The mouths of babes

 (With apologies for repetition to anyone who's read my or my husband's Facebook status updates recently.)


 Mabel was looking for a library book.
- Tits, tits! she exclaimed.
- Um, I prevaricated.
- Tits. I want tits. You go into dem tits!
 Then I realised she was looking for the book called You'll grow into them, Titch.

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The kids got one of those swirly hooded chairs from Ikea for Christmas from a generous aunt. They have amused themselves ever since by pushing each other around, demanding to be pushed round by us, pushing themselves around with hands or feet, or closing themselves both in and doing I don't know what.

This last was going on the day after Christmas, with - apparently - something they were using as a pretend screwdriver, when I heard the conversation go something like this:

- Stop screwing [it?] around!
- I'm not screwing.
- You have to stop screwing now.
- Now I'm screwing! Screw, screw, screw...

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Lately, Dash's fourth-birthday presents of Zingo and Junior Yahtzee have been experiencing a resurgence. Mabel is perfectly well able to play Zingo, though she gets bored with Yahtzee and wanders away after a few throws of the dice. A few days ago Dash and his dad were playing Yahtzee. They got to the end, when you have to add up the scores to find out who won.

Dash: Now for some math!
Mabel: No it's no-ot!
Dash: You don't even know what math is.
Mabel: Yes I do. Granny goes to math.

Revolutions

I introduced Dash to the idea of new year's resolutions today. He liked the concept and immediately announced we should resolve to give more cookies to everyone. Laudable, though maybe not exactly somethijng that will jibe nicely with other people's weight-loss or healthy-eating aspirations.

Ironically, I think deciding to run - jog, whatever - on a regular basis and actually doing it might be the easiest of my resolutions. The other changes I want to make depend more on my children and less on just me; except for those that are good for the kids and make my life harder, like the one about letting them watch less TV.

But then there are the things I want to get the children to do, like getting Dash to eat more foods, and getting Mabel to sleep better. This is trickier, and requires wiles. (You'll note I say nothing about toilet training. She's on her own for that one at the moment.)

Dash and I decided that he's going to try a new food every day, even if it's just a tiny taste that he spits out, or another taste of something he didn't like before. If he doesn't, his regular bedtime game of superheroes won't happen. If he does, he'll get the superhero game and also a star on his chart. After ten stars, he'll get a dollar. So far today he's tried a cracker he didn't like before, and carrots; steamed and plain, and steamed and tossed in butter and salt. He didn't like any of them, but it's a start.

So there's that. The ultimate threat to keep him on track is that if he doesn't make an effort, we'll have to take him to a doctor or a therapist or someone, because I do think he's a lot worse than the average picky eater. I don't see that a therapist would be able to do any more than what we're trying now, but Dash would hate it, so the concept serves its purpose. (I found an SPD (Sensory Processing Disorder) checklist yesterday and really, though a few of the many behaviours listed could have applied to him at times in the past, he doesn't send up big red flags for anything, even in the "Oral Defensiveness" section, except this one:

picky eater, often with extreme food preferences; i.e., limited repertoire of foods, picky about brands, resistive to trying new foods or restaurants, and may not eat at other people's houses

Yes, that's my kid. And lots of other kids too, I think.) 

Then there's the sleeping and the Mabel. For the past two nights she's been up till almost 10pm, after protracted nursing-not-to-sleep, leaving alone to yell a bit, sending up Daddy, more nursing, more yelling, finally bringing downstairs because I wanted my coffee, and eventual dropping off. I think this means it's time to nix the nap. Much as I love my hour of peace in the middle of the day, and much as I think she can still use it, I need my sanity and my two hours on the sofa at the end of the day even more. We'll work through the afternoons of crazy until she gets used to it, and when Dash is back at school it should be easy enough to instigate an hour of quiet play (though not in her room, I fear) after lunch.

I reviewed my options, discussed it with friends and spouse, and decided to start with the tactic that's probably least likely to work, but involves the least crying. Because I can't take the crying, and in the middle of the night I know exactly which of us is more likely to back down. We're going to try putting them together tonight, on mattresses, both in Dash's room. For a sleepover. Yay! Sleepover! Mabel said that she won't need me to go to sleep with when she has Dash there. So it must be true.

You may see I've created an entirely new category for this type of post, called Best Intentions. So you needn't point out that I'm always promising to do things that don't pan out. I'm painfully aware of that. But here I am again, writing from the point of view of unalloyed optimism, as we've yet to try which means we've also yet to fail. There's probably only a tiny chance it will help, but heck, here goes nothing. Again.

Saving myself

And so it came to pass on Christmas morning that I opened my present and lo, there was a pair of running shoes and a marvel of sartorial engineering sometimes known as a sports bra, and thus I could avoid my self-appointed destiny no longer and on St Stephen's Day (also known as Boxing Day or December 26th) I donned my new apparel and went out for a run.

Why does nobody jog any more? In the 80s, when yuppies were invented, everyone who did that sort of thing went jogging, with their Sony walkmans and their Adidas, didn't they? People only ran from escaped lions, or the Feds. My mother's vocabulary is still stuck there: when I tell her that B goes running she expects him to be sprinting from start to finish. (And winning. My mother expects him to be sent to Mars and/or win a marathon at any moment.) "You mean jogging," she says, to clarify. "Yes, Mother. Jogging. Except it's called running these days."

Anyway. When I came downstairs all togged out in my running bottoms and my running top and my running fleecy hoodie and my new bouncy shoes, B grinned admiringly and said I looked great. Taller, even. I very nearly went back upstairs that point, because clearly the gear had done its job already. Magical. I probably looked smaller in volume because the bra was squishing me as I had never been squished before, that was all.

Anyway. Out I went. And I have to say that the constricting upholstery did its job and the only parts of me bouncing as I set off down the hill (always good to go downhill first, so long as you can work your run so you never have to come back up) were my cheeks. The cheeks on my face, I mean. And my bum.

Too many years of cycling to school and to work have left their mark on my psyche, and I always think running downhill should take no effort at all, but the truth is that you still have to put one foot in front of the other, even with gravity helping. I apply this principle to everything actually, assuming that once I'm past the halfway mark, the rest will do itself. Sadly, not always true. Not even mostly true. But still, the downhill gave me a nice boost and I got around the rest of my 1.6-mile route running a bit and walking a bit. I was still able to run to the front door when I rounded the corner to our road, so I felt pleased that I hadn't overdone it.

As if there's any chance of that. I vividly remember Mrs McGoldrick's enraged tones yelling at me from the other side of the (field) hockey pitch: "Stop saving yourself, Maud," as I pootled around in the idle backwaters of "defence" and tried to look as if I gave a hoot. When it comes to exercise, I have a history of saving myself. Women and children first, you know. 

