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.  Revisited

2.  Reunion

3.  Respite

The Man came home at 10pm last night.  He went in the Big Bed, I went down with Son 2 aged 19m.  At 3am he woke, crying.  I went to him, he was hot, bothered and gasping for water.  I gave him water. He gulped and gulped.  I gave him Calpol and he slurped it down. I decided to change his nappy, and lay him down on the changing mat.  He threw up spectacularly, Reflux Revisited.  I put him in the shower, The Man came down.  “Is this wee?” he asked, dabbing at the pool on the changing mat. ”No he’s been sick.”  Son 2 eyed him, barely awake, and then buried his head in my shoulder.  We gave him more water.  He threw that up too.  Son 1 aged 4y 7m came in. “You were supposed to wake me up to see Daddy!” “We both tried but we couldn’t. You wanted to stay asleep.” He went upstairs with The Man, I held Son 2 upright in the armchair till he went to sleep, and then got into the double bed with him. 

By morning I had the bug too.  I was miserable and unable to eat, The Man was instantly in charge of all food and drink-making.    Son 1 was excited and ecstatic that he was back; “Where are we going, where shall we go?”   Very unhappy that we couldn’t go anywhere because Mummy and Son 2 were poorly.  During last summer’s nightmare Walk With Gastroenteritis, I read that stewed apple settles the stomach.  The Man peeled and microwaved an apple for Son 2.  He scoffed it. And then helped himself to a great whack of Son 1’s cottage pie lunch.  And ginger biscuits for pudding.  It all stayed down.

In the afternoon they played outside with the paddling pool, and then Son 2 broke down and started crying for me again. I put him down for his second sleep in his cot, and at 3.30 I went back to bed.  This was an Amazing Thing.  I don’t think I’ve had a daytime sleep since I was on maternity leave with Son 1.  I slept for an hour, till  Son 1 came up to tell me that he’d made some (cardboard) ice cream.  The dishwasher box has become his ice cream house.  He was painting it, in creative heaven,  in the kitchen, with The Man making tea and trying to be patient.  Son 2 woke up, and clung and cried.  But he packed away sausage and peas, and it stayed down.  At bedtime he wanted book after book, again, a Good Thing after so many days when he couldn’t be bothered.

1.  The First No

2.  Big Weld

3.  Ballet

4.  Superbug

Son 2 is Latin in his language acquisition.  His word for  ”yes” is “peeeez”, and he had no word for no, either shaking his head or pushing away with his hand.  This morning though, when I offered him some more milk, there was a clear, confident, grown up “no.” And then he went back to head-shaking and batting.  He looks awful.  Some chickenpox spot have scabbed; he’s picked some of the scabs off.  Great flaming red craters, each one with the potential to pock mark.  He at last ate something this morning.  He drank milk and ate hummous, grapes and banana.  He was clingy, tetchy, whining and tired. “All right,” I said. “We’ll put you back to bed.”  Then he threw up all over himself and the hall carpet. A great, chicken-soupy puddle.  Then over the kitchen floor.  I stripped him, put The Wiggles on upstairs and hunted for J cloths.  

They both came down within minutes.  Son 1 aged 4y 7m wanted his pancake.  It was straight out of the pan, cooling on a plate, but then I had to clear up after Son 2. ”Darling I can’t touch it while I’m clearing this up. If you want it, put your own lemon and maple syrup on. Just get your chair and get the lemon from the fridge.”  Clunk, as a little green Early Learning Centre chair was plonked against the freezer. Son 2 pulled baby wipes from the packed and stirred them into the water in the mop bucket.  Son 1 opened the fridge door, gazed in and sighed.  “Oh the lies I have told, the lives I have ruined.”     I looked up.  “Where’s that from?” “‘Robots.’” “Oh. Is it what the baddie says?” “No.  Big Weld says it when he meets the people.”  Of course he does.

