1.  Rhythm

2.  Blues

3.  Jeopardy

Wednesday is Friends’ Day.  So why oh why did I have to do painting, colouring and a long, loud session on the drum kit and ELC keyboard before anyone came round?  She is saintly, and will not  mind me crying Foul! Is That Not Why I Have Wonder Nanny?  Ahem. Excuse me.  One Wednesday  Mother had a hospital appointment for 3 year old’s adenoids and was Too Stressed To Come Out.  The other Wednesday Mother wanted to come here, which was fine. I am being unfair on Son 1 aged 4y 10m and Son 2 aged 23m.  Son 1 was up for painting. Son 2 really just likes stirring the dirty water from an upturned ramekin and splatting it on the walls with a paintbrush.  And the jamming session was great. Son 1 on keyboards “You’re too noisy! I can’t hear when I sing!” and Son 2, “Bang-It-Hard-Enough-And-The-Crayons-I’ve-Posted-In-All-The-Drums-Will-Rattle.”  Mrs Gallagher would have had this.

Best Friend and Little Brother at last came round.   Best Friend and Son 1 locked into a horrible axis and wouldn’t play with Little Brother. Little Brother, tired, rejected/dejected, was uninterested in Son 2, no matter how we tried.   Son 2 trailed after all three: “I’m 4! I’m 4! Honest!”  Son 1 and BF were in an elaborate game of pirates which involved caves, maps and treasure. LB, who must never be under-rated, was very often in possession of the treasure chest. And I was on his side.  Son 2 wore Son 1’s Captain Hook outfit, and was incredibly pleased with himself. Pa-ang.   Son 1 hasn’t worn his Captain Hook outfit since BF’s mother found him one at a car boot sale.        

The MAn came home with a Business Colleague and we all went crabbing. The tide was coming in, there was seaweed everywhere so we couldn’t see anything, all four boys stripped off.  I made Son 2 put his reins back on. “In years to come, it will cost him a great deal to walk around naked with a beautiful  blonde on the end of his reins,” I told Wednesday Mum.   Son 1 found something which i thought was a weathered old battery case with stuff growing round it. ”It’s a sea urchin,” said Wednesday Mum. “That’s its mouth.”  She did a degree in Marine Biology ahead of the PhD in Chemical  Engineering so I kinda believe her.  We still caught crabs. Big ‘Uns and Littl’Uns. Son 1 caught a whopper. Son 1 caught a titch - just by trawling his shrimp net he found the teeniest sideways-mover. We put them all in the same big bucket, worried they’d eat each other. But they all huddled under the Whopper. ”We’re running out of concrete,” observed BF.  Four-year-old speak for The Tide Is Racing In. We were also running out of bacon.  But we defeated our own record.  Twelve crabs and a sea urchin. We tipped the bucket out on the river wall so we could watch the crabs scuttle back to the water. Three huge seagulls appeared instantly.  We then had to prise the bloody crabs out of the gaps in the steps to get them safely back in the river.    It was supposed to be a race, but it turned into an airlift.

1.    Graffiti

2.    White Noise

3.    Performance

Son 2 aged 22m has scribbled in biro on my lovely leather chair again. See here for previous episode. http://mumsnet.com/blogs/serenedays/2009/04/27/wheres-spot/  He was in the lounge with Son 1 aged 4y 10m, watching telly while I did my hair and make up.  A Wednesday Mum rang, Son 1 answered and brought the phone upstairs. I chatted - her car’s broken down so they couldn’t come on today’s planned outing - and went downstairs with the phone and Son 1.  “Dor!” said Son 2, happily, pointed at his artwork.  Black. Circles. He’s pressed hard, And he’s done crosses on the arms as well. I was livid. I held him at arm’s length, yelling at him for being naughty, took him upstairs, dumped him in his cot and closed the door.  I went downstairs, out of breath from stomping up too quickly.   I sorted the washing out. I put the washing on.  I heard a high-pitched wail from upstairs. I cleared up a bit in the kitchen.  After 5 full minutes (I never leave him more than two in case he climbs out. But I was cross) I went back upstairs and opened the door.  He was standing in the corner of the cot, his arms folded.  He smiled. “Dat! Up Dere!”  He pointed out of the window.  If you’re bored, standing in the corner of the cot you can see the squatters’ bungalow up the cliff behind us (see here for previous episode http://mumsnet.com/blogs/serenedays/2009/07/25/cliffhanger/) On the doorstep, in front of their red door, sat a black cat.  He says he won’t draw on Mummy’s chair again.  And Mummy says she won’t leave a 22m old alone in a room with a leather chair and a biro.

