Ersatz

Sometimes I don't know why we bother with toys. I know it's just another riff on the baby-loves-boxes theme, but this is what I found Mabel playing with this afternoon, after she'd raided the kitchen for implements.

And then I asked her to clean up a mess and she found the cutest little family of sweeping brushes.

Then again, maybe it's because all the babies were napping.

 

Irrationality

I walked to school this morning with two happy six-year-old boys, watching them alternately run ahead and lag behind, jostling each other and both claiming to be the winner for half a mile in the chilly dry air that brought a glow to all our cheeks. The lined-up pupils had just started to enter the building when we got there, so I left the two as they scurried up the ramp into the warm, welcoming place where they're both content to go every day.

I let her father take the intransigent four-year-old to school. She didn't sleep well again last night.

The elementary school is having a lock-down drill today. It's three months since the Newtown shootings, and they've never had one before. I suppose I'm glad they're addressing the need, but I wish the need was not there. This is a county-wide thing, spurred perhaps by a shooting at a high school not a million miles away last week.

When I heard about it I told Dash what they'd be doing, in the broadest possible terms. I reminded him that they have fire drills for when something happens and they need to go outside, and told him this is the sort of drill for when something happens that means they all have to stay inside.

Dash: "What sort of thing?
Mabel: "Like when magical unicorns are outside the school?"
Me: "Yes. Like that."

I wasn't going to go any further into it, not with the four-year-old standing there taking it all in. We left it at unicorns and nobody was worried. I don't know what they'll tell them at school today. I don't think unicorns will be involved.

[I don't remember ever even having a fire drill at school. One memorable time, the principal came on the intercom to tell us that nobody could leave yet because there were BOYS outside. With EGGS. It was rag week (somewhere; not that we had any sort of official rag week) and our sixth-years apparently had made connections in the neighbourhood with some disreputable types who had ditched school early to come over to the not-conveniently-situated girls' school to egg someone, or anyone. The nuns were having none of it. We did not shiver in our shoes but instead mocked the staff who had decided boys were scary. (I was secretly relieved.)]

Every day we send our hearts out into the world for other people to take care of, to carefully avoid with their cars, to not harm. It becomes so routine that we don't even remember that's what we're doing, until something happens. Something not like magical unicorns, and not like teenage boys armed only with eggs, either.

It's completely irrational, but I keep wanting to drive past the elementary school today to make sure they're all okay in there.

Oscars and others

So many disjointed thoughts to impose some sort of order on, as I sit here having third breakfast which just happens to be the same as last night's dessert minus the custard and plus some coffee. It's got apples and oatmeal in it, so the cake part can be disregarded (but enjoyed, of course). Also, I went for a walk/run, so I'm allowed.

Mabel gatecrashed my weekend, basically. Friday night and Sunday night were supposed to be kid-free zones, and somehow they ended up including a certain four-year-old. This morning I dragged her kicking and screaming to school and left her there, where she stopped screaming as soon as I left the room. When I came back at pickup time I was told she'd thwacked her best friend in the face with a shovel. So that went well.

Last night I packed the children off to bed early and tuned the TV in to one of its rarely watched non-kid channels and spent a happy hour or two making snarky comments about the Oscars on Twitter and Facebook, and even paying attention to the show now and then between frantic typing. Just when they were FINALLY getting to the interesting awards, Mabel woke up and wanted to come down and see what we were watching. Getting her back to sleep made me miss the rest of the show, which was probably just as well since it was after 11pm and I had a raging headache, but it was still a bit of an anticlimax.

Oscar thoughts, randomly:

• None of the dresses really stood out to me, but then I missed most of the red carpet. I liked Amy Adams's feathers, Jennifer Aniston's red, and Jennifer Garner's violet, even if the ruffle did make my husband think of seaweed.
• I prefer my men beardless, but George was still lovely. You can all keep Ben and Hugh and I'll have George, thank you.
• Adele's hair looked good. I like the song but I wish she'd stop singing about "Skyfoal" and how it "crumbowls." The husband was delighted with the Bond tribute but would have liked it to be a bit more in-depth. We may have to just view the whole ouvre again
• I laughed at the boobs song. Sorry, world. On the other hand, if you're so unsure of your content that you have to envelop it in a cloaking device of Shatner coming back from the future to tell you it's not much good, maybe you should just get some better content. Or a host people are well-disposed to from the outset. (Hint: Neil Patrick Harris, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler.)

Other thoughts:

• This is the third time I've tried to write a post, so this is what you're getting.
• I have Girl Scout cookies. The end.

Watching Tangled with the Rapunzels

Code

I had Mabel's parent-teacher conference yesterday. I was pretty sure there wouldn't be much of import to say, but thought I'd better go along anyway just to make sure they didn't need to tell me she was a sociopath in training or anything. (They didn't.)

