Giants

Mabel woke up last night at 2.30 and wanted to go downstairs and get a doll. I knew this was a ploy, because I'm astute that way even in the small hours of the morning, and also because she'd mentioned earlier that she was scared of giants and that her dollhouse looked like one.

Monkey, sensitive soul that he is, had gone a few bouts with bad dreams and night fears by this age, so while I had been happy that Mabel so far seemed immune, I hadn't counted my chickens. I think it's a maturity thing, really, to start distinguishing fact from fiction and have an imagination wide enough to encompass things you didn't even want to imagine. It's not surprising when they spend half the day in imaginary play - and you only have to give Mabel any two items - forks, crayons, shoes - to find her turning them into a mother and baby and voicing their dialogue -  that when they go to bed it's sometimes hard to turn it off.

I could sort of see what she meant about the dollhouse: it's a simple wooden one with a pitched roof, and the big windows on either side look, in the half-light, like huge eyes in a big head. I moved it downstairs today. But last night I just took her to our bedroom rather than try to convince her that the giants only wanted ice-cream and would happily take directions to Target and go away again. There, she finally nursed back to sleep and took up most of B's side of the bed. Sorry, honey.

This morning I'd sort of forgotten about the night's shenanigans, and I sent Mabel off to play with friends while I helped get the nursery school ready for tomorrow's meet-your-teacher sessions; because I am, as we must remember, the housekeeping chair this year. So far I've mostly shown up, but I'm not sure I've been of much practical use beyond reminding the other parents to sign in. I suppose I do know a little better than the new parents where a few things are kept, but so far mostly I've shown a startling lack of initiative.

Mabel headed off to the giant sandbox (aka volleyball court) happily enough in the caravan of laden strollers, strewing goldfish crackers as they went, but a mere hour later I had a call to say that she was very sad and perhaps should come back to me. As I brought her back inside I asked, "Did you have fun with your friends?"
"I don't like my friends." A wail of despair.
"Oh. That's a pity, since they're all going to be in your class next week."

I think it was just the fatigue talking. I took her home early and she was napping by 12.45. Another hour or so on the sofa (she watched Mr Rogers, I read my book, she nursed; we were both content) and she was back to her usual happy self, excited about going to nursery school and all the snacks she might eat there.

Then again, it's possible that she too has a few start-of-school nerves that are manifesting themselves one way or another. When Mabel was on the way, Monkey had dreams about giants too. My children, with their literal metaphors.

From the coalface

This is what I wrote last night. Then I turned off the laptop, with its modicum of remaining battery life, blew out the candle, and was about to go to bed when the lights came back on. There was much rejoicing and also some logging into Facebook.

********************

I write to you by candlelight, such is my dedication to blogging. Candlelight and the light of my laptop, that is, which has 46% of its power left, so I’d better get on with it.

Hurricane Irene swept through last night, starting with gentle rain around midday and working up to a full-blown (heh) tropical storm by midnight. Our power went out at 6.30pm, and came back around two hours later, leaving us congratulating ourselves on our easy storm experience. I’d bowed to Facebook peer pressure and decided to put us all to bed on the family-room floor, rather than upstairs where a falling tree might come through the roof onto isolated individuals. That left me looking at Monkey, asleep directly under a large ceiling fan, and wondering what would happen if the tree crashed through the roof right here or a projectile hurtled through the window beside him instead. But there just wasn’t room for us in the basement, what with all the crap we have taking up vital floorspace down there.

Anyway, the kids thought it was a great adventure to bring down the mattresses, and they – amazingly – went to sleep quite quickly before the daylight had entirely gone. Leaving B and me to happily update our profiles and drink coffee when the power came back on.

Several hours later I was busy obsessing over the ceiling fan while lying on the spare-room mattress a few yards along and waiting for Mabel - who occupied the spot in between - to wake up. I had set my phone to receive severe-weather updates for our area from The Weather Channel because the other thing I was obsessing about was tornadoes, and I wanted to know if there was a tornado watch, even though then I’d have to decide whether it was worth waking everyone to move them downstairs to the basement where there was no room, just because conditions were favourable to a tornado, or whether I would wait for an actual tornado warning, when a funnel cloud had been already sighted, before making that upheaval. Thus taking the risk that swirling our house into the firmament would be exactly where it was first sighted.

I made sure my phone was on vibrate. Then I spent the next five hours or so checking my phone every time it vibrated to tell me that there was a flood watch, a flash flood warning, or a tropical storm going on, but never a tornado. I’m happy about that – don’t get me wrong – but I wish there had been a Tornado Only setting. Then I might have got more than four hours sleep before the kids woke at their usual time of 6am, by which time the electricity had been out for about two hours.

It’s 9.30pm and it hasn’t come back yet.

Apart from that we had no damage. There were a lot of leaves on the lawn this morning, and a tree fell sideways from two houses down into the back garden of our next-door neighbour, but apart from the power, everything’s dandy.

It was funny how, once we lost electricity, it seemed surprising that even the tiniest thing could actually be accomplished. I was a little amazed this morning to find I could, in fact, brush my teeth. It was also (sadly) perfectly possible to sweep the bathroom floor and clean the shower without electricity. But mostly, B and I both got stuck into good books to replace our usual web-surfing habits for the day. This was bad for our parenting, because it made us both even more prone than usual to wait for the other one to address the screaming/yelling/pumelling/indoor bike-riding that may have been going on, rather than just doing it ourselves.

Anyway. The problem now is that we find ourselves totally unprepared for a long-drawn-out power cut. B went to Target for batteries, it’s true, but it was only when the light was dying that it turned out we didn’t know where any of the flashlights/torches were. We’re now – right now, I mean - operating with two bike lights and a tiny ornamental lantern that I’ve had for about ten years and never used before.

This is because, I have decided, Irish people – please allow me to generalise wildly here – don’t go camping. The weather’s too bad in Ireland, and there’s a lack of wilderness to get out into because the country’s just too small for that sort of thing. So while here in the US camping is a perfectly acceptable hobby, something people can take off and do for a weekend at the drop of a tent pole, Irish people mostly limit themselves to Posh Camping in France. This is the sort of camping where you just drive there, and then wheel your suitcases into a fully equipped, already erected, family-size tent, caravan (trailer), or mobile home on a campsite near the beach and mostly populated by other Irish families and nice Dutch people with perfect English. You have a selection of on-campsite and local restaurants, a little shop that sells baguettes and sunscreen a short walk away, and lots of cheap wine to bring home and see you through the Irish winter. It’s not what you’d call hardship camping. The most difficult part will be when you have to lift up your suitcase because the weels got stuck in the grass.

