1.  Starting Slowly

2.  Finishing Fast

3.  Dropping Marks

Son 2 aged 21m, rattling around downstairs before 7am, while I drank coffee to wake me up and got together drinks and snacks.  I took his night-time nappy off to change it. “Wee wee,” he said. “Do you want to do a wee?” “Yes,” he said, and toddled off to the potty. He sat on it. “No,” he said, getting up.  knowing Son 2 to be a child who can wee on the bathroom carpet whenever he feels like it, I said “Oh go on Son 2, do a wee on the potty and I’ll give you a biscuit.”  Up he sprang, the potty forgotten. “Bisbik.  Bisbik.”  A heat-seeking missile, following me, his course unswerving “Bisbik. Bisbik.”  We haven’t got any, so I went upstairs to hunt in my briefcase, which is where I put the free ones you get sometimes in coffee shops. He burst into tears thinking he wasn’t going to get one. ”Bisbik.”  

Son 1 aged 4y 9m has been in Nursery since a few days before he was six months old.  When I first left him he was a babe in arms, with no hair and huge blue eyes.  Today was his last day in Nursery, a scruffy schoolboy in shorts, falling down socks, floppy hair, and dancing eyes.  He has the summer off and then he’s in school. I feel like I’m on some mad express train racing past these milestones so fast I can hardly see them go.  Surely it’s only a minute since he left the Day Nursery for this one. http://mumsnet.com/blogs/serenedays/2008/09/01/last-day/ We have Three Things to celebrate now: Son 1 leaving Nursery, Son 1 getting a Good School Report, and Son 1 saving my big leather chair from Son 2 aged 21m (the biro still hasn’t come off.)

Nobody told me you have to give the teachers and teaching assistants presents on the last day of term. It was like a wedding in there. A table set aside for the floral arrangements, carefully wrapped presents and pretty carrier bags. All the little children conveying in their gifts. Except one. We had a card which Son 1 made for Miss Lovely before we set out.  How do people find out this stuff? I’ve spent all week checking and checking again that the other children weren’t going to turn up in their own clothes today… and then they all sneak the present thing in.  I rang Wonder Nanny to beg her to sort it. ”Oh yes, when I was a Nursery Nurse we were always getting presents.”

1.  A Storm In The Night

2.  A Storm In The Morning

3.  Sunshine

Mighty thunderstorm in the night. Great big crashing cracks of thunder, sudden bright-as-daylight flashes of lightning. No Von Trapp children skidded into bed with me. I peeked in the bedrooms to check on Son 1 aged 4y 9m and Son 2 aged 21m, tiptoeing carefully, not making a peep with the doors. KER-RACK BOOM. Someone lifted up the roof of the house and let it slam back down again. The children didn’t stir. The storm went on and on. The rain drummed down. i had to close the windows, open against the stultifying heat, to stop us all being washed away.  The storm passed. I went to sleep. Son 1 arrived, at 4am. I took him back to his bed.

Son 1 insisted on taking his Dinosaur Bone to Nursery.  “Ok,” I said. “For a start Miss Lovely won’t let you have it. It’s too big. If she does let you have it, you will hear people all day long telling you it’s not a dinosaur bone, it’s a twig - ” ” - It’s NOT a twig. You can smash it on anything and it doesn’t break. It’s a bone, a leg bone -” “- and when you tell them that they will try and break it and they will succeed. It will be smashed to smithereens. And Mummy will be right and you will be wrong.” “I don’t want to listen to you anymore.”

The Dinosaur Bone went in the car boot. “It stays there. We will ask Miss Lovely if you can bring it in.” Son 1 wouldn’t even come in while I checked. “We have an issue. Son 1 found a Dinosaur Bone on the beach. Son 1 has always wanted to find a Dinosaur Bone. I have said it is Too Big For Nursery. I have said everyone here will say it is a stick, because it looks like a very ornate stick which has been worn down by the sea.   I have said it will get broken. ” A small, expectant face had appeared at my elbow, gazing up at Miss Lovely. ”I’d love to see it,” she said.  Back to the car I trogged. Back to the Nursery. “Oh that looks like a bone from a very scarey dinosaur.” “It’s a leg bone,” said Son 1, his eyes shining. “I can see that. Do you think it’s from a Tyrannosaurus Rex?” “Yes!”