Her teachers opened procedings by assuring me that on the mornings when I pry her off me and leave her wailing in the classroom, the yells have stopped before I'm down the corridor and I'm not to worry at all. Which was nice.

I countered by explaining that those are the mornings when she hasn't had much sleep. I explained how bad a sleeper she is (though of course I've noted this on those days too when handing her over) and how she's often wide awake for an hour or so in the night, and how I have to go to her and try to help her get back to sleep.

Which left the field open wide for them to tell me what I should do about that. Silly me for mentioning it. They advised not going. I chuckled. (Maybe it was more of a snort.) Or at least a Supernanny-style putting-back-to-bed with no cuddles, over and over, until it sticks, they said.

I nodded and smiled and didn't say "Well, I'd prefer to go to my child when she wakes and calls for me, because she might actually need me. She might be sick, or have had a nightmare, and I don't want her to think that she's all alone and banned from my company just because it's dark outside." I only thought of that afterwards.

"No cuddles," repeated her teacher. Of course, I hadn't mentioned the booboos component of the putting back to sleep. No need to confuse matters. Oh, fine, okay, so I'm a little embarrassed and don't want to tell her teachers we're still nursing at night. If they think I'm a soft touch to be cuddling with her every night, can you imagine what they'd say when I mentioned that she still partakes of the nectar too? Besides, it's none of their business. But I was conscious of being a bad extended-lactivist.

I nodded and smiled some more, and we talked about Mabel's "academic" progress (she can cut with scissors!) and social progress (needs encouragement to clean up; needs to work on peaceful conflict resolution, yada yada, four-year-old-cakes), and I took my leave.

It was only later on last night that I realised that Ms S's references to "cuddles" were code for booboo. Because of course, she's talked to Mabel about this, and Mabel has no self-censoring device, and Ms S. is no idiot, and hadn't she just told me that you can have a good, sensible conversation with Mabel? (Not like me, then.)

She should have winked and cocked her head a lot more obviously if she wanted me to understand that she meant "No more booboo." I'm sleep deprived, so I'm a bit slow on the uptake.

Glow

Recently, a parent who'd been helping out in Mabel's classroom the day before stopped me, and said: "Oh, hey - I have to tell you,  Mabel..."

"What?" I was pretty sure it was going to be a positive comment, but decided to pave the way for an apology just in case she'd viciously pinched his son in a disagreement over the plastic animals: "Is she horrible?"

"No, no, she's not horrible. She's amazing. At her letters, I mean. She can write them all. I was amazed when I saw her. Does she practice at home?"

"Oh. Yes, well, I suppose. Not all of them, only the uppercase ones, most of them, and her S's are just squiggles that don't stop...  She doesn't practice, I mean, we don't make her, but she likes to write things. She has a big brother, you know, and so she sees him doing his homework and ... "

I blushed and babbled. I didn't want the other parent to feel his child was lagging behind. His son is exactly Mabel's age, and a very typical four-year-old boy who likes to play with the big blocks and the trucks and couldn't be less interested in writing his name or wondering which way round a letter goes. I had one of those too - I know how they are.

He didn't care. He thought it was the best thing ever and that I should be praising her to the skies.

The thing is, I am proud of her abilities, but the fact that she got to this point earlier than some others might isn't really any reflection on our parenting, or even her personality. It's a combination of fine-motor-skills development, gender, birth order, genetics, and inclination that leads her to like letters and want to write them and be able to do so at this age.

But to be honest, I would far rather he had stopped me to tell me that she did something generous or kind, or even that she'd said something clever or funny or sweet, or displayed great powers of deduction or memory, than to praise her writing ability. She does say clever and funny things, and can even be sweet and kind on occassion, and those are the traits I'm more concerned with her learning (and displaying) at this stage of her schooling.

She's not in nursery school to learn to write, or read, or do math; those are just things she's picking up along the way, and call me crazy but I don't really want her to get them too soon. She's there to learn how to rub along with her fellow man, to relate to her peers, to develop a healthy respect for authority figures, and perhaps find some non-disruptive ways to let her crazy-silly-funny-clever personality shine through in a classroom setting.

Of course I'm proud of my precocious little girl, for many reasons. But next time you see a child make a generous gesture or use her good manners, be sure to tell her parents, because that's what really makes a mother's heart glow.

Sacrifice

Generally speaking, I'm the chilly one in the house.

I mean, I get cold more easily than my husband, and the children take after him. I'll have four layers on and be pulling another cardigan round me and making another cup of tea while Mabel throws her clothes off with abandon and tries to run out the door barefoot. So we have a hot-water bottle, and I like to take it to bed with me on especially cold nights.