Ankle deep in vomit, dirty washing, dirty floors, washing up and with a sick, clingy, crying baby,  I rang a Wednesday Mother.  “Are you better?  Can you have Son 1 this morning?” Yes she could. “Oh good, can you come and get him?”  Son 2 and I had a shower and I put him to bed.  He slept for three hours.  Son 1 was dropped back, scampering through the hall. “Son 2! Son 2!”  Still asleep.  Eventually I rang Wonder Nanny.  “Should I get him up?” “He’s never slept for three hours, even for me. His body clearly needs it. Just leave him.” He woke up within minutes, and wouldn’t eat lunch.  We went outside and played with the paddling pool.  I eventually found the puncture.  Son 1, naked,  pulled on one of the inflatable rings, wedged it round his hips just above his willy and pirouetted. “I’m a ballerina and this is my tutu!”  I took pictures for The Man.  

We went into The Town to find more calamine cream for Son 2. Superdrug didn’t have any.  We went into Marks. Son 2 threw up in the pram. I cleared him up in the ladies’ loo and we came home, Son 1 clambering on the Big Pram abover Son 2. Son 2 threw up in the lounge. I saved the soft furnishings by turning him round so he did it all over me.  I gave him white rice for his tea.  He threw up all over the kitchen. I put him to bed.  The Godmother, out for drinks in The Town, dropped off calamine cream from the Big Town and J cloths.

1.  Explorer

2.  Miracle Worker  

3.  Communicator

I worked long and late last night.  At midnight I heard coughing from upstairs, then creaking, then little mouse footprints. I peered up into the gloom. “Son 1, I can’t see you up there, it’s too dark. If you’re there, come on down.” A little wraith aged 4y 7m in white pyjamas plopped down the stairs.  I switched the computer off and we went downstairs to make my go-to-bed cup of peppermint tea. He wanted something to eat.  I gave him a yoghurt, and he sat at the dining table, scoffing it. Upstairs I put him in the Big Bed while I got ready for bed.  “I’m going to have a little read before I go to sleep,” I said, getting my book out.  “I want your eyebrow,” he said, his little fingers heading straight for it. I put the light out and fell asleep straight away. No idea what he did.

Son 2 aged 19m’s spots are starting to scab over, and he’s starting to pick them off.  He is using the “boh” sound he does for “Box” for his spots… gestures at his tummy and goes “Boh!”  “Are they sore?” I asked.  He nodded madly.  Poor, poor little cherub. Son 1 and I took out a library book with pictures of leopards, ladybirds, spotted fish, giraffes, peacocks, ocelots, dalmatians etc. It’s called “Lots Of Spots.” Well, we think it’s funny.   Wonder Nanny, who is Practically Perfect,  said “Aqueous Calamine Cream.  Only Superdrug sell it. Best thing for chickenpox.”  Son 2 has been so much better since we started slathering him in it.  His willy and groin area have calmed down a bit, but the spots are still raging.  The third nipple on his chest which started it all off is the size of a 5p.

I sat on the bed reading to Son 2 this morning.  For once, Son 1, upstairs watching cartoon nuclear wars on CITV, didn’t disturb us.  Oh no, spoke too soon.  Plodding down the stairs.   Carrying the phone to me.  The Man says he will be back tomorrow night.  He says his flights are booked. I will believe it when I see it.  Son 1 hadn’t finished with him and took the phone back.  “No more adventures, Daddy, if they’re going to take this long.”

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.

1.  The Rash

2.  Rash Actions

3.  Splash

Son 1 aged 4 shrieked regularly and loudly through the night. Till: “If Mummy doesn’t get some sleep she won’t be well enough to go and see our friends tomorrow.”  He woke Son 2 aged 13m up at 0430.  I don’t think Son 2’s spots are chickenpox.  They twinkle.  They’re barely there… they get brighter… they fade… they vanish.  Lots around his neck, front and back.  A couple of very faint ones on his face.  Some angrier looking ones in his little baby nappy creases.  Could be chickenpox, or could be me not believing any child can poo SIX times in one day and leaving him too long sitting in a dirty nappy.