I was back from The Office Very Late. Son 1 was just about in bed. “How was the bone?” “All right. No-one said it was a twig.”    Traitors.

1.  Sod’s Law

2.  Law Courts

3.  The First Rule Of Parenting

Both boys decided to have a lie in this morning.  On holiday, when we had nothing to do except Find The Family in the cafe at 11, whenever… 6am.  On Saturday, flying back, clear out of the villa by 1030… we had to wake them up.  This morning, needing to get Son 1 aged 4y 7m to Nursery… needing to get me to the Big Town by 9am… zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.   I had breakfast, showered, sorted holiday washing, did my hair and make up, made snacks… still nothing.  I eventually got Son 1 up with the promise of Ice Age 2 in the lounge.  And Son 2 aged 20m finally stirred when I marched into his room braying Good Morning and pulling down the blanket and blackout blind.

We got out in plenty of time for Nursery.  All very pleased to see Son 1, and took a delighted interest in the holiday photos we’d printed off.   Then I went off to Court for Jury Service.  Rather baffled about whether I can say anything about it at all.  We never got into court, there was lots of waiting around and then we were all sent home.  Is that ok?  And  hilarious male-female split while we were all loafing around waiting for anyone to want us.  All the men sat singly aloof, reading papers, out of sight of the women.  Who sat on two tables, drinking coffees, trashing the lunch menu, comparing jobs, where we all lived and how many children we had, and what they want to do when they leave school.

I picked up Son 1 a bit early, which was nice, and we headed home.   Son 2 had had a quiet day with Wonder Nanny.  She moved house while we were away, which is all part of her spectacular marvellousness.  A Very Good Thing.  Too complicated to think about if she’d needed time off when I can’t get out of Jury Service and The Man is away…    One of our neighbours is an elderly nun who can’t hear very well.  Which means in 8 years I’ve had very few conversations with her. And they’ve all been started by me. Sister X stopped me yesterday to tell me how lovely Wonder Nanny is with the children and what a very sweet girl she is. When Son 1 and I came back today I watched Son 2 in the back garden for a while.  He was playing with the water in the sand pit.  Wonder Nanny, sitting on the steps watching, said something to him and he waddled over to her.  Then he waddled back again, with a Shane Warne-style strip of suntan lotion down his nose.  He went back to her, and again, returned to the sandpit, this time with a stripe under his lip to protect his scar.  Outside, I protested it wasn’t fair.  “He never stands still for sun lotion.  He’s like a bat in a barrel when I try!”  Wonder Nanny smiled. ”They never behave for their parents.”

1.  Comprehending

2.  Coconuts

3.  Clarifying

Son 2 aged 19m wept, tantrumed and screamed as Son 1 aged 4y 7m and I left the house this morning.  In Wonder Nanny’s arms, he gazed through the window at us as we got in the car.  It’s borne in on me that the poor little mite has no way of understanding why Mummy and Son 1 are going off together and leaving him.   Memo.  Lots of books about school/nursery from now on.   Stick with him the whole weekend.    He started his tantrum about 20 minutes before we left, when I did my usual slow, clear and repetitive “Mummy and Son 1 are going to say goodbye.”  So Being Positive, another Sign Of Excellent Receptive Language.

Son 1 and I went to Tesco for a Big Shop after I picked him up from Nursery.  He was amazingly well-behaved.   We spotted marked-down coconuts in the yellow-sticker trays.  “My whole life I have always wanted a coconut,” he said, sitting in the 15 kg max weight seat and stripping some of the fibre off the shell.  “Mummy how do we open it?”  ” I don’t know, I can’t remember.  I thought you wanted to make a hole in it and drink the milk. ” “Yes I do, but what shall we use?”  “I don’t know, we’ll have to wait till we get home and see what we’ve got.  We used to have hours of fun trying to get into coconuts when I was small.”  “What did you do to get in?”  “Don’t know, my dad used to do it. Smashed them to smithereens.”  “How did he smash them?”  “Can’t remember. I think he used to just throw them on the floor, very hard.”  Son 1 peered down over the side of the shopping trolley.    ”Don’t even think about it,” I growled.