We were going out to a Play Day in the Big Town.   I packed up the car, including the boys, and remembered my phone. On my way back I saw a neighbour, someone we see to talk to about twice a week. She had some time off last week, and she and her long-term partner had a low-key wedding. I was thrilled , and told Son 1 as soon as I got back in “I just saw Neighbour!  She and Partner have got married!” “I knew that already,” said Son matter-of-factly. “How did you know that?” “I saw her with Wonder Nanny and she told us then.” “But it’s really exciting! Why didn’t you tell me?” “I forgot.”  Oh God.  He’s such a bloke already.

All the Play Day parking was gone by the time we got there, and men in yellow jackets were telling people to drive three miles out of Town and get the Park And Ride.  I parked at The Office, well over half a mile away.  Son 2 wanted to get out of the Big Pram, Son 1 wanted to get in. But we were seeing some friends we hadn’t seen for ages http://mumsnet.com/blogs/serenedays/2008/12/03/the-christmas-tree/ so I wanted to hurry.  The Play Day was in the Town Park.  Or the Town Paddy Field, as it should now be known after countless days of rain.  The ground was sodden and sopping. We found our friends. The big boys were shy of each other at first, Son 2 just wanted to get out of the Pram, the 2 year old wasn’t really up for a play.   We found some bouncy castles and they bounced. They ran off to the playground area and played on balances and slides. Son loved the sea saw. We had lunch and headed to the Marquee to see acrobats we’d last seen at The Freezing Fiesta http://mumsnet.com/blogs/serenedays/2009/05/26/the-freezing-fiesta/.  They were very good.  Handstands, acrobatics, diablos, girls with sashes doing aerial ballet up in the roof.  A band, a clown, and fire-jugglers.  The fire-jugglers let great balls of flame roar upwards. The clown, casually juggling three burning sticks on the stage where the band were playing yelled: “No! Not in the tent!” at the fire-eaters.  Last time we saw them, he cleared children from underneath the aerial ballerinas half way through their act.  I do like their Health And Safety style.   We went to the playground, the Big Boys played on the roundabout. “And me! And me!” cried Son 2.  There was a posse of bigger children on the roundabout. “Can he go in the middle?” I asked them. “Slowly, slowly, spin it slowly” they hissed to each other.  “Jack! Mind that baby!” barked a father from the bus shelter. “It’s ok,” I called back. “They’re being very good.”  Son 2 was spun slowly.  I took him out. He cried and reached back for it.  “Can we sit on the outside and I’ll spin it?” I asked the posse.  They assented.  I span us round and round. I took him off when I was dizzy.  The posse piled back on and whizzed it round like a drill bit.  We bought cold drinks, and went back to the tents. There was a circus workshop on. Son 1 and his friend span sticks round and round like majorettes. Son 2 was fascinated by a diablo.  He held the sticks, I helped him get it on the string… he tried to throw it off.  Guess what I used to call him in his reflux days.

1.  Pushing Boundaries

2.  Pushing In

3.  Pushy Mother

A Very Grim Weather Forecast.  Wet. Really, Really, Wet. But clearing up Later On.  We decided our planned Bird Park trip could go ahead, but we would need to leave early. The Man helped us get out.  0930, in our macs just to go from the house to the car, double parked outside.  The house phone rang. The Wednesday Mum.  She forgot. We’re picking up another family and splitting them between us.  OK. We drove round and round looking for the right road.  And found a Post Lady to help. We found the right house.  Wednesday Mum gave us Best Friend to take, so she could take the Mother and two daughters in the other family.  Off we went.   Pouring with rain. The road we needed closed with miles and miles of diversions. And Son 1 aged 4y 10m and Best Friend giggling away as they yelled “Poo Poo Pants!”  and “Wee Wee Head!”  at each other. Son 2 aged 22m sat in his seat yelling “Bart!” (= fart) and laughing his head off.  I will remember not to be disappointed if this is as good as conversation in our 75% male household gets from now on. 

