parenting

Insanity in a potty

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A cheeky Thursday throwback to the pottying years and the flagrant misuse of Cadbury’s chocolate buttons… 


“It’s been 3 months and the weeing on the floor hasn’t stopped. Neither has the occasional poo-poo on the carpet (why is it always on the carpet that they poo?? There’s a perfectly nice, wipe-cleanable wooden floor just over there!) We started off all eager and organised. Wall charts and coloured stickers for wee-wees, butterfly stickers for a poo-poo. But then they didn’t seem that bothered by the stickers and it cost me more energy trying to get them interested in the stickers than they were worth: they weren’t stopping them weeing themselves anyway. So we gave up on the stickers and just carried on with the positive encouragement. Well, most of the time. When your child jubilantly announces at the top of her voice “Wee wee!!” as she spreads her legs and sprays her wares everywhere and then gaily shouts out “Never mind!” when she’s done you start questioning whether you should at least show some sign of annoyance. The other day“… 

https://hoveringclosetoinsanity.com/2014/10/30/the-power-of-the-giant-chocolate-button/

(Poo)#hoveringclosetoapotty #butnotinit #onthewallsinstead #cavemanart #twins #hoveringclosetoinsanity #makementalhealthgreatagain

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Insane zoo trip

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The next time I suggest going to Whipsnade Zoo in sub-zero temperatures can someone hold up the ‘INSANE’ card please? Along with about 3 other people, we battled through horizontal sleet trying to catch a glimpse of a cheetah, tiger, elephant before taking a warm but very smelly respite in the hippo enclosure and then giving up on the outdoors, we tried to see every other animal from the confines of our very warm car. 

I was surprised to see that River Cottage now have a restaurant there, selling very tasty but poncy fare way flashier than is required by your average zoo punter (a group of three blokes came in, looked at the menu, laughed and left). For my part, I made good use of my newly decided thick winter coat keeping it zipped up so I looked like Kenny from South Park. I then devoured a delicious beetroot based River Cottage lunch only to find hours and several conversations with strangers later that a large proportion of my face was still stained bright purple. Thanks goes to husberk for neither noticing nor alerting me. 


As for the kids, they turned their noses up at the high class kids bread, houmous and veg sticks, deeming the rainbow carrots and other unusual root vegetables “not yummy”.#hoveringclosetoinsanity #makementalhealthgreatagain

Diary of a Mother trying to have a nice relaxing bath while Granny watches the children

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Mummy: I think i’ll have a nice relaxing bath
Frank: Sounds great! I’ll join you
Mummy: No Frank, you help Granny build a tower and when it’s really big I’ll come down and we can knock it down together
Frank: No, I’m pretty sold on the bath idea
Mummy: OK what about helping Granny with the washing – can you help find all your clothes and put them in the machine
Frank (red faced): WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA WANT MY MUMMY
Mummy: OK you can come into the bathroom with me but you can’t come into the bath, ok?
Frank: Great.

[Mummy and Frank enter bathroom]

Frank: Ok, you settle into the tub, I’ll just quietly play with my aeroplanes over here
Mummy (gets into lovely warm bubbly tub): Mmmmm…
Frank: NEEEOOWWWWWWMMMMMM [splosh!]
Mummy: Hmm
Frank: It smells nice in here Mummy
Mummy: Yes that’s my Elm Pure Organics bath salts
Frank: Nice but it could do with something a little extra. Tell you what, I’ll do a big poo in my pyjamas
Mummy (to self): OK I’m just going to ignore it for now and concentrate on relaxing

[Mummy takes deeps breath]

Mummy: OK that’s not going to work

[Mummy gets out of bath]
[Frank gets into bath. Mummy spends 20 minutes showering off poo from most of his body and pyjamas and then the shower curtain, shower, bath, bath toys and herself which somehow the poo has managed to ricochet onto]
[Mummy leaves the bathroom smelling pretty badly of poo]

Frank: That bath bit boring Mummy

Two Times Terrible Two

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It’s 4:30am and I am sitting between two identical cots stroking two non-identical backs making two non-identical noises. I am tired. Tired to the core. We are on the tail end of a tandem tantrum and my nerves are long since gone. The fact that I’m still here at all is only because I am so numb with fatigue that I can’t even be bothered to stand up and relocate back to bed. And besides the (god sent) lullaby star night light is actually quite soothing…

Soothing night light

The love of my life.