But that's not the point. The point is that the shower afterwards felt like I'd earned it, and yesterday my legs were that good sort of sore, and even though it hadn't completely worn off this morning, I went out again and did the same thing, and I could swear I was able to save myself just a tiny bit less.

Mabel declared that she doesn't want me to go out for a run again until she's four. But then, she says she's not going to wear underpants till she's four either. I hope she'll be proved wrong on both counts.

Meringues and gingersnaps

Finally, some baking updates I owe you.

Gingersnaps going in

One afternoon when the kids were otherwise occupied, I rolled out the second half of the gingerbread dough as thin as my OCD little heart desired, to see if I could make crispy, crunchy gingersnaps. They turned out perfectly.

Gingersnaps all out

And these are the meringues I made to use up the egg whites left over from the other cookies. I whipped the three egg whites (should have been four, but one absent-mindedly went into the cookie dough) with my hand-held electric mixer until they were stiff. Then I mixed in three tablespoons of white sugar and folded in another three of light brown sugar. (Nigella's suggestion to make them chewier.)

Brown sugar meringues

I dolloped them artistically onto parchment paper on a cookie sheet and baked them in a very low oven (140 C or 275 F) for about an hour, then turned the heat off and left them there until they were cold. (Again, Nigella's instruction.) Easy as pie. In fact, much easier, I'll wager. The only thing is that they do occupy the oven for a long time so it's probably best to cook them last thing in the evening and just leave them overnight.

They stay fresh for up to a week in an airtight container, so they're the perfect lazy dessert for a special occassion - just add cream and fruit.

Mmmm

The hare, part II

The hare is the Christmas cake, and part I is here.

So. In November I made the cake, and put it away in an airtight container and conveniently forgot about it for a month. That was easy.

About a week ago, I bought some marzipan in Ikea. I painted the unwrapped cake with warmed apricot jam (to help it stick), rolled out the marzipan, and stuck it on. Because this is just the inner icing - the undercoat, if you like - you don't have to be very particular about how it looks, but it's good to aim for a fairly uniform thickness.

The cake looks shiny because this was after I'd done the thing with the jam

You can see here how the marzipan was pieced together, Frankenstein-like, to cover the whole thing. Don't worry, I did that last bit before I put it away again.

Then it went back into its tupperware for a few more days, until I was ready to make the royal icing. It turns out that royal icing is much like making meringues, and just as simple. I whipped two egg whites, gradually adding about a pound of icing sugar (confectioners' sugar) as I went along, and finally mixed in a teaspoon of lemon juice. (I don't know why. Because the recipe told me to.)

It starts out runny, but as you add the sugar the expanding egg can't quite keep up and eventually it becomes the right consistency to stick onto your cake.

I went for the rustic look, because making this smooth was way beyond me and my new red spatula (not pictured). In my parents' house, this is the point when I'd put my little Christmas scene on top, or at least sprinkle some sugar silver balls in festive fashion, but I have no cake decorations and had neglected to buy any silver balls for the task. I'm also missing the vital cake wrapper thingy, usually red and white and gold with fringey bits, to wrap around the outside. Maybe I'll pick one up next time we're home. (You have no idea what I'm talking about, but the cake in the photo on this page is wearing one. I think it keeps the cake fresh once it's cut into.)

 

And finally. After Christmas dinner, and our Christmas meringues, we cut the cake. This is how it looked. Personally, I think it's a tiny bit dry, but B sighed a sigh of nostalgia at his first bite, so I must have done something right.

Here's the kicker, though. He doesn't eat the icing.

Next year, I'll make it bald.

Merry whatsit

Eighteen people have visited my blog today, so clearly my audience demands that I post something.

They weren't even here as the result of some random Google search, unlike the poor misguided person who, according to my stats, recently looked for "French lesbian tube" and somehow - really, I have no idea how - ended up here. Maybe they saw the error of their ways and decided to stay and read about my thrilling life instead. Let's hope.

As predicted, it's been a much quieter, more relaxed Christmas Day than our usual whirlwind of courtesy calls and extended-family dinner and mince pies, but the basics of crazy-excited children and something containing fruit juice and alcohol with breakfast remained unmovable. (In Ireland, at my in-laws', it's always buck's fizz, or what Americans call mimosas - champagne and orange juice. We rang the changes just a little with bellinis - peach juice and prosecco. Because we're rebels.)  I made buttermilk pancakes and bacon; Dash ate one bite of pancake with a lot of maple syrup, and Mabel ate an orange segment.

However, this evening we all ate dinner together at the dining table, which was a feat in itself. We had to partake in a game of I-Spy to keep the kids in situ, but, probably, conversing about the situation in Korea and Mitt Romney's election prospects are beyond a three-year-old and a five-year-old. And I-Spy was more fun. (My words were "brussels sprouts" and "wine", because I didn't extend myself too far in finding things to spy. Mabel made us guess the blue shoes on her baby in the other room, which was a little tricky. B had us trying to pinpoint the red stripe on his sweater, which merited a slap, but my end of the table was too far away.)

I roasted a chicken, and potatoes, and did sprouts with bacon. It could probably have profited from gravy, but hey, whatareyougonnado? Dash has recently taken a vegetarian stance on behalf of the poor dead animals, which I laud from an ethical point of view, but really when you're a peanutbuttersandwichatarian, anything else is purely hypothethcal. I keep telling him I'll be delighted when he's a vegetarian, but he'll have to actually eat some vegetables. Mabel ate a lot of chicken and nothing else. Then we had the last of the meringues with cream, and cut into the long-awaited Christmas cake.

Photos tomorrow, when I've had less wine. I'm told I still have to help finish the bottle.

Happy whatever-you-want-to-celebrate to you and yours.

Elephants

When you invite people over for food, it's usually important to have something to eat in the house. Similarly, when you invite friends over for drinks, it's customary to have more than just our usual milk, water, or fruit-and-vegetable juice available. And so it was that I went to the shops again this morning.

B and I, as many people do, spent our twenties expanding our tastes for drinks both fruity and hoppy (though not at the same time), well-chilled or mulled, spicy, bold, well-rounded, Russian, slammed, shot, bubbly, flaming, muddled, colour-changing, or with a slice of clove-studded orange floating in them. Whether it had a nice creamy head or came in a fancy glass, we were probably happy to try it.

Then we had a baby. First there was the ritual giving-up-of-alcohol-during-pregnancy for me. And then the cautious re-introduction of just a little alcohol while nursing. And then we moved from Texas to Maryland and somehow I felt as if we were moving trans-Atlantically and couldn't take anything comestible with us, so I gave away our few bottles of spirits and we arrived here without so much as the makings of a gin-and-tonic to our name.

