The Unmumsy Mum Diary

by The Unmumsy Mum

  Monday 12th

  Dearest Jude,

  My little curly carrot-head, getting less curly and carroty every day.

  Today is your second birthday. It’s been two whole years since you arrived and claimed a place in our hearts as the baby of the family. Today you should be spoilt rotten – you deserve to be – but it’s not quite going to work out that way and I just want to say I’m sorry for that.

  I’m sorry your brother’s brand-new school routine and the ongoing home renovations and LIFE and the fact that, despite us fighting it, the prophecy of the slightly-more-neglected-second-child has been fulfilled, meaning your birthday has arrived without much preparation having been done on our part.

  I’m sorry Mummy and Daddy are both working today.

  I’m sorry I haven’t made you a cake.

  I’m sorry you’re not having a party, not even one of those token ones where relatives come round for a ‘picky tea’ of buffet items.

  I know you won’t care about any of these things because you are two and you’ll be in love with the ‘bastard car’ your dad spent two hours putting together last night. I had rather foolishly assumed it would just clip together, but there were several pages of instructions and its assembly required a drill and a hammer, which Daddy dug out of the shed in the dark because he loves you and because I kept saying, ‘Just imagine his little face when he sees it!’

  I am finishing work early today (though, hands held up, this is also because your brother is doing short days this week, so your birthday ‘outing’ will be to pick him up, but still). I promise we will make it up to you next year.

  We have failed you on the birthday front today but I hope you know how loved you are.

  Happy birthday, my little angel plum-plums.

  Mum xx

  Tuesday 20th

  Today marks the one-year virtual anniversary of something pretty special: Ruth. One year ago today, a mum named Shelly Parkinson took to my Facebook page to post a rant about a fictional character from her daughter’s homework named Ruth. It kicked off what can only be described as an online phenomenon. I contacted Shelly to ask if she would be happy for me to mark the Ruthiversay here in the diary, and she replied to say, ‘Ruth doesn’t even belong to me any more. She is an entity in her own right and you are more than welcome to share her in your book.’

  So for those who never saw it and those who were there in the thick of Ruthgate unfolding, here’s a reminder of Shelly’s original post:

  God, sorry, I need to rant … does anybody else HATE doing homework with their kids? My nine-year-old brought home ‘comprehension’ (‘reading and answering questions’, for normal people) homework. There was a passage she had to read about a girl called Ruth. It went something like this:

  ‘Ruth is fabulous, Ruth has hair like the sun, Ruth has a great job in an office, every day Ruth gets up and goes for a jog …’

  Now the fact that Ruth sounds like a total c**t who makes me feel bad about myself is not the point of my rant. After reading about fucking Ruth TWICE aloud to my daughter, we decided it was time to tackle the questions.

  Question 1: Where does Ruth work?

  I look up from the homework to see my daughter staring at me blankly, so I repeat the question, ‘Where does Ruth work?’, and I shit you not this was her response:

  ‘Who is Ruth?’

  AAAARRRRGGGHHH! RUTH! FUCKING RUTH WITH HER HAIR AND HER JOB, YOU KNOW, RUTH WE JUST SPENT TEN MINUTES READING ABOUT, RUTH WHO GOES JOGGING EVERY MORNING, REMEMBER THAT TWAT?! FUCKING RUTH!!!

  Obviously, that’s not what I actually said. I went into the kitchen, had a moment to myself (four gulps of wine) and returned to continue ‘comprehension’.

  FUCK YOU, RUTH.

  After an initial flurry of Ruth-based jokes and memes, I anticipated that all trace of her would disappear into the ether, but she seemed to take on a life of her own and became like the fictional embodiment of Supermum, somebody we could take our frustrations out on and swear at because Ruth is perfection – and, just like perfection, she’s not realistic. If today’s instalment of Ruth comedy from my followers is anything to go by, she is very much alive and kicking a full year later …

  Vici Myers: Wow, so it’s one year since I was up literally all night with my baby and Ruth brought me out of the depths of despair and made me laugh out loud when I thought I would never have the energy to even smile again.

  Lynne Morgan: Ruth wouldn’t be reading this post at work eating a sneaky Greggs sausage roll when she’s meant to be on a diet. Fucking Ruth.