The Bird Park. Soft Play, on a hideously wet day in the summer holidays.  Every table full.  Wet macs, jackets and kagoules over the back of every chair.  Son 1 and Best Friend ran off, I plopped Son 2 in the baby area and found a table. I put our macs and bags on it, went to play with Son 1 and still had to fend off an older woman who snuck on the one seat I hadn’t baggsed.   The others took a while coming.  Son 1 and I had a good play. He stood on top of the jets, all his fine, long, blond hair blown vertically upwards. With his tee shirt full of air and a great delighted smile on his face.  We played with the balls, we climbed, we went down slides.  Son 1 was a pain. He spent the morning playing  a Fierce Game.  Growling and roaring at everyone. Eventually he fell out with Best Friend.  He roared, Best Friend lashed out. He cried.  So all three of us went to play on the Big Uns equipment together.  

And then we all went outside.  In our macs, the rain drumming down, no-one else out. Son 1 dropped his Knobbly Bobbly ice lolly.  I gave him 85p and told him to go back in and buy another one. He managed.  Amazing what motivation can do.  We saw owls, and otters. Son 2 just said “Fish.”  “Fish.” “Fish,” as we wound our way down to the farm area. He studied the fish - great fat koi - for as long as we’d let him.  We looked at the rabbits and the guinea pigs. Outside we fed rabbits and sheep with goat food. Son 1 was letting big sheep lap the pellets off his hands; Son 2 was still just a bit scared. There was a Daddy, Mummy and Baby donkey. Son 1 and I wondered if The Man would let us have a baby donkey.  Son 2 hung on the wire sides of the hen houses.  At penguin feeding time the other Wednesday MOther took her two boys back in. Not us. Son 1 sat on the side of the penguin pool trying to get picked to feed them. Son 2 cried with tiredness and pressed his face in to mine.  When it came to choosing the children, Son 1 didn’t get a look in. “Just get down,” I said, giving him a nudge over. Inside the penguin pen, he turned to me. “Did they say it’s all right?”  ”Yes it’s all right,” I said. “Did they say so?”  How well that child knows me. The keeper passed him and told him to come along, olonking a bucket of fish down beside him.  Son 1 and his new friends hurled them into the pool.   Next to Son 2 and me, two children behind the wall stood with their hands up.  We went round the pool to watch Son 1.  “Pin Gin” said Son 2.

1,  Stealth

2.  Sea King

3.  Merlin

I was very pleased to get to bed without Son 1 aged 4y 9m padding upstairs behind my heels, and glad also to get through the night without being wakened by a little pale visitor clambering into the Big Bed.  I woke to the usual siren sound of “Mummeee, Mummeee” from downstairs. And was eyeball to eyeball with a little pale visitor.  No idea when he turned up.  He obviously didn’t wake me when he got in, and I didn’t wake him when I got up. 

The Rockpool Beach was just a strip of sand with great rolling waves reaching well up it.  “It’s going out,” said the Wednesday Mums.  They weren’t staying, they each had other things to do. I decided we’d hang around and see how we got on. I put Son 2 in his sunsuit and plastered him in Factor 50.  How British. Yesterday it rained on me so hard I could barely breathe… this afternoon I was gazing out to sea wondering how could I could go for a dip with two children on land.  Son 1 went in the sea up to his hips in his trousers.  i yelled at him and got him in his sunsuit.  The tide pelts in on that beach, and it raced out.   The three of us played at the water’s edge.  We had some lunch. Son 1 wanted to go home - he’d got cold but wouldn’t let me change him.  I span it out.  We took him to the loo and on the way back looked in rockpools for cowries. We found two.  Three children came up to us to show us the crab they’d caught.  They wanted ice cream; the cafe was shut. Son 2 understood the drift of the conversation, and went nuts “Ice Deam! Ice Deam!”  Embarrassed, I told their mother :”His brother was organic and sugar-free till he was two, but his favourite words are sweets, choc-choc, ice deam, bik bik and cake.” “Wait for the third,” said the mother. ”She was three at the weekend, and we gave her a DS. ”