And thus, almost, we have stayed. We like a beer with dinner, we drink wine now and then, but hard liquor has not been a part of our lives recently. My aunt and uncle stayed with us before Dash turned two, and gifted us with a bottle of gin - for some reason - when they left. It has - I kid you not - sat unopened in the freezer ever since.

(B would like to point out that that's not strictly true. We've only lived in this house for 18 months. Before that, it sat unopened in the freezer in our old house. And there was probably some period when it was in transit from one freezer to the other and therefore was in no freezer at all.)

My point still stands. We're pathetic, that's what. I had great intentions of having gins-and-tonic this summer, because what could be more refreshing, right? But then I was stuck looking for tonic water that didn't have high-fructose corn syrup in it, because I couldn't believe that was necessary. And when I finally found it, in the organic supermarket, I couldn't believe it was that expensive, so I didn't buy it. B eventually circumvented all this by going out one day a few months ago and just picking up a bottle of Schweppes, HFCS and all, and that has sat unopened in the fridge ever since.

So today we said, "Right. Let us have on hand this Christmas the makings of cosmopolitans. And maybe bellinis."

I went to the supermarket that has alcohol. I needed more sugar for icing the Christmas cake anyway (more on that in a few days, I promise) and more bread for Dash's interminable peanut-butter sandwiches (guess what he's having for Christmas dinner?), and a bottle of wine for the day that will be in it, since we've already started into the one I got before. (Note to self: should stock up with more than one wine bottle at a time. Maybe need to throw a party so people will bring us wine.) I got a lime, for the cosmo's. I got peach juice for the bellinis. We already have a bottle of prosecco in the fridge that needs to be used.

Then I realised the supermarket-with-alcohol doesn't stock spirits. So I got back into the car and drove to the liquor shop. At least this isn't Pennsylvania, where no supermarkets have any alcohol at all, and you can't even buy beer and wine in the same establishment. And nothing on Sundays.

I picked up a bottle of Guinness to make beef-and-Guinness stew with for Christmas-Eve dinner. And a bottle of vodka for the cosmopolitans. I contemplated the Cointreau, but it was too expensive. (I have only just now looked at that link up there and discovered that's meant to go in the cosmo too. I think we used to make them without.) Where's duty-free when you need it? When will we ever be travelling light enough to think it's a good idea to add a heavy glass bottle to our luggage on the way home from the airport?

I came home. We still need at least cranberry juice for the cosmo's, and there are only two beers left in the fridge. Entertaining will have to wait for another trip to the supermarket. In the meantime, would anyone like a bellini? I think we'll be having some with our bacon and pancakes on Christmas morning.

Mabel raiding someone else's Christmas drinks stash two years ago

Seezun's greetings

At our little parent-teacher conference a month or so ago, while waxing lyrical about how wonderful Dash is (of course), his teacher did say that she wished he was a little less of a perfectionist sometimes (oh, so do I... huh?). He was very reluctant, she said, to try to write anything by sounding it out - he insisted on asking for every letter. Which is fine at home, but I can imagine that a class of twenty-three five- and six-year-olds all asking you for the next letter could get tiring.

On Tuesday, Dash sat down to make a card for his beloved teacher. I oversaw the drawing of the picture:

[Draws a big curve]
- What's that going to be?
- An earring. Because we're giving her earrings.
- Um. No, we're not. Remember I said that wasn't the best idea? We're giving her a gift card.
[Erases curve. Draws a big rectangle.]
- No, you really don't have to draw the gift card. Why don't you draw something Christmassy?
- Okay, I'll draw a present. On a reindeer.

Then I was distracted in the other room while he started with the writing. I could hear him sounding out "Happy Christmas," but he didn't ask me anything, so I didn't offer.

I think his teacher should be happy with the result. I loved it.

Slow down

And now we're for it, rushing helter-skelter head-over-heels into Christmas as if there were no tomorrow, or Friday or Saturday for that matter. Things were progressing in a fairly orderly fashion until suddenly the last weekend before was gone and there's no stopping it now. We haven't been to a carol concert or seen The Nutcracker or put up lights outside the house (not for want of trying, but for want of sockets in the right places) but now it's follow-through-or-bust time for everyone with all those little plans of things you thought would be nice to do or make or give, and we're rapidly coming to the day when we'll all throw up our hands and wish Christmas had never been invented because it does nothing but stress everyone out and cause massive rifts in families that were otherwise happily chugging along in mutual indifference but have now been thrown together and ordered to be not just civil but extra nice to each other because of the season that's in it, and sometimes that's just too much for anyone to handle.

Things would go so much more smoothly if we could just hunker down and get through the darkest time of the year without this annual requirement to decorate, to shop, to spend, to wrap, to give, to recieve, to entertain, to cook to bake to mull to spike to sprinkle to keep up.

You don't have to keep up. Nobody is making you do this. Nobody except your mother, your husband, your in-laws, your children, their friends, the economy, and the media. Stop. Breathe. Revise your plans. Do the least you can get away with. Do less than that, because your harshest judge is yourself and everyone else is too busy wondering how much they have to do and what they can get away without doing. Give yourself permission to take something off your to-do list. Simplify. Delegate. Outsource.

See the people you like. Give presents to your friends, if you want to. Dress up if it's fun to dress up. Bake if you like to bake. Make your children happy by sitting on the floor to play a game. Make one fewer side dish.

Give yourself a break. It's Christmas, after all.

Commute

Three to four o'clock every weekday is not exactly my finest hour. It's then that I have to disturb Mabel in her avid viewing of Angelina Ballerina or her complicated play scenario involving all the horses living in the dollhouse (you'd be surprised), stuff her into the stroller, with a snack if I'm feeling magnanimous, and get Dash from school. And then shepherd them both home again.

Most often, Mabel does not feel like putting on a coat when we set out. Quite often, she doesn't want shoes and socks either. This is okay in September, or even October, and we've had a very mild November, but nowadays it's pretty chilly and shoes would really help, I think. The biggest concession I can get from her is usually to hide her bare tootsies under a blanket so passing motorists won't call Child Protective Services. It's very considerate, really.

On a good day, she'll eat a snack or play with some toys all the way there. I can't really let her out to meander or we'll be late. So apart from the nagging feeling that I'm giving my child pneumonia, this is really the easy part. Half a mile later we get to the school.

Mabel attempts to hop out, and I take my moment to swoop in and deliver a shoe ultimatum. She acquiesces, and then, finally shod, she's off to climb a tree or run up and down on a bench in some dangerous fashion, leading younger, more impressionable friends into temptation as they too wait for their big siblings to exit the hallowed doors of learning. I chat to some other mothers for a brief moment of relative peace.

The doors open and Dash is released as if on a spring - he runs down the ramp to hug me, and his sister, if she's in our orbit. How sweet, I think they all think. And then we set off, homeward bound.

