On the days James has asked, ‘How was your day, babe?’ and I’ve replied, ‘It was shit. I hate being at home. I hate maternity leave. I hate every minute of it,’ I can almost guarantee I have been at home all day. By the same token, I know when I’ve replied, ‘Pretty good, actually!’ me and the boys have almost always been up to something. We have been somewhere.
The crazy thing is, when I say ‘somewhere’, I literally mean anywhere that isn’t our house. I’m not just talking about libraries and baby groups and play dates at other people’s houses (though all of these have their merits). I’m talking about garden centres and retail parks. The hours of fun there are to be had exploring the ‘small animal zoo’ (aka Pets at Home) and running riot in the hedging-plants section of the garden centre! We have enjoyed outings to some bloody random places – and I mean properly enjoyed; this isn’t even sarcastic. For ages, Henry kept asking if we could go back to ‘the orange shop’, and I couldn’t for the life of me work out what he meant.
‘The orange shop with the playhouses,’ he clarified.
By ‘playhouses’, he meant sheds.
He was talking about B&Q.
So, sometimes, we go to B&Q. Not a weekend outing to pick up a new drill bit or some white matt emulsion but a mid-week excursion, something to do (‘Shall we go to B&Q, Henry?’ ‘Yayyyyyyy!’), and we look at the sheds (occasionally, they have genuine playhouses, too) and I push Jude around in the trolley and we wave at people picking up drill bits and white matt emulsion . . . Yes, I realise this whole admission about how we get our kicks in B&Q makes me sound like a total fruit loop but, the truth is, it passes the time. And after parking up, having a traipse around, standing looking at electric fires (family tradition) and then going home again, sometimes a whole hour and a half has passed where nobody cried.
And that, I think, is the whole purpose of an excursion outside the house: it breaks the day up into manageable chunks. Even a trip to the sodding dentist breaks the day up. Where we go, what we do, doesn’t really matter – it’s simply a bonus if it’s time we would otherwise have spent indoors with me getting cross, silently wishing the hours until Daddy Rescue Time would arrive.
It’s all about a much-needed change of scene – the kids need it and, Lord knows, I need it. Mostly, I need an incentive to get out of my dressing gown, in which I have been known to unhappily fester all day.
I occasionally have moments when I wake up tempted by a Snuggly Home Day but, nowadays, when I hear myself say, ‘We’ll just have a day at home today, shall we, boys?’ it triggers a wiser part of my brain to scream, ‘Awful idea, Mummy. Rethink it immediately.’ Unless one of us is really very poorly (and physically can’t exit the house), I make sure we plan at least one outing or excursion every day. Every now and again, we go to Pets at Home and B&Q in the same day.
Those are the days I am winning at life.
(Yes, I, too, am finding it difficult to understand when browsing guinea pigs and DIY materials became a ‘win’.)
* * *
‘No one tells you about the shower of shit days. I reckon 60/40 [in favour of] shit.’
Jae, Glasgow
* * *
The Frustration of Toddlers
When Henry was a baby he used to stare quizzically at me from his bouncer, looking slightly disturbed by my one-way conversation. Maybe he was just a bit bored by the tenth round of Peek-a-Boo and was thinking, Oh God, not the old ‘Where’s Mummy gone?’ charade again. Yep, she’s behind the sicky muslin. What a surprise.
Besides the clapping and the row, row, rowing the bloody boat, you just can’t do a lot by way of activities with babies, can you? I remember longing for Henry to get bigger so I could interact with him properly. You know, play proper games.
It’s only now he is considerably bigger (a pre-schooler, starting actual schooly school this year: arghhh) that the proper playing stage is starting to materialise. I’m welcoming it, too, because the interim toddler period of games and activities, though hilarious at times, has proved pretty testing. The truth is, you can’t really play games with toddlers at all, though you’ll have a bloody good bash at it.
So now that Jude is of the cusp of toddlerhood (lock up your toddling daughters!), I’m preparing myself all over again and, this time, I know (largely) what to expect.