  Louise Pentland: I bet Ruth doesn’t do Skype calls in a smart top and make-up from the waist up but massive pants and slippers only from the waist down. I bet Ruth wears tights and a pencil skirt.

  Julia Bever: This has cheered me up no end. My motherin-law is called Ruth – need I say more! I say ‘Fucking Ruth’ as a mantra in my head every day, particularly when my mother-in-law tells me on a regular basis that all her children could read at the age of two! Well, bully for you, Ruth, I’ve only heard this story a hundred times. She is seventy-three and runs two mother and toddler groups, a coffee morning every Sunday, makes amazing flower arrangements and cakes and was a primary school teacher. She cycled across Cambodia for her seventieth birthday! There is seriously nothing she cannot do. I’m totally convinced she is the original: THE MOTHER OF THE RUTHS!

  Adele Colbourne: ‘Remember that twat?’ Best line ever.

  I hope Ruth Day becomes a national holiday.

  Friday 23rd

  I am nearing the end of my tether with school drop-offs. We’re now two full weeks into the school adventure and Henry is still sobbing his heart out every morning when we take him into the classroom. I always knew he’d have a couple of wobbly days, but it’s been even more extreme than I’d anticipated. If anything, it’s getting worse, and this morning he started crying at home even before we left.

  I am struggling with it on so many levels. Fundamentally, the hardest bit is leaving a distraught child somewhere he doesn’t want to be, as he screams that he doesn’t want to be there. Yes, I know it is more than likely that he will settle in soon (déjà bloody vu), but having a child cling to you and beg you not to leave because it ‘hurts his feelings’ is so hard. It’s more than hard, it’s devastating. I have no idea what to do to make it better.

  Henry is a confident boy at home, he’s great when he meets new people, he’s fun to be around. I don’t recognise the boy who won’t make eye contact with anyone or let go of my hand in the classroom. He looks small and timid and sad. I’ve started to feel resentful towards the other kids at drop-off as they merrily glide in, giving their mums and dads a quick peck on the cheek before becoming immediately absorbed in play.

  ‘Crikey, my daughter doesn’t even look back!’ one mum told me in a very kind attempt to strike up conversation as I hung around anxiously outside after another harrowing separation. ‘I bet if you stay and peep through the window in a few minutes’ time he’ll be over the upset and distracted by all the fun.’

  So I did. I hung back, pretending to fiddle with the pram, and then I positioned myself as best I could out of his line of sight so I could just peer quickly in through the window, to put my mind at rest. I couldn’t see him at first so I guessed he must have been somewhere in the middle of the mat among the happy children listening to the teacher. But he wasn’t. He was standing to one side, crying, holding the hand of a teaching assistant.

  Oh, Henry.

  All the anxiety of the drop-off rigmarole means I haven’t really been chatting to the other parents. Everybody else seems to know each other already. How is that even possible? Have I missed the window of friendship-making opportunity or, worse, have I missed an invite to a ‘Reception mummies meet-up’ because I’ve been too busy wiping the snotty tears from my coat sleeve to attempt the usual parent-chat about reading books and school dinners?

  I know we’re only a fortnight in and I’m probably over-reacting, but I can’t
believe all my worries were tied up with how grown-up he looks and how sad it would be not to have him at home. Right now, just a normal school run, without any moaning or crying, is the absolute dream. Come on, H-bomb. Show them your true colours, buddy.

  Tuesday 27th

  Dad and Tina have gone on holiday for a week – a ‘fishing holiday’, no less (God bless my dad, he sure knows how to treat the lady in his life) – and we’ve somehow found ourselves looking after their dog. In fairness, Misty was originally my dog, acquired in my final years of living at home (‘Please, Dad! I’ll walk her twice a day! It will be good for us both to get out of the house!’), but then I got a grown-up job and moved in with James, so I had to hand over my twice-daily walkies duty. Anyway, their usual dog-sitter is not available this week, and when Dad started his phone call with ‘Now then, I don’t want you to feel like you have to say yes, but I have a favour to ask …’ I mentally stacked up all the Granny and Grandad babysitting hours they have put in over the last four years and knew I would say yes to whatever favour they asked of me. One week’s dog-sitting is a small price to pay. And besides, the boys love Misty, so were quite taken with the idea. By the time she arrived even I had started to feel enthusiastic about having her to stay – it would be nice for us all to get out and do dog-walky things together.