I am hampered immediately - it's a conspiracy, like when someone in an Italian railway station distracts you by rustling a newspaper in front of your face while their accomplice runs off with your luggage - by Dash pulling his folder out of his backpack to show me some wonderful worksheet he completed or drawing he coloured in, while Mabel sprints towards the road as fast as her little marathon-runner's-daughter legs can carry her. Luckily, so far she has always stopped at the kerb, and the nice crossing guard would probably catch her even if she didn't. I wave Dash and his pages away and run after her, catching up just in time to stop her crossing the road, and turn right instead. We wend our way along the path, Mabel running ahead and Dash insisting on plonking himself in the stroller.

"Get. Out. You're five and a half. Why are you in the stroller?"
"Did you bring snacks? Where's my water? Did you not bring my water? Why does Mabel have water?"
"It's the middle of winter. You don't need water. You're not going to die of thirst before we get home. Didn't you just have a snack after recess?"
"I didn't like my snack at recess. I'm thirsty."
"How was school?" Trying to reclaim the cheerful, interested-Mommy ground.
"Fine."
"What did you do today?"
"Work."
Listen to that, he's fourteen already.

We may or may not stop at the playground at this point, depending on the weather and how clothed and shod Mabel is, but it usually becomes clear that Dash wants to sit in the stroller because he can't hold his need to go to the bathroom once he starts walking, so I soon pry her out of the baby swing and we set off again. I try to put her in the stroller, but she rebels. He tries to sit on the front part, where there is no proper seat and his five-year-old legs now trail along the ground. (I believe I described this a year or so ago. He hasn't got any shorter since.) I rebel. They both run like crazy towards the second road-crossing of our daily odyssey.

Yesterday, around this point, as I slogged along pushing my giant child like a young rajah travelling in state, in the wake of my smaller, overtired, hopped up on, I dunno, air or something, speck-in-the-distance one, Dash hummed a little ditty of his own composing. The lyrics went, "Dash is the best one in his family-y-y..." I restrained myself, with great difficulty.

Then we turn the corner and have to navigate a fine line between the house whose owners are going to sue me one day for letting my children walk on their wall, off which they will no doubt one day fall, before I sue them for having a wall that children like to walk on; and the house a little further on on the other side of the street where the children like to steal the ornamental stones and bring them home. At some point I lose patience and stuff Mabel into the stroller, clicking the straps to keep her there. The day she figures out how to unclick herself, I'm toast.

Finally we turn onto our court, and I unleash the beast. I mean, Mabel. They both run haphazardly towards the house and, just when I think we can finally go in and be in a somewhat controlled environment again, they swerve off course and head for the scooters and bikes instead of the door. "Noooooo," I lament.  "No, we are not staying out. We have to go in... oh, all right, just for five minutes..." And they're specks in the distance again.

Christmas cookies

Right now I am a miracle of over-achievement. I have meringues in the oven, french toast in the pan, gingerbread dough ready to roll, and now I'm trying to blog. I'm also letting Elmo and a bowl of apple slices do the child-minding, because though Mabel annouced she was ready for her nap as soon as we got in the door from school - and so was I; this morning was a co-op morning, so I spent two and a half hours rolling playdough, shaking glitter, breaking up three-year-old fights, reading stories while six children tried to sit on my lap, washing small hands and then trying to stuff them into mittens: I'm pooped - she then did not fall asleep but popped up again and asked what was for lunch.

The meringues are because I made two batches of cookie dough yesterday, to give to friends as ready-frozen, bake-me-when-you-need-me presents, and my recipe calls for two egg yolks. Last time this happened I conscienciously put the unused egg whites in the fridge, whence I just extracted them five minutes ago, threw them out and reclaimed the tupperware container I've been without for a few months now. So I made today's meringues with the more recent whites in an attempt to atone - and honestly, it took three minutes and I should have learned how to do this years ago. (On the other hand, I haven't tasted them yet. But they looked good going in.)

I made the gingerbread dough on Friday, and on Saturday morning, while B was out running a race, I presided over the most successful baking/decorating session we've ever had. I take no credit for this: the trick, as I told a friend who was lamenting her riotously chaotic attempt to decorate a gingerbread house in the company of three three-year-olds, is to have a five-year-old in the mix. While his sister piled up her dough and told me it was a castle, Dash industriously rolled and cut and pressed and shaped as carefully as my type-A little heart ever could have wished.

Perhaps we think that as soon as our kids are old enough to convey the results to their mouths independently, they'd really enjoy to bake and decorate some cookies, beginning a lovely family holiday tradition. But honestly, they won't remember that you didn't do it when they were two, and you'll be a lot saner if you wait till they're four or five before you start.

But then, maybe I'm just a curmudgeon.  When we got to the decorating I gave them one cookie each, a tiny tube of icing which was all I had in the house, and a few chocolate chips for buttons. Minimalism, always minimalism.

Maybe when they're sixteen I'll be ready to tackle a gingerbread house.

(And I didn't even burn the french toast.) 

Wax on, wax off

Last night I took Dash to his karate class, instead of hustling him out the door with his dad as I usually do. I thought it was the last of the session (in fact, there are two more) and I had never seen him in action.

We arrived a few minutes late, so as soon as we reached the gym Dash was kicking off shoes, peeling off socks, and joining the other children in front of the instructor. Half of them had proper white karate gear with orange belts; the other half, like him, were in regular clothes. I sat myself on a bench and watched my child in this new environment where he belonged and I was the outsider.

At first I felt a little bad for him: he seemed to have trouble catching up with what they were doing, and the instructor was moving quickly and could hardly see Dash behind the white-clad taller kids, who were clearly more advanced. But after a few minutes the class was split in two, with one teacher taking the orange-belters to the other end of the hall while Dash's class stayed with the other and broke down a long series of movements - punches, kicks, and blocks - to practice them over and over. It reminded me of my ballroom dancing classes, watching the movements and trying to replicate them with my unwieldy limbs - but then at least I had a partner to rely on, whose very presence helped my body remember what to do.

(I took ballroom and latin dancing classes for a few years before I left Dublin. I absolutely loved it. The only catch was that I functioned so much by muscle memory that though I could perform the steps perfectly with my own regular partner, I was pretty much lost without him. It wasn't that he was pushing me around the floor or that the others couldn't lead; it really was that when dancing with that one person my body knew where to go, but with anyone else, when I needed to engage my brain to tell my feet what to do, the process was much more prone to disaster.)

So there was Dash, clearly the smallest and probably also the youngest in his class - they can start at five, but it looked like the others were six or even older - giving it his all. While some kids were goofing off or just going through the motions, flopping their arms around like wet fish and shuffling through the steps, I could see the intensity in every move he made. His arms were strong, his fists clenched, his steps deliberate. He wasn't just gamely giving it a go; he was focused and determined and undeterred by the others a head taller. As the sequence got longer and the moves more complicated I was really impressed by his ability to put it all together and keep going in the right direction, even without the teacher to mirror.