One Wednesday friend has vomiting.  The others have diarrhoea.  And still I took the boys to see each family, separately.  We met Mother 1 and the nearly-3 year old in Costa.  Son 2 is of course the child I do not want to get a vomiting bug. “He’ll be asleep by the time we get there,” I said.   Hey ho.  We went to get Son 1’s hair cut afterwards.  Short back and sides.  He looks great.  If about 7 years old. ”I hate my haircut.”  “Why?” “The hair is in my mouth”  He was really too tired to walk back home, so he sat on the Pram handle, hung on to me and I wheeled them both back somehow.

And then we drove over to the other Wednesday friends’ house.  He played with his Friend, Son 2 played drums, pulled toys out, pulled books out and ate grapes. Late arriving, we didn’t go till three, when both boys were wiped out with fatigue.  At home I got Son 2 to bed for 20 minutes; Son 1 fell asleep watching Scooby Doo.  Son 1 wanted a shower before bed.  I left him in it and Son 2 playing in the bathroom while I drew curtains, tidied beds etc.  “Mummeeee. Emergency!”  A large roll of Andrex had been dumped in the water pooling in the bath.  Son 2 stood by the taps looking pleased with himself.   It took me two hours to get him to sleep.  It’ll be me cutting the breast-feeding/The Man being away/teeth… or maybe he just has got chickenpox.

(The Man has told one of his colleagues about my blog.  I will kill him.  No-one knows.  I can’t put your comment up because you used your real name…  But you did make me larf out loud at ten thirty at night…) 

1.  Night Manoeuvres

2.  The Doctor

3.  A Clever Little Boy

Son 1 aged 4 arrived at about 0100. Still hot. Still crying if he couldn’t have my face close to his so he can comfort-stroke my eyebrow.  “I want a drink.” “I need the loo,” “My ear is sore.”  I went to the loo while he was finally asleep. And came back to him T-boned across the King Size bed, head on the pillow my side, legs sticking out The Man’s side.  I slept on a slither of bed the width of a bookmark.  90 seconds later.  I heard Son 2 aged 13 m wake up with The Man downstairs.  I drowsed.  The Man brought me a coffee.  He switched the light on. “Don’t do that, you’ll wake Son 1,” I snapped.  “Son 1’s downstairs with Son 2,” he said. ”They’re waiting for  you.”

 I made an appointment for Son 1 to see the doctor, to get his ear and throat checked out.  The Positive Point was that I rang at 10 past 8 and got an appointment at 10 past 9. So I will not dwell on having to tell the Woman Who Answers The Phone what was wrong with Son 1.  He didn’t want to go.  Because of the “noodles.”  Which was his MMR top up a year ago.  He’d gone in happy, looking forward to the Play House.  He came out crying, not consoled at all by the bag of chocolate money I gave him.  “I hate doctors.” The Man had to take him.  I wrote everything down for him.    He forgot to ring me after, and wasn’t answering his mobile.  At lunchtime he rang back.  The doctor said Son 1’s throat was a bit sore, there was nothing wrong with his ear.  Give him Calpol.  Son 1 had extracted the Smarties from The Man’s pocket  before they were out of the consulting room.

I went like the clappers at the Office to get out in time for Son 1’s Parents’ Evening at The New Nursery.  The Man got stuck behind a slow lorry and didn’t get there on time.  Son 1’s Teacher said he’s settling in well, takes part in class, chats to his friends, has good focus, an excellent vocabulary, he’s a clever little boy, he’s polite, eats his lunch well with a knife and fork, cares about his friends - if someone’s hurt he’ll go and tell an adult, and plays well in the playground.  And has great memory retention… two days after listening to her tell him something about elephants he repeated it back to her.  Any questions?  “What does he do all day?” I asked.  He always tells me he can’t remember.  The Man got there for the last few minutes.  We drove home different ways as an experiment to see which route is fastest, and arrived back at the same time.  Wonder Nanny smiled when I walked in. “I think Son 2 has chickenpox.”