I did, once, spend two nights in a tiny two-person tent in Yosemite with my best friend. I spent most of the time wide awake worrying about bears. Have you read Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods? Where he sits up all night armed with a toenail clippers to defend himself from marauding bears on the Appalachain Trail? It was like that, except I didn’t even have the toenail clippers. But even then, we didn’t need stuff, because we were in a campsite with a pizza restaurant, and we were 20, and it was only for a weekend.

So by the time you read this I’ll presumably have power again and all this unmitigated darkness and lack of Internet connection will be but a hazy memory. I just hope I remember it for long enough to go to REI and invest in some sort of camping lantern for the next time.

Calm before storm

I'm very bad at American weather. I'm very bad at extreme weather in general, I suppose; it just happens that America tends to be where I experience this sort of thing. Ireland is one of those nice calm places where we don't get earthquakes, we don't get hurricanes or tornadoes (unless the hurricane is the tail end of one that made its way all the way across the Atlantic like Hurricane Charley in 1986), we are hardly ever snowed in (except last year and the year before; I blame global warming) and where I lived, on a hill, we never flooded either. Also, we have no active or dormant volcanoes. It's a nice place to live.

And now, here in Maryland, after the - traumatic, devastating - earthquake, we have a hurricane on the way. We don't live close to the coast, we don't live in a floodplain, the trees behind our house shouldn't fall down; but our power will probably go out, because all our powerlines are above ground and the power goes out at the drop of a weatherman's hat. The electricity company has already called us to tell us to prepare for outages.

My husband has gone to Target to stock up on a few things. I imagine he's currently beating off the hordes of other frantic Marylanders to get to the shelves that by now are depeleted of everything but reject crayons and incoming Halloween baskets.  No, on second thoughts, I don't believe anyone here is panicking. I'd be surprised if Target today was anything other than the cornucopia of stuff you didn't think you needed but actually you do that it always is. He will buy batteries for our flashlights/torches, and more bread for Monkey's ubiquitous sandwiches (I'm already stocked up on peanut butter, so that's him sorted) and some bananas and pita chips. I have tins of beans, but unless we're actually starving, I don't really imagine us eating cold beans straight from the can.  Even if starving, my children probably wouldn't.

You know the way, after any natural disaster, you see the people on the news picking through the remains of their houses or gazing sadly at their destroyed property, and your brain can't really encompass that possibility, so you tell yourself that these people are different people, not like you - they're foreign, or poor, or used to things like this happening... but before this thing happened that put them on the news report, really they probably were just like you, even if they were also foreign or poor or had experienced hardships before.

I'm not saying that on Sunday morning you'll find me sadly picking up shards of my laptop on national tv, gazing into the foliage at my wedding photos scattered among the greenery, fishing out a sodden shoe whose partner is somewhere in Virginia... that's highly unlikely, if not completely impossible.

But for all those people, I wonder if it starts out a bit like this, with the denial and the half-assed preparations. I wonder if I'll ever get better at extreme weather, or if it takes an actual fully formed disaster to make anyone sit up and pay attention.

Baby pictures

Baby In Hat has a new car seat.

Baby In Bathtub has a new hat.

 

Baby In T-Shirt may have been naughty. Or maybe it's just one of those fancy European standing-up baby baths.

Baby In Jeans is trying to escape. Baby Elmo is trying to stop her. Baby In Hat is frankly a little freaked out by it all. Baby With Headband is leading us all in a woo-hoo. I don't think a nap is on the cards for any of these babies.

Life: Like a box of chocolates

And then there was an earthquake, of all things.

Here I sat, rabbitting on about school and tears and expectations and feelings and yada yada blah and suddenly I thought "That's funny." It was as if someone heavy with a long stride was walking along the upstairs hallway, making the floorboards vibrate. Then there was more and I thought "Hmm. Is she awake?" Was Mabel jumping on her bed instead of napping? I headed upstairs to find out.

As I entered her room and saw her lying still asleep, my brain caught up with the facts and I realised it was probably an earthquake. An earthquake on this side of the US is about as likely as one in Ireland, but I've been in an earthquake before (a 4.2 while staying in a house on top of the Hayward Fault on, like, our second night in San Francisco in 1994; probably the same day we watched the live TV news showing an actor I'd never heard of called OJ Simpson being chased down the highway by a lot of police cars) - so I'm a pro, you know. I ran back downstairs with my dozy baby in my arms, frantically wondering what I was meant to do. Hide under the stairs, right? No, in a doorway. No, wait... oh, it's over.

So that was that. I pretty much regretted waking her up because it hampered my Facebooking for the next half hour, when the Internet was buzzing with people all telling each other the same thing.

It's not really that it puts things in perspective, because nothing terrible happened. It's just that you really do never know what's going to happen next. An unexpected day off school is just what Monkey needed to get him recovered from the stresses of the last two and to set him up well for the next two.  But an earthquake day just when I wanted it (they're off today while the county inspects the school to make sure it won't fall on their heads) was pretty much the last thing anyone could have predicted.

 I like it.

Firmly rooted in our era

B: Oh, well I guess it would be nice

Me: If I could touch your body

Us: I know not everybody

Mabel: I don't like that song.

Us: Has got a body like yours.

Monkey: I don't like that song too.

Us: But I've gotta think twice

Mabel: Stop singing!

Us: Before I give my heart away

Mabel: Stop, I don't like it.

Us: And I know all the games you play

Mabel: Cut! Cut!

Us: Because I play them too. Well I need some time off

Mabel: Stop! Stop!

Us: From that emotion
I need to pick my heart up off the floor
When your love comes down without devotion
Well it takes a strong man, baby
But I'm showing you the door
Because I gotta have faith
I gotta have faith
I gotta have faith, faith, faith
I gotta have faith, faith, faith.

Mabel: Sing it again, Daddy.

History repeating

September 2008: Monkey's first day of nursery school
Monkey enters the room, excited, and plays with stuff until I say I have to go now. He turns limpet and clings to me. I peel him off, sobbing. (He's sobbing. I'm only having my heart torn out.) I run away and linger in the hallway until I can peek in the window and make sure he's stopped crying.
I pick him up two hours later. He runs to me in the playground and bursts into heaving sobs.

August 2011, today: Monkey's first day of elementary school
Monkey enters the room, meets his new new teacher (lovely), happily finds his seat, his cubby, some crayons, and explains to another parent that the Man with the Yellow Hat is a bit wrong because Curious George is some type of ape rather than a monkey. I beam with pride. Then I try to leave, whereupon he gets upset and turns limpet. I peel him off, run for the door, and close it behind me. The woman who comes out after me says he's under the table. I figure he'll stay there for as long as it takes him to compose himself, because he hates people to see him crying.
I pick him up six! whole! hours! later. He runs to me outside the school door and bursts into tears. I hold him and tell him he did great, that the day is over and he did it and tomorrow will be better, and he's just overwhelmed.
"What's that word you said, Mummy?"
"Overwhelmed. I mean, you just have a lot of feelings going on."