Son 1 clambered in the Big Pram, fidgeted around to get comfortable and tipped it over sideways onto some rocks. The Big Pram is as sturdy as a small tank.  Maybe I should admit he really is too big for it.   We cleared up and went up the cliff to the car. The Navy flew by, very low, in a helicopter. We waved. They waved back.  Very exciting. I have for years told Son 1 that we have to wave at helicopters because they are waving at us, and now I have been proved right.  Back home we got a space outside the house.  I put the children in, unloaded the car, put Finding Nemo on upstairs “Fish! Fish!” and Nanna came round.   I made tortilla for tea. Son 2 demolished his in minutes, Son 1 sucked the butter from his hot baguette and said he’d finished.

1.  Terrible Teeth

2.  Terrible Claws

3.  Turned Out Toes

Moving The Cot into Son 1 aged 4y 9m’s room was kind of successful.  Son 2 aged 21m slept through and slept till 0730. Son 1 however was up in the Big Bed by about 0030. 

We went to the Rockpool Beach with the full set of Wednesday Friends. Son 1 refused his sunsuit and ran off with his Best Friend. They headed off, hundreds of yards down the beach and out over the rocks.  Best Friend’s Little Brother was playing with a Big Truck, Three Year Old Friend was playing in the sand. Son 2 aged 21m trogged down to the water’s edge.  He trogged back again and tugged at the food bag. “Food. Food.”  Four periwinkles rolled down the beach mat next to him.  He settled for  a drink “Joos. Joos” and toddled off to the rock pools again.  One Wednesday Mother went for a sea swim.  I put my costume on.  There was a howl and a scream from Best Friend.  We stood and peered.  His Mother went over. “There’s blood everywhere,” shouted Son 1.  Best Friend had fallen and bitten through his bottom lip.  Blood dripped all over his bare chest and tummy. “It’s like Dracula,” said Son 1.  HIs  Mother cleaned him up.  The imprints of his two big front teeth were clear in his fat bottom lip.

We ate lunch, the children rejecting The Man’s chicken sandwiches in favour of the smartie and jelly tot cakes I bought for tea on Monday.  A Book Club Mum arrived with her little girl. I heaved Son 1 and Son 2 over to the loo, and then took them down to the low tide-line to look for fish and crabs.  Our tally was two dead crabs, and one still alive which had only three legs. I couldn’t cope with that one and had to put it back in the sea. Son 2 carried his dead crab around proudly. “Bab. Bab.” He held out the bucket “Fish.”  We couldn’t find any fish. Best Friend, Little Brother and Mother left.  I cajoled the children back up the beach, although Son 1 still wanted to play. At the beach mat, Son 2 lay down on his back and looked at me. Son 1 curled up on the sand.  I put up the beach tent for them to play in and went for a quick swim in the sea.  Icy but fab. The water was turquoise, long seaweed fingers stroked at me as I swam out and back. I didn’t spend long in, and after I came back the others left. I put the boys in the car, drove home and they were both deeply asleep. The Man joined us for an ice cream at the Headland. The  boys woke up. Just as well I’d got them ice cream.  I cut the underside of my tongue on a sharp bit on my cone.  There were bloody red streaks all over my Whirly Whippy as I ate it. Didn’t seem very veggie.

We got them both in bed and asleep at 7.30pm. I went out for a run. I’ve changed my route - I now run through The Town and over towards the Rockpool Beach, although I can’t quite get there in the 15 min out and back I’m currently trying. I’ve bought new trainers - Nikes, after I checked out a few cheaper ones.  In the shop, the assistant offered me a Nike Chip to put in my shoe.  It will then register with my Ipod, and play fast music when I run fast and slow music when i run slow.  I said no. Too humiliating if it never chooses fast music for me.