If you’re yet to reach this stage, here are a few upcoming highlights to look forward to:
Hide and seek
Get your best poker face and annoying-parent voice ready (you know the one; if you don’t, just go up an octave), because your toddler will tell you where he is going to hide. ‘I’ll be under the table, Mummy.’ Excellent. Better still, after counting to ten, you will see him very obviously lying on the sofa with only his head concealed, with a cushion, giggling and/or farting with excitement, and the whole ‘No sign of him here!’ charade will commence.
Initially quite amusing, the fun factor soon wears off as you ‘search’ the living room for the blatantly visible (and sometimes sniffable) small person for the seventy-sixth time. Sigh.
From time to time, you can make this game work to your advantage by sending your small person upstairs to hide and counting to at least one hundred before periodically shouting, ‘Hmmmm, no sign of him in the kitchen!’ or ‘Definitely not in this cupboard!’ as you gaze at pictures of an old schoolfriend’s wedding on Facebook. On a good day, this can buy you ten minutes to sort out the washing (or eat a KitKat Chunky). On a really good day, your toddler will hide somewhere comfy and fall asleep by the time you get there.
Football
‘I’ll be Liverpool, Mummy. You be Chelsea.’ Superb. An actual game, at last. Goals are set up, the baby is relocated to the Jumperoo to avoid impact damage, you shimmy into position to ‘save’ the shot that will never come close to the goal . . . and your toddler starts crying.
‘Don’t stop the ball, Mummy. Mummy! It has to go in there.’ Your explanation of the whole point of the game falls on deaf ears until you no longer have any fucks to give about the point of the game and basically stand there complimenting the ‘goals’ he scores in a keeperless net from a distance of five inches. This game has recently improved pretty dramatically for us, to the point that I can now pretend I am trying to save his shots (but still know better than to actually block one from entering the goal).
Frozen
Probably infiltrating houses worldwide after the 2013 chilly-themed Disney offering, your toddler will want to ‘act out’ the film. I was actually pretty excited about the prospect of a bit of amateur dramatics before lunchtime. It had to be better than the excruciatingly pointless football.
‘You be Anna, Mummy. I’m Elsa. I’ll go behind that door.’
Excellent. Act II, Scene 1 commences …
Me: [coughs, ready to sing at the door] Do you want to build a snowman?
Toddler: Yes, please!
Face palm. He’s seen it one hundred times and yet still lacks any comprehension of the main plot theme. I tried to explain how exasperating I found this episode to James one evening after work and, unsurprisingly, he laughed his head off at my annoyance about Disney-plot comprehension. There I was, standing in the kitchen, becoming increasingly angry about our attempt at Frozen roleplay until I heard myself say to my husband, with genuine concern, ‘She obviously doesn’t want to build a bloody snowman. That’s the point.’
And realised what my life had come to.
Anything crafty
You can derive lots of hopeful intentions from Fun Mum Pinterest boards: there is something very homely about setting up drawing/painting/sticking and such like, especially when it’s raining. But the absolute worst thing you can do when there’s a toddler at large amidst crafting paraphernalia is have a target finished artwork in mind. Because it won’t happen. And the urge to wail, ‘You’re not doing it right!’ can be overwhelming.
One time, I got out a whole host of fun crafty stuff to make some 3D sheep (think pipe cleaners, cotton wool, sparkly card, eve
n some googly eyes), and I was full of hope as my dining table morphed into the Art Attack desk. But, alas, in the end, Henry stuck the cotton wool on his fingers, the googly eyes to his chair and the pipe cleaners up his nose, leaving me to rustle up the fluffy cotton-wool sheep (which I then displayed in the kitchen with the byline ‘By Henry, aged 2’.
I was only lying to myself. (But, naturally, I’ll have to do the same for Jude’s ‘aged 2’ 3D-sheep creation this year; it’s only fair.)
Cars
* * *
‘I hate playing “cars”. Sigh. So I try to make it as interesting as possible for myself: “Look, the car is driving to the kitchen. Oh, it’s gone to the biscuit cupboard.”’