The class ended after some fun mat instruction on how to fall correctly, and as I headed for the other side of the room with Dash, the black-belt instructor acknowledged me with a gruff - manly, karate-like - smile and said, "He's doing great."

Dash sat on the floor and I resisted the impulse to help him while he got his socks disentangled. It's only a year or so since he finally started to put them on himself, and now here he is taking classes, learning moves, knowing words I don't even know, putting his mark on the world.

He doesn't even want to do karate again next term. He's thinking maybe basketball.

Seasonal

The good thing about being thousands of miles from your loved ones at Christmas (sniff, sniff) is that at this point, when all around are wringing their hands and declaring to Facebook that they're not remotely organized, will never be organized, and vow to be super-duper organized next year, you can sit smugly with your tea and muffin and bask in the glow of having it all in hand.

No doubt a large whale will now fall from the sky to crush me in my insufferable cockiness.

But, fingers crossed and stuff, I'm not too disorganized. Cards were posted, with photos, to the lucky few recipients. The parcels to Ireland went off last Wednesday - two days before the Post Office's deadline for international mail, but up to the wire on my own personal last-chance-to-queue-up-child-free timeline. (And boy, I'm glad I did it child-free, especially when I discovered that the large box I'd so cleverly packed everything in was now too big for the regular customs form and needed a special iron-clad extra-information form to be filled in. I was also glad I'd covered up the graphics and lettering on the box I'd snaffled from outside the supermarket with plain paper, as I heard the woman behind me being told that she couldn't mail that ex-wine-bottle-box as it was with all that other stuff visible on it. Well, you would feel a little silly if your presents all ended up at a vineyard in California.)

I have procured marzipan - from IKEA, of all places - to commence icing the Christmas cake, the children's presents have arrived from far-flung Amazon (not the river), and I even have something for my husband that's a tiny bit more imaginative than a CD and a book. (It's not even a book and a sweater, so there.) I am counting the slippers I bought him yesterday in Target as part of his present too, even if he did ask me to buy them, they were not wrapped up, he's been wearing them since last night, and  - oh yes - I don't bring home a paycheck so I suppose, technically, he pays for everything. But I totally was going to get him slippers for Christmas because I knew he needed them, so it counts, right? I'm just so thoughtful and concerned for his cold feet that I didn't want him to have to wait another day for them. Or even have to go to the bother of unwrapping them.

So that's how organized I am. We also have a tree, though there will be no presents under it until Christmas Eve, because three-year-olds are not known for their self-restraint. What we don't have is any actual plans for the day, or any of the days surrounding the day. I don't know what we're going to eat or who we're going to see or even what I'm going to wear (which is really a moot point if we don't see anyone). Maybe we'll spend Christmas Day in our pyjamas, eating muffins and drinking Prosecco (just the adults, I promise), and watching cartoons.

That doesn't sound so bad, really.

Today's Public Service Announcement

Here's a new topic.

What do you think of if I say "transgender"? Drag queens in dodgy dives and Pride parades? The big reveal in The Crying Game? (Oops. Sorry.) Middlesex, if you've read it? Now what if I say "transgender child"? Ross from Friends wearing a dress and throwing a tea party? Maybe the stupid captions that the trashy magazines throw at Shiloh Jolie-Pitt from time to time when they've run out of pregnancy rumours for Jennifer Aniston? (Angelina was pregnant with Shiloh when I was expecting Dash. And Gwen Stefani with Kingston, and Jennifer Garner was just ahead by a month or two with Violet. That's a link that can never be broken, the celebrity-pregnancy-sister link.) (Wait, is Jennifer Aniston actually pregnant now? I can't keep up.)

Transgenderedness (I don't know if that's a real word, but I bet it is) is not something that affects my children or anyone I know right now, but it came up recently and was so interesting that I feel like I need to spread the educational word. What follows is my own very lightly educated opinion. If I've got something wrong, please let me know. I aim to enlighten.

Our society, for whatever reason, has decided to lump transgender in a box with gay, lesbian, and bisexual. But transgender - in children, at least - is not about sex, it's about gender.

Sex is a biological fact; gender is the boy/girl identity, and everything that goes with it, that people assume, usually at a very young age. For most of us the two things mesh and we go about our lives thinking gender just is another word for sex and blithely misusing it all over the place in an effort to save granny's blushes. (You are finding out the sex of the baby, not its gender, no matter how much more polite you might think that sounds.) To put transgender in simple terms, I think it's possible to say that a person's body grew one way, but their brain is wired for the other.

Transgender is also not about sexual preference. This is the Very Important Thing to remember. This is why it is perfectly possible for a child to be officially diagnosed as transgender when they are as young as four years old. They are not deciding that they find boys, or girls, or both, sexually attractive. They are telling the world that they are a boy or a girl, no matter what the world tells them they should be, based on their physical appearance.

These children face a huge struggle in their lives ahead. If they are lucky, their parents will listen and take their feelings to heart, and read good books and consult trustworthy experts, and let the child identify as they wish to. They might make it through elementary school unnoticed and unquestioned in their "new" identity. But when adolescence hits, they'll have to make some huge decisions about hormone treatments and eventual possible surgery, and their lives will always be marked by their difference.

And those are the lucky ones, in today's society where we understand that such a thing is possible. The unlucky ones walk a much sadder, lonelier road.

That's my PSA for today, so that in the unlikely event that this issue comes your way, you might face it with a tiny bit more education, insight, and compassion than otherwise.

Move-y time

In a gigantic triumph of optimism over experience, we all went to the movies yesterday. It was our first movie together as a family, and Mabel's first ever trip to the cinema, not to mention Dash's first since last Thanksgiving's disastrous half-viewing of Tangled, and it went admirably.

On Saturday, were were supposed to have a date night, but our babysitter forgot us. I gave her an Irish half-hour leeway, and by the time I realised she'd crossed the line from a little late to probably not coming, our delicately timed window of opportunity was closing and there was no point trying to get her. Also, it turned out I didn't have her mum's phone number.

(As she's only 13, her mum looks after all her scheduling. Which is a less-than-ideal situation, really, because her mother is a busy, working mother-of-two who has other things on her mind, and the babysitter is a 13-year-old girl whose first priority probably is not her babysitting job. Basically, I blame myself for not sending a confirmation e-mail on Saturday morning. And she was very apologetic, said they'd had the day from hell and all forgot, asked can we reschedule... I'm not sure whether to give her another chance or find an older babysitter we should have probably got in the first place. Probably both.)