1.  Starting Slowly

2.  Finishing Fast

3.  Dropping Marks

Son 2 aged 21m, rattling around downstairs before 7am, while I drank coffee to wake me up and got together drinks and snacks.  I took his night-time nappy off to change it. “Wee wee,” he said. “Do you want to do a wee?” “Yes,” he said, and toddled off to the potty. He sat on it. “No,” he said, getting up.  knowing Son 2 to be a child who can wee on the bathroom carpet whenever he feels like it, I said “Oh go on Son 2, do a wee on the potty and I’ll give you a biscuit.”  Up he sprang, the potty forgotten. “Bisbik.  Bisbik.”  A heat-seeking missile, following me, his course unswerving “Bisbik. Bisbik.”  We haven’t got any, so I went upstairs to hunt in my briefcase, which is where I put the free ones you get sometimes in coffee shops. He burst into tears thinking he wasn’t going to get one. ”Bisbik.”  

Son 1 aged 4y 9m has been in Nursery since a few days before he was six months old.  When I first left him he was a babe in arms, with no hair and huge blue eyes.  Today was his last day in Nursery, a scruffy schoolboy in shorts, falling down socks, floppy hair, and dancing eyes.  He has the summer off and then he’s in school. I feel like I’m on some mad express train racing past these milestones so fast I can hardly see them go.  Surely it’s only a minute since he left the Day Nursery for this one. http://mumsnet.com/blogs/serenedays/2008/09/01/last-day/ We have Three Things to celebrate now: Son 1 leaving Nursery, Son 1 getting a Good School Report, and Son 1 saving my big leather chair from Son 2 aged 21m (the biro still hasn’t come off.)

Nobody told me you have to give the teachers and teaching assistants presents on the last day of term. It was like a wedding in there. A table set aside for the floral arrangements, carefully wrapped presents and pretty carrier bags. All the little children conveying in their gifts. Except one. We had a card which Son 1 made for Miss Lovely before we set out.  How do people find out this stuff? I’ve spent all week checking and checking again that the other children weren’t going to turn up in their own clothes today… and then they all sneak the present thing in.  I rang Wonder Nanny to beg her to sort it. ”Oh yes, when I was a Nursery Nurse we were always getting presents.”

1.  A Storm In The Night

2.  A Storm In The Morning

3.  Sunshine

Mighty thunderstorm in the night. Great big crashing cracks of thunder, sudden bright-as-daylight flashes of lightning. No Von Trapp children skidded into bed with me. I peeked in the bedrooms to check on Son 1 aged 4y 9m and Son 2 aged 21m, tiptoeing carefully, not making a peep with the doors. KER-RACK BOOM. Someone lifted up the roof of the house and let it slam back down again. The children didn’t stir. The storm went on and on. The rain drummed down. i had to close the windows, open against the stultifying heat, to stop us all being washed away.  The storm passed. I went to sleep. Son 1 arrived, at 4am. I took him back to his bed.

Son 1 insisted on taking his Dinosaur Bone to Nursery.  “Ok,” I said. “For a start Miss Lovely won’t let you have it. It’s too big. If she does let you have it, you will hear people all day long telling you it’s not a dinosaur bone, it’s a twig - ” ” - It’s NOT a twig. You can smash it on anything and it doesn’t break. It’s a bone, a leg bone -” “- and when you tell them that they will try and break it and they will succeed. It will be smashed to smithereens. And Mummy will be right and you will be wrong.” “I don’t want to listen to you anymore.”

The Dinosaur Bone went in the car boot. “It stays there. We will ask Miss Lovely if you can bring it in.” Son 1 wouldn’t even come in while I checked. “We have an issue. Son 1 found a Dinosaur Bone on the beach. Son 1 has always wanted to find a Dinosaur Bone. I have said it is Too Big For Nursery. I have said everyone here will say it is a stick, because it looks like a very ornate stick which has been worn down by the sea.   I have said it will get broken. ” A small, expectant face had appeared at my elbow, gazing up at Miss Lovely. ”I’d love to see it,” she said.  Back to the car I trogged. Back to the Nursery. “Oh that looks like a bone from a very scarey dinosaur.” “It’s a leg bone,” said Son 1, his eyes shining. “I can see that. Do you think it’s from a Tyrannosaurus Rex?” “Yes!”

I was back from The Office Very Late. Son 1 was just about in bed. “How was the bone?” “All right. No-one said it was a twig.”    Traitors.