August 2024, how's that for terrifying: Monkey starts college
I hope he's got the crying down to a minute or so at either end. And I don't think he'll fit under the table any more.

Procrastinatio... ah, I'll finish that word later

I wonder when my credit card statements will file themselves? They're mostly on the shelf beside where my laptop lives, and every now and then I look at them and muse on when they'll shuffle themselves off to the filing cabinet in the basement where they're supposed to be. I'm sure it'll happen sooner or later.

It's always easier, I find, to leave the house and go and do something new, than to stay at home and do something boring and old. I think that's why we're such a nation of consumers - a world of consumers, really: it's so much nicer to go into a shop and find something shiny and new and pay for it and bring it home and use it than to go rooting around in a box or a suitcase or on a shelf you can't reach or wherever you might have put it to find that item you already own which would work just as well in this circumstance. 

And it's definitely nicer to go out and get something new than to stay in and clean the house, or put away your credit-card statements, or make the doctor's appointment that's been hanging over your head for just a few months now, or any of the other things I've been avoiding doing.

It's also much easier to contemplate that misty time in the future when you will have the impetus and the energy and the peace and quiet to do such things while you sit down and surf the web or read a book or blog (even), than to just take advantage of these exact five minutes of peace that you have right now to go and do it straight away. Because then it would be done and you'd have to move something else to the top of your procrastination list, and that would just be a new thing to feel vaguely stressed over, so why not just leave things as they are, when everyone's perfectly satisfied with the status quo?

Get along, little credit-card statements. You can do it. I'm just going to sit here for another minute...

Troublemaker, part II

So. I wrote that, and I thought, "I wonder how it will end." Stories finish, they get wrapped up neatly, and even in real life things like this come to some sort of conclusion, and it's funny to know you're in the middle of one and have no inkling how long it will go on for and what the outcome will be.

I woke up this morning and wondered whether it had all been a massive overreaction and if I should just leave well enough alone and let Monkey fend for himself with his new teacher. If he'd get used to her, and she wouldn't be so bad, and that I really shouldn't be so judgemental. And then I remembered how we'd both felt yesterday, and I knew that phrases like "I have to advocate for my child" had to remain in my vocabulary, and that even if he gritted his teeth and bore it, I didn't want his year to go this way. I want him to have a good year, a great year, to have fun and love school and have a lovely teacher who inspires him to learn and put all his massive amounts of curiosity and energy to good use. The teacher we met yesterday was so far from the idea you might have of a kindergarden teacher that it wasn't even funny.

I felt insulted, really, by the school that seemed to think this was okay, that maybe it was because we didn't know anyone in the school, or hadn't pulled any strings or known the right code words to use to request a good teacher; because we're immigrants, even - that they thought they could just brush my kid under the carpet with a classful of other nice, non-complaining types and a substandard teacher.

The school office was closed today so I couldn't call them, but at about 8.30 while B was still at home to watch the kids, I snuck off and drove up the road to see how the land lay. I thought maybe I could snatch a quick word with the principal. I wasn't sure I'd even be able to get in the doors, and I drew the line at banging on windows. That wasn't really the impression I wanted to give.

As luck would have it, I arrived at the doors, glasses steaming up in the bizarrely misty early morning that precedes another hot day, at the same time as a sixth-grade teacher whose name I already knew. She ascertained that the principal wasn't yet in, and gave me some helpful advice, suggesting that I follow up with an e-mail asking for an appointment to discuss things. She almost single-handedly restored my faith in the school then and there, just because she was so darned nice.

So I sent my e-mail, included two phone numbers, and took the kids out for the morning. I asked Monkey how he was feeling about school, and when he said he was feeling a bit better about it and thought he'd be able to give his teacher a chance, I was so proud. He's far less judgemental than I am. But this wasn't about how he feels: it's about what sort of teacher I think he needs. If I had merely been afraid he'd be upset for three weeks because he was shy of the teacher, I woudn't have started this campaign. My tactic was to be a thorn in the side of the principal for as long as it took to have my voice heard and my opinions taken seriously. An ever-polite and diplomatic thorn, of course.

By the time we got home Mabel had missed her nap, and I decided it was too late to do anything but forge ahead with the afternoon, being extra conciliatory to her whims to make it through the rest of the day and get to the hallowed early bedtime that should, by rights, await. If that meant letting her watch the dreaded Baby Songs DVD, well, so be it. The phone rang, and I hoped it might be the principal.

Better than that: it was a friend calling to let me know, via the grapevine, that the teacher in question has been let go. On Monday morning Monkey's class will have a "very capable" substitute, and a new teacher will be hired. I knew at least one other parent had complained, but it seems we weren't alone. What it seems may have happened is that the county took the opportunity while our school was without a principal for most of the summer (the present incumbent has just taken up the job, which was part of my difficulty because nobody could really tell me how best to approach her) - the county took their chance to perhaps offload a few teachers who were hard to place, let's say, on our poor undefended school. It's even possible that the principal hadn't actually met the teacher before yesterday - the latter arrived late to orientation.

Whatever the reason, I'm impressed and delighted by the school's swift and decisive action. I don't even have to feel guilty about the other children who would inevitably have been left behind or even switched into the class if we had managed to move Monkey out. (B feels sorry for the teacher, but he's a soft touch. I don't deserve him.)

Once I had called the school to confirm the news, I told Monkey. He was quietly happy, but I think he was even more happy to hear that I had been trying to switch him out of the class because I didn't think the teacher was right for him. I do want him to know I'll always advocate for him (yes, I said it), but at the same time he has to understand that parents can't always just swoop down and fix things when life gets a bit tough. Sometimes you do have to just deal with it.

Just not yet, not like that, not being stuck with a bad teacher for the whole year. That's something I had to try to fix.

So there you have it. The story wrapped up in one day, and a happy ending to boot.

 

Boom, baby

Troublemaker

I wasn't worried about entering the public school system, once the shock of being the mother of a five-year-old wore off, back in April. We live in a pretty good school district - not one of those scary high-acheiving ones, but one that's okay, fine, definitely among the top for the county we live in (not the richest, let's just say). I was confident that the school was nice and Monkey would settle in pretty well to his new class. It's only elementary school, for goodness sake.

I'm not one of those parents who makes a fuss. I don't expect special treatment. While Monkey is a wonderful, smart, amazing child, I'm under no illusions that he's anything other than pretty much standard in the classroom, at least in the ways they notice at this age.

But now I am one of those parents, because we met his new teacher, and I was not impressed. I had assumed kindergarden teachers were more or less the same all over: mostly nice middle-aged ladies; if you were lucky, an enthusiastic young teacher fresh from college. His school has four kindergarten classrooms: three with perfectly normal teachers, and one, the one they hadn't been able to budget for - even though this happens every year - with a teacher who looks like they rolled her out of the ark and dusted her down. Frankly, she's scary. Monkey thinks so, and I had a hard time mustering the courage to look as if I didn't.