So I was hungry and cold and grumpy and then Mabel refused to go to sleep. She had been going to stay up with the babysitter and fall asleep, um, organically, let's say - that is, if I put her to bed before we left (a) she'd never go to sleep that early and (b) when - not if - she woke up, she'd be unhappy* to find not-me there. And she won't go to bed for anyone else, but if allowed to stay up she'll either happily play the entire time or fall asleep on the sofa while pretending she's not tired. So I was hoping for the latter, but there's only so long you can push that, so if we weren't out the door at 7.30 - not to mention the issue of the place we wanted to go for dinner being popular on a Saturday night - it was too late to go by 8.00.

Finally, having been brought downstairs again while I had some hastily conceived pasta-from-the-freezer to haul me back up the cliff from Evil Mummy to Nice Mummy, she went to sleep at about 9.45. So the next morning we slept in till almost 8am. She's been in a phase of 6am wakings, so this was a departure, and while welcome, I was afraid it had put the kybosh on Sunday's nap.

As predicted, 12.30 came and went and Mabel decided she didn't want a nap after all; what she really wanted was some cinnamon toast. So after lunch, I looked at my precious, overtired daughter and decided that her father and I should indulge ourselves at the expense of our children, and that today was the day to go to The Muppets. "If she's tired," I thought, "she can just snuggle up on my lap."

What sort of self-delusional teabag was I steeping in my mug of piping-hot self-indulgence? This is the sort of denial that you are reduced to after five and a half years of parenthood and about that many trips to the cinema in the whole time. I conveniently chose to forget that when tired, my children turn into Duracell/Energizer bunnies, unable to sit still, and - for Mabel at least - also unable to shut up.

We at least had the sense to miss most of the obscenely loud trailers and ads before going in. We even got Dash to use the bathroom so he wouldn't spend the whole time jigging in his seat. Mabel, in underpants, refused to go. She sat on my knee - because her own seat kept tipping up and swallowing her - and, to her credit, stayed dry the entire time, until we arrived home and she peed all over herself because she just won't go to the toilet for me.

And she sat there and ate popcorn for probably the first half of the film. For most of the second half, she climbed onto my lap, from there to the empty seat beside me, back down off it, and up on to my lap again. About one gazillion times. Stopping (or not) only to ask in piercing tones why they were doing that, whether that was the baddie, why he was the baddie, why he wanted to knock down the theatre, and a host of other pertinent questions. Or to declaim random non-sequiturs such as, "I like my friends, Mommy**." Which was fine most of the time except when it coincided with a brief quieter interlude in the film.

Eventually the climbing was too much, and, with what I estimated to be five minutes to go judging by the advancement of the plot, I took her out of her seat and brought her down to the passage to the door, put her down and said "Run up and down there." Just like the bunny, she took off as soon as her toes touched the ground, and happily ran a few laps. Then she found a handrail to climb, so I brought her down to the very front seating area, where we were out of sight of most of the audience, and let her clamber around for a while, shushing her regularly. At this point I noticed that she'd taken off not just her shoes - politely handed to me much earlier - but also her socks. The floor of a cinema is just where you want to romp barefoot, isn't it? (Ugh. Now I'm having flashbacks to the sticky carpet of the big screen at the Savoy in Dublin, never seen but always felt, slightly spongy and holding onto your shoes just a moment too long at every step. This floor wasn't that bad. At least, it wasn't carpet.)

And then it was the credits and we could gather our belongings, locate the socks, and take her and her brother - who sat still and enjoyed the film like a pro - home for pizza, a bath, and an early bedtime. The weekend was pretty decently salvaged after all.


*screaming blue bloody murder, that's what.

** It pains me to admit it, but what she calls me sounds more like "Mommy" than her brother's "Mummy".  Except when she's saying Mom, or Mama, or Mummy Jaguar, or whatever my moniker of the day happens to be.

Raindrops keep falling on my daydreams

Mabel is very much enjoying this song these days. It may have taken over from One Dozen Monkeys, at least for a while. I think it's hilarious that my budding grammar maven insists on expanding "you'll" to "you will", with no care for scansion.

I think she's really going to get into the Christmas spirit in a week or two. Yesterday she ran up to me:
"Mummy, sing 'Redolf, the rud...', 'Redulf the rod...' ... sing the song about the reindeer."

The thing she's messing with in the video is one of those devices for hooking bikes on the back of a car. Sadly, no longer much use to us as B left his bike out front one too many times and it disappeared. So the frame thing came into the house, and Mabel found it this morning and decided it was her pilates machine. She's doing exercises on it while she sings, you'll notice.

The kids are mostly mystified by what pilates is, I realise. It's just this mystical place I disappear to on Wednesday evenings (sometimes), and I'd love to know what their little minds envision when they think of it. Earlier in the week I had brought my pilates mat into the house, and they unrolled it and gave themselves a pilates class. "This is a very difficult pilate," Dash advised Mabel, as he contorted himself in to some sort of pushup on the mat.

Which brings me to my other traffic-stopping revelation for the day: it's much nicer to think about exercising than to actually do it. I was happy with my new decision to start running (walking briskly in expensive clothes, whatever), and it was lovely to think about how nice it will (firmly using the future tense, none of these hypotheticals for me) be when I am fit. But B was almost unseemly in his enthusiasm, and made sure to bring me to the running shop this morning to buy some good shoes. "There's no rush," I assured him, but off we went anyway.

The man in the shop asked me how much running I was doing, when I said we'd come to get me some shoes. "Well, none, yet." Really, who buys shoes after they've started running? Isn't the right thing to do to get the shoes first? He found me some shoes in my size with a "neutral" gait, to see how I looked on the treadmill.

"You're familiar with running on a treadmill, right?"
"Um, no. No, I don't think I've ever been on one, really." I did use the elliptical machine a few times when we lived in Texas and had a tiny gym attached to our apartment complex, but I steered clear of the treadmill. It just didn't look very interesting.
"Okay. I'll set it to a walking pace. Probably somewhere between three and four miles an hour for you."
We settled on 2.9, because I was in danger of falling off the back.

He pointed out the various wierdnesses of my gait, and I mentioned my vertiginous arches, and he came back with a new pair of shoes that felt bouncy and snug. I was sent for a little run outside and assured that the people around here were used to seeing people who didn't look as if they should be exerting themselves running around the square. Once around the plaza was just about as far as I'm able to run, it turned out, so I looked perfectly reasonable until I reached the doors and flopped myself back in, a tad out of breath. We had a little conversation about how people who are aerobically fit when they start running are prone to injury because they push themselves harder than their bones and muscles can cope with at first. I agreed that I would probably not have that problem.

Then, the piece de restistance: I needed a decent sports bra. The ones I wear for pilates are from before I had babies, which makes them at least six years old, and not exactly the right size in several directions, besides being not nearly sturdy enough for running purposes. I tried on a few, and, as I had feared, had to accept that the best one for me was the most ugly, most industrial strength model there. I may look a little too well-upholstered for comfort, but damnit if I won't bounce. At least, some parts of me might be bouncing - let's charitably say my feet, in their new shoes - but my boobs will be bound tightly to my chest in perfect, immobile squishedness.

