The Unmumsy Mum Diary

by The Unmumsy Mum

  Sunday 8th

  We’re staying down at my in-laws’ for a few days while the home improvements rumble on back at ours. Hopefully, the risk of the kids impaling themselves on stray rusty nails will have lessened by the time we get home, but I know there is still going to be a mountain of work to do. I wish we could move somewhere for a few months and not have to deal with the dust, the rubble bags and the revolving door of tradesmen who turn up three hours after they said they would, waking Jude from his nap by firing up their power tools: ‘Sorry, little fella, it’s a noisy job!’ And that would have been fine if you’d come on time, like I had planned, so you’d be finished ahead of his sacred nap time … ‘Oh, Jason! I didn’t realise it was you! Kettle’s on.’

  We were simply not prepared for the level of disruption that comes with doing up a house when there are kids at large. I have never seen an episode of Grand Designs or DIY SOS where the whole family ends up sleeping on a mattress in the living room with all their essential clothes and food within a five-yard radius, like some kind of drugs squat. Neither have I seen an episode where both the shower and the sink are out of action so the whole family is forced to develop an evening swimming habit purely to make use of the leisure centre’s showers. Where the mum then stubbornly shivers, waiting for a private shower cubicle to become free so she can address the prickliness of her bikini line with a razor – though by this point, if she didn’t fear getting marched out of the leisure centre, she’d quite happily shave her lady garden in the visible poolside shower, because she has lost all regard for standards since living in a drugs squat.

  One evening, the poolside showering became so onerous that we resorted to filling up the boys’ Thomas the Tank Engine paddling pool and took it in turns to have baths on the kitchen floor, washing each other’s hair with a measuring jug. I’m sure one day I will chuckle at the memory of James sitting naked in four inches of water inside an inflatable train and I will smile about the week we spent lying in the dark on the family’s communal mattress with only our iPhones for entertainment, too scared to move or speak due to the sleeping infants between us. Right now, it feels like a nightmare.

  I know I can’t begrudge anybody their DIY SOS because they always have an emotional back story, so are deserving of ‘The Big Build’, but I do slightly begrudge the Grand Designs couples who start by saying their absolute maximum budget is £1.2 million and then, when Kev McCloud revisits, they’ve actually spent £1.8 million. I can never work out where you just find another £0.6 million, like, ‘Oh look, there it was, down the back of the sofa!’ Yes, maybe I am a bit bitter about these couples, because I don’t expect they’ve ever spent weeks showering at the leisure centre. That’s the reality of renovating for us – no ‘Big Build’, no interior designer, no craning in of a custom-made ten-foot glass panel as a finishing touch, just week upon week of living in dusty chaos, wondering if it’ll ever end.

  Taking a few days out is probably a wise move, because I have been feeling edgy and on the verge of yelling for weeks, obsessing over loose wires and wet plaster and generally killing everybody’s fun. I have also been feeling terrible that ‘home’ has become such an unsettling place for the kids. I’m sure Henry is feeling anxious about having his toys constantly moved or placed out of his reach, but I am paranoid about tripping hazards after the electrician nearly broke his neck on the Scooby Doo Mystery Machine. At least here at their nanny’s they can play on the floor without running the risk of contracting tetanus from a nail in the foot.

  The weirdest thing about this sabbatical is not the cohabitation with the in-laws (I’m actually relishing sitting on the sofa watching Come Dine With Me while Jude summons his grandad to the floor to crawl around racing tiny cars); no, the weirdest thing is that we are back in our hometown of Launceston, Cornwall, for a few days. I was five when we moved down here from Essex, and I can vividly remember thinking that this would be ‘home’ all my life or that I would briefly move to London to be a hotshot something-or-other before finding my way back here to raise a family of two daughters and a bearded collie with a husband who never had a face (as in, I never pictured his face, he was just a presence in the future-family imaginings).

  Being back here is weird and makes me want to stick on Adele’s ‘Hometown Glory’ as we drive past all our old haunts. There will always be something reassuringly familiar about being back. All our formative years were spent here – making friends, falling out with friends, studying for exams, awkwardly navigating a position in the popularity hierarchy. (I was always mid-range on the Loser Scale, tolerated by the bosom of my peer group but far too uncool to be noticed by anyone popular until I loosened my morals, bought a fake ID and started binge drinking.) It’s where I had my first proper job as Customer Advisor in a bank, strutting into work feeling all professional in my bank cashier’s blouse. It’s where I had my worst ever job, shaking nutmeg on to custard tarts and manually rolling over the pastry for apple turnovers at the local dessert factory. It’s where I learned to drive. It’s where James played football every weekend for nearly twenty years. But it’s not home any more, not really. It’s funny how things change.

  We took the boys into town with us this morning and, as we walked around (me dragging Jude by his reins like a disobedient dog because he refused to leave the stairwell of the multistorey car park, despite it smelling like piss), we saw the same old faces. The scary thing is that those same old faces now look old, which inevitably must mean that we look old, too. Maybe they’ve just aged really badly, but I’m well aware that I no longer look as fresh-faced as when I last lived here and my biggest worry was whether to go out on Friday night or Saturday night or both.