(Hot-water bottles seem not to be the ubiquitous bed-warmers here in the US that they are at home. In Ireland, I'm pretty sure I could walk into any chemist/pharmacy/drugstore and find a nice red or blue or even orange rubber receptacle for hot water, with which to take the chill off the sheets of a winter night, but over here they're a bit harder to track down, and  sometimes, extremely offputtingly, come with attachments for giving yourself a nice little colonic irrigation while you're at it. I don't really understand this part. I don't want to understand. Here's a more normal one. Phew.)

Anyway, since I never remember that it would be nice to have another hot-water bottle while I'm browsing Amazon for more interesting items, we only have the one in the house. I know there are such things as electric blankets, but that's so high-tech, you know. And I only want my bed to be warm at the start of the night. Later on, when my toes are finally toasty, I like my sheets to be soothingly cool. I'm an enigma, you see, a woman of intrigue and mystery.

So, and gosh but it takes a long time to get to my point tonight, I have found it a little annoying lately that Dash has decided he needs the hot-water bottle. Even though he's regularly found in bed with little beads of sweat on his nose (probably from insisting on falling asleep under the direct glare of his bedside lamp), he professed to be cold and to need it. And since every parent's prime directive is to get the children to go to sleep ASAP so they can finally enjoy a glass of wine and watch an R-rated movie in peace, we gave it to him.

Then, one night, he was so hot that he couldn't sleep. The duvet was taken entirely out of his duvet cover, but he was still too hot. B filled the hot-water bottle with cold water, and that seemed to help. He finally conked out. The next night he was still hot and wanted the cold bottle again.

The following night, B asked what sort of water bottle his majesty might desire, and I found him in the kitchen filling a lukewarm water bottle. Yes, Dash wanted his bottle neither heating nor cooling, but just body temperature. The better to keep his bed, um, the same.

So off I went to bed again that night in my socks and my cosy pyjamas, burying myself under mounds of down comforter and extra blanket, because my son was using the one and only hot-water bottle for nothing at all except to be a pleasantly squishy neutral-temperature thing in the bed beside him.

The things we do for our children.

Perfect two

Years ago, years and years ago, we took a few days in the Wesht of Ireland, and we drove there in my tiny wafer-thin car, and at some point along the road to Clifden, or Roundstone, or somewhere like that, I conjured up our imaginary future children in the back seat and made some brave, foolhardy even, remark about how young Ermingarde and Lavinia would react to whatever nonsense had just been said. Not to mention the little fella. We had to think for the little fella's name, but settled on Murgatroyd, which is the name of a duck, for reasons that are not actually clear to me.

To be honest, I don't even know if Lavinia was Lavinia, though I know Ermingarde was definitely Ermingarde, unless she was Ermintrude.

That was probably the first time we discussed our imaginary offspring. No, that's not true. We first discussed names when we'd been going out only a few months, less than a year, certainly; and at the tender age of not yet 21, that's a long time to be dating and still early on for such weighty discussions. We were in Lisbon, on a bench in the gardens of the Monastery of Jeronimos, I believe, though that's not important; I'm just giving you a sense of place. B had mentioned that he was partial to a particular girl's name, and I commented that, since putting it together with his last name would make the name of a famous film star, that would not be practical. Our friend appeared around the corner just as I was saying, "Well, if we have a girl, I'm not naming her that," and was justifiably a little concerned, no matter how much I reassured her that the whole conversation was extremely hypothetical.

But by the time we were driving to Roundstone it was eight years later and it was all just that little bit less hypothetical, even though at that point our permanent residences were an ocean apart and we hadn't quite figured out how to get around that fact. This was the trip where we both agreed that we wanted to get around it, although it took another 18 months for events to conspire to let that happen. 

And I think it was then, after conjuring Ermingarde and Murgatroyd and their sister, whoever she was, that we agreed that 2.5 was a good number of children. Two and a half. Very sensible, though maybe not entirely practical. Two, with an option on a third, was how we left it.

And thus it stayed, for a long time. But the option has never been taken up, and it's due to expire very soon, if it hasn't already done so. Maybe it's because I can't remember what the other girl was called. Maybe it's because I can't even imagine having another girl or another boy; or not having one or the other. By which I mean, that if a hypothetical third child was a girl, I'd still be sorry about the boy she wasn't. And if it was a boy, likewise.

So I think two is it. And two is perfect, because we have two perfect children, no matter how much and how often they drive us both demented, individually and one at a time, and we want to run away and drink a lot of wine and sleep forever. We'll still keep 'em.


This post is part of a virtual baby shower in honour of two of the Irish bloggers who have welcomed and are about to welcome their own perfect second children. Many congratulations to Aine of (the currently on hiatus) AndMyBaby and Lisa of Mama.ie.