As we left the shop, I told B that he can wrap it all up and put it under the tree, because of course I'm not going to use any of this stuff yet. That would take all the enjoyment out of my daydreaming.

Fiction, two ways

A friend of mine is writing a novel online, in serial form, just like Mr Dickens in the olden days, except  about a million times more interesting and readable. (Sorry, but I've never been a Dickens fan. Hard Times was just that, Bleak House even moreso.) I am in awe of how smoothly the story flows, how I read it and want more without even noticing, and the fact that - she claims! - she has the whole thing planned out in her head, even if now and then her characters turn around to her and announce that they're just not ready to do that yet. I suspect it's just that sort of easy readability that is in fact very difficult to pull off.

The tragedy is that she has very few readers, so I said I'd give her a plug over here. Go and have a look. Read the Introduction and then start at the Home page, where you'll find the table of contents. Then tell her you're reading and that you'd like some more, please. Because I want to know what happens.

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Mabel has moved on from announcing "Not again!" with as much italicization and eye-rolling as she can possibly inject into a two-word exclamation, to saying, "Forget it!" I think the girl has bershon all sewn up, at the tender age of three.

She got a new baby from the thrift store yesterday after her dental ordeal, because that's where we go when a new baby is in order but I only want to spend two bucks on it. For 1.95, she has a new "baby sister" whom she loves nearly as much as the last one, the one that cost an appalling $40 in FAO Schwartz for her birthday. This morning she staged a baby festival, but I'm not sure if that was a place you could get babies, or a place to bring your babies.

Dash has Santa Claus all figured out this year, which is something of a relief. Worrying about what we would do about Santa took up a good deal of my time even before he was born. In the end, we took a sort of middle path where we didn't push the myth, but didn't exactly explode it either. We had stockings, but didn't make a big to-do about who put the presents in them. In September or October this year, he whispered to me that he thought the parents really brought the presents, and I agreed, but told him we were still playing the game for Mabel and not to let the cat out of the bag.

He doesn't seem scarred for life by the lies we told him, or allowed him to believe, or failed to debunk, so I'm a bit more relaxed with Mabel. She has a vague idea that Santa, who is that guy with the red-and-white suit, is going to bring her presents at Christmas.

- What would you like for Christmas, Mabel?
- I think probably a baby. Because I like babies and puppies.
- So maybe Santa will bring you a puppy*. You have a lot of babies already.
- Yes, but I want a baby, because I like puppies but I need a new baby.

This conversation took place before the advent of yesterday's baby, but I'll wager her position hasn't changed. Because you can never have enough babies.

*Not a real puppy. No way, Jose.

Nothing to report

Must blog, despite the fact that both Blogger and my poor little computer appear to be having nervous breakdowns right now. The cursor is having difficulty keeping up with my fingers. (Type like the wind, little fingers.) Also, lack inspiration. 

I could tell you about Mabel's trip to the dentist this morning for her very first filling. It was meant to be a crown, but she wriggled too much. I hope the filling holds, because I don't feel like doing that again soon.

Or about how I wore the skinny jeans yesterday, told Facebook about it, and was then led down a rabbit-hole of paranoia about why so many of my female friends were liking my status. Had I worded it amusingly? (Good.) Did they think skinny jeans on me sounded like a good idea? (Good.) Were they secretly laughing at how ridiculous I must look in my skinny jeans and congratulating themselves on the fact that either they look better in theirs or have the sense not to wear any? (Not so good.)

Why must we women tear each other down? Oh wait, I did all that tearing down by myself. The comments were nothing but supportive. I stopped thinking about it, was happy not to have half a square yard of denim flapping wetly around my ankles in the copious rain, and had a cup of tea.

Or I could mention that we have a babysitter booked for Saturday evening. Whether Mabel's asleep or not.

This time I mean it

But first, some administrative stuff. Have you noticed my new thingy? Yes, it's lovely, isn't it? Oh, and also, I have a clever whatsit now that picks out four related posts, with or without pictures, and links to them at the bottom of every post. I'm not sure if it uses the tags, or possibly magic, but I love that it's giving some love to lesser-spotted posts, and personally I have found when I saw such a thing on other friends' blogs, that it drew me in and brought me to lots more interestingness, so I hope it does the same for you.

And then, when I was thinking about how to lure you people in and enmesh you in my fascinating word-tangles - I mean, how best to serve your needs as readers - I decided to do away with the silly and self-perpetuating "Popular recent posts" section in the margin and instead make a new page called Cliff Notes, which lists a few of my favourite blog posts and serves as a sort of potted history of what's been going on here and what I like to write about.

If you'd like to nominate a post to go there, I'm always open to suggestions, by the way.

(Cliff Notes, for my non-American readers, are those yellow-and-black-covered summary texts you can buy so that you don't have to read the whole book. Not that I've ever owned any such thing.)

See the link over there under the About Me section? There it is.

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That's enough of that.

I vowed not to mention this until we were at least a week in, but then I changed my mind. So what if I end up eating my words (again) in two days' time? Will you scorn me? And will I know? Will you stop reading entirely because I jumped the gun and blogged about something without giving it due thought and process? Well, fine, I never liked you anyway.

No, not you. Come back. You don't even know what I'm going to say yet.

On Sunday, which was exactly one month after her third birthday, I said to Mabel, "Let's put on your new dress for your friend's party," and she said to me, "I want to wear underpants." And I did not stand upon the order of my going, but went at once and fetched said underpants from the ranks of their brethern where they have been waiting patiently ever since June, being the last time she was potty "trained". I also took with us a spare pair, and a pullup, and an extra outfit just in case, because I'm not thick, me.

Luckily, the host is a wonderful, laid-back mother who greeted my news of an undefended bottom on arrival with "It's not a party until someone's peed their pants." Indeed. And Mabel successfully came to me twice and had me take her to the bathroom, before the third time telling me that she had indeed peed her pants just a little. That was pretty good going for a birthday party, and I certainly wasn't swooping down on her to check every ten minutes, because there was wine and spinach puffs and entertaining people to talk to and my son wasn't hiding under my legs like last year - he was happily playing with the birthday boy's brand-new robot and eating his weight in potato chips.

Yesterday I casually produced more underpants with the day's clothes, not sure how it would go down, but she was happy to put them on and tell everyone at school, at the top of her voice, that she was wearing underwear. She came home dry, wearing the same thing she'd set out in, and then proceded to motor through four pairs of bottoms in about two hours.

This may be the pattern for a while yet. Today I was all set to announce, in foolhardy manner, that this was it, no turning back, pullups for bedtime only... and then she took an extra-long nap, woke up soaked, and tearfully demanded a diaper for the rest of the afternoon.