We were not late enrollees. Monkey has been registered for school since May. (I know this sounds late to my Irish readers, who had to put their children's names down for school while still in embryonic form, but here you can't enroll them till the spring before.) None of his nursery-school friends are in this class, even though they're allegedly divided up according to ability, and he's neither streets beyond nor behind the others who were in his class. It just looks like we drew the short straw and got chucked in with the rejects, and Miss Havisham.

And I'm sorry: I know someone has to be in her class, and maybe for some it would be preferable to having 30 in a class, but frankly I'd prefer Monkey to be with a young, vigorous, exciting teacher in a huge class than with the teacher we've been assigned. So would Monkey, who was doing just fine until she appeared, and then regressed to mute-limpet-hiding-behind-my-legs state, and now claims he's not going to kindergarten on Monday.

I hate confrontation, and I couldn't do anything straight away, though in hindsight perhaps I should have, but I had both Monkey and Mabel (who had woken up with a streaming cold; oh joy) hanging out of me and whining about hunger and despite the vitally helpful presence of B, I was pretty much stuck with leaving straight away. Also, I didn't want Monkey to know that I was trying to request a change, in case it didn't pan out.

We came home, I dithered and stressed for an hour and a half, and got some good advice from friends online, and finally put Mabel down for her nap. Then I bribed Monkey with ice cream to let me make a phone call in peace outside on the deck. After three calls, all of Mabel's nap, and no luck speaking to the principal, I was told to write her a letter. Well, I thought: probably not going to change things before Monday; on the other hand, I'm good at writing things.

So I wrote a letter with still-shaking fingers, used spellcheck to discover I've been spelling kindergarten wrong all this time, and delivered it in person to the school office. I don't know what will happen now, but apparently school isn't as easy as I thought it was going to be. Just in case, we'll be talking a lot this weekend about appearances being deceptive and giving things a second chance.

Solitary feline

All summer, I've had nothing to do and nobody to do it with (go on, break out the tiny violins), and have been entertaining my children with little more than my ingenuity and a dwindling supply of bribes - and this morning, when I already have plans for the day, not one but two people ring me up and ask me to do stuff with them. It's ever thus, I suppose.

I'm not really a social butterfly. I'm not the girl in the middle of the gang, chattering excitedly and confidently to her circle of friends. I've always been more of a girl on the edges, and sometimes a cat who walks by herself - and I've made peace with that.

In junior school I had a best friend or two. In secondary school I had a best friend and then I didn't, and then I had some fellow Social Reject Friends who liked me just fine, and some Walking Home With Friends, who didn't seem to like me much, but they let me hang around with them and sometimes even invited me to do stuff. I may have been pathetically grateful. I remember at least one occassion when I got all dressed up to go out because someone had said something about doing something on Friday night, but then nobody rang me. That was sad. I don't know whether I rang anyone to find out what was happening. I don't think I was up to such an assertive move back then.

In college, I started to make some real friends - people I liked and who liked me, who would actually wait for me after lectures or look out for me at lunchtime. But I always had a book to read (the joys of studying English), and if necessary I could pretend I didn't want to be chatting and laughing and having fun. I was bookworm-girl on Tuesdays and Thursdays when my friends' lunch breaks didn't coincide with mine, or they had other things to do.

But I also started learning about faking it till you make it, and how other people who might look to me as if they were right in the middle of the circle still felt like they were only on the edges too. I started to understand that friendships wax and wane and you don't have to swear undying fealty to one another and meet each other for every single lunchtime - you could be friends with people and still only see them now and then. In fact, sometimes those were the best sort of friends - the ones who didn't demand constant attention, but were happy to pick up where you'd left off whenever the last time was, without a barrage of accusations about how you like that girl in your Postcolonial Literature seminar better than them. Friends are not boyfriends. (I got one or two of those too. That helped matters significantly, I must admit.)

So now here I am, faking it and making it on a daily basis, and keeping us occupied, and sometimes meeting friends and sometimes just being on our own. It's different now, because we're three cats who may or may not walk by ourselves: Monkey and Mabel and I, and we're thrown together sometimes too much, and then we yowl and scratch at each other a little bit, but we rub along pretty well.

But I hope I'm not making my children less sociable than they would be if they had a mother who was constantly surrounded by others. I think Monkey, so far, is pretty oblivious to who hangs out with whom in his little circle, and whether or not he's included: it may be a boy thing, or just a personality thing; or maybe I'm wrong and he's all twisted up about it inside, but I don't think so. Mabel seems like she'll be a leader, not a follower, so maybe she'll be the one in the middle in a few years' time - or maybe she'll be the one out in front, not caring who's coming behind her.  Maybe she'll be like some four-year-old girls I've observed who are have already discovered the heady power of bestowing and witholding friendships in the playground, but I hope not.

(One way or another, they'll get to the teen years and There Will Be Angst, but if there's one thing I would say to a teenager to help them through that slough of self-consciousness, it's that nobody else cares nearly as much as you think they do about what you're doing and how you look, because they're all far too busy worrying about themselves.)

And next week, Mabel and I will be cats walking by ourselves, together, sometimes with friends; and Monkey will be making his own way and making new friends and showing people his new shoes and hopefully not worrying too much about what they're thinking about him. Long may his obliviousness last.

End times

I could probably get all emotional about Monkey's impending entry to kindergarden and thus Real School, if I decided to, but for now I'm okay with it.

"Okay", actually, is how Monkey would describe his own feelings about starting school next Monday (with orientation this Thursday), if you had asked him. He says he's not nervous or worried, though he was a bit earlier in the year when all the members of his nursery-school class seemed to think that kindergarden was a maybe-friendly, maybe-not leopard waiting in the undergrowth to spring out on them at any moment. In preparing the four-to-five-year-olds for things like raising their hand to ask a question, or doing homework (they had a homework week - it was so cute), I think perhaps the teachers didn't stress enough exactly when the big K was going to happen, with the result that Monkey wasn't the only one thinking in February or so that maybe it would be tomorrow, or then after Spring Break, or then as soon as nursery school ended in June.

As soon as I realised what was going on, I steered him up to my big wall calendar and showed him just how many pages needed to be flipped over before we would get to Big-School Time, and all the things that had to happen first. That reassured him. Since then he's been making peace with the idea of being a kindergardener, moving slowly from worried to mildly anxious to pretty much okay.