Yesterday's post in the bloghop was by Laura at My Internal World, and tomorrow's will be from Kieran at Go Dad Go.

And today's mystery letter is S.

The Irish news

My American readers might be blissfully unaware of any brouhahas going on in European circles, so I feel it's my duty as one more connected with things happening on the other side of the Atlantic to update you every now and then.

Thing is, it turned out a few weeks ago that some beefburgers for sale in an Irish supermarket were not all beef. In fact, they were as much as 30% horse. Everyone choked on their breakfast sausages and vegetarians all over the country had a quiet chuckle. The rest of Europe thought we were all big gombeen eejits for not realising we were eating the geegees - until it turned out that horsemeat (and possibly donkey) was being substituted for beef in frozen lasagnes and ready meals sold all over Europe, and in fact the Irish were the cleverclogs who had uncovered these horrible shenanigans, which are starting to look like a Sopranos-style scam of the highest order, lining the pockets of some very crafty somebodys somewhere. Probably somewhere on a beach in the Bahamas.

I'm on Twitter these days (follow me! there's a button over there ->), and it's interesting to see how much more immediate and reactive it seems to be than Facebook. There were suddenly a lot of tweets about people being so hungry they could eat a horse.

Meanwhile, of course, the Pope resigned. That was news everywhere, and there were plenty of memes going round Facebook about how he was giving up the papacy for Lent and how the Queen thought he was a big ol' wuss for throwing in the towel. The Irish meme brigade were out in force with Dougal from Father Ted; because when you've a national cultural icon that's suddenly relevant (sort of) to global news, you photoshop the heck out of that.

Source: http://gingerbrownies.com/

If you don't know what Father Ted is, you haven't been paying attention. Let's just say it's spawned more catchphrases for the Irish population than Friends, Seinfeld, and Frasier put together.

Rebel

Last night, all over this great continent, some people were primping and priming themeselves and their wardrobes in preparation for today's celebration of love. Others were scrambling to order flowers online or find a card at the second-last minute. But everyone I know was cursing their children's classmates for their hard-to-spell names and their sheer numbers, and wrestling with printers or glue or tape or stickers, and wondering just how upset a class of three-, four-, five-, six-, or seven-year-olds would be if they didn't get a Valentine's card from every single other classmate.

Well, I'll tell you this afternoon, becuase my two went in with nary a card to their names. (That means nothing.)

Last week, as I think I mentioned, I was delighted to find some cute pre-made Valentine's cards in the local store. I got a pack of superhero ones for Dash, princess ones for Mabel. They, in turn, were also delighted, and sat down forthwith to write in the "To" and "From" names and seal them with a sticker. That was all they had to do. Crafts are for the birds, I thought. This is perfect.

They both got about halfway through their class lists. "That's great," I announced. We'll do a few more each day and by next Thursday they'll all be ready."
"Not so fast," said Fate to me.

The next day, Dash's teacher sent home a note saying that everyone should bring in 24 blank envelopes and a packet of candy hearts on Thursday. The blank envelopes confused me for a while - should there be anything inside them? How would the cards get to the right people if their names weren't on the outsides? Also, our cards didn't come with envelopes. Also also, I try to minimize the candy, especially the no-redeeming-features sugar-and-Red-40 type candy. If everyone brings in a pack, there's going to be a lot of candy in the classroom. (They plan to use them for math before eating them. So that makes it fine, right?)

A short consultation with Facebook enlighted me about the envelopes: what she meant was that the Valentines should have a sender's name but no recipient's name, for ease of distribution. Which makes it only almost, but not absolutely entirely, pointless. But Dash had done half the names already. Should he finish up the rest or not?

The decision was made by Dash deciding not to do any more, and not to bring any in. Mabel also fell off the wagon and gave up on her cards, so this morning I said:

"Right, are either of you bringing in Valentines today?"
"No," they chorused cheerfully.
"Okay then."

I did not say "Well, how will you feel if you're the only child who doesn't give cards in your class?" For one thing, the four-year-olds won't notice. For another, the six-year-olds probably won't either. And for the most part, I don't like being held hostage by Hallmark, the craft industry, the school, and some imaginary set of judgemental parents for yet another thing to think I should nag my children about if I want to be a good mother.

My children did not bring in any cards today. I'm fine with that. (But if I meet you I'll probably apologise profusely, just to be on the safe side.)

Consumer index

I panicked at Target this morning.

So many of Target's success stories probably start out that way. And by success stories I mean times they parted people from way more of their money than they went in intending to be parted from.

