1.  A White Rabbit

2.  Halloween Bats

3.  The Enormous Crocodile

The alarm went off.  Son 1 aged 4y 11m was in the Big Bed.  I had a nice snuggy cuddle, and woke up 50 minutes later. Oh my ears and whiskers.  Poor old Son 2 aged 2 didn’t get any stories.  Got up. Breakfasted Son 1 and Son 2, showered, dressed, did face and hair, scooped up Son 1, gave him a toothbrush and told him to do his teeth in the car…  and outta the door. Hellish traffic, but I have a Rat Run. “Have you cleaned your teeth?” “Yes.” We got to School in time to park up the Muddy Path. And then I saw the toothbrush. He hadn’t touched it.  “Just clean them now.” “No.”  He cried, he stropped, he dillied, dallied and dawdled.  The doors were closed by the time we got there.  And Son 1 was very upset. “It’s my fault,” I said. “For rolling over and going back to sleep.”  

At lunchtime I went looking for Cookie Cutters for the party bags. It is a Scooby Doo party, and I’ve been after for one Nice, Lasting, Cheap Thing to go in the bags.  They are getting Halloween cutters. I haven’t yet worked out how many children we have coming.  Doesn’t matter. We like making biscuits in our house.  We do, it has to be said, have a heck of a lot of boys coming. And two girls.  I haven’t told the parents of the girls that we have a slight imbalance.  Tra la la.   When I picked Son 1 up I let him see the cookie cutters, and he of course wanted to do the party bags when he got in. Oh boy.  As a friend said to me recently: “Why don’t you just try saying ‘no?’”   

Son 1 does Activity Time with The Man each evening while I’m bathing Son 2 and putting him to bed.  Then Son 1 and I read, him snugged next to me in the Double Bed, just ahead of popping him into his own bed, in his room, where Son 2 is already asleep in the cot. The Man’s being doing Son 1’s Jolly Phonics with him. We also have a reading book with a list of words we’re supposed to help hime learn. This week it is “I” “a” and “look.”  Son 1 and I read The Enormous Crocodile. I tried to get him interested in looking at the “looks.”  “I don’t want to.  Just read it.”  Then we got onto Bugs In The Blanket.  “I’ll give you a chocolate button for each ‘look’ you can find.” I said. He went to bed with a pile of seven chocolate buttons waiting for him in the morning.

1.  Walking pace

2.  Normal Walking

3.  Nearly Walking

Getting to Nursery On Time was a Good Thing.  I was out of the door at exactly the right time to jump in the car and go, and get to Nursery avoiding the glacially-paced Monday traffic.  “Where’s the car?” I called to The Man, who’d parked it on Saturday.  “Outside XXX and YYYs,” he said.  XXX and YYY are friends who live 10 minutes’ walk away.  Oh dear.  I wasn’t a very good Example For The Children.  However.  The conclusion is that the longer, rural route to the Big Town is faster than the normal way, despite the mile-long crawl near the Industrial Estate.  Son 1 aged 4y 2m got there in time for the Hellos.

I had to pick him up again at 1.30pm because he had an appointment with a paediatric physio.  I think his right foot flays out when he runs.  She asked me lots of questions, watched him sit, walk and run, and then moved his legs up and down while he was lying on a couch.   She says both feet flay out, but when he’s walking both feet are turned in.  His hip joints in the sockets turn in, so his thighs turn in when he’s tired, so his lower legs flay out.   Stop him sitting in a “W” - which he’s done since he was a baby; he need to be cross-legged.  And get him to stand on one leg, and hop, when he can (he can’t yet.)   In the range of normal, but he’s never going to be an athlete.  Dang, and there’s us with athletes on both sides of the family.  Was it because he was breech? I asked.  She didn’t think so, it’s hereditary.  Somewhere on either side there is another “W” sitter.  It’s just how he is.

Back home and Son 2 aged 14m is almost ready to lift off.  He can comfortably walk eight or ten paces… and managed to slalom through a doorway this evening to get to me when I went upstairs.  He can walk many steps, several times in a row before he pretends to lose interest, plops down on his bottom and goes crawling off to change the subject.  He gives himself a clap before he starts, and then steps out confidently until he lets himself fall into the arms of whoever’s in goal.  And when he totters over to Son 1’s outstretched arms and plops on top of him at the end Mummy’s heart turns to mush.

1.  Driving Away

2.  Driving Instructor

3.  Driven

Son 2 aged 14m woke up when The Man went to bed last night and then could not be settled.  The rolling around in the cot, the propping himself up, the lying down, the sighing, the wah-ing… and underpinning it all the great talent he has for lying as still as possible for long enough to convince me that he’s gone to sleep, waiting till I’ve gone and WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH.  He woke Son 1 aged 4y 2m up, he kept The Man awake, he broke my back as Yet Again I bent over the cot with my head next to his.  And in the end of course I just got fed up and left him to it.  My scientific, highly-researched I-love-you-and-I-hate-you-being-unhappy-but-I-just-have-to-sleep-now technique for problem sleepers.