And in the past couple of days, I've seen something I can only describe as actual excitement in his eyes when he's asked me again how far off the first day of school is. Yesterday morning, inspired by that certain feeling of last-weekiness, I decided that the laundry didn't look much like fun, and we took a hastily conceived trip to the outlet mall instead, to get them new shoes. (Children's clothes and shoes are tax free in Maryland this week. So I sort of had to.) One light-up pair of Star Wars shoes, some new socks and a new t-shirt later, and Monkey is now really quite enthused about school. What's more, he's not wearing his snowboots any more.

And all it cost me was, well, some amount of money, and a chocolate milk in Starbucks, and a portion of my limited reserves of patience, as I sent longing glances in the direction of the Loft and Banana Republic outlets, so cruelly denied to me by my horrible offspring and their need for fripperies like food and sleep.

And now I have a few more notions of things to do with my scant few free hours a week after Labor Day when they're both in school, most of which have more to do with spending money than earning it.

Supplies

I just spent my precious cup-of-tea-and-Internet time labelling 48 crayons, 24 no. 2 pencils, 8 markers, 8 glue-sticks, and two pairs of safety scissors with my son's name.

This part of preparation for kindergarden is new to me. I hope I've done it right.

In Ireland, we got, as I assume students still do, a list of books to be bought at the start of the year. Everyone had their own pencil case with a couple of pencils, an eraser (or ten, depending on whether there was at the time a craze for scented erasers - or smelly rubbers, as we call them, no doubt to the amusement of my American readers), a pencil sharpener (again, something Americans don't need - classrooms have those terrifying electric ones that look like they're just waiting to eat a finger), and a ruler. We also had our own copybooks (soft-covered exercise books, or composition books, I suppose you'd call them).

Over here, the books are provided by the school, but the children bring in not only all the pencils, crayons, and markers they might need during the year, but also extras like boxes of tissues and ziploc bags and copy paper, for general school use. I suppose it comes to the same thing, but it's just the first of many ways, I'm sure, in which school here is all new territory to me. I asked the Internet how I should label the supplies. Google told me to use a Sharpie marker and labels, and to mark each item - every last pencil and crayon. I used a ballpoint pen and I cut my big sticky labels up into as many pieces as I could fit his name onto. I hope that's okay.

I used to get a new pencil case from Santa in my stocking every year. I didn't mind starting the new year in September with last year's ratty and doodled-on pencil case, because I knew that in January I'd come back from the holidays with a lovely clean one. But it's the memory of my copybook covers that is really what made me want to get this vital introductory step right for Monkey.

Many people's parents would lovingly cover their schoolbooks, and even their copybooks, with brown paper, in an effort to keep them cleaner and make them hang together a bit longer during the long terms of being slung in and out of a schoolbag on a daily basis. As I grew older, the really lucky kids had their books covered with clear sticky plastic, making them extra durable and also attractive, because you could still see the original, like-new, cover. Brown paper, though, was classic, and clean, and would never get you into trouble. My best friend's books were covered with brown paper. My books were not.

Most years, my books paraded a colourful and sometimes seasonal selection of used wrapping paper, with tiny tags of old sticky tape left here and there to betray an earlier, more temporary, vocation. I was probably not the only child in recession-hit 1980s Ireland whose parents had thought of this. One year, however, and maybe things were especially tight that particular August - though I have a feeling it was just my parents' habitual frugality - I distinctly remember going to school with all my copybooks covered in the sort of waxy paper that came around loaves of bread. Johnston Mooney and O'Brien Wholemeal, to be exact: still the bread of choice in my house. The wrapper has changed now, but the particular pattern of beige and white with big, unmistakeable logos, that graced all twenty or so of my copies that term is seared by the flames of mortification onto the little grey cells of my memory.

I also seem to remember having flock wallpaper on some of my books that year - some sort of raised paisley pattern in cream. Sturdy and hardwearing protection for the rough-and-tumble life of a history textbook - and very tasteful, in the 70's, whence no doubt it came.

That must have been the nadir in terms of book coverings, and the following year I demanded that for my entry to secondary school there must be no  more of this recycled nonsense. I took my father to the homewares store and pointed to the clear plastic stuff that would show I too was a person of taste and discernment. I was, no doubt, the envy of all. At least I knew there was one fewer thing to set me apart from the crowd, and when you're 12 in a new school, that's all that matters.

So, with all that still fresh in my mind, I hope that I got Monkey's labelling right first time.

Opportunism

Mabel is totally kicking my ass on bedtime lately. For the past two nights she's been awake till ten or close to it, coming back downstairs for a drink, or a snack, or another toy, or to tell Daddy something that can't wait till morning. Often when she's not too tired, I can leave her to play in her room until she's ready to sleep, when she calls me to go back and nurse her down. Not so much these nights. She wants to be in the company of parents, preferably right on our laps typing her name on our keyboards, until the cows come home. (When the cows might finally come home is anyone's guess. These are not well-bred cows coming in to be milked at 6.30. These are feral cows, nocturnal cows, off rootling in the forest and discoursing at length till the early hours. They are probably cows who enjoy knocking back hard liquor and playing poker.)

Monkey did ask me this morning, when I was discussing Mabel's night, if I thought she might be nocturnal. Oh, those five-year-olds and the things they learn from the TV.

Did I tell you about the time on the aeroplane when, as I settled Mabel into her straps, she asked me "Mummy, why do orang-utans have 'pposable fumbs?" I wanted to turn to the admiring audience of fellow travellers and announce, "Ladies and gentlemen, my two-year-old!" but alas, nobody had heard her.

I digress. Lack of sleep will do that to you.

Anyway. Last night, to give myself a break for five minutes, I told Mabel that this time Daddy was taking her back upstairs. Then I listened to the baby monitor as a most entertaining dialogue took place upstairs...

Mabel (clearly stalling, telling Daddy something hilarious at the top of her voice): That doesn't make sense!
B (seeing an opening and going for it): Mabel, can you say "Chewbacca is a Wookiee"?*
Mabel: Toobacka is a wookiee? That doesn't make sense!
Me, downstairs: [Suitably amused.]

Then, tiring of his trifling games, she sent him back down to get me again.

*This, in case you're confused, is a piece of South Park dialogue that has somehow made it to meme status among nerds (and lovely people like my husband, too). The Wikipedia link there explains it much better than I can. (I may be using the word "meme" wrongly there. I'm sure I'll be told about it soon enough.)

Salt-n-Pepa

Even though I've been gone eight years, I still scan the front page of The Irish Times online every day, just to get a sense of what's going on, and what the news looks like from Outside. (To be honest, sometimes it's the only place I look at the news.) And even though yesterday I swore off advice columns, I do sometimes find myself clicking through to read John Sharry's parenting wisdom, if only to see What People Are Doing At Home.

(Unrelated, but I have to say there's an awful lot of soccer, GAA, and golf news making it to the front page. Shouldn't that stuff be kept where it belongs, on the sports pages, for people who care. Why are you trying to make me care about hurling, even if it is the national sport?)

