Take a memo, Miss Mabel

I am really quite tired of chasing my two-year-old around the sofa like a 50's boss after his besweatered secretary. Though I imagine the 50's boss usually wasn't brandishing a onesie, except in particularly special professional relationships.

And then, when she's finally dressed, there's the huge thrice-daily hissyfit over socks, and shoes, and a coat. I miss summer. The other evening we went out to a school fundraiser at 5.30, which was a particularly challenging hour to leave the house. I ended up stuffing a shrieking toddler into her coat, wondering if I was the cruellest mother on the planet (she's teething, into the bargain), but five minutes later she was happily removing her footwear in the back seat and got through her ketchup with a side of fries and all the way to bedtime quite happily.

I am also tired of the thin-skinned four-and-a-half-year-old who can't be denied a cookie or told to wash his hands without bursting into hysterical tears and ear-piercing wails. Part of me wants to cut him some slack because I know it's a phase, and at least somewhat beyond his control. The other part of me thinks he's big enough to know better and needs to get with the program, stat.

This morning he had a breakdown because his sister was given a wet wipe before he was. She leaned over his sobbing form and said, as sweetly as pie, "I'm sorry, Monkey, I didn't know you wanted it. I was just blahblah blurble..." [descends into unintelligible babytalk and starts dancing around comically]. Even Monkey had to laugh. Before remembering himself and going back to the wailing.

It would be so nice if they weren't in these phases right now, when we have to take them home to Ireland for their annual fortnight of being paraded for due admiration by aged relatives (and non-aged ones, but it's more the judgement of the aged ones that I'm worried about). There's an outside chance, I suppose, that Mabel will be between molars right for those two weeks, but it's a lot more likely that she'll reaching the apex of misery with all four at once or something. And there's no way that Monkey will be over his four-and-a-half-ishness by then. It's unfortunate that his birthday falls in April so he's always right in the middle of the second-half-of-the-year retrograde phase when we go home for Christmas.

But still. Who doesn't love an adorable naked two-year old laughing maniacally as she runs around the house and dances on the tables? Only the most scroogey of Scrooges would deny us all such entertainment. Especially when they're not the one trying to get the clothes on her.