He behaved impeccably, didn’t pester, didn’t whine, got down from the trolley and trotted around happily holding his coconut. “They have these in Aloha Scooby Doo.”  So back home I showed him the paddling pool I’d bought from TK Maxx.  He can’t wait.  But the weather has turned, and a loud lightning/driving rain thunderstorm moved slowly over us this evening.  “I don’t mind playing in it in the rain.”  I got into a coconut hole with a metal skewer.  Wonder Nanny stuck a straw in so Son 1 could, like Shaggy and Scooby drink the milk.  “I don’t like it.”   Son 1 brought Son 2 a book about fish back from Nursery.  Son 2 is obsessed with it.   He has a word for Shark, and Boat, and Bus, and Please, and Banana, and Car, and Down, and Upstairs and Outside, and Bubble.  Still not quite recognisable to anyone except those who adore him… but we think he is a Miraculous, Magical Marvel.

1.  Domestic Science

2.  Team Game

3.  Lost Property

My usual night-time visitor.  I will never stopped being amazed by the sheer volume of fathomless, trusting, unconditional love that pours forth from both Son 1 aged 4y 6m and Son 2 aged 19m.  Son 1 snuck in the bed in the dark, eyebrowed for England - unconscious and vigorous stroking of my eyebrows and eyelashes to relax himself and get back to sleep - and then burrowed round the bed after me, wherever I went.     At 0530 I tiptoed downstairs, starting on packed lunches, washing and morning snacks.  Son 1 followed after, clearly still exhausted, and I made him a bed form sofa cushions on the kitchen floor.   I had to wake Son 2 up at 0730, after I’d had my shower, after I’d done my make up. 

A fabulous morning. Son 1 was philosophical about going back to Nursery, which was also a good thing.  Got dressed, found himself a nursery toy, packed his bag, had a bit of snack.  All without protest. We got there in plenty of time, which was also a good thing. 

I had a sprint round town at lunchtime… changed the children’s library books, bought school shorts for Son 1 and did an M and S run.  It made me late leaving, so I rang Wonder Nanny to apologise and warn her I’d be late back with Son 1.  Then when I picked him up from the After School Club, his teaching assistant said “The Office rang. They say can you check the message on your mobile before you leave The Big Town.”  I would have checked the message on my mobile.  Only it was in my briefcase. Which I’d left in The Office. We had to go all the way back.  And we were very very late indeed for Son 2 and Wonder Nanny.  Son 2 stood in the bay window watching, smiling and waving as I walked up the street towards the house.

1. Lavender Blue Dilly Dilly

2.  You Will Be King Dilly Dilly

3.  An Essential Oil

I put a drop of lavender oil on the boys’ pillows last night.  Son 2 aged 17m woke screaming when The Man went to bed, and I helped him back to sleep.  Then just a yell in the night, and that was it.  Son 1 aged 4y 5m apparently woke afterwards and The Man went into bed with him for a while to get him to sleep.   And then he slept through.  And I, whisper very quietly, got a Reasonable Night’s Sleep.  So. Fingers crossed.  Positive Thinking.  Oh The Things I Can Think Up If Only I Can Get Some Sleep.

Parents’ evening at Nursery again.   Son 1 is lovely.  Polite.  Well-behaved.  Says please and thank you.  Knows his numbers.  Listens. Has an excellent vocabulary.  A confident speaker.  A joy.  Interested in everything.  Well socialised.  Plays well with the other children.  A great sense of right and wrong.  Congratulations to his parents.  He’s a bit slow putting his shoes on, but that’s about it for bad points.  Son 1 got two bonus stars for his chart for his glowing report.  He has eaten cucumber again, and got a star for that too. 