So this column caught my eye recently. To do away with the suspense and get to my point (get to my point? why would I do that?), in it the mother of a nine-year-old says that recently her daughter asked her where babies come from, and the mother uncomfortably changed the subject.

What? What? And again, I say, what? Where did they get this "reader"? She can't be that much older than me, and yet she sounds like someone of my mother's generation, not mine. Did they invent her, and stretch the realistic age of the questioning child as far out as they could for some unfathomable reason? Are there really, seriously, parents out there in 2011 who haven't said a word to their kid about sex in a life that has spanned almost a decade, and who still aren't sure whether they should?

(Sorry, Monkey would like you all to know that the Baby Bullet now comes with a steamer that doubles as a steam sterilizer. Isn't that amazing? Don't I need one? Isn't advertising great?)

I know not all children are as questioning as Monkey. I wasn't - I had a sixth sense for potentially cringe-inducing subjects, and steered clear as much as I could. But even I remember subtly prodding my parents, almost against my better judgement, for information I half-wished, half-dreaded hearing directly from them. It would have been better than ignorance, or vague inaccuracies gleaned in the playground. How can we expect our children to have morals, values, and the like, if we don't give them first the correct information, and then our own take on how to behave? By osmosis?

I suppose in the olden days, parents relied on Religion to promulgate this information, in its obfuscatory and guilt-fuelled way. And let's not dwell on how well that worked out in my home country, among others. I think/hope we all know now that it's up to us to teach our children about sex in a timely manner, as soon as they ask and (especially, maybe) even if they don't. And to make it not so much teaching as talking, explaining, chatting, and making it a topic of conversation that is definitely not taboo.

Doin' it rong, cos I don't like right

I read advice columns sometimes, but sometimes I should really know to leave well enough alone and stop at the title. This morning I made the mistake of reading this one, and it's possible I took it a mite too personally.

Amy is a favourite blogger of mine, and has three boys: Noah is a few months older than my Monkey, Ezra is just a month older than Mabel, and - well, there ends our uncanny bloggy connection, as she just had Isaac (Ike) this past June, and I - I'm fine, thanks all the same. She's a great mom and gives good, heartfelt, well-reasearched, and sensible advice.

On the other hand, her boys, so far, have been great sleepers, and neither Noah nor Ezra was as devoted to the boob as my children were/are. (Since Ike is only two months old, I'll give him a pass.) This particular entry in her advice column isn't even about sleeping or breastfeeding - it's about a toddler who asks for a midnight snack - but, of course, I was able to read deep into the subtext and divine that, once again, I'm doing it All Rong.

Of course I am. This is not news, it's just that I prefer to leave these things unsaid and not have people blare them onto my laptop right during my quiet time. Of course Mabel wakes up multiple times a night and demands to nurse, because I have programmed her to do so. Of course she's not going to change this habit of her own volition, because it's too cushy. Even though I constantly find patterns where patterns are not and decide, for example, as I did last night at 3am, that she's dropping a waking all on her own - she normally wakes at 10 and 12 and 3, but last night she woke at 11 and then not till 3 - it's probably not really true. Anyway, then she latched on again at 4.30 and didn't seem to come off till she got up at 7.30, so it wasn't really an improvement.

But have you met my daughter? Maybe you haven't. She's feisty. She's loud. When crossed, she goes full-on Exorcist. When crossed and tired, she's ear-splitting and tragic and I just don't have the resources to deal with that at 3am. She's strong and determined and will be a great woman to have in your corner in a few years' time, but right now she's in nobody's corner but her own because a) she's 2, and b) at 3am, who isn't?

And you know, it doesn't matter. I don't care (much) that I'm doing it all wrong. I'm not dropping from exhaustion because I co-sleep for half the night and my body is perfectly used to it. I'm not wasting away from all the breastfeeding, and I get to eat a bunch of good stuff without putting on weight. In a few years' time, both my children will be grade-schoolers, running around with their friends and barely giving me the time of day, and I'll have new things to be doing wrong, like homework enforcement and peer-pressure defence and computer time and figuring out when it's reasonable for a kid to have their own phone these days. And nobody will be asking me how long it took before Mabel slept through the night or when she weaned or when she potty trained.

So yes, I'm a sap, and a mug, and maybe some day I'll start doing it right. But I doubt it.

Should I be worried?

The groom was late. "Get up! It's the marrying day!"
"Marry, marry, marry!" The bride was enthusiastic.
[Mwah, mwah, mwah]
In the blink of an eye, time passes.
The groom has turned his hand to midwifery. In red super-hero cape and spiderman gloves, Monkey scrabbles at Mabel's tummy and presents her with...
"One hundred million babies!"
"Yaaayy!"

Summertime blues

We are at that point in the summer where I swear that next year I will be signing Monkey up for summer camp, come hell or high water.

Which I probably will, because he'll be well able for it at that point. And because if I have any sense at all I'll look back on this and remember that no, the fact that I have one at home anyway doesn't mean I may as well have both of them. It may be more fun for them, but it comes down to a lot more headaches for me, and who's in charge here anyway? (Don't answer that.)

Monkey has not got any better at entertaining himself. Levels of "What can I do now?" are reaching epic proportions, and B and I have been badgered to make every conceivable item out of cardboard, from a Monkey-and-Mabel-sized, fully functioning Batmobile (with added flying power) to a gas mask (currently under construction). He's also going through a very irritating attention-seeking phase where he bugs me every time I try to talk to another adult and jumps all over Mabel and me every time I sit down with her for some mumeet. (Hmm. That last isn't so much a phase.) The TV-time amnesty that began when we came back from our trip has been gradually winding back down to the limits that were in place before we left, but for the sake of my sanity we're not all the way there yet.

On the bright side, though: we had a babysitter last night! I went, in the company of my husband, of all people, to the cinema (the cinnamon-man, as Mabel calls it) and saw the last Harry Potter movie (great, but intensely grim with little opportunity for light relief). The babysitter arrived at 7.00 - she's only 13, but the kids like her exactly because she's not in that grown-up space in their given designations - and Monkey, by choice, was already in bed, stories read and on the way to sleep. Mabel stayed up till we came home, as there was no point trying to get her to sleep. She watched a DVD and demanded a waffle and presumably entertained the babysitter the entire time, and so long as there are no tears I don't care how long she stays awake.

So that's a long-overdue first. I think that was B's birthday treat (his birthday was in April March) so we still have mine to go. When's the next must-see blockbuster coming out?

Apostrophizing

Every night since we came back (that's, ooh, twelve nights now) I've wondered if this will be the one when Mabel goes to sleep without a trip downstairs or three for a drink/waffle/book/talk to Daddy. So far, apart from that one evening when I wasn't home till after nine because of a committee meeting, that night has not yet come. Maybe it will be tonight.