Dani, Southampton
* * *
This game is pretty basic. It’s also pretty dull. You get down on the floor and ‘drive’ a tiny toy car while following the path of the toddler’s tiny toy car. Sometimes, this will be a race. You will be required to make annoying engine noises.
The only hard-and-fast rule is: you get the shittier car. And the second only hard-and-fast rule is: you never win.
Henry recently decided to make this game slightly more interesting when, during his second week of preschool, I had to pick him up early after he swallowed a wheel from one of said tiny toy cars in its entirety (no, I don’t know if it ‘passed’, just in case you’re wondering). After debriefing him about the car-wheel-swallowing incident, I was at least comforted by the fact that he 100 per cent did not willingly put the car wheel anywhere near his mouth. Definitely not. ‘It flew in there, Mummy.’
Of course it did, my little Pinocchio.
I’ll be honest, it’s not just ‘games’ that prove interesting (do I mean that?) when you have a toddler at large. Hell no, that’s just the start! There is so much more to look forward to . . . Here are my top reasons why toddlers are, in fact, tossers:
They call your bluff
At the park, when you threaten to leave (‘Come on, it’s time to go. I’ll go without you – Bye, then!’), they shoot you a look which says ‘you do that’ and potter off back towards the slide. The little bastards. You then have to face the indignity of retracing your steps through the gate and resorting to the Lift and Drag technique. All while parents of well-behaved children pretend not to look.
They overhear what you say and repeat only the bad stuff
Ask them to copy your recitation of the alphabet, or the numbers from one to ten and they become selectively deaf. But accidentally let the swear guard down due to some cockwomble’s bad driving and you’ll be faced with ‘Fuck’s sake, man!’ as clear as a bell, for all to hear. Come on in, Social Services.
They lie down on the floor. In public
Usually prompted by the earlier disagreement in the park, this little trick means they always have one up on you because they don’t care what people think. They will go completely stiff and refuse to stand so you have to pick them up and carry them out of the post office by their coat hood. (Caution: some coat hoods are detachable. I discovered this when I tried to lift a screaming Henry off the floor outside a charity shop following an apocalyptic tantrum over my unwillingness to buy him a naked Barbie with a wonky fringe.)
They refuse to eat the food you give them
You offer them one last chance to start eating it properly before it goes in the bin.
They don’t want it.
It goes in the bin.
They do want it.
[Scratches eyes out with discarded breadstick]
They give away your lazy-parenting secrets
When asked, ‘What did you do today?’ they ignore any of the activities by which you actually tried to be a good parent (‘Have a break from CBeebies’), and instead reply, ‘Watched Gigglebiz,’ ‘Ate chips!’ or ‘Watched Gigglebiz eating chips!’
They poo at inconvenient times
Regardless of whether they are still in nappies or need your help to use the loo, they save any poo action for other people’s houses. Or a supermarket, where there is no customer loo.
They manipulate bribes like a hostage-taker
As I’ve already ’fessed up, many deals are agreed with my toddler on the sole basis that he will get a biscuit. ‘Never reward a tantrum,’ they say. Of course we all agree in principle. But after zero sleep, a stressful trip to the shops and a potentially explosive tantrum-bomb on the bus, I have been known to whisper, ‘Stop whingeing and you can have a biscuit.’
They cry because they are tired
But won’t nap. Enough said. (Helpful tip: always remember this is your fault.)
And after all of this, they look so cute when they are sleeping, or when they give you a cuddle, you forgive the bad bits and accept they will be the cause of headaches for the next twenty years.
Tossers they may be, but they are your tossers.
* * *
‘At my brother’s wedding someone at our table said, “Fuck it!” and our eighteen-month-old decided to repeat it. You can clearly hear us on the wedding video trying to stop him repeating, “Fuck it” by encouraging him to say something else.
‘“What does a cow say?”
‘“Fuck it!”
‘“What does a dog say?”
‘“Fuck it!”
Apparently, the farmyard wasn’t very motivated that day.’
