1.  Scrappy Doo

2.  Scooby Doo

3.  Scoopy Poo

Yesterday’s marathon gave me an afternoon off, and I took Son 1 aged 4y 10m to see Scooby Doo and the Pirates in The Big City.  I felt desperately guilty about Son 2 aged 22m… when I booked the tickets last October he was 13m old. Couldn’t walk, couldn’t talk, couldn’t do anything.  Now he thinks he’s 4, loves Scooby Doo and can point him out on a poster, loves Pirates (”Arrrr!” and “Hook!”) and would have been devastated if any of us had admitted he was being left behind. Instead we pretended that I was taking Son 1 to school, and Wonder Nanny engineered things so Son 2 was asleep when I swooped in and out to collect him.

Great show and a great time.  Just as I fell in love with Anthony during The Wiggles, there is now Something There That Wasn’t There Before with Shaggy.  He’s happy and kind,  he loves animals and dancing and he adores food. We were in the second row. Son 1 kept hiding under the chairs of the front row when the pirates came out.  He seems so big when we’re with Son 2, but on his own, in a theatre with 2000 people he seemed tiny. “I know who the pirate queen is Mummy, the  lady who likes chocolate in the first bit.” 

“Do you need the loo?” I asked before we left the theatre. “No,” he answered crossly, as he always does. Then, two miles into the 70-mile trip home “I need a poo!”  “Can you wait a bit?” “No! It’s coming!”  We stopped in a supermarket car park.  Lidl and the Co-op. Not a loo between them. We asked in a community centre. No, the loos couldn’t be opened.  It rained.  I fished in my hessian shopping bag.  A printed out email from The Office and a handful of napkins.  I perched Son 1 in a corner by a hedge. “Have a wee and then go on that.”  He obliged.  I picked up the Matter.  And that is how I came to be walking around a shopping centre with a rolled-up email filled with poo in one hand and a four year old’s grasp in the other.  I found a lined bin and got rid of it.  Pre-children, pre-swine flu, I didn’t even know you could get small bottles of antiseptic hand gel. But as it happened, I had one in the car.   I cleaned my hands. “Wash your hands with this,” I handed the bottle to Son 1.  His small voice came from the back. “Oh. Missed.  It’s gone everywhere.”

1.  Coffee

2.  Church

3.  Presents

Son 1 aged 4y 3m longs for Christmas.  His tummy hurts.  He is excited.  Santa is coming tonight.  We have a deal that he can open his stocking and the big present under the tree he has his eye on - which he thinks is the Abyss underwater set but isn’t - and then he has to wait till Granny and Granddad get here.  He is also worn out.  Why are my children always so tired?  It can’t be anything to do with their five-hours-sleep-a-night full-time-working Christmas-Eve-but-I’ll-just-bash-a-blog out mother.  The Man went off to Marks for supplies with Son 2 aged 15m at about 9.  I prised Son 1 away from the telly and we met them, and Granny and Granddad for coffee.  Son 1 misbehaved, tired and excited.  Son 2, uncharacteristically, fell asleep in the Big Pram.

I took them to church.  The vicar wrote us a letter for a C of E school saying we attend from time to time, and I don’t want him to go to hell for lying.  We met some Wednesday friends there.  Son 1 and Older Brother tore up and down the aisles, played with the toys at the back and chattered, oblivious to proceedings.  Son 2 picked, uninterested, at the greenery arrangements.  In the middle of the reading Son 1 proclaimed “I need a poo,” and off we set, round pews, through doors, over concrete flooring, through an office, via a robing room (oops, that’s not it then) to the Tiny Loo.  We took Monday’s Birthday Boy with us.   Four of us couldn’t fit in, so we held the door open.  Birthday Boy is known for roaming, and wanted his Mummy.  Son 2 is unstoppable.  Son 1 took forever.  A flight of stairs plunged downwards yards from our nook.  After 10 years the Other Mother arrived, having only just realised I was three-up and out of control.  “This service isn’t very long,” I thought, as we warbled “Away in a Manger” to finish.  Then I realised we’d been waiting for Son 1 for about 20  minutes.

Son 1 put out a mince pie, a sherry and two gold chocolate coins for Santa, and a carrot and milk for the reindeer.  He was allowed to eat a chocolate coin to make sure they were good enough for Santa.  Then he decided to leave only one chocolate coin for Santa, and to put the other one back in his Trick or Treat bucket.  We decided he could leave two small ones out for Santa, but he could eat the big one.   Both boys were asleep at 7pm.  Who’s SuperMummy?  Granny and Granddad babysat, and we went round to our friends’.  We were supposed to be staying for one and then going to the pub, but they had crisps, and champagne, and an open fire, and we were talking and drinking and drinking and talking and then we had to go because G and G don’t really do Late.  Back home I put chocolate decorations on the tree, gold coins in the treasure chest and filled the stockings (not enough stocking fillers, where’s open at midnight on Christmas Eve?) while The Man heaved bags of presents down the stairs and piled them under the tree.  I need to get up at 6am to see to the turkey.  I can’t wait for the morning to come.

1.  Plop

2.  Shoes

3.  Stairs

Son 2 aged 11m was hungry when he woke up at 0630, but I needed the loo.  In the bathroom, I gave him a toothbrush and toothpaste, which usually does the distraction trick.  Nope.  He would not be put down. So on my lap he sat.  I had to sit him on the floor after for just a couple of minutes while I… er… tidied up because I just don’t have enough hands.  He howled, and then in a smooth move lasting a couple of seconds only, pulled himself up on the loo seat while I was … er… busy and tossed the toothbrush into the unflushed loo.  Nice. 

A Good Thing is I’ve decided I’m not cooking when The Man is away.  I will move us all onto ready meals and packets.  I’ve decided this only after a pretty hard time today, trying to feed and clear up after all three of us.   The only time I was out of the kitchen was when we went to the shops to get shoes for the Posh Nursery.  We went to Clarks. “Don’t be disappointed if they haven’t got shoes to fit you,” I said.  “All the other mummies who are a bit better organised than me might have been in first.”  Clarks measured him on a weirdie machine, and made him a size and a half bigger than five months ago.  The only shoes the Other Mummies had left in Son 1’s size were £32 with a toy in the heel.  I did like the Other Mummies and left them in the shop.  Emboldened by a Mumsnet talk threads, I went and bought him a pair in M and S for £12. 

 Son 2 rejected the Hipp spaghetti carbonara I gave him for lunch and necked yesterday’s cold salmon.  Curious child.  I’ve no idea what the Hipp jars taste like.  I never buy the veggie ones because there’s nothing they do that I don’t… and I won’t taste the meat ones because I won’t.  Why don’t baby food jars have fish in them?  Is it hard to preserve without salt or something?  Son 2 has found something he likes that isn’t fromage frais or Cheerios.  And they don’t do it as ready baby food.   He climbed the stairs for the first time today.  He practised in the garden on the three low, flat steps, and then did the whole ground-floor to first floor flight.  In a one piece play suit, so also contending with his leg getting stuck.   He’s big, he’s strong, he’s very nearly one.