So I went in to get a pack of crayons for Dash (yes, we have eleventy million crayons in the house, but he needed a new pack for school, and taking some brand-new practically unused crayons out of our big box and putting them into a smaller box would not do, in spite of the fact that he and his sister scorn everything but markers at home but I digress) and maybe a couple of other school supplies his teacher said they were running short on (scissors; how do kids run out of scissors? What are they doing with them? Using them to cut up other pairs of scissors?) and some toothpaste because he won't use the new "clean squeeze" tube I just got because it's too minty, damnit, even though he likes mint, and then I thought maybe some new bathtub foam letters for Mabel to keep the grand universal scales of "you bought something for one child" level...

... and then I got to the Star Wars section of the toys and suddenly worried that Target would stop promoting Star Wars all of a sudden, because maybe something else is the next big thing and now that Disney has Star Wars (even though with JJ Abrams at the helm everyone knows that it's going to be absolutely the thing to see, but maybe the 6-year-old set aren't so well up on JJ Abrams's oeuvre, not having watched all of Alias, probably) perhaps the cool kids won't want lightsabers by April so I bought the damn Darth Maul red double-blade lightsaber that Dash has been begging for since some time last summer.

(I got into big, huge, trouble with him one night a few weeks ago when he suddenly remembered that he had thought he might get one for Christmas and then he didn't, and I was the worst, cruelest mother on the planet (and probably also on Alderaan and Tatooine) for not giving him a double-blade for Christmas when I had promised I would (note: I hadn't) and I should go out the very next morning and get him a double-blade to make up for it and when I wouldn't agree that this was clearly the correct way for me to atone for my sins, he threw a long, long hissy that still gets revisited from time to time when he remembers to be very upset about the whole incident.)

So there, fine, now he's getting his double-blade for his birthday (at the end of April; never say I don't plan ahead), because you can't just go out and buy people big presents when it's not Christmas or birthday or the culmination of some long-worked-for sticker-chart extravaganza.

(In related news, Mabel is plotting how she can get another baby sooner than her November birthday. She asked me the other day if we could do another star chart for her using the toilet, since that worked so well the last time. I pointed out that she knew how to do that now, so no, that wouldn't work. I wonder how I can leverage this desire of hers into some sort of necessary behaviour?)

But despite having the entire cave of wonders at my child-free-browsing disposal, I still didn't manage to find anything nice or unexpected or quirky or even predictable to give my beloved husband on the occassion of tomorrow's Annoying Hallmark Holiday. Looks like he's getting two delightful children. Again.

Hey, this year they're potty trained. It gets better.

Naturalized

Things I did not say to the nice people at this morning's very important appointment: 

All right, fine, I'll be part of your country then.

Can I just skip the first line of the oath? I don't really like this abjuring part.

Oh, look, there's a gun in my bag! [on discovering Dash's noisy plastic blaster]

Are you sure I can wear brown boots with grey pants?

Oop, time to get Mabel from school. You go on without me. I'll do it some other day. [Don't worry, B. went and got her and brought her back, whereupon she squirmed and asked about cookies in a very loud whisper for the rest of the time. I hadn't thought it would go on so long.]

Why is it called naturalization anyway? Was I not natural enough before?

Things they did not say to me:

A good American citizen would support the economy by buying a new pair of trousers for this important event instead of wearing ones she's had for nine years.

Wait a minute, you bought those before you had children and they still look good? Nice one.

But grey with brown? Hmmm.*

Your daughter's hair has clearly not been brushed in more than two days. You may not become a citizen of our country.

You have a large zit in the middle of your forehead. Concealer ain't fooling no-one. We prefer our new citizens zitless, thank you.

This photo on your naturalization certificate looks like a mugshot. I hope you weren't planning on showing it to anyone.

Things I did say:

Cookies? Sure I'll have a cookie. Cookies are a good thing about America.

It's great that you gave me two miniature American flags, because both my kids like those.

Thank you.

 ----------

 Well, I don't feel any different. And the cookies were delicious. So that's that over with.




*This is because my friend Helen's Mom assures me that brown and grey is an okay thing. And was also the one who pointed out that I should be proud of those trousers.

Imprint

I believe in the power of writing things down.

Just like it didn't really happen if you didn't tell someone about it, for me it didn't really happen if I didn't write it down. Because what's in my mind is ephemeral; it could be tipped out at any moment, to be replaced by children's shoe sizes or where I last saw your orange dinosaur. 

Sometimes it's because I need to remember all the things I mustn't forget. Sometimes it's because I need to find out what's inside my head and it won't come tumbling down, like Rapunzel's hair, until my fingers fly along the keys. And sometimes it's because I get overwhelmed by the fact that every few years we lose a generation's worth of stories, of knowledge, of information.