Like I said the last time Ted, it won't happen again.

Kermuffins

I think my free ride may be coming to an end.

I'm one of those happy people for whom breastfeeding performs as advertised: I mean, as well as nourishing my babies, it had the lovely side effect of helping me lose the pregnancy weight. And then some. (I always remembered a friend of Anne Shirley (of Green Gables fame) telling her that she - the friend - had got fearfully thin since the babies arrived, and I hoped against hope that I'd be that sort of person.) I'm not saying you'd mistake me for someone with a tapeworm or anything, but I've been cheerfully wearing a size I like without having to think about it for several years now.

Anyway, I'm starting to get my kermuffins, as a friend of mine would say. Yesterday I tried on and discarded two dresses and several pairs of trousers in my search for the perfect thing to wear to a three-year-old's birthday party; the sort of thing that says, "I'm not going to any great effort, but I can look a little nicer than my usual playground self on occassion." But my difficulty was not just in finding the right level of casual/festive/able-to-withstand-barf, but also due to the mystifying way my middle section kept rolling itself over the top of my tights. Sigh.

It's about time, really. I've coasted by on a lone weekly pilates class, when the mood strikes me and the bedtime gods are favourable, for far too long. But I'm hampered by a distaste for exercise - and sweating, and getting out of breath, and having to wash my hair more often, and so on - and a fondness for muffins. (Ker- or otherwise.) Lately I've been having stern talks with myself about the need to prioritise exercise in my life instead of finding more important all the other things that have to get in the way. Perfectly reasonable things, like procuring food for my family, and laundry, and Christmas shopping, and sitting down with a good book, and blogging.

So I leveraged my synergies, and swallowed my pride, and mentioned to my husband the marathon runner that he might like to buy me a pair of running shoes for Christmas. Because even though I have always said that I'm not a runner, when you come down to it, it's the simplest thing to do. And I thought that if I had a decent pair of shoes and maybe some nice new gear to run in, the guilt of needing to get my (his) money's worth might prod me into actually doing it.

It's funny, the first blogs I read were weight-loss and fitness blogs. Not because I was mad to lose weight and exercise - more because they were there, and there was a satisfying progression built in as I read about people getting thinner and fitter. It was almost like getting thin and fit myself. Quite the armchair gratification. Then I gave into temptation and moved on to the the pregnancy/baby blogs, which was what I really wanted to read but hadn't wanted to admit to just yet. And now here I am, going in the other direction.

Which is not at all to say that this is about to turn into a fitness blog. I will not be counting down my pounds, if any are misplaced, but I suppose I might brag about running some distance, if I ever do such a thing. Based on past experience, I'm more likely to come back here with my tail between my legs and admit that I've moved on to something else and decided to embrace the zaftig. But I'll try to give it a decent shot first. If only for the sake of the fancy sneakers and the aerodynamic new top I happened to buy myself in Kohl's this morning.

Mumeet and proper

Mabel takes a doll with her in the stroller when we walk to collect her brother from school.
"My baby sister's thirsty. She wants her bottle." (Alarmingly, she has taken to pronouncing it "boddel," like a good American. This is just the sort of thing I wanted to avoid by having Irish children.)

"What about giving her some mumeet, Mabel?" I ask. I find it fascinating that she is so enamoured of giving bottles to her babies. Shouldn't she be lifting her shirt and latching baby on, as so many photos of breastfed toddlers depict. Where did I go wrong?
"She's my baby sister."
Oh, yes. Good point. "Well, shouldn't you bring her to her mummy and get her to give her some mumeet?" Pronouns getting the better of me, but she knows what I mean.
"No, she's thirsty. She wants baby milk."

I try to explain how milk from the mother is much better for a baby than formula. Then, overthinking a little, I decide that I shouldn't prejudice her against bottles. Sometimes bottles have breastmilk in them, after all.

"But," I continue, "sometimes the mummy can take out the mumeet and put it in a bottle so that another person can give the baby mumeet when the mummy is somewhere else." Even as I said it, I knew how this would sound.
"Mummy, that doesn't make any sense."

How right she is. Because mumeet, to her, is so much more than a drink. It's her word for the comfort of being close to me, for snuggling up and getting what she needs, for how to feel better when you're frustrated with the world and how to fall asleep at the end of a long day. How could anyone put that in a bottle?

I think she loves giving her babies bottles because they're part of the mysterious baby trappings that she's so fond of. Mumeet is not something she associates with babies, because she's not a baby, and mumeet is still her right and her privilege every day.

I don't think I've gone too wrong there.

Hoppity

Isn't it great when your three-year-old, who was demonstrably tired all morning, if the unwarranted hitting littler kids and yelling "I don't like [poor innocent 20-month-old who just happened to get in her way]!" and repeatedly climbing in and out of the shopping trolley at the supermarket checkout* are anything to go by, then turns out not to take a nap? Well, yes, it's great at 7pm when she finally goes down for the night and you get to enjoy a rare early night of peace and perhaps some red wine (or perhaps a lot of red wine), but right now, it's not so great, no.

*My children wind up, not down, when tired. So if they can't stand still and are bouncing off the walls, that means they're exhausted. (Unless it's Dash, in which case it may also mean he is trying very hard to ignore the call of nature yelling at him from his bladder region.)

Details

I think, speaking for myself and generalizing wildly (as I do), we have an endless fascination with other people's lives. I think this is why people read blogs. Because even when other people seem just like you, their lives are always different in tiny (or enormous) ways, ways they often wouldn't even think of as remarkable - and it's those chinks that make it so compelling to read about other people's doings. It's like visiting a friend's house, a friend you've known a while, and seeing their family photo collages on the wall, and poking around the books on their shelves, and considering the colours they painted their walls that you would never have thought of. (And then, I suppose, you either think "I'm so glad this cool person is my friend," or "Wow. Maybe I should ease gracefully out of this whole thing.")

And so I think I blog because, if you care enough to read this, and are interested enough to stop by every now and then, I'd probably like to invite you over to my house and have you ask me about my photo collage with its grainy, orange-hued 1970s picture of me with my grandparents (they had Instagram even then?) and the photo of me with my class in our white First Communion dresses ranged around the stautue of Mary in the chilly Dublin wind of May 1980, and the blurry one that looks all arty because my mum's disk camera was dodgy and you never knew what sort of double exposure you were going to get. And then, while I was making the tea, you could scan the bookshelves and ask yourself what sort of people have an ancient set of classics (in the original languages) on the top and far too many battered Dick Francis paperbacks in the middle and an entire collection of PG Wodehouse on the bottom, and discover many new and fascinating things about us.

The devil, as they say, is in the details. So please keep writing your own details, and I'll keep writing mine as best I can.