1.  Signs Of Love

2.  Good Intentions

3.  Warning Signs

Son 1 aged 5y 2m and Son 2 aged 2y 2m were so wiped out at bedtime yesterday that I was SURE we were heading for a lie-in this morning. Nope. 7am. Son 1, was as usual, in the Big Bed. The Man had gone Downstairs to try to get Son 2 back to sleep.   Son 2 wanted his breakfast. We were all getting up.  Son 1 was knackered. There was a lot of lying on the bed/on the floor/on the comfy chair watching telly. Son 2 was raring.  As the morning ticked on, The Man took Son 2 outside to play in the garden while he pulled down our rotten trellis.  Son 1watched more telly.  I rang Eldest Brother. Aged Aunt’s funeral is on Thursday. The Man says he’ll come.  Eldest Brother has found a box in which Aged Aunt kept every letter I ever sent her.  I am strangely, completely undone.   Eldest Brother is missing her.  “She didn’t have a bad life,” he said.  “She spent her life surrounded, or being cared for, by people who loved her,” I said. “That puts her in the top 1% of old ladies in the World.” I put my running things on, waved at The Man through the window and off I went. 

It’s the morning of the 5 mile run I did last year. five miles Tra la la. Last year I thought it was the beginning of Big Things. This year, well, I’ve been out 8 times in the last 2 weeks. I’ve realised that the point of the 10- weeks-to-get-you-to-running-12-miles-a-week training programme which I keep starting, isn’t to get you running distances… it’s to get you running 4 times a week. So. Walking 2 minutes, running 4 minutes, when every other runner in Town was doing 5 miles. Chicago, Chicago, it’s My Kind Of Town. I mentioned my Chicago Marathon Daydream to a Mum I know who rows a couple of weeks back. She went running that day, and has been seen out running since.  I have 11 months. I can still Do It.

Son 1 wanted Eggy Pie for tea, much to The Man’s disgust.  Son 2 stood on a chair and washed the potatoes. Son 1 aged 2y 2m used to wash potatoes. Yes, there was water and mud everywhere, but that was all. Son 2 threw the vegetable brush at the cactus, stretched up to press the microwave buttons, stretched for knives and scooped water from the sink with a spoon and drank it.  These are, of course, organic potatoes, with the mud and manure still attached.  Neat e coli.  Yum.  Son 1 came down to break the eggs for me. He cracks them and put the shells in the box. We need 5 eggs. We had 5 eggs. He went back upstairs for Even More Telly. I poured the mix into the pan. “I usually have more than that,” I thought. I fished in the bin. There was a whole egg in the thrown out egg box.  I cracked it into the pan and stirred it up a bit.  They all stuffed their faces, even The Man, who also had Ready Meal chicken pieces and dip I found in the freezer.  At bathtime, Son 2 reached for a Nemo toy Son 1 had left on the bathside. Son 2 didn’t realise that he needs the bathmat which covers the floor of the bath, and stepped up the bath wall.  He slipped instantly, did a half turn, slid straight down, clunked the back of his head and zoomed on his back straight under the water. I was just walking back into the bathroom as he did it, saw it, fished him out, cuddled him and let him go back in when he wanted to.  Of course I have never left him on his own in the bath before.

1.  Like A Jungle, Sometimes

2.  Smash And Grab

3.  Collateral Damage

Today was just a bonus.  I thought I’d be on Jury Service, miserably ordered out of my children’s lives by the Iron Heel of David Blunkett’s determination that Middle Class People Must Stop Dodging It.  But with one wave of a magic wand (yes oh yes I believe in fairies) I was on the beach, taking pictures of the boys, swigging from my credit-crunch coffee flask and awaiting the Wednesday Friends.  The Sister-In-Law has lived to fight another day.  Son 1 aged 4y 7m ran off with Best Friend (aged 4y 6m,) Second Child aged 3 and half and Best Friend’s little brother, aged nearly 3. Son 2 aged 20m dug sand, watched a playgroup, besotted,  and tried to wander off On The Road, again and again.   After lunch they moved into the Garden By The Beach. We discussed the ethics of letting four small boys dive in and out of infant ornamental grass in the presence of 20 council gardeners putting out the bedding. And decided it served the council right for laying out a formal garden for the over-60s in land that could have been a perfectly lovely playground.  We pretended we didn’t know that three of them had escaped into a vast thicket of 7ft gunnera.  We couldn’t see them, or the gardener who said sternly: “Lads, I don’t mind you being in there, but don’t pull that up, it’s there for a reason.”  They’re allowed in the gunnera, we thought.  

At 2pm we headed home.  The parking fairy put us close to the house.  Son 2 fell asleep in the car of about 5 minutes and refused to go back to sleep. I put A Shark’s Tale on for an exhausted Son 1, and fish-mad Son 2 decided to he’d rather watch that than cling to me.  Son 2’s Godmother called round, and we drank tea as she test-drove her new presentation.  Son 2 appeared, and coyly flirted and giggled, and “hallo”-d her from the Dishwasher Box House. He then tantrummed when she left. I put him on a chair at a sink full of warm water and bubbles while I made Eggy Pie - tortilla - for tea.  I called Son 1 down to break the eggs. As soon as he saw Son 1 smash and plop the first one, Son 2 slid down from his chair and up on Son 1’s.  Gimme Gimme Gimme.  I patiently said no, blocked off his access to the egg box and let Son 1 get on with the job of breaking another four eggs into the jug.  Son 2 got down from the chair and played on the floor.  Five minutes later I looked down.  The little b**£$%^!# was patting and paddling in a broken egg on the floor, egg shell everywhere.   In the four seconds he’d had available, he’d whipped an egg out of the box and either dropped it or taken it down to the floor with him. Neither Son 1 nor I saw a thing. 

I cleared up the egg, and let Son 2 up on the chair again. The recipe includes two tablespoons of parmesan in the egg mix.  I put a spoonful in  a tub and let him pour it into Son 1’s jug.  “More,” he demanded. I obliged. “More.” I put some more in his tub. He poured it in. “More.” And cried when I wouldn’t give him any.  “You’ve put courgette in this,” said Son 1, peering in the frying pan. “Only a bit,”  I said. “Because I like courgette, but I know you don’t like it.”  Subtext. Because courgette was in the veg box and you won’t notice it when it’s all mixed up with the peas and potato. Between us all, we made a Damn Fine Eggy Pie. Son 1 cut and served it. “I think from now on we should always help you make tea,” he said.  I agreed it had been fun.  He helped himself to a vast portion, and then, very slowly,  dissected it to remove every molecule of courgette.