  I think perhaps it would have been nice, if Misty were a normal dog. Don’t get me wrong, she’s lovely and friendly and furry but, Jesus, she comes with a trunk load of behavioural issues that have made the last few days a bit of a nightmare. When out walking, she barks the whole time. Other dog-walkers stare at me as she barks and growls at everything before manically ‘digging’ at the ground with her paws. I must have said, ‘Hi there, good morning! This is not my dog. I’m just looking after her,’ at least twenty times now, because it’s embarrassing to be associated with her unruliness.

  This morning, she was whining to go outside but refused to poo in our back garden because it’s concrete – she will only ‘go’ on grass. So I had to get out of my warm bed at an ungodly hour, before my children were even awake (sacrilege!), throw on some jeans and a hoody and walk her to the park purely so she could shit under a tree and then bark at me. Then yesterday, after school, Henry and Jude came with me to walk her and the three of us attempted a running race (Jude likes to join in with the ‘Ready, steady, go!’), but Misty ran after us, jumping up and growling. In her possessed barky state, she tripped Henry over, which meant he cried, and I nearly cried because I had to wash and dry another pair of school trousers.

  I can’t even blame Dad for this doggy disobedience as it was me who was tasked with training her. My failure to get past ‘sit’ and ‘play dead’ has come back to haunt me this week. I tried. I really did. I took her to puppy classes at a village hall and followed the doggy lady (with the bumbag full of doggy treats) around in a circle, but Misty just wasn’t having any of it. She jumped up at me and barked while trying to bite the lead. At the end, when the doggy lady gave out the biscuits, she demolished hers and then stole another from an unsuspecting cockapoo. (In Misty’s defence, I didn’t think it was a bad life lesson for the other dog to learn – when it comes to food, you snooze, you lose.)

  I can still feel the weight of the other dog-owners’ disapproving stares, almost as though they feared Misty’s bad influence would rub off on their perfect pooches. I remember feeling like I was an interloper, not equipped for the world of dog obedience. To be honest, looking back, I think those early dog-ownership days were a prelude to how I would cope ‘owning’ a baby. Perhaps it had nothing to do with the puppy we had chosen and everything to do with my skills as a caregiver. There are certainly a great many parallels with how Misty behaved during those classes and how Henry behaved during his first and only term of baby massage, in which he refused to behave like any of the other babies. They didn’t scream or poo on their towels.

  I have since wondered if perhaps he cried in those sessions because he had picked up on my disparagement of that whole charade. I know people swear by such activities as a good opportunity for bonding, but I struggled to get past the fact that I spent half of every session questioning whether Henry was actually enjoying having his back rhythmically stroked with organic chamomile oil and the other half trying not to dwell on the fact that I was the one who’d had no rest for six months yet he was the one getting a fucking massage.

  Anyway, I digress. I think it’s safe to say that we won’t be getting a dog any time soon, as I don’t seem to be able to get anything I’m in charge of to behave. Except maybe James. He’s mostly very obedient, which is why I let him have so many biscuits.

  Sunday 2nd

  This weekend’s ‘Expectation versus Reality: The Parent Years’ front-runner has got to be watching a DVD with the kids. We’ve had a really frantic couple of weeks, with all the usual chaos, as well as me making a flying visit (literally) to Jersey for a book event, plus a gazillion dog walks because Misty is too posh to shit on concrete. She’s gone back to Dad’s today so, this afternoon, after wiping the floor where she’d been sleeping (which smelt of stagnant pond-water, even though we’ve not been near a pond), I thought it would be nice for us all to snuggle up on the sofa and watch The Secret Life of Pets. As we got cosy under a blanket, sleepiness kicked in (for me, never for my children) and, just for a second, I thought I might get away with a little nap while they were engrossed in the movie. A sneaky snooze feels like the ultimate indulgence these days but, alas, it wasn’t to be, because I had forgotten (Selective Parent Amnesia, we meet yet again) that Henry doesn’t enjoy simply watching a film. Instead, he likes to narrate the bits he knows or understands: ‘Ha! The cat came through the window! Mum, watch this bit, look what the dog’s doing. Hahaha!’ If he’s unsure of anything, he then rapid-fires questions at me, asking where the plot is going, even though I haven’t seen the film before either.

