1.  Box

2.  Tea

3.  Rain

Son 1 aged 4y 7m wanted a Big Box to make a den from.  One of his friends has one. So I lugged a huge dishwasher box home from The Office on Monday, and we made it into a house this morning.  A stable door, a window with shutters, and a skylight were my contributions. Son 1 has written his name on it and made a picture to hang up wonkily inside.  Son 2 aged 19m has drawn on the sides in felt tip pen.  “Boh!” he said, pointing. “Boh!” They were supposed to be getting on with playing while I made pancakes for breakfast.  It worked, kind of.   I struggle with pancake making. I burn or undercook, I never get the oil right, I’m rubbish at flipping them.  Wonder Nanny knocks out perfect examples every time.  She doesn’t use oil. “It’s a non-stick pan.”  I never understood that logic, but this morning I went with it. No oil.  Perfect pancakes.  They gobbled them up. 

Son 2 is still in hell with chickenpox. He woke up this morning boiling hot, scratching and howling.  I gave him milk, put him in a bicarb bath and let the shower run on his back.   One set of Wednesday friends didn’t come today, but the Mother was ill, so I’m hoping that as the reason.  We walked into town to meet the other. There was a book about a character with Son 2’s (unusual) name in Oxfam, so I bought it.  And Son 1 had been promised a Pirate Lego set for being good while Son 2 got all the Mummy Time. “Boog!” said Son 2.  We had coffee at one end of town, and then another coffee at the other.  I spent most of the afternoon putting the Pirate Lego set together. That’ll be why the box said 6 - 12 then. I got fed up with how much time I was spending on Pages 1 - 37 instructions, with two other sections to follow. Son 1 said “Well done Mummy.  You’re doing a great job.  Thank you very much for buying me my pirates.”  The pat on the head did the trick, and I persevered.  Again, I started grumbling.  I wanted to spend time with Son 1 and Son 2, not fish poxy two-bit Lego brick things out of piles of other poxy two-bit brick things. ”Well done Mummy,” said Son 1.  “Thank you for helping me.”  My heart sang.  There was a knock on the door.  The Wednesday Mummy, taking pity on me because The Man’s Business Trip goes On and On, had brought round some home-made sauce for us.  “Tee!” pointed Son 2 at the pan as the pasta boiled. 

Books and Bath and Bed was therefore earlier and more successful than other days this week. I am still starting off with a glass of wine. Son 2 and I did his books. I wanted Tiddler. He insisted on “Oceans,” which is pictures of dolphins and sharks and whales and seahorses and jellyfish etc. In the bath I washed his hair to get today’s calamine out before I slathered him again. He screamed.   Surely this is the worst his spots can get. He has great flaming lines of them down his back and his groin is a mess. “Wee wee,” he said, sitting in the bicarb-ed bath.  Wee wee is wee, but it is also willy. Translation: “My willy hurts.”  And then he pointed up at the shower head and said:  “Rain.”

1.  I Told You I Was Trouble

2.  Trying To Fix You

3.  Sunshine On A Rainy Day

Son 2 aged 19m’s skin is awful.  The blisters are angry, red and wet.  Except the big ones behind his ear and on his willy, which are red round the bottom with a huge, wet, white blob on the top.  There are so many red blotchy ones in his nappy creases that they all run together in an inflamed red line.  They’re all over his head and today, they’ve just started popping out on his face.  Serve me right for being so precious about the scar on his lip.  Now he’s got a boil on his eyebrow and a crop of them on his cheek.  His nappy area is so bad that this morning I let him roam nappy free. He was in the kitchen playing with some toys, I was upstairs with the ironing. ”Wee wee!” I heard him call.  I went down.  He had pooed and weed in the big plastic toybox, smeared poo all over the sides, trod wee all around the kitchen and had brown smudges of poo on his legs.  Half an hour later he did another one, and this time smeared my posh pyjamas. I gave up and put us both in the shower. After I’d finished, he sat there with the shower trained on the spots on his back, staring ahead vacantly. 

I took him down to the Lounge to calamine him up.  He batted my hands away. Son 1 aged 4y 7m was interested in the cotton wool balls.  “You could paint Son 2’s spots if we found you a brush,” I said absently.  He vanished. Wonder Nanny and I continued with the task in hand.  Really hard.  Son 2 does not like being calamined. He is a fast, sure, controlled mover and we are no match for him.  Son 1 returned with a paintbrush.  I felt the bristles. “No you can’t use that on his spots. It’s too rough. I’ll go and find you a make up brush.” ” I like this one,” said Son 1. “It’s blue. “ When I came back down, Son 2 was standing naked in the sunshine on the windowseat, dabbing his own spots with a great wadge of cotton wool, while Wonder Nanny and Son 1 coloured in the rest of him.

I had booked leave today, and Son 1 wanted to go to the Aquarium. We arrived and had lunch. Son 2 was grouchy, whining and clingy. He’s eating very little at the moment, but grabbing sweet things whenever he can. There may be trouble ahead.  We went round, Son 1 chirping excitedly, Son 2 pointing and demanding to be lifted up. ”Dzar!” he can say, in a clear word meant to be Shark.  And, the triumph: “Ray!”  “Ray!” at the big rays. Clear, correct, and repeated at the top of his little boy voice, often.  Inspired, when I got home I wrote out all the words he can say.  He’s got a vocabulary of about 50 words, which I just didn’t realise.  All this time I’ve been Not Worrying Because Second Children Talk Later… when in fact he’s been building up his speech quite nicely.