No. No, it's not tonight.

Meanwhile, let's talk about possessive plurals.

About three of you said "Yes, let's," and everyone else's index finger is slowly migrating north to that suddenly more attractive Next Blog link. Well, fine. Go if you want, but you might miss something. I'm just warning you.

It all began with the Presidents Club, which was something dreamed up by the Sales Department of the software company I used to work for, to entice its members to sell, sell, sell our product. The sales people were all (mostly) in the USA, and I was in Ireland, where head office lay. And somehow we in the Editing Department, desperate for work so as not to be downsized, had got our tentacles on Marketing Stuff and I was faced with proofing some internal baloney about how if you sold Lots and Lots of computer-based training courses, you too could become a member of the prestigious Presidents Club and go on a special trip to New Orleans next summer.

This may be something that all US-based sales departments have, but I was not US-based and had never been in sales, and I was very hazy as to what on earth all this was about. I sent confused e-mails back to someone in California asking what president this was, and how many presidents we were talking about here, and in what sense was this or was this not the club of/for/by/about one or more presidents. And whether they could not just call it something less ambiguous, please, instead?

Now that I'm older and wiser and know about Presidents Day, I am more forgiving of the presidents club. I passed more than one third Monday of February in this country before I acquiesced to those who forwent the apostrophe. I wanted it to be the day of all the past presidents, and therefore to be Presidents' Day. But no! It's not the day of them, it's the day celebrating them, about them, if you will. So no possessive needed.

Looking back, I would now charitably assume that whoever invented the damn Presidents Club was modelling it on the eponymous Day, and I would just leave well enough alone. But that was then, and I can only apologise so much for apostrophes inserted where none were due.

But every week now for half the year, twice a week at least, I'm faced with a similar - but not similar enough, more's the pity - conundrum, as from May or June on, I begin to see signs pop up on random street corners for a market where farmers gather to sell their produce directly to the public. A farmers' market. Or a farmers market? Is it a market of the farmers, by the farmers, or about the farmers? I think we can all agree that it's not a farmer's market, unless it's particularly tiny, but beyond that I'm no longer as decisive as I was in my confidently dogmatic youth. Perhaps the sign is merely telling me that farmers market. Yes, they do.

I'm not even going to try to tell you about the confusion that arose in my mind when I encountered the phrase "Laissez les bon temps rouler" in the same internal sales brochure. If only we'd had Wikipedia in 1999.

Of the moment

My children have been playing nicely together for large portions of the morning. Frankly, I'm a bit confused about my role as parent here. What am I supposed to do? I looked in on them, and was told I could be the babysitter. Batman handed me an imaginary baby. I handed it back and went off to clean a toilet. It's all a bit strange.

Is this what other parents have? Is this what I have to look forward to as they get older? I don't know whether I should rush out and get a job or rush upstairs and get impregnated, stat.

Since we went away and came back, a couple of other things have changed. Some for better, some for worse.

Better: No more sippy cups. While we were away it became clear that Mabel is no more likely than Monkey, and possibly less, to spill an open cup. So the sippy cups are now mostly just for taking with us. If you're sitting at the table, you have an open (plastic) glass.

Worse: No more crusts, again. Before we left we'd just got to the point where Monkey would eat the sandwich and leave the crusts. Now he's demanding that I cut them off again. Bah.

I also seem to have worked my way through all the inspiration I had been harbouring, and have run out of posts written days before they would appear. It's back to seat-of-my-pants blogging. Woo hoo.

Not today's photo, as this is obviously Iron Man, not Batman.

Cultural education

Some things they just don't teach you at school. That's why your parents are there with a bundle of late-80s and early-90s films and music to make sure your education is nicely rounded out.

My mother tried this, I suppose, when she started playing her Beethoven records at me, in the hopes that one day I'd be able to identify the Eighth and the Ninth and the Pastoral and so on. It didn't work. As far as I'm concerned, all classical music is divided into, "I've heard/played/sung that somewhere before" and, "Huh. Violins."

Last Sunday, B tried once more to show The Princess Bride to Monkey. In the past, this has not gone so well. From the time Monkey was three or so, and first expressed an interest in the gentlemanly art of fencing by demanding a foam sword rather than just using one of the many sticks at his disposal (stick collection: out the side door, look left), B has been trying to get him to watch the pinnacle of swashbuckling magnificence that is the Man in Black's fight with Inigo Montoya towards the start of The Princess Bride. Monkey, freaked out perhaps by the fact that this was a live-action movie rather than the cartoons he's more familiar with, wouldn't let him get past the first few seconds before running away in terror, yelling, "Turn it off, turn it off."

But now he's older and wiser, and something or other that was said on Sunday made B think it was time to try again. Monkey's older and wiser too, after all.

The Man in Black got to the top of the Cliffs of Moher (sorry, Insanity) and the fight began. Monkey ran away yelling, "Pause it, pause it!" I thought this was a good sign, so I followed him. "I promise," I said, "that nobody gets hurt. You just have to watch it."
"But who wins?"
"I'm not going to tell you. You have to watch and find out."
He came back, cautiously.

Every few minutes as the swordfight progressed, and then as we moved on to the encounter with Andre the Giant, I'd have to run back to the bottom of the stairs and shout up it, "Nobody dies! It's okay!" Which of course is exactly what Peter Falk says in the film, reassuring his grandson when he's looking worried about the giant eels. Then we got to the part with Vizzini, and I had to check myself. "Okay, he does die. But he's a baddie. And it's funny. "
"And listen," added B, ready with some distracting trivia. "He's the voice of Bob's boss in The Incredibles."

Monkey made it through the fire swamp and past the ROUSes, with only slightly less fortitude than was afforded Westley himself, and then we were out in the calm valley of Act Three, with just the peculiar anatomy of the six-fingered man to explain. Every now and then, with a scene and costume change he'd get confused and ask if that was the princess.
"There's only one girl in this film. If you see a girl, she's the princess."
"Except the crone." B corrected me.
"Except the crone. And Miracle Max's wife. Okay. Only one nice-looking girl."

We fast-forwarded past the torture scene, because that might actually have been a bit scary, and were quick to reassure Monkey that, as he would soon hear, Westley was not actually completely dead. By the end of the film, he was really quite enjoying it, and not running away any more at all. At least, not all the way upstairs, though maybe just into the kitchen once or twice.

Later, after the satisfying ending ("They all have horses," said Mabel; and what more could you want?) Monkey was still turning over all the fight scenes in his head.
- So, when the black guy ...
- The Man in Black.
- When the Man in Black was fighting the pirate...
- The pirate? There aren't any pirates. Unless you count the Dread Pirate Roberts.
- The pirate. With the long hair.
- Inigo Montoya, you mean?
- Yes. When the black guy was fighting Inigo Montoya, ...
- [Sigh]

and so on.