  After picking up lunch from the bakery, we headed to the castle green to eat it and then, for some reason unbeknown to any of us, Jude had the mother of all meltdowns, screaming and kicking and rolling around in dramatic distress, like we had just delivered him the worst news of his life rather than offering him a sausage roll al fresco. After it became apparent that nothing was going to settle him (not even a biscuit, so we knew we were in dire straits) we were forced to abandon the whole picnic idea and head back to the car. This was a shame, as Henry wanted to climb up the ‘real-life castle!’ and we had to fob him off with the promise of doing that another time to avoid his tears of disappointment being thrown into the noise mix. As we were on our way out, I told him that the castle was built after the Norman Conquest and that, next time, we could pretend to have a sword fight, and then James started laughing and said, ‘I took your mummy up the castle once, didn’t I, Mummy?’ and we howled with laughter over the sound of Jude’s tantrum at the vague recollection of a drunken incident that occurred after we climbed over the fence and snuck into the castle following a night out. Henry laughed, too, as if he were in on the joke, which only made us laugh some more.

  We won’t tell him about that particular night of the castle’s conquest history. We might get arrested.

  20:35

  We’re heading back to the dust and the disorder of home tomorrow, so James and I thought we’d make the most of having live-in babysitters for one last evening by going out for a walk, just the two of us. It felt like such a novelty because, at home, we can obviously only ever go out one at a time when the kids are in bed so, generally, our ‘quality time’ together is sitting side by side in silence as we peruse social media (him for football-transfer updates, me to torture myself further with social media feeds full of mums who I would pay good money to look like/have a home like/possibly have children like. Their kids are always so willing to be photographed looking gleeful in clean, matching outfits – what kind of sorcery is that?).

  ‘I really don’t want any more babies,’ James announced, halfway around our planned route and with a sideways glance in my direction. ‘We never have time to talk about anything any more, except the odd chat about the weather. All our conversations are started but never finished; we speak, but it’s not talking, is it? And look how nicely Hen
ry can play by himself now. Jude will be like that soon. Why go back?’

  Why indeed?

  Friday 13th

  I fired up my laptop this morning with the intention of spending a full day sorting out my emails and cracking on with some writing – Lord knows I need to; I am behind on just about every professional project I am supposed to be tackling right now. But the online distractions kept calling me. I realise I only have myself to blame for not staying focused on the task at hand (and that, all things considered, there is really no need for me to press play on a video of cats getting brain freeze after eating ice cream), but this morning’s online distraction was worth it, after I rediscovered the now infamous Mumsnet Penis Beaker thread. In my defence, I was initially looking for that advice on stopping Jude from biting but soon found my attention diverted to the ‘Mumsnet classics’ section which houses some real gems. If you have never read the Penis Beaker thread (perhaps you have more willpower than I do and haven’t yet completed the Internet when you are supposed to be working), I can verify that this one is deserving of your time. In summary, it’s a post from a woman who reaches out to the Mumsnet mum masses to ask if anybody else’s husband keeps a special beaker of water by the bedside table … to dunk his penis in after sex. A ‘penis beaker’. I spent a good hour absorbed in the comments thread. Unsurprisingly, nobody else came forward with the admission of having a penis-beaker-dunking husband, but a lot of further questions were raised about this unusual practice. What exactly is the purpose served here? That he doesn’t have to dash to the loo and can just freshen up by way of a quick dunk? Does he not mind having to sleep with a beaker of penis dunkings beside him? What happens if he reaches out in the night and mistakes the contents of the beaker for a drink? So many questions. And now it’s lunchtime and I haven’t even started what I should be doing.

  Saturday 14th

  Almost every day when we are at home we put the boys to bed (this usually requires a gazillion trips back to Henry’s room because his light is too bright/the dark is too dark/he’s thirsty/he’s scared of the monsters/yesterday’s tea was too spicy) and then we collapse on the sofa. It’s one way to unwind but, Jesus wept, it’s so boooooring sitting with one eye on Corrie and the other on Rightmove for hours on end. I don’t even know why I’m looking at my phone most of the time – it’s just a habit. So this evening, still feeling enthused by last week’s evening walk, I went out for a little jog. When I say ‘jog’, I mean I walked around the park at the end of our road at a pace slightly faster than my usual stride, and that’s hardly a challenge, as my usual stride is one step forwards and five steps into somebody else’s garden chasing my toddler who shouts, ‘Not Judy’s door!’ at every front door, even his own.

  Exactly how fast I was bumbling around the park is neither here nor there, but I’m just setting the scene, as it was during this uninterrupted walking time that I started thinking about life. Life in general. Everyday life. And how all too often there is build-up and expectation attached to daily events, moments and milestones that can leave you under pressure to feel a certain way. Feelings are not like that, are they? By their very nature you can’t create feelings or build up to ‘a moment’. Something either gets you in the feels or it doesn’t.