1.  Spot The Difference

2.  Spot The Dog

3.  Hitting The Spot

I have a Lovely Chair.  Brown leather, lilo-like back, big round arms, and a matching stool.  It was chosen, way BC, after a lot of research, from John Lewis, Oxford Street.  Flipping through the big leather swatches on the furniture floor with the helpful salesman.  Ordered.  Made for us. Delivered.   The Man envies me my Lovely Chair, and wants to get another.  Wiped out by our gold-plated childcare, we never will.   This morning I left Son 1 aged 4y 7m and Son 2 aged 19m watching The Wiggles while I showered,  dressed, and did my hair and make up.  I was nearly finished, when a voice bellowed “Mummy!  Son 2’s done a wee!”  Son 2, who is seriously and sickenly spotty,  had removed his trousers and nappy, and was sitting bare-bottomed on my Lovely Chair, watching telly.  In a deep lake of wee.   The leather in the Lovely Chair is so good that none of it had soaked away.  So when I moved the cushion it all ran and spilled.    

Son 2’s spots are just awful.  There are hundreds of them.  I had to go to The Office, and rang home at lunchtime.  He was fine, said Wonder Nanny, who’d taken him out to her Mum’s to play with the cats. I picked up Son 1 so late I barely made it there before closedown.  “Did I stay till the end for a special treat?” he asked.  We were back embarrassingly late.  “Son’s had a really good day,” said Wonder Nanny. “No scratching, and laughing all day long.”  She left. Son 2 burst into tears and scratched his ears off.  A toy dalmatian pup, free with the Disney film, has emerged from the toy pile on its own. Son 1 played with it. We hunted out its mate. I took off Son 2’s trousers to change him, but he escaped and waddled, bare-legged into the hall. ”Son 2! I need to change that pooey nappy!”  The nappy landed on the changing mat with a heavy splat.  He really is getting good at taking his nappy off.  And he already knew how to throw.  

His groin is horrible, with blisters on his willy and in all his little baby creases.  They didn’t seem to bother him till I slathered them in calamine lotion and then he cried real tears.  We went upstairs and did Where’s Spot as one of our books.  I put a ton of bicarb in the bath, on the advice of a colleague from The Office.  Poor Son 2.  Spots all over his back with hardly any bare skin in between.  All over his front.  In his hair, in his ears, behind his ears. Poor miserable little sausage.  He cried and cried when I got him out of the bath, objected loudly  to the calamine and was then worn out and inconsolable.  Even though I was incredibly late getting them to bed, I was relaxed and patient all the way through.  Possibly linked to my swapping my usual bathtime cup of tea for a very large glass of Sauvignon Blanc.  A Marvellous Mummy Am I.

1.  Outbreak

2.  Outside

3.  Outcast

Son 2 aged 19m has had a pimple on his chest for the last four days.  A red, acne-style beacon, sitting there, shining, glowing. “If there were any more of those, I’d think he had chickenpox” I’d vaguely thought.  Son 2 has had odd spots before, none of which have turned out to be anything other than odd spots.  Yesterday, Son 2 was scratching behind his ear like a flea-bitten dog.  This morning, Son 2 had: spots behind his ears, spots in his ears, spots on his chest, spots on his head, spots on his back, spots on his upper arms, spots on his baby thighs and a big, horrid one right on his willy.    I texted Wonder Nanny, to tell her that the person with the NNEB training was in charge of putting calamine lotion on the wrigglest child in the world.  She rang back. On Friday, with still, just that lone blister, she’d stripped him naked and checked him all over, so sure was she then that he had chickenpox.

Son 2 slept.  We got the paddling pool out.   Son 1 aged 4yr 7m checked with Next Door to see if they’d managed to borrow a pump. Nope. But Next Door did know how to get into a coconut, so Son 1 scampered round, and sat out in the yard with Next Door Neighbour and a hammer.  They smashed it.  He brought it round our side, testing it. “I don’t like it. It’s like the milk.”  He went inside, I stayed outside to try to blow the pool up.  I managed, but it’s already got a hole in it.  From where i folded it.  After 15 minutes I went back into the house.  It was strangely quiet.  “Son 1!”  No answer.  “Son 1! Where are you?”  “Mummy I’m here,” came a strange, faraway voice.  Upstairs?  I went to the bottom of the first floor stairs. “Mummy!  Mummy!”  He sounded scared, which made me scared. “Where are you!”  “Out here!”  I peered downstairs.  A littleface peered in at the front door.  He’d gone out the front door and shut it. ”How long have you been out there?”  “Fifty years.”  Stuck.  Which, coincidentally, is a word Son 2 has started using only today.   Falling between the legs of the upturned toddler chair.  “Stug!  Stug!” 

After lunch, we went down to the Discount Store in search of a puncture repair kit. Stopping off for Nappies.  The Discount Store had sold out.  We headed back, past The Church, where it was Family Tea Time service day.  ”We can’t go,” I told Son 1. “Son 2 will give the other children chickenpox.” “I want to go,” said Son 1.  He scampered up the steps while I battled with the shopping and The Big Pram.  The Vicar and His Wife came out. “It’s good to see you. We don’t know how many others there’ll be.” Code for: No-one Else Is Here. As we went in, a few more families headed in through each door.  Enough for it not to be embarrassing.  The theme was Fish.  Right up Son 2’s alley.  Son 1 fished for magnetic fish in a (puncture free) paddling pool.  Son 2 made Hand Fish.  I drew round his hand, cut it out and then he earnestly squidged gold glitter paint on it.  Then we did Casting Your Net Over The Other Side.  And then tea. Fish Fingers.   Son 2 tipped a beaker of squash down his front, soaking his jumper and vest.  ”Oh dear,” said the Vicar’s Wife.  “Have you got any other clothes with you?”  “Just his coat,” I said. “I’ll change him when I do his nappy.”  “Oh you can change him here, no one will mind,” she said.  They will if they see The Plague Of The Boils, I thought, and retreated to the privacy of the tiny loo.