1.  Jamming Till The Break Of Dawn

2.  Hotter Than July

3.  Rhythms In The Park

Too Darn Hot. The Man padded up and down the stairs in the night, a great, uncomfortable bear with a sore back, sore ankle and a bad case of overheating. Son 1 aged 4y 9m arrived in The Big Bed at 3am. “My room is too hot.”  His room was too hot. I’d closed the door to shut out the light to try to keep the little beggar in bed first thing in the morning.  I heard Son 2 aged 21m roaring “Mummeee!” The Man’s in there, I thought, he can get him up. Then grizzling: “I’s dhuk!” “I’s dhuk!” Oh God, I thought, scrabbling up. Where’s he got himself stuck… has he fallen in his cot… is he ok… He was in the Double Bed. The Man had him in a cuddled half-Nelson to keep stop him snaking off in his sleeping bag. “Dhuk!” “Dhuk!”  

We went to the Rockpool Beach to meet a Wednesday Mother and her three and a half year old.  Incredibly hot.  The tide was on its way in, so we only had a strip of rock and sand… which we more or less filled with two pushchairs and a beach mat.  Son 2 played with water, Son 1 was crotchety, I looked for cowries and found three.      The Wednesday Mum has a spirited child, and is enjoying my new childcare book,  “Honey I Wrecked The Kids,” so much she plans to get her own.  Drop The Rope is our new motto (for when you are in a tug-of-war power struggle with a child…) 

Son 1’s Nursery was holding a Pirate Afternoon, and he wanted to go. So. We went for ice creams, stopped off at The House for his Captain Hook costume, and drove over to The Big Town.  We dropped him off and Son 2 and I went to play in The Park. I had visions of us having Wonder Nanny-style hours of play together.  He wanted to watch teenagers playing tennis.  He grasped the principles at once, saying loud ”Uh-oh”s every time they fluffed a shot or hit the net.  He picked up feathers (Feh Feh,) pointed at dogs, had a little swing and played on the slide ladder. He wouldn’t go on the slide. “Hot.” “It isn’t hot darling, feel it.” Wouldn’t touch it. “Hot.”  Clearly a hot slide issue on another day, at another playground. I had some iced water in a flask and I poured him some.  Not interested in the water. Very interested in pressing the buttons on the top of the flask and pouring it out. Two hours later we picked up an exhausted Son 1 and went home.  The boys watched Ice Age 2 while The Man and I made stir fry.  “Mummy!” called Son 1. “Son 2’s drawing on your chair.” I sprang up the stairs. “What with?” “Pen.” Does anyone know how to get biro out of leather?   They came down for tea.  I’d cleaned the kitchen floor in the morning before we left.  Son 2 ate his rice with his fingers. He got one grain in his mouth for every 17 he dropped on the floor.    AFter, they played in the back yard. Son 2 took off the drain covers and dropped balls down the pipe. When they were finally asleep, I went for a hot, humid run.

1.  Roar Power

2.  Pushing Ahead

3. Raw Power

Every night, when I’ve turned off the light in the kitchen, I’ve been roared at. The first time it happened, The Man was away.  I froze and stared at the light fitting, wondering what I’d done to it to make it go so wrong.  http://mumsnet.com/blogs/serenedays/2009/04/14/changing-things/ Since then, at the end of each day, I have jumped out of my skin and hoped it wasn’t a sign of an electrical fault which would burn the house down.  Eventually I worked out that the noise wasn’t coming from the light, but from the filled-in fireplace where the toys are kept. Aha. A light sensitive toy, I thought. Beyond that I was baffled.  I’d eyed the ridiculously loud fire truck suspiciously but hadn’t had time to check. Although it did keep making me jump very late at night.  This morning I managed to tidy and clear out some toys.  I put a missing tiger shape back into a wooden ELC jigsaw.  Get the shape right and the puzzle makes the right animal noise. It roared at me.  Well, now you know how those work.

Son 1 aged 4y 9m did a poo without his booster seat. “I don’t need it any more.”  Hooray hooray.  I’m very Lazy Parent over Son 1’s milestones. I waited till he was two and half before toilet training, because I couldn’t be bothered earlier. Then we did it in a week, with him learning very quickily that every wee in the potty got him a chocolate button.  We still take the old McLaren buggy out with us if we walk somewhere and think he won’t be able to walk back. I read a thread on Mumsnet discussing how old your children were when you stopped using pushchairs.  some people guiltily confessed to still having older children in them… and Son 1 was older then any of them.  I think that was about three months ago.  Son 2 aged 21m is exactly opposite and will never relax his plank-boy body long enough to strap him in the Big Pram. Unless Son 1 wants to get in, of course, in which case he won’t get out. 

