1.   An Early Run 

2.   Eyebrows

3.   Banana Cake

4.   Yes

By the time I got up to bed last night, Son 1 aged 4y 8m was in the Big Bed with The Man.  The Man trooped downstairs to Son 1’s bed, and I spent the night with a little octopus clinging and stroking my eyebrow. I woke at 0530. A bright, dry morning, perfect for someone who needs to get going on running again. I was a bit depressed reading last year’s blog entry when I was out running more often.  Can’t remember when I last went out. Whenever it was, I left my kit slung over a radiator, so I tiptoed over, grabbed it, grabbed my contact lenses, and fairy-trod downstairs.  I went out of the house as fast as I could. I did five sets of three-minutes running and three-minutes walking - it’s been so long I don’t want to get injured - and felt hugely better for it.  I really can’t be disciplined about my eating, I love food too much. But I do think I can possibly manage to exercise.

We went to the Rockpool beach with the Wednesday Friends. The weather was great - a real bonus as the forecast was grim.  Son 1 played with his friends, rock-climbing and pirates. Son 2 aged 20m was hard work - tired and clingy. Back just after lunch, and I tried unsuccessfully to get Son 2 to go to sleep.  “Do you want a snooze, or do you want to get up?” I asked him, in the darkened bedroom.  “Up,” he said.  So downstairs and I put CBeebies on. Son 1 sat on my lap - I couldn’t get Son 2 to join us.  Son 1 reached back and stroked my eyebrow.  This, as I’ve mentioned before, is a legacy from his breast-feeding days, when he used to play with my eyelashes and eyebrow during feeding.  It’s still his comfort thing, and it’s always when he’s tired.  He Eyebrows me, mainly, and sometimes The Man and Wonder Nanny.  I’ve also see him try Son 2’s, and have now seen him sitting with his fingers on his own eyebrow.  Not that keen on that one.  Don’t want him ending up rubbing them off.   Anyway. “Are you tired?” I asked him as we sat in my chair watching telly and my eyebrow came under attack.  “No.” “Then why are you Eyebrowing?”  “I just want a quiet time with my eyebrow.”   

Son 1 then decided he wanted to make a cake. I don’t really do cakes.  Mix butter, sugar and flour together and then cook them. In special tins. Add food colouring.  Seems odd.  However.  We have a banana glut (Wonder Nanny and I both bought some on the same day, then the Organic Veg Man brought some) and a Banana Cake recipe from Wonder Nanny. So that is what we made. I got the baking box out. The boys found an opened packet of choc chips and stuffed their faces with them.  Then they tried starting on the Tesco Value cooking chocolate.  I snatched it from Son 2 just as he’d torn his way inside.  We had piled ingredients in the food processor when I realised that every drop of bicarbonated soda had gone into baths for Son 2 during his chickenpox.  We did however have cream of Tartar, and the tub said it was a raising agent, so we chucked that in instead.  The boys took the food processor bowl and spoons and licked it out. Until Son 2 put the coins from his moneybox in the mix, so I confiscated it.  And we were very pleased with the cake. 

Son 2 can say “yes.” He wanted to talk on the phone, so I rang Nanna.  He tried nodding at something she said, and I told him she couldn’t see him and he’d have to say “yes.” So he did.  Perfectly. He has also just started saying something like “fish” instead of his ages-old preference of opening and closing his mouth. In the bathroom tonight “towel.”  And, accompanied by the action of pulling them all out of the box “tissue.”  This is of course a scientific study of language acquisition, and not a bragging mother.

1.  Sleeping In My Bed

2.  Banana Cake

3.  The Play Den

Midnight.  A stir in the air which means Son 1 aged 4y 4m is heading upstairs.  Son 2 aged 16m started roaring.  I sat up.  Son 1 crawled into bed behind me.  I waited to see if Son 2 would settle, but he wanted someone to come, and he was doing his shouting-so-angrily-you-can-hear-his-throat-strain thing. “Did you wake Son 2 up?” I asked Son 1. “No.” “Did you peek in his room at all?” “I didn’t go in his room.”  Son 2 was using everything he had, heels upwards, in his yelling.  I went downstairs to him.  The quilt of the bed in his room was turned back.  Son 1 had obviously got in the bed, snugged across unsuccessfully looking for a parent, padded away upstairs… and set his brother off.  By 0130 Son 2 was back in a deep sleep.  I plopped him in the cot, and went next door to sleep in Son 1’s bed.  I was freezing and needed an extra blanket.  Ah.  Son 1’s broken nights have coincided with this cold snap.  We are indeed Terrible Parents.

In the morning I told Son 1 that someone had, indeed, been into Son 2’s bedroom in the night and woken him up.  Son 1 laughed.  “It was me.”  Son 2 wanted food.  I took him downstairs while I made drinks and snacks.  He stood on dining chairs propped up by the worktops.  Direct line of sight to  the tub containing banana cake made by Wonder Nanny on Friday.  “Aahhh,” points Son 2.  I don’t think it’s possible to deflect Son 2 from a food mission once he’s got an idea in his head.  He ate two pieces.  And another piece for breakfast.

Son 1 had an invitation to a joint Nursery party at a Tourist Attraction 30 miles away.  The day was planned.  Son 2’s sleep.  Lunch. In the car and off we go.  Son 2, bunged up with banana cake,  wouldn’t eat an atom of lunch.     We walked into the Tourist Attraction. “You know Mummy, this isn’t as bad as I thought it would be,” said Son 1, taking in the slides, the soft play, and the Big Uns’ playstuff.   Half the size of the Bird Park play area, with four times as many children.   He sat on the sides, swinging his legs, and trying to get me to ask his Nursery friends to play with him.   He got there in the end.  Son 2 loved it.  Ball pool, play with the air jets.  Slides.  Climbing over the Big Uns’ playstuff. 90 minutes of heaving Son 2 up and down, round and along… sometimes checking on Son 1, sometimes playing with him, and it was time for Party Tea.  I tried to get Son 2 to eat a ham sandwich.  He settled for a chocolate doughnut.  At last I could go and get a cappacino.  The coffee machine was out of order.  Twenty minutes later, an announcement.  The loos were also out of order.  Tea over, more play, and then we rounded up our balloons and headed home, listening to Peter Pan and (one of us) munching cake and eating lollipops all the way.