Next up: Star Wars. He's had a light sabre for a couple of years now, and they both know who Yoda is, so I think it's time. A rousing chorus of "Star Wars Cantina," please.

This is exactly why I married him

A moment in our kitchen:

B looks in the fridge for the peanut butter, to make Monkey's sandwich. (And here I must pause and give thanks to the man who hates peanut butter in all its forms and yet is willing to slather it on bread twice daily, or as often as necessary, without complaint, just to keep his ingrate son happy/fed.) He calls out to me as I sit sub-Mabel in the other room.

"Dónde está el ... [searches his internal Spanish vocab for the word for butter] burro de ...?"

While he's still thinking about what the word for peanut might be (cacahuete, dear), we both note that he's used the Italian word for butter, which actually means "donkey" in Spanish, and, from our respective rooms, start to laugh.

Monkey asks what's so funny.

"Nothing." For my benefit: "Tastes like ass."

"What? What tastes like ass? Tell me. Tastes like ass?" 

Oh dear.

Hello nemesis, whatcha knowin'?

I need you to tell me what to do.

Or maybe I just need to write it all down, and then it will become clear that I knew all along. But you can still be there for me, can't you?

(Have you heard of the "cardboard programmer"? A friend of mine once told me that programmers used to (or some do, or one did somewhere once) have a cardboard cut-out of another programmer beside them, because so often just by framing a question you find yourself arriving at the answer. I have no idea how much of that is true, but it's a concept I come back to often.)

As usual in parenthood, my children have left me in no doubt that any notion I have of being in charge is just an illusion that they, sometimes, allow me to indulge in. (They're sort of like cats in that respect.) Thus, as you may have gathered, we totally fell off the potty-training wagon during our time away, and have yet to reboard it.

There are two ways I can look at my daughter in relation to this.

A. Mabel is totally ready to train. Because:
i) She has control over her bodily functions. She can keep it in, and she can perform at will.
ii) She's two-and-three-quarters, and a girl.

or

B. Mabel is not ready to train. Because:
i) She has no interest in wearing underwear at the moment, or in staying dry or even clean.
ii) She positively enjoys thwarting me.
iii) She doesn't even care or ask to be changed quickly when she poos in her pull-up. She'll happily sit on it and deny it, for just as long as her father and I can fight over who smelled it first and therefore whose turn it is to do something about it.

And there are two ways I can look at my own motivations.

A. I want to get back up on the horse. Wagon. Toilet. Whatever. Because:
i) We've lost a lot of momentum and I don't want to lose any more.
ii) I'd like her to go to school in underwear, and I know she can easily stay dry all morning when sent to the bathroom regularly, as will happen in school. Which would be a good start towards staying dry the rest of the day.
iii) I begrudge spending the money on the pull-ups when I know she can easily do without.
iv) I admit it; I liked having a little girl who wore underpants, not nappies. Because other people's two-year-olds are doing it, and I'm an overacheiver.

B. I'm lazy, and leaving things the way they are is much easier than all the stress that constant monitoring of how easily cleaned the surface she's sitting on might be, and twice-daily laundering, brings. Also:
i) She's not really potty trained if I'm the one putting her on the loo every time.
ii) The last thing I want is another child who thinks it's my job, not theirs, to tell them when to go.
iii) She's not going to be in pull-ups for ever. She'll get there in her own time.

So, what? Do I break out the chocolate chips and sticker charts again and start back into it, once I'm sure the jet lag and mixed-up sleep patterns are a thing of the past? (Two weeks, to be certain.) Do I just start talking up school and how she's going to be a big girl there and that big girls wear underwear, and wait for her to draw her own conclusions? Do I say "Feck it" and ignore everything until she turns three?

Opinions?

Freedom to change

I think everyone should take their small children on a trans-Atlantic trip (and back) twice a year. It's very good for getting yourself out of a rut.

See, the thing is, most of the time I'm a bit bound to The Schedule. Not the one where lunch is at 12.30 and dinner is at 6.00 and nothing can come between the whole family and a properly laid table twice if not three times a day, because we don't really have that one. But sleeping is a bit of a sacred cow, because I'm always afraid that if we do anything to nudge Mabel's patterns (I use the word lightly) off course, it'll all blow up in my face in the middle of the night. Which is silly, really, because for one thing, the patterns are all in my head and definitely not in hers, and for another, it can't really get much worse. (No, Fate, I'm not looking at you. I know it could be worse. I didn't mean it. Go away and read someone else's blog, okay? Julia's updating daily at the moment, and she's a great read.)

Anyway. Once you mess up everyone's sleeping by going five hours out of your time zone for two and a half weeks, and then coming back again, you suddenly have a huge amount of freedom to just keep messing, if you want to. Or make changes, even.

While we were gone, since naps were late and bedtime was later thanks to the time difference, we had a babysitter not once but three times. The first time, I rushed back alone from the conference dinner where I was being regaled with tales of Physicists Gone Bad (not too great a loss there, then) before 10.00, thinking that Mabel would still be wide awake and possibly screeching - in fact, she was balled up asleep on the sofa; though she jumped up with a squawk as soon as she heard my voice, and it took a good hour to get her down again.

The second time, we left them with their granny and went to a grown-up party, full of grown-ups, and wine, and not a child in sight. At 10.00 I was ready to call it quits, not yet having recieved a text message to tell me that Mabel was asleep. (And this was a week later, so she was that much more acclimatised to the time difference, so that much more tired.) A quick enquiry elicited that she had just yawned, would no doubt be out in a minute, and to stay where we were. One hour later (oops), I was definitely on my way out the door when the phone rang and I was greeted with the happy news that she was finally out for the count. I had a large glass of wine and we stayed another hour.

The third time we just went out to dinner locally, and Mabel stayed up with Granny till we came home at 10pm, when I put her to bed. She was just fine.

Monkey, you will note, does not even appear in this discussion because he went to bed with no trouble and fell promptly asleep each time. Henceforth I am not going to worry about him and babysitters.

So now I know that Mabel, if left with someone she likes, will be perfectly fine without me for an evening. She'll either stay up and play or watch DVDs, or she'll fall asleep where she sits. She won't be put to bed, but that's okay.

Last night, I went out as soon as she fell asleep, to drive across the city and pick up a tiny pink pedal-less bike that I'd found on Craigslist. She woke up on the dot of 40 minutes after I'd gone. B said she almost went back to sleep when he lay down with her, but then woke up insead. She was awake when I got home, but went back down easily for me.

So I think my lesson here is not so much that the children are ready for babysitters, but that I'm ready to trust that they'll be, if not asleep, fairly content with someone else at night if I'm not Right There.

At the next moms' night out, I might just stay till closing.