I want to tell my parents' stories, but they're not mine to tell. I'd like them to tell their own stories, but they don't feel the same compulsion I do to send the words out there. They might even feel a desire to keep things quiet, untold; even if that means they're lost forever. Some of their stories are probably lost already. Some of mine are too.

Writing it down makes it real. It keeps it alive. It takes it out of our heads - those amazing, wondrous, unfathomable places that are as fragile as mere skin and bone and grey matter - and turns it into marks on a page that can be deciphered today, tomorrow, perhaps long after we've gone and our bones have nourished a thousand rose bushes.

Ode to shoe

Ah, Zappos, how I love thee. And also hate thee, for you try so hard and so well to part me from my money.

Zappos, in case you live under a rock or on the tragically Zappos-less rock of Ireland, is an Internet mail-order shoe-selling company. They sell other things too now, but shoes are their main stock-in-trade. If you say Zappos, I think shoes, and so do many, many other women who have fallen into their supple, shiny, suede-trimmed trap.

It's not that they're bad. It's just that they're very very good.

So you go to the site and you look at lots of pretty pictures of shoes. You can see the shoes from every angle, you can zoom in to examine the stitching detail or the pattern on the sole, you can even watch a video where someone wears the shoe and then holds it and bends it to show how delightfully flexible it is. You can read reviews by other people who were delighted with these shoes, or disappointed by them in some specific way, and thus you can make an educated guess as to which shoes are best for you. They have all those odd sizes that are so hard to find in stores, like wides and narrows. You can sort them out by size or style or colour or brand or season - or emotion they inspire, probably.

But here's the best bit. Shipping is free, and return shipping is free. So you can order as many pairs as take your fancy, safe in the knowledge that if they're not quite right once you have them in your own hands, and on your own feet, you can send them back and not be a penny out of pocket.

Oh, those canny Zappos people, they are so clever. Because once you have the shoes not just in your hands and on your feet - as you might at the mall or on the high street - but in your very own house where you can try them on with all thicknesses of socks, with trousers and jeans and skirts and everything you own, the temptation to just let the nice people in the computer keep your money while you keep these shoes that are so nearly right, but maybe just not exactly what you had been initially envisaging, that temptation is great. These shoes that you might not even have picked off the display in the store, because you could see immediately that the shade was wrong, or the leather was oddly wrinkly, or you were actually looking for sandals, not boots - now you can see that really there could be a place in your collection for these shoes too. Maybe you'd be crazy to send them back.

Also, of course, sending them back requires action. You have to package them up again, and your children have already run off to pop the bubble wrap. You have to seal the box, and you can't find the packing tape. You have to print out a return label, and the printer is all the way downstairs in the basement and sometimes the wireless connection doesn't work so you have to go down there and manually turn it on. And then you have to drive to the post office or the UPS store and bring it inside. (I've heard you can just give it to your mail carrier too, but I don't ever trust my mail carrier to actually take things as well as deliver them. That sort of thing would never work in Ireland.) Sure, you don't have to pay anything, but all that activity, when you could just let them keep your few paltry dollars (eighty, whatever, were these on sale, I don't remember) and have these shoes in your collection for the day when you do own the perfect pants/skirt/suspenderbeltwhatIdon'tjudge . . . well, you see how it goes.

Right now, as you might have guessed, I have two pairs of shoes upstairs, all nicely re-packed in their boxes with the fiddly plastic mouldy things and the tissue paper and the inner bags all perfectly replaced. One pair was gorgeous, the perfect colour, but not comfortable enough. The other pair was blissfully comfy but the wrong colour. I'm trying very hard to either just let it go and send them back or find some good reason why I need the brown ones so that I can keep them.

Oh, Zappos. I just can't quit you.

Weird

Someone said a very reassuring thing to me a while ago; something so helpful that I return to it almost daily and take a deep breath and get over myself.

"Your children cannot possibly be weirder than my children."

I know, at first glance it doesn't sound all that comforting. But it was my sister-in-law, mother of three who are older than mine and are all turning out just fine, becoming upstanding young adults I'm proud to have call me Aunty. (Except they don't, of course, because I'm not that old.)

So partly there was the comfort of thinking that any weirdness is genetic (and not from my side of the family, to boot), but mostly it was just nice to hear another mother admit that kids are weird. Kids have their little quirks and things and requirements and desires and demands and individualities, and they all end up being pretty much on the normal side of weird, so there's no need to worry. I like that.

Another thing I liked happened when I was explaining, in slightly embarrassed terms, the limited nature of Dash's diet to my aunt and uncle. They totally took it in their stride, and reminisced about a certain niece (not me) who always came to visit with her box of Corn Flakes in tow, because that was what she ate. (I was the niece who ate everything with a side of cranberry sauce for several years.)