It has been a long day. One that I cannot believe I will have to repeat tomorrow. The current regular tantrum inducers are: trying to get them dressed, trying to get them undressed, putting them in the buggy, taking them out of the buggy, leaving the house, re-entering the house, putting them in their chairs for dinner time, not allowing them to make their own dinner, not allowing them to sit on a perilously high surface for dinner, bathtime, bedtime, and so it goes on… I find myself going through varying degrees of calm and collectedness (mixed with a lot of uncalm and disconnectedness), but I know that if I want to get through each fit of insanity quickly then the only thing that works is acknowledging their grief in a grown up, sensible, serious manner and then distracting them from it jovially. But who has the time and patience to do that 24 (x2) times a day? And so they cry on. And boy do they.

Nothing can prepare you for the pain of having two year old twins. I literally feel like someone has come round and injected fatigue into every joint…with an extra shot into each of my temples. When they are born you have this lovely image of ‘being totally sorted’ by this stage. “In a year or two they’ll

be playing with each other and you can put your feet up,” people said to me. At that point, phrases like that were the light at the end of the tunnel. Well that light has long since gone out. In fact it turns out it wasn’t a light at all but a firefly flying ever closer until it finally exploded like a fire cracker in my face. But will there be a light at the end of this tunnel or more exploding fire flies/crackers? Ah well, “things get much better when they turn 3,” someone sagely tells me. Well d’you know what? I know people with 3 year old twins and I’m yet to feel much hope when I visit them, I can tell you. So when is it then? 4? 5? 5000?? All I know is that if I concentrate on thinking “oh good god when will it get better??” then right now feels worse. So I’ll concentrate on the here and now. And the here and now is drifting off to sleep. And so am I. That night light is magic. In fact, fuck these two. Tonight that light is mine.

 

Guilty as charged

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Following on from the theme of perfection, or at least the action of striving for it, let’s talk about guilt. This is more for the parent types out there, but I’m sure it can be applied to others too, it’s just that I can no longer remember not being a mother. It seems like a wild, crazy, hedonistic dream I once had.

Ok, so do you find that you constantly feel guilty and therefore feel the need to justify yourself to others – even to your other half or your best friends – for those moments when you stray from the perfect parenting path? Do you even find yourself justifying yourself TO yourself? (I know. That’s a lot of yourselfs.) For example, today I’m feeling guilty for a nice healthy spectrum of things: the two and a half pieces of toast topped with lashings of nutella that I am gobbling just before bedtime, the fact that I didn’t take the kiddies out this afternoon, the fact that I resorted to letting them watch the television for an hour or more so that I could get on with sorting out a logo for this site (it didn’t come out quite as I’d hoped, so I’ve hurled it back into the design phase in disgust), and the fact that I let them have dummies outside of sleepy time (in fact, the fact that I let them have dummies at all, being that I promised myself that I’d ditch them as soon as they turned two).

So there’s some good solid guilt in that little selection, but there must be a bit more I can squeeze out of myself if I really tried. Well let’s have a think…[2 seconds pass]…Ok that’ll do it. Here is a list of my top ten guilty mummying actions:

1. Not breast feeding for ‘long enough’
2. Letting them watch the television for longer than 10 minutes a day
3. Allowing them to have a dummy
4. Getting a nanny for a couple of days a week to let me have some ‘me’ time even though I don’t have a (proper, paid) job
5. Sometimes giving them quick and easy meals that are just that little bit too salty and/or sugary
6. Buying a non essential cute toy
7. Buying a non essential cute outfit
8. Ditching bath time
9. Despite buying various non essential cute toys, feeling guilty that they don’t have the latest and greatest ‘best’ toy or book that is essential for their development (and which, as it happens, that baby over there has who is talking/walking/tap dancing/snow boarding better than my children)
10. Not being proactive enough in encouraging them to speak and wondering if that is why they are still generally only saying mama, dada, mamadada and now gaga (which instead of augmenting their vocabulary has generally replaced dada)

and one for good luck

11. Feeling like I must have done absolutely everything wrong because for some reason my children are the only ones who are clinging to me in terror and floods of tears in a room filled with otherwise quiet, happy children.

But why should we feel so guilty? Granted, if I was only ever eating nutella on toast, or feeding the kids back to back KFC, putting them in front of the box for nine hours a day with a dummy in their mouths and never ever venturing outside the house (other than to go to KFC of course) then I might have a case for poor parenting, but should I really feel like I have to justify myself for those little moments when I feel like I ‘let myself down?’

Well do you want to know what I think? Fuck it. That’s what I think. It’s as simple as that. Fuck the lot of it. I’m fine, the kids will be fine, they will talk, tap dance and snow board just as well as the next guy and my nutella tastes delicious.. I might just have to put in a few more skips tomorrow morning.

Not seeing your guilt-maker on the list? Do let me know – I do so love to share.