Thursday 26th February
I recently posted a circular thing going round Facebook which simply asked you to put 25 things about yourself (anything at all) then send it to 25 more people and ask them to do the same. I was going to copy and paste the list onto here, but as I started doing that the other day, I realised - 'What am I doing? Here I have twenty five wonderful ready-made blog subjects!'
I'm not sure if they'll stretch to 25 entries - some are very sparse and uninteresting points, but here's the first:
1) I always wanted four children. I consider it an average amount and have huge respect for people with big families, I think they're amazing.
I'm one of four children (two boys, two girls) and I loved being part of my family growing up. My dad is one of six (five boys, one girl) and the family is still pretty close, so whenever we get together as a whole family, there is this sense of being part of something bigger than you - a big, safe, secure network. It's part of the reason I never really wanted to rebel as a teenager. It would have been embarrassing more than anything else - I can imagine my uncles giving me funny looks and saying, 'What on earth do you want to do that for?' It's not that there was any pressure to 'be' something or to attain some high unrealistic goals. There was just a general assumption in the family that there's no point in being an idiot. It's quite a good assumption, really.
So, I view my dad's generation as a big family, and my generation as an average-ish family. So much so that I've always felt a bit sorry for people I know who are only children or just have one sibling. I've always thought it must be a bit dull and how quiet a house must be with only two children in it, and wondered if their parents had fertility problems. Three is okay, that's acceptable, but four is the best number.
Until I moved to Morecambe, I knew very few people with more than four children. It's not really a very middle class thing. But round here, four is definately average. I've met quite a lot of people that have five or six - even as many as eight (usually spread over a couple of marriages and about 20 years between the oldest and youngest child).
So it still takes me by surprise when people refer to me as having 'a brood' or 'millions of children'. I don't see myself as a wondermum - I reserve that for those of the 5/6 category, and only then, those who seem like they are actually enjoying their chidren (because many surprisingly don't).
I do acknowledge that I was in an usual situation in the early days - to have three under-2s is a rare thing - so I really appreciated people stopping me in the supermarket and saying things like 'Oh my goodness, you've got your hand's full!' (that made up about 80% of the first statements said to me by strangers) or 'Wow - how do you cope?' I chose to take those things as compliments because people were saying that I was managing to achieve something most people wouldn't ever have to deal with. It reminded me that it was a big task so it was okay that I sometimes found it very difficult. Some people even said to me, based on a twenty second encounter in the cereal aisle - 'You're doing a wonderful job!' I always said thankyou and wondered how they knew I wasn't secretly a child beater or that the reason the babies were sleeping in the trolley was because I had just sedated them. Anyway, I saw it as a real privilege. Parenting is one of those often overlooked, thankless tasks and there I was getting compliments just for getting myself and the children dressed and being out of the house.
I have to say though that now I don't relish in it quite as much. Anyone can see that a person with lots of tiny chidren must have lots of work on her hand, but now that those three are 7 and 5, it's a very different stage of life. So when people see us sitting having a meal and come over and say 'Oh my goodness, I can't believe it! Look at them! How on earth do you manage?', I look at them sitting calmly eating hamburgers, dripping ketchup onto the napkins in front of them and quietly reading the backs of their Happy Meal boxes, and wonder what these people are seeing that is so dreadful. I generally smile and say 'Oh, it's fine now, it was much more difficult when they were tiny' and hope they go away.
Recently we dared to go into a local fabric shop on a Saturday, so all four boys were with us, and we managed to squeeze them, us and Baby's puchchair into this tiny little shop between all these reams of fabric. As soon as we were all in, the elderly propriatress took a deep breath and said loudly 'Oh my word! Look at them all! How on earth do you cope?' I quickly looked at them all to see what they were doing and they were all standing, just gazing at all the different colours, with their hands in their pockets. Richard made some kind of joke and we began to peruse the shelves. She carried on - 'How do you not shout lots? Oh, I think I'd be shouting all the time!' Again I looked at them, as they were slightly dispersing so they could see more of the shop and talking quietly to each other and wondered exactly what she would like me to shout at them for. I said something about using different tactics at home to save my voice, and she said 'You must have a lot of stairs in your house then!' I counted, and there were still only four children, so assumed maybe she lived in a bungalow.
At the end of our visit, she did comment on how well behaved they had all been, which was nice, but I was inspecting them all closely on the way home wondering whether there was something menacing about their facial expressions or whether their haircuts were too short or if they had 'ASBO' tattooed on their heads, in case I hadn't noticed.
Nope, they were fine. Just right, in fact. That's my number - four - and it's just right 