  I am in no doubt that years of watching sentimental films and TV dramas has set me up to fail on the feelings front, because real life is simply nothing like film life. Of course, we all know that. It’s not as if I sit at home awaiting a knock on the door from Andrew Lincoln, who then instructs me to pretend it’s carol singers before declaring his undying love for me on handwritten cue cards. James has never once dressed up as a fighter pilot and serenaded me with ‘You’ve Lost that Loving Feeling’, but I fell in love with him nonetheless.

  Still, I can’t help but feel that once you’ve internalised a whole catalogue of romanticised film moments it’s hardly surprising if you start to hope that life might just play out like a script every now and again. Parenthood has brought about the absolute worst of these disappointments because all the big parenting moments are so well documented on the big screen. Like childbirth, where the parents always share a cuddle and a cry when the baby is born and the baby never has a purple cone-head. Henry and Jude were delightful babies and I was over the moon to hold them against me, but I didn’t cry. I can remember thinking, I should be crying now, people always cry, but no tears came. I can also remember thinking that if parents are evolutionarily programmed to find their own offspring attractive, then there must have been a mix-up, because both of mine looked like wrinkly potatoes and Judy Potato had orange hair fuzz and was therefore absolutely not my spawn.

  Motherhood just looks generally pretty amazing in films. Even when it’s portrayed as chaotic it looks like fun chaos – cereal spillages on floors, lots of noise and laughter, the odd slamming of a door that is later resolved by an emotional chat over fresh coffee and lots of meaningful eye contact. The chaos in my life can be fun, too, but milk on the floor generally results in a head injury and we tend to save all meaningful eye contact for chats about the credit card.

  This morning, however, a special moment happened in real life. It was quite extraordinary. I had taken Henry to his first ever gymnastics class and, after waiting awkwardly, not really sure what was expected of me in this environment, it was time for him to go in. I have taken him to other classes before – music, drama, etc. – but these have always been things that I have joined in with (and, to be honest, in the last six months of Monkey Music I mostly found that it was me sitting cross-legged in a circle enthusiastically pointing at Monkey while Henry tried to climb the chair stacks and pickpocket Pom-Bears from the other change bags). This morning’s class was different because Henry’s four now, so has joined a group where parents wait outside and just leave the kids to it. No big deal …

  Only it became a big deal for me as I stood there and watched him through the glass. Watched him trot in with zero hesitation, take a seat on the mat among the other boys and girls before proceeding to follow them around in a gym circuit, stretching his arms out as he balanced on the beam and joining in with floor exercises (where he was, understandably, two steps behind everybody else but persevered with such a happy face). He was in his element, and when I saw his eyes searching for me I jumped and waved and mouthed, ‘Well done!’ with a huge thumbs-up from the other side of the door. He returned my thumbs-up with a long-distance fist pump and then, just as quickly as he had looked for me, he looked away and slotted straight back into the class.

  It was nothing like anything you would see in a film. There was no moving soundtrack, no pep talk from me telling him I knew he could do it, no slow-motion shot of him leaping off a balance beam and landing gracefully on the mat to rapturous applause from the rest of the gymnasium. Nobody else noticed anything remarkable.

  But I did.

  To me, it was extraordinary. My boy was extraordinary. I had to fight back a lump in my throat as I stood there in a sweaty-smelling gym corridor and realised, with mild amusement, that it was probably the proudest I have ever felt about anything.

  And so this evening, as I found myself out jogging (walking) and contemplating life-in-general, I realised that I have been looking for the wrong moments. Or, at the very least, looking in the wrong places. I don’t think that we should be looking at all.

  Feelings aren’t like that. Feelings just are. Like pride just was for me, today.

  Monday 16th

  Things you really shouldn’t attempt with your children present #74: trying on bikinis. I did just that today, because we have bitten the bullet and booked a holiday to France next month and my old bikini is no longer an appropriate fit.

  Holy moly, the kids were embarrassing. The initial flustered trying-on session was accompanied by the usual lines of extremely loud questioning from the ever-curious Henry: ‘Mummy, do your boobies go in there? Are they swimming knickers? Haha!’ There then followed this awkward exchange:

  Shop assistant:

&
nbsp; ‘Any good?’

  Me:

  ‘No, thanks.’

  Henry:

  ‘Cos she’s got no boobs.’

  Jude:

  ‘Haha, boobies. Funny!’

  Today’s lesson: Never body-shame yourself in front of your children because:

  1. Body shape is not important, nor should it influence your self-worth.

  2. Kids repeat what you bloody say, loudly and in public, further cementing your insecurities about being part of the itty bitty titty committee. I have no idea if the bikini I’ve come home with will fit my empty-sock tits. I panic-bought it with a red face.

  Wednesday 18th

  11:52

  One of the most surprising things to have come about since I started documenting my everyday parenting woes is all the messages I receive from mums who don’t know me but somehow feel they know me well enough to share something personal. I’ve received a number of pretty intense messages recently, with mums writing to me about issues such as PND. I feel compelled to respond to as many of these kinds of messages as possible, to reassure these women that they are not alone, and though I mostly feel honoured that they turn to me I’ll admit I do sometimes feel the weight of that responsibility. So when, after replying to several such messages, I noticed the following in my inbox, it was quite the tonic. I can imagine the mum in question angrily typing it and there is always something comical about a Mum Rant: