Posts Tagged "kids"
Make friends, make friends, never ever break friends
I am curled in a ball on the sofa, wrapped in a blanket, my face turned away from you, my eyes tight shut against the glare of the artificial light of our early morning.
Vague sounds of the television and your quiet play and chatter filter through but don’t penetrate past the armour I have so carefully applied this morning. You are just noise to me. I wish you weren’t here.
I wish I wasn’t here.
I feel bruised. My body pinched, pulled, rearranged. A night of being your bed, comforter, punching bag, drinks dispenser, toy, as you worked through your rage and despair and frustration and all of the other things that seem to plague your nights. I wonder at what point last night did I finally shut down? At what point did I stop hearing the crying and just switch off to the writhing, grasping, angry little body in my arms. At what point did you stop being my baby and become something I had to endure? It was before exhaustion took you, finally, that much I know. Long before. Your stamina long eclipsing mine. My head hitting the pillow numb and empty.
I feel nothing now. My body moving on auto-pilot as I was woken from a sleep only just begun. I am cold, my skin prickling, as if the emotional drainage of the night has taken all my body heat with it. I shake, I shiver, wrapped in my cocoon and in darkness.
And yet even now, in my dark place, the mother synapses fire again. Ears on alert for sounds of distress and need. I hate that the instinct is so strong, that even when I want to disengage it holds me. Even now blissful nothingness is beyond my grasp, however much I wish for it, as anger burns hot in my chest. Dull but there, keeping me from icing up completely. I suppose I should be grateful for it. Grateful for feeling something. Because what kind of mother feels nothing?
Wrapped in shadow I am concious of time passing. All too soon the sounds of contented occupation begin to morph to sighs and little murmurs of annoyance. It is inevitable.
And then.
Movement. A shuffle. Warm fingers feeling there way beneath my covers to find my face, probing but gentle, searching for a connection and a response.
“Mama”
I am defrosting. The guilt is creeping back now. A familiar friend. Guilt that I seem unable to perform such a basic a function as enduring your need for me. Guilt at my weakness, at my selfishness, at my inadequate limits. Guilt that I am not enough, never enough for you. Guilt that I could ever wish you far away.
Turning, I pull you up and under, your body settling into my shape. I cannot yet look at you but your eager grin hovers an inch from my face in the half-light, your breath heavy and sweet. You wriggle your way through my defences, seeking out my bruises and my hurts with gentle hands, your fingers pushing their way through my hair to stroke and sooth and pat: movements learnt from being their recipient so many times.
You lie still for only a moment, but it is long enough for me to feel a rush of love so strong and deep it takes my breath, releasing in one low, shaking sob, that makes my body move and throw off the cover to let in the bright light of the dawn, here at last.
And I hold you close to me, breathing in your smell and your warmth and your life as the long night drips off me, and you begin to chatter with your nonsense words, telling me of your plans, about the red car that just drove past and that the dog from next door is awake and barking hello, and how you’d really like some breakfast please.
I take your hands in mine and plant a kiss on each small palm and look up at you to smile. Breakfast. Yes.
Read MoreIntroducing: The Baby Show 2060
It was a rather long night last night. Not quite a talking bread people kinda night but not far off.
And as I lay, trying to block out the whining and sniffing of the giant baby draped across my chest feeling very sorry for himself, having given up trying to put him back in the completely useless cot for the millionth time, I ended up thinking back to that post about baby gadgets and all the crap cluttering up our attic.
And I wondered… what gadgets do you reckon Kai’s children’s children will be ordering from their Mothercare catalogues in preparation for their first borns?
Side note: I’ll still be alive obviously and irritating the hell out of all my children by refusing to die. Holed up in some cottage somewhere surrounded by cats and writing steamy vampire erotic literature (because that’s all that will sell in the future).
Anyway…
Future baby gadgets. Here are my top 5 Baby Show 2060 contenders:
1. The ‘Operation’ Style Baby Monitor
You know that game right? Operation? With the man with the flashing nose and the elastic band in his leg that always got lost? Well since we already have camera monitors and movement monitors I reckon it’s only a matter of time before all homes mount an electronic representation of their baby on the wall that will alert them to said baby’s every need and complaint. Hungry? The tummy will flash. Cold? Skin will light up blue. Colic? Wailing siren and emergency lock-down procedure will initiate, sealing all doors and windows with cry-proof barriers to protect the neighbours (and stop us running screaming into the street) and deploying medicinal gin (for the parents, natch).
2. The Zero-Gravity Baby-Gro
Thus causing contained baby to become weightless enabling more comfortable all-night pacing. (Did I mention that Kai has just been weighed in at a whopping 26 and a half lb?!)
3. The Simpsons/Family Guy branded Baby Translator
As featured on the Simpsons to turn all those baby gurgles and gibberish Ikean talk into real worlds, but with translations spoken by the voice of baby Stewie from Family Guy (Don’t worry about the cross-show legal copyright complications – Family Guy will have bought out Simpsons by then, being as it is the far superior show). No longer would we have to guess what that gobbledegook nonsense accompanied by frantic gesturing meant when our Stewie-Speaker would reveal the truth: “Hello, mother. I come bearing a gift. I’ll give you a hint. It’s in my diaper and it’s not a toaster.”
4. The Baby Stasis Machine
In which our adorable little bundles of joy (who we love) could be cryogenically frozen (quite safely) for short periods (say a day or two – week at most) while we read a book / catch up on the housework/ go on holiday.
5. The Selective Hearing Ear Plugs
Fitted in a mother’s ears they would filter out all sounds that are not absolutely essential. For example , “Mummy I put the cat in the washing machine” you would hear. Unimportant whining, the sound of CBeebies (Reloaded), endless noisy battery operated toys, your husband talking about football would all be blocked. Silence is set as the default but you can also programme your ear plugs to instead play relaxing music, stress-relieving affirmations, or talking books read by Antonio Banderas.
So there’s mine. What parenting inventions would YOU like to see on the market in another 50 years?
NOTE: All the above ideas will be listed at the patent office shortly so no copying people. I need a future income to feed my cat hoarding, reclusive, vampire literature writing lifestyle after all.
————————————
Read MoreLinguistic Mysteries and Practical Storage Solutions
If you were to press your ear against the front door of our house at the moment (which I hope you wouldn’t by the way, I have quite enough stalkers already thanks, but if you were figuratively speaking to press your ear against my front door…), you would probably be greeted by one sound and one sound only:
“Bakkum bakkum bakkum bakkum”
Don’t ask me what it means. I have no idea. But it obviously means something to Kai because he says it A LOT.
I have often wondered at the true nationality of Kai. Given his tendency to babble incoherent yet strangely consistent words and phrases and shun normal words I doubt he is English. To be honest, most days I doubt that he is even human. If two white parents can have a black child because of random contributions from their combined genetic history then I find it perfectly feasible that I can have given birth to a child who is not the same nationality, race or perhaps even species as his parents. I swear his ears grow more pointy by the week so my bets were on troublesome fairie folk.
Anyway, his dad and I have listened on in bemused (and slightly concerned) amusement to Kai’s constant and earnest attempts at communication for the last couple of weeks with absolutely no idea what “Bakkum” or “Grunbar” or all the other weird and wonderful words he comes out with might mean until a family day out last weekend brought some unexpected insight on what he might have been trying to tell us all along.
We were off to visit my brother’s brand new flat in Coventry, city of grey and the famous ring road of doom. Feckin’ nightmare that ring round. We went round it twice, in both directions, before we figured out where we supposed to get off (and that was only after we’d shouted at each other, pulled over and waved Ant’s phone with it’s GPS out the window a few dozen times to try and calculate our position, and then finally relented and phoned for directions). Turns out we needed to get off, then drive as if we were getting back on and then pull a Lewis Hamilton type hard left to screech off down a side road at the last minute. Who knew? Not google maps that’s for sure.
Anyway. It’s a gorgeous flat, very ‘young executive’, and with TWO balconies and TWO toilets (which seems quite execessive for one a one bedroom flat but there you go). But that’s not the exciting bit. No. The exciting bit is that it is within 3 minutes walk of Coventy Ikea.
“It’s WHAT??! You mean you can WALK there???!”, I screech down the phone at my brother a couple of weeks earlier.
Dave: “Ummm yes. But anyway… did I tell you about the balconies? And the under-ground car park? And the concierge”
Me: “SCREW the balconies! Ikea baby!! Oh my god… you could go there for breakfast!!”
Dave: “I fear you’re rather missing the point…”
So of course, on our visit there I insisted we have a day trip out to the blue and yellowed halls of delight (Dave: “Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer to do something else? See the Cathedral…?” Me: “IKEA BABY!!!”) I mean, come on, where else can you indulge your need to by useless yet beautiful kitchen implements AND eat your body weight in meatballs and chips?
And it was while we wandering round, marvelling at the LEKSVICKs and the SKUBBs and EKTORPs that it dawned on us.
Kai is Ikean.
Now they are an elusive race the Ikeans. By night they revel in their homeland paradise of practical yet stylish storage solutions and simple, common sense design. Perhaps sitting and reading one of those books you see on the shelves in an incomprehensible language (it’s not Swedish, it’s Ikean), or working in one of the ergonomicallydesigned office spaces, their children running gayly amidst the labyrinth of sofas and TV cabinets, before being tucked up under their stripy, whimsical duvets with their strange giraffe-esque cuddly toys. But as dawn breaks, our mysterious friends scuttle out of their sanctuary in preparation for the mass public invasion and disappear off into the early morning light to be forced to design new and exciting additions to next year’s catalogue. The only clues of their existence being a half-eaten hot dog, a crumbled looking bed, and their shining faces with just a hint of sadness peering out from photo frames in their abandoned living rooms. A displaced people they are. Waiting for the day they will be allowed the freedom to conduct their lives undisturbed.
To them LIATORP isn’t merely a strange name for a coffee table – it means “place to put your cuppa”. Their native tongue bastardised for novel marketing purposes.
Somewhere in my distant ancestry, I reckon we must have Ikean relatives and Kai is the genetic throwback.
If only I could find an Ikean to translate and tell us what “Bakkum” really means…
Maybe I’ll ask Sandy Toksvig (whose family name translates as “She of the Interesting Shoe-rack”)
I bet she’s one of them…
The Ordinary Child and a Mashed Potato Moment
First of all, a HUGE thank you to Potty Mummy for naming me the British Mummy Bloggers’ Blogger of the Week – what an honour! Welcome to new folks joining the sleep deprivation party here at SIFTW (acronyms mean I’ve totally made it!) This does of course now put me under immense pressure now to come up with something vaguely entertaining for you all. Which no doubt means, according to the ‘rules’ that I will end up being dull and weird. Oh well. Popularity was nice while it lasted!
There seems to be a bit of a theme running through my blogging at the moment. First we had a post about my average accomplishments, then it was my average blog, and today, well, today I want to talk about average babies.
You see, now Kai has hit the big 1 the inevitable baby race seems to have taken on new and infuriatingly pervasive proportions. Of course, it’s always been something. Can he smile yet? Can he roll? Sit up? Stand on one leg while singing ‘I’m a little tea-pot’? (ok, not the last one. At least… not yet)
Right now it’s walking and talking. It’s all anyone seems to care about.