Mark, West Sussex
* * *
Mum Rage
It’s not just the behaviour of my children that makes me angry. I think I am angrier generally since having kids. My fuse is shorter and I suffer from bouts of seeing red. Chats with other mums both in person and online has led me to conclude that I am not alone.
I usually recognise when I am in the throes of Mum Rage because I find my anger to be ridiculously disproportionate to the actual situation. The following are common causes:
Abuse of ‘Parent and Child’ parking spaces
We’ve all seen some bad-ass rule breaker casually swinging into one of these without a child or with a child aged sixteen. Yes, I’m glaring at you as I park in a normal bay. Not because I’m lazy but because, in a standard-width space, it is almost impossible not to scratch the Audi next to me as I heave the car seat out and the toddler exits wielding his lightsaber. Dick.
Short iPad battery life
The iPad, loaded with Angry Birds and/or Lego Juniors is quite often the only way I can get stuff done. Charging it for a morning is out of the question. ‘5 per cent battery remaining’ warns me that shit is about to get real. And by ‘real’, I mean my fifteen-minute childcare sabbatical to clean the loo and change sheets that have been on the bed for a fortnight (six weeks) will be over before it has even started.
Ignorant shoppers
I have a pram. So when you walk at 2mph in a gang four-friends-wide and then stop abruptly outside Urban Outfitters to look at crop tops, I will ram it into your ankles.
Other people’s children
Mainly at the park. God, the park. If my own child doesn’t share the play equipment, or he shouts, whinges and makes incessant screeching noises, it’s pretty annoying. When this behaviour is demonstrated by a child who doesn’t belong to me, it’s intolerable. I often find myself glaring angrily over the climbing frame at somebody else’s child with a look that says, ‘My son wants a turn. Stop hogging the slide by climbing up it. I don’t care that you are two’ (although I follow this with a Nod of Sympathy to the parent).
Husbands
Loo roll left balanced on the empty loo-roll holder. Sock balls (that have fallen out of the bottom of jeans) left on the bedroom floor. Empty cereal boxes and juice cartons left on the side for the recycling-box fairy. No.
Lack of consideration from child-free friends
Yes, I should still be able to function like a normal member of society. Yes, I’d still love to see you. But when you text me to ask if I fancy meeting in town in half an hour I can do nothing but a kind of combined laugh/cry where a bit of wee comes out. Half an hour? Jesus, with me having the ki
ds in tow, you’re lucky if I can get ready in half a day.
Opinions from strangers
This is actually not something I have ever got massively wound up about, but I have witnessed many angry mums spitting responses to those unhelpful pearls of wisdom offered by people unknown to them. (‘I know it sounds like she’s hungry, but she’s just been fed, actually,’ and ‘Yes, somebody is a bit cross. That’s why she’s screaming.’) It’s always an old person, too. Comedy gold.
Yummy Mummies
Actually, this isn’t Mum Rage at all. It’s jealousy, pure and simple. I’m jealous of mums who have the time, money and inclination for pedicures, eyebrow threading and a personal trainer. Mums who are never seen sporting yesterday’s outfit or deciding they can ‘get away with’ another day of dry shampoo. Mums who have purchased trendy clothes they have somehow managed to try on. Mums whose houses have interior-design schemes and seasonal home accessories. (Scatter cushions, you say? I have those: my children are always scattering our cushions.) Jealousy is ugly, I know. Haters gonna hate, and I’m a hater. I must shake it off. I am adding this to next year’s resolutions (which I won’t keep …).
The Sugar-coating of Social Media
Social media is a lie.
Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.
The end.
Just kidding. I’d best not leave it there (particularly as social media is the lifeblood of my blog, the blog which, incidentally, landed me this here book gig). I must stress, therefore, that there is a lot I love about social media and, sad as it may sound, I probably couldn’t function professionally without it. If I ever meet Mark Zuckerberg I’ll snog his face off.
The beef I have with social media is less about the social-media channels themselves and more about how we, as parents, choose to use social media. What we choose to share.
The Unmumsy Mum Page 13