It's quite possible that we were all deeply weird as children, but we got over it.  Or at least, we grew up and learned the coping techniques that everyone uses to hide their internal weirdness from the outside world, to the appropriate degree.

 They probably will too.

Dilemma

I want to bake something, but I don't know what to bake.

It needs to be delicious, obviously.

But preferably quick to make and not requiring more than two bowls, max.

It should probably have chocolate in it, because if it doesn't I'll end up scouring the kitchen for something else that does.

It should have some sort of vaguely redeeming healthiness about it, so that I don't feel too bad about making it (and eating it).

But if it's too healthy, then it's not going to qualify as a) delicious or b) chocolatey.

If it's too healthy, or lacks chocolate, the children will not eat it.

But if it's too delicious the children will fight over it and I'll regret making it at all.

I could make it and hide it from them, but that requires tricky logistics.

And if I make it and hide it from them I'll end up eating it all, which won't be good for me.

It's going to be pumpkin muffins (with chocolate chips) again, isn't it?

I suppose there are worse things.

Sick children: a balanced view

Good things about sick children:

• Having sick children provides a break from the quotidian, a change from the ordinary, and makes you once again appreciate the pleasant routine of normal life. To which you will never return. DOOOM.
• They nap. For hours. Bliss.
• They're too tired to be naughty, so they're sweet and adorable all the time.
• They love cuddling. They just want to be close to you. You feel needed and special.
• Bedtime is so easy. They conk out on the sofa, you put them in bed, the end.

Bad things about sick children:

• Prime puking and/or fever time is in the middle of the night, exactly when you'd most like to be getting some rest and girding your own immune system against falling prey to the same thing.
• Whichever spot you haven't quite covered with a waterproof sheet or a precautionary towel is exactly where they'll manage to barf every time. They will also get their pyjamas and their hair on the way, and probably some totally different area you won't even notice until tomorrow.
• All that napping in the middle of the day means that at some point you will be faced with children who are convinced that 2.30am is when they need to get up and go downstairs to play. Both at once.
• You are the only person who can make them feel better. You can never leave. Don't even try.
• They love cuddling. Especially just before they throw up, or at 4am when you'd really like an hour or two alone in your own bed.
• They still wake up at 6am.
• Even when they're better, they've completely upset their eating and sleeping patterns and may never return to them. DOOOOM.

Sick, baleful Mabel says you are doooooomed.

Spanish-ish dinner

I spent a year in Spain as a student, have I mentioned that before? I must have. I usually describe it as a year "studying", with heavy air quotes, as it took place between my second and third year of college and sufficed to turn my plain old BA degree into a much more high-falutin' BA (Int.). They hadn't quite ironed out the process of the Erasmus year at my home university, though, and told us frankly before we left that though we were quite entitled to take the end-of-year exams in Spain and count them towards our final degree, we'd in all probability do better at home (where our Spanish-literature courses were taken through English, for one thing).

How they thought this would entice us to actually attend classes all year I don't know. I was the most studious of the four from our University, and even I only attended everything I was meant to in the first term, about half my classes after Christmas (the 9.30am modern-literature class was first to go), and nothing at all by summer term. When some members of our department came out to see how we were getting on, at Easter, only one of us was even in town* - and she was the one who'd barely gone to a class at all. She was running a lucrative and enterprising English-language teaching business, but had to employ her considerable acting talents and bullshitting skills to convince the visitors that we were all going to class every day. She may have been rumbled by the end of the night, but at least she got a fancy dinner out of it. (*One had a green card and had gone back to America "early" for the summer, I was sightseeing in Lisbon with some friends, and the third was also in Portugal, busking with an American mate and two guitars.)

Anyway. What I did learn that year, apart from a lot about beer, was to cook for myself. It was the first time I'd lived away from home, and once I stopped going to the university cafeteria, a few of us used to make dinner together every afternoon. We'd make an outing of it and vote on our choice, which almost always came down to creamy pasta or tomatoey pasta. Gradually, however, under the tutelage of someone's Spanish housemates, our repertoire broadened and we learned to make arroz a la cubana, tortilla de patatas, and lentejas (that's lentils). As well as calimocho. (That's cheap red wine mixed with cola.)

Towards the end of the year, when the other foreign students were studing for exams, my fellow Dubliners and I (except the one who'd gone to San Francisco in February) were finding new and delightfully empty bars. One was a little tapas bar called El Cielo (Heaven) where on a Monday night we'd be the only patrons, and the barman (Jesús, of course) would give us a little lesson on how to suck our red wine through the slice of chorizo already in our mouth, to marry the two flavours in the most intense way possible. (We never paid for real tapas, because we had no money to spare. So the free stuff at the bar was all we got, and since this was the centre of Spain rather than the south, a few slices of chorizo and some bread was as much as there was to pick at. If Jesús was feeling generous, he'd even let us have some shavings of jamón serrano and maybe a black olive or two while he polished all the glasses for the second time that day.)