And as Kai is doing neither (apart from the odd random word and strange animal impersonation) nor, in fact, showing the slightest interest in doing so, I find myself once again the recipient of a multitude of wonderfully reassuring and self-affirming comments such as “Well, I’m sure he’ll get it EVENTUALLY *sympathetic look*”, and (my current favourite of the week) “It’s ok, some babies just have more ‘physical’ intelligence than others” (what does that even MEAN??! If you’re reading, person who said that – FOR SHAME!!)
I’ve talked about the infuriating affliction that is competitive mum syndrome before on here. It’s something I try very, very hard to avoid. Mostly because I think it’s a huge big pile of bull crap.
But I’m going to admit it. A teeny tiny part of me cries as I watch Kai’s peers confidently run around reciting the alphabet backwards while Kai himself sits in a corner randomly pointing and laughing at inanimate objects and trying to bark like a dog. I am forced to face the fact that, despite my best efforts at parenting, my child hasn’t been gifted with supernaturally advanced powers of development.
Yes Josie, it’s bad news I’m afraid. Your child is *gulp*… average.
Why does it bother us so much? Cause I know it’s not just me, I bet you, mummy readers, have all had such moments of fleeting disappointment and vague feelings of failure which seem to rise, unbidden into our minds, every time your child’s friend does yet another extraordinary thing.
Saying that, I think this is mostly a first-born thing. Parents with two or three, or even (as in the case of some friends) , five or SIX probably don’t give a damn at what age their child decides to do something, or what anyone else thinks about it, too busy as they are trying to end the day with as many children alive as when they started. So parents of multiples – you have permission to take a smug position of superiority here – no doubt you learned these lessons long ago.
Anyway. Where was I? Oh yes…
Common sense tells us that obviously the rate of our child’s development has nothing whatsoever to do with our relative merits or failures as parents, or is, in fact, any indication of their future intelligence or success but far more likely down to random genetics, personality and well, chance. Despite what the competitive mums seem to infer, the fact that my baby is not walking and talking at the grand old age of thirteen months old, does NOT mean he is destined to become that man that walks around our town with a robe made of a sacking, sandals, and a straw hat shouting at the pigeons.
So why do we take it all so personally? Why DOES it bother us, if only a little?
I think the reason it seems to strike a nerve is due, in part, to a journey that began back in our teenage years. When we were forced to come to terms with the fact that no, we probably weren’t going to be a model, and that we weren’t going to ‘grow into’ our noses and magically wake-up looking like Angelina Jolie. Or that we were going to randomly bump into Robbie Williams in Starbucks one day and, looking mysterious and alluring (as, of course, we would), and being given his skinny cappuccino with extra foam in a hilarious coffee shop- misundertanding, cause him to fall head over heels in love with us because we ‘got him’ and didn’t care about the fame thing.
I’ve STILL not quite got over that one.
And guess what. Our children probably aren’t going to be space men either, or prime minister, or nobel peace prize winners, or pirate ninjas, or a horse, or any of the of the things we ourselves dreamed of becoming as children. Unconciously we long for them to live extraordinary lives, the lives we did not lead, the lives we had to let go of.
Ok I’ll admit this is all sounding rather depressing in a kind of let me take your dreams and stamp all over them kind of way.
But the sooner we realise this as parents the better. The sooner we can let go of our need for our children to be so damn extraordinary, the sooner we are freed to see just how incredible they already are. Maybe if we can just stop worrying about the big stuff, the stupid milestones and the whole ‘my baby should’s, we’ll be less likley to miss all those teeny tiny subtle moments of everyday extraordinariness that our children show us just be being alive. Those moments that show us that sometimes it’s the ordinary and unremarkable that can be the most beautiful and precious of all.
Like eating mash potato with their hands. Or how watching a dog running round the garden can be the single most hilarious experience of their little life. Or they way their head seems to fit so perfectly nestled into your shoulder.
Not clever. Not exceptional. But just magic.
So let go Competititve Mums. Please. Because I can’t take this crap anymore.
Stop asking me if Kai’s walking yet and let us get back to rubbing mashed potato in our hair. Cause it’s ten million times more fun.