The Rockpool Beach. Blue sky, light wispy cloud, but a gusting easterly wind.  Son 2 was a joy, Son 1 was trickier, but played well with Three Year Old Friend. Best Friend and Little Brother are on  holiday. We collected shells - I found a cowrie, which The Other Mother told me to keep for luck. There was a four inch black sea slug in a rock pool.  Plus a couple of fish and shrimp. I went for a swim in the sea, but it was low tide, and the waves were higher than my head when I was standing hip-deep.  I didn’t have to do my usual inching-in routine because I’d been smacked into, buffeted, knocked off balance and sprayed within a few steps. I swam out a few strokes, swimming up and over the top of the waves, and then semi-surfed back on them, but it was just too random to enjoy. Waves were breaking over my head, and I was in sunglasses (yes I know) and contact lenses.  And I was getting pounded onto rocks and seaweed in less than two feet of water.  I can’t have been in more than 10 minutes but I was breathless when I got out. It was amazing experiencing the power in the sea, and I just didn’t feel the cold…  But I can’t help thinking, having just read back what I’ve written, that it might have been…er.. a little bit dangerous.  

1.  Son 1.5

2.  Sinking

3.  It Seems Like Only Yesterday

Still not doing very well with the fluey cold. I woke this morning with Son 1 aged 4y 8m in bed beside me, tiptoed downstairs for coffee, and suddenly it seemed a very long and hard day ahead. Yesterday was the due date for the one we lost, and even though the following month I was pregnant with Son 2, I still wonder about that child.  The LMP date for him (I will always think of him as a boy) was Sept 11, which is Son 2’s birthday. The only person who will ever know or care about this stuff is me.   Son 2 aged 21m woke, on fine form.  “What would you like in your (snack) tub?” “Gape.”  “What else?” “Boobee.”  We read and stuck stickers upstairs. Son 1 aged 4y 8m pootled down. “I think I should have my fish when I am four, and then I can have more fish when I am five.” “You can have your fish when you’re five.” “I can’t wait that long!” Son 1 says his fish will be called Fluffy and Coupon and Walbert.  I might have to get them early just because he’s chosen such great names.

One Wednesday mother was working. We went to a playground.  The other Wednesday Mum had made sandwiches for all the boys, left on a table top in a takeaway container. A seagull pecked through the lid.  It rained. We gave up, and went back to the other family’s house.  I drove down, and as we arrived we were told that Mother had had to break into her house because she’d left the chain on the front door and gone out the back.   Son 1 and Son 2 had a good play with the three and a half year old.  My paracetamol cocktail wore off, and I started flaking out.  We came back, went into The Town because Son 1 wanted Apple Pie and Custard for tea, and then I made tortilla and buttered spinach.  Son 2 tried licking the butter off the spinach before giving in and scoffing the lot.  We are still boiling kettles for washtime, and yet again, it was very hard. Both of them machine-gunning me at top volume for attention at once, and me with zero energy craving stillness. I think the hot water is the Final Straw. They’re upset by the hole blasted in their routine, The Man being away, and me being incapable because of my bug. Bedtime was awful, and I wasn’t very nice. Being Postive, both The Plumber and The Man will be here tomorrow.

I have had an email from The Boy Who Broke My Heart When I Was 19. I logged in yesterday and there he was.  “I’m betting it’s you. You may not welcome this contact in which case tell me where to go, or ignore, else how are you?”  I replied and said don’t worry, it was fine, how was he?  He’s emailed today with a bit more detail about him.  I’m sure this is the plot of a book.  Our heroine, in relationship for 22 years, married for 18 of them, has children incredibly late, and while struggling with her work-life balance, her besotted small sons, her often-absent husband, swine flu and a major domestic crisis, is suddenly contacted by someone from half a lifetime away.  I’m also sure They All Live Happily Ever After.