Spanish chorizo is hard to find in the US, especially when people often take chorizo to mean the spicy Mexican sort of uncooked sausage. Spanish chorizo is a type of salami, garlicky and paprika-y, cured and dried and ready to eat - though of course you can fry it up to release some of that delicious fat and make it even tastier. I hadn't cooked with it for an age, but I came across some in our local supermarket last week and decided to invest a few dollars in some memories. It has worked out very well.

Egg and chorizo scramble

First, I fried up a little as a background accent to a pasta and kale dinner. Next I used a little with a scrambled egg and some spinach leaves in a pita pocket for a two-minute lunch. And tonight I used a bit more with chicken and all the spanish flavours I could think of, and the aromas as it simmered transported me back to Valladolid and apparently inspired all that remeniscence you just waded through. So I decided to share it with you, in all its glorious inauthenticity.

About an inch and a half of Spanish chorizo, diced
1 sweet onion, chopped
2 large cloves of garlic (or more), finely chopped
1 chicken breast
3 tablespoons of flour
About half a teaspoon of paprika
1 red bell pepper, chopped
Red wine, about half a glass, perhaps, if you can spare it
1 can of white beans, drained and rinsed
1 can of fire-roasted tomatoes
Good shake of dried oregano
Salt and pepper

First I fried the diced chorizo in a dry pan. Then I stirred in the onion and garlic and let it all soften in the chorizo fat. I put that much in a bowl to one side and added a bit of olive oil to the pan. I mixed the flour and paprika on a plate and tossed the chicken in it before browning it in the pan, and then threw the onion and chorizo back in, along with the red bell pepper. Once all that was hot again, I sloshed in some red wine and inhaled the memories as the alcohol bubbled off. Finally, I added the beans and tomatoes, and some water - about half the capacity of the tomato tin, to pick up the leftovers in there. I sprinkled over a good shake of oregano, some black pepper and about a 1/4 teaspoon of salt, and some red pepper flakes for a little heat. Then I let it all simmer for 20 minutes until the liquid had thickened into a delicious sauce.

You could have it on rice or even with mash, but we just ate it with crusty bread as we had some left over and it works well to mop up the sauce. You could use pork instead of chicken, but you'd probably want to simmer it all for longer, depending on the cut. I won't say it's authentic Spanish food, but it tasted good. I served it on top of some baby spinach leaves, just for extra vitamins and some green.

Of course, if you're not trying to stretch one chicken breast into a healthy dinner for four**, you could just fry the chorizo with the garlic and skip straight to the bread part and put all the wine in your glass, and experiment with sucking the wine through the chorizo in your mouth, and that would be transcendentally glorious too.


** No, of course my children didn't eat this. Even if they didn't have stomach viruses, there's no way on earth they would eat this. So in our house, that's dinner for the grown ups for two nights.

Full circle

When Dash was three and in nursery school, his classroom began getting the kids to "sign in" every morning.

Yes, I know that sounds a bit pushy, but really, it was the lowest of low-key. They would print out a class list with the large letters of each child's name in dots, so that the children just had to find their own and try to trace over it. By the time they started kindergarden, a year and a half later for most of the class, they'd be expected to recognise and write their names - this was just the beginning of a very slow ramping up to that.

Honestly, even the following year at nursery school, signing in was absolutely all the writing they were expected to do - though of course if they wanted to do more, they could, and they did talk about the letters and have a show-and-share (bring in something starting with your assigned letter and tell the class about it) once a week. I love this school and its ethos is all about learning through play.

Anyway, every morning I'd bring three-and-a-half-year-old Dash to school, and his 14-month-old baby sister would grab a pencil and yell "Ning! Ning!" and try her best to sign in along with everyone else. "Ning" meant pen or pencil in Mabel-ese."Ning circle!" she said.

And this week Mabel, in the same classroom, with the same teachers her brother had, started signing in. Because she's a girl (maybe) and because she's six months older than he was in this class (November versus April birthday), she's already pretty good at writing her name, and tracing over the letters was no challenge. Some of the younger boys, I could see, were much closer to where Dash was at that age, just digging the pencil deeply across the line of letters in an angry-looking scribble. That's fine - it's totally age appropriate, and so long as they're learning to know how their name looks by seeing it every morning, it's a start.

But I remember thinking how lovely it would be when Mabel finally got to this stage and was allowed use the ning for its intended purpose, and here we are, and yes, it is.

Not actually signing her name right now