  ‘Is there a baddie, Mummy? When will the baddie get them? Are baddies real? Have you ever seen a baddie? Has Daddy? Do cats eat chicken? Am I a vegetarian? Oh, I thought I was, because I eat salad. Are we having salad for tea? I don’t like tomatoes any more, only the ones we have at school, they’re nicer than the ones you do. Is that cat going to die? Do all cats die? When did our cat die? Are we still sad that our cat died? Is there a volcano in this film? Where’s the nearest volcano? You know George from my class? Is George’s daddy taller than Daddy? Who’s the tallest person in the whole wide world?’

  When it had finished – and I thought, finally, I could escape to the kitchen to cry into some cheese – he then asked me to read out THE CREDITS and got upset when I refused. And so, because I have no backbone and regularly change my mind just to keep the peace, our relaxing, snug-gly DVD afternoon concluded with me reeling off, ‘Dennis Leonard – Supervising Sound Editor; Marlene Thomas – Layout Production Supervisor …’ and so on, until I told him I had a headache and distracted him with some crisps.

  I do love his thirst for knowledge – in fact, it’s one of my absolute favourite things about him – I just wish he’d tone it down every now and again. Not least because I can’t bear leaving his questions unanswered, so always end up googling random shit when I should be making tea/tidying up/sleeping. Still, at least I now know that the tallest living man (correct at the time of writing) is Sultan Kösen from Turkey, who is 8 feet 2 and a bit.

  Friday 7th

  I went to watch Henry’s first ever school performance this afternoon – his Harvest Festival – and it was so cute that, without exaggeration, I nearly cried. Morning drop-offs have improved massively this past week and I felt an immense sense of relief when I saw him standing there in the school hall wearing a little hat with a pig on it that he’d made in class, joining in telling the story of the Little Red Hen and singing a song about a combine harvester. He did all the actions with such cheery gusto that I could not have been prouder – my cheeks were aching from smiling.

  This is why I had children.

  This is what I s
igned up for.

  This is what makes me sure having kids is the single best decision of my life.

  This is also the danger zone, as, if today’s informal show is anything to go by, his nativity play in December is going to make me pregnant. Not because of some kind of miracle real-life Immaculate Conception but because I will drag James home and tell him I want at least one more tiny Wise Man or shepherd before we call it quits.

  Wednesday 12th

  I’m starting to doubt whether anybody achieves a work/life/kids balance they are happy with. I know I’m probably sounding like a broken record by now but I honestly thought becoming self-employed would allow me to have a bit more control. In some ways, I do have more control – I was especially grateful for self-employment last Friday, when I put my laptop away at lunchtime so I could make it to Henry’s Harvest Festival – but on any standard week my ‘home’ time is suffering. The new normal, even with James’s decreased work hours, is a precarious balancing act. When I’m spending time with the boys during the evenings or at the weekend, I am distracted, trying to respond to work emails on the sly and getting crosser than I ought to when they start fighting. I’m not even particularly angry about their insistence on giving each other ‘pony rides’ around the living room (although it is annoying, as somebody always falls off and cries), I just snap because, when I’m trying to plan an article in my head, the constant whingy din kids exude makes me feel more stressed. I find myself thinking, I need more time to concentrate.

  Today, though, I’m sitting upstairs at my desk listening to James and Jude merrily getting their coats on, on the way out of the house to go swimming. This means I will have a couple of interruption-free hours – but I so badly wish I was going, too. I was tempted to sack off work for a couple of hours to join them but then an email popped up reminding me I hadn’t done something I should have done by now so, with a sigh, I let them go, peering out of the window as the pair of them held hands up the road. Jude goes swimming at least once a week now, but I haven’t taken him for months. Bar our French holiday, I’m not sure I’ve seen him swim at all this year. When I do next take him, I feel like I’ll get in the pool and not know what he should be doing. I’m told by both James and my mother-in-law that he’s ‘very confident’ in the water, but I have no idea what that means. I’m guessing by ‘confident’, they’re just reporting that he doesn’t mind his face being splashed with water and is happy to do some kicking if his body is supported and not that he’s already mastered a one-hundred-metre butterfly technique that would rival Michael Phelps – but I don’t really know that. Does he usually have armbands? What’s his routine? Do they still take the pram along in case he needs to be strapped in while they get changed or does he walk in then happily sit in the changing room waiting for his caregiver-that-is-never-his-mummy to get changed?