probably have it in their systems by now anyway) or do we let him roam free and assume it was phlegm based, (as is usually the case in our house)? We waited for the rest of the morning and nothing else unusual presented itself, so we assumed he was okay. In fact he was so okay that he managed some very successful wrestling with his brother, which ended with an unintentional headbutt and Scooby's nose exploding. This fortunately happened just as I was approaching Scooby to wipe his nose so I got hold of him before any blood hit the shirt (successful catch of the day number 2). Unfortunately (and embarrassingly) I was not approaching him with a tissue in hand as one might think, but, due to an empty tissue box and a knack of resourcefully using the mess my children leave on the floor, I was actually about to wipe his nose with a sock. Yes, I collected my son's bloody emissions with his own used sock. And after a while, its pair as well.

Once the bleeding had stopped, we decided Crash was probably okay to go out as he had been bouncing off the walls all day and so we braved it to church. We were right, he was fine. Baby, however, was not. One minute he was toddling around in the main room where we were doing Sunday School with the kids. Then he was pulling faces at the adults having their discussion meeting through a glass door panel. The next thing he was spewing forth all over the door, the carpet and himself. This was not a successful catch - I was in a tidy room with no used recepticles and no verbal warning at all. My friend Catie and I managed to clean up the mess (amazingly the guys in the meeting in the next room hadn't even noticed what had happened and only realised when we actually opened the door to disinfect the crack underneath it) and Baby toddled around semi-naked for the rest of the meeting. His was also a one-time thing and he showed no symptoms before or after that.

No, it doesn't stop there. A couple of our friends had come up from Preston to see our church so afterwards for a change we decided to get an indian take-out. I am no indian connoisseur and so I just ordered one korma for me and another for the kids to share, because I know that it's not spicy - but that's as much as I know. Half way through the meal, Turtle started making agonised noises, gurning and holding his throat. Uh oh.

'What's up?' I said.

'Nuts!' he started wailing. 'I've had nuts! My throat is itchy and my ears hurt!'

I started searching round the table, looking at the naam bread, pittas and everyone else's meals.

'You can't have had nuts, there aren't any here.'

'They're in me! Get them out! Waahh!' (I know he will win an Oscar one day)

'Did anyone get a meal with nuts in?' I asked around.

Blank faces stared back at me and then the bravest of our friends spoke up.

'Erm, you did.'

'What?'

'Korma has almonds in it.'

'WHAT?'

I ran to the kitchen and fetched water and Piriton and got Turtle to drink down as much of it as possible. Then I had to go and make him a weak cup of tea since the first time he had an allergic reastion I lied to him convinced him that having a cup of tea would make him feel better (I was desperate for something to distract him and didn't know what else to do - tea always seems to cure all my problems anyway). He drank the tea and then doubled it all back into his bowl, along with the half-eaten korma. That was the third successful catch of the day, but my victory was somwhat overshadowed by me shrieking at the poor guests; 'Don't look! Shield your eyes so you won't be able to see! Save yourself from the horrific sight!' or something similar. We managed a quick clean up and shunted the other three off to bed, had a polite coffee with our guests (who are currently childless and we think after today, may permanently choose to remain so), said goodbye and then made it back into the house just as Turtle brought up what was left of his guts onto the dining room floor.

So this day was less than perfect. Yes, I did gets lots of cleaning done, but not really the kind that progresses you any further along than you were before. I did spend a lot of time with the children, but none of it was what you might class as 'fun' activities.

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And, if you want to know about the gingerbread house, it did progress into house shapes, it was baked to perfection and even constructed, but as soon as any force was applied (as in delicately placing sweets onto it), it crumbled under the pressure and refused ever to stand again. It would have been good - I admit it got further than I, the cynic, would have predicted - but instead we had a large pile of gingerbread pieces on which to ice the sweets and sustain ouselves for the next three weeks.