And then we all got up too late to get Nursery on time.  So for the second (Nursery) morning in a row, I had to ring up and confess we’d be late.  I missed out reading to Son 2… I barely saw Son 2.  We were so late we saw Wonder Nanny.  In the car, Son 1 interrogated me about stolen cars.  I told him the story of how my car had been stolen from outside An Office, many years ago.  He promised to catch the Burglars and Kill Them.  I gently did the “we don’t talk about killing anyone, Son 1, even burglars, because killing is always wrong,” thing.  “OK. When I catch them I will kill or spray them with space goo.  Which do you want Mummy?”  I chose the space goo.   

There was an Office Business Lunch today, and the two new people I met were both runners.  One was just back from the New York Marathon, so we swapped stories about how fab it is.  The other is a triathlete, and we swapped stories about injuries.  I told the triathlete I felt guilty about spending what little time I have at home with the children on running, like I did on Sunday.  He said neither of his children is sporty, but they are both driven in their own chosen fields and he thinks it’s because they’ve watched him and his wife - a runner - work towards their events.  I was buoyed and inspired.  And then I got home, and I was tired, and it took an age to get the boys to bed, and it’s raining… And I didn’t go out for a run.

1.  Sleeping Through

2.  Sock Triumph

3.  Soft Touch

Son 2 aged 14m went down in his cot last night and stayed there until 0620 this morning.  Which last night gave me the tortured choice of check him and wake him up vs what if he’s dead?    I have never, ever, heard of or encountered anyone who sleeps as lightly as Son 2.  I swear the ting of a radiator, the click of a knee or the sound of a contact lens falling on the floor can wake him.   But we’re getting there.  A month ago I could only get him to sleep by lying on the bed next to him, and had to go to him each time he awoke in case he rolled off.  And he needed a grown up to sleep with him.  And now he’s doing ok on his own.  Unless your tummy rumbles…

I found the sock, hooray hooray.  A woman in a pinny, smoking a fag, watched me carefully as I scoured the Quay.  “I’m looking for a little boy sock,” I said. “We lost it in the dark last night.” “There’s a sock over there,” she said. “But it’s not a little boy’s.”  Yes it was.  Squodged, soaking, muddy and run over several times.   Yes I know it’s only a sock.  But inconvenience/annoyance of having to go back and look for it < inconvenience/annoyance of having five Nursery socks.  Forever.

The boys went to a play park with Wonder Nanny, and her Nanny Friend and her two charges… and then had them round this afternoon with the Thomas Wooden Railway boxes out.   A nightmare getting home from The Office.  A broken down bus on a single lane stretch and no escape from the stationary traffic.  Late late late.  Late for Wonder Nanny going home, late putting the boys to bed.  Son 2 is always first out of the bath, and then Son 1 aged 4 y 1m.  He wraps himself up in a big towel, and Son 2 helps me pat him dry.  Many, many giggles.

1.  The Young Visiter 

2.  Sitting comfortably

3.  Gorillas

Had a little visitor at 4am.  When The Man and I move across the loft conversion floor, it creaks like the earth is splitting.  Son 1 aged 3y 11m has cat-like tread.  A sense of a presence, a bedside shuffling, the touch of an arm or a leg and he’s in.  We woke up at 7am with no sound from Son 2 aged 11m downstairs.  I put my contact lenses in, and when I came back into the bedroom Son 1 had buried himself under the quilt so I couldn’t see him.  So I got in and we pulled it over both our heads.  So Daddy (who’s on a Business Trip) can’t see us.  Peals of laughter from Son 1.  And: “You’re great, Mummy.”  Perceptive child.

Late back from The Office, so poor old Wonder Nanny just had to wait and wait past going home time till I finally got in.  They were upstairs, lying on the bed reading baby books.  Son 1 had told her what we do to get ready for bed.  I bathed the boys, got Son 2 out, and Son 1 demanded to come out too.  We’d decided he would listen to a story CD on the laptop to keep him occupied while I was feeding Son 2.  I put on a Nursery Storybook CD given to him by his Godmother, Younger Sister.  Son 2 took 20 minutes to go down.  When I went in to Son 1, Colette from Casualty was just finishing off the Gingerbread Man.  And Son 1 was sitting on his bed, demurely following the story in the correct place by looking at the pictures.  Mush.  I only just chiselled him off it and back to Mummy reading Jack and the Beanstalk.  And then the Elves and the Shoemaker.  And then Winnie the Witch.

And then I had a really nice phone conversation with the Wise and Wonderful Friend.  She’s still Wise and still Wonderful.  I just felt happy after talking to her, which is a very positive place to be. I was late starting work, but it was worth it.  WAWF is child-free.  She’s going to Uganda next year to see gorillas.  She recommended a good book for me to read.  I said I’d definitely get it because I haven’t read anything for ages.  I didn’t say: “There’s a coincidence.  My current reading is in fact a book about a gorilla.  And a girl called Hannah.”