We took Son 2 to the Nursery, and he was lovely.  Tottered over to Son 1 and tried joining in his drawing.  Waved bye bye to the Nursery teacher.  He’s saying Bye Bye very well now too, and his MaMa is impeccable.  He chatted nearly all the way to the Nursery, and stayed awake all the way back as well.  They both ate pasta and pesto for tea, then yoghurts, and then books and bath and bed.  I put two drops of lavender oil on Son 2’s sleeping bag and he passed out almost instantly, and hasn’t cried yet.  Son 1 had one large splodge on his pillow, yet still hung on for five Paddington books, and would have had more if I hadn’t put my foot down. I am going to have to check on Son 2 before I go to bed.

1.  Darkest Hour 

2.  A Kind Of Blue

3.  White Teeth

Son 2 aged 17m started crying. I looked at the clock. Just before 6am.  It wasn’t really crying.  It was shouting.  Loud, intermittent pre-vocal blasts.  Getting louder and louder. Standing up in his cot, hands hooked over the rail.  I got him up, changed his nappy and gave him a drink of water.  We got past Son 1 aged 4y 5m’s bedroom without waking him and went downstairs to get the drinks and snacks.  It was 5am.  On the positive side, we didn’t have a rush to get to Nursery.  

Nursery.  All the Nursery and Reception children were in their own clothes, in their favourite colours.  All except one.  How do the other Mothers know this?  Every other little child except Son 1, decked out in civvies.  “Oh Navy’s a lovely colour, it’s a kind of blue,” sang out the class teacher as we arrived.  I simply do not know where the communication loop is.  There is a tiny book of dates they hand out at the start of each term.  But that just gets sucked into our Paperwork Vortex where it is probably still spinning, weightless.  They send letters about Parents’ Evenings, and class photos.  Nope. Genuinely baffled.  I picked Son 1 up early for a dentist’s appointment.  The children were clustering for photos in their various colour groups.  The reds were being taken as I arrived.  The blues were rounded up.  1 sent Son 1 over, and he sat cross-legged in the middle of the front row. As the lady said.  Navy’s a kind of blue.

The Dentist was a Good Thing.  I’d pictured the Dentist staring into Son 1’s gaping mouth and spotting craters bombed out by raisins, chocolate, fruit juice and bedtime milk.  Ting ting ting with his little metal proddy thing.  “They’re fine Son 1, what a good boy, would you like a sticker?”  He did me, I was also fine.  The hygienist had a space, did I want go down now?  Yes I did.  Unfortunately poor Son1, who’d already waited for the Dentist for 25 toyless minutes, had reached his limits. Prone in the Big Chair, goggles on, bib on, mouth full of cutlery and teeth getting sandblasted, dug out and polished, I had Son 1 crawling on top of me and lying with his head on my tummy.  “Does it hurt?” he asked. No, said the hygienist, as I couldn’t speak.  At bedtime I said “Were you frightened Mummy was getting hurt?” He nodded sadly.  So I gave him a flash of my sparkling new smile.

1.  Darling Buds

2.  Primroses

3.  Hazelnuts

And Good Thing No 1 is that for the first time in ages (since they had their colds?) Son 1 aged 4y 4m, and Son 2 aged 17 went to sleep and woke up in their own bed/cot.  Not without trauma or incident, but it’s a start.  Son 2 cried so much yesterday evening that we simply had to leave him.  We were both working and in the end, after each of us had spent a couple of 20 min+s with him, we had to give up and let him cry.  Which I’m not doing again as I can’t stand it.  But… he did stay asleep in the cot till morning.  A Gold Star to the little boy with the Very Loud Voice.  Son 1 came floating up to the Big Bed at 4am, and I led him back down to his own bed.  I got in with him, and then when he’d gone back to sleep I went in the bed in Son 2’s room.  After so many nights of me in one bed with one child, and The Man in the other bed with the other, I am pleased. 

We got to Nursery in plenty of time.  Son 1’s last day before his half term.  There are some daffodils in bloom on the other side of the road to the Muddy Path.  And primroses.  “I won a prize when I was a little girl for drawing a primrose.” “What did you win?”  “I can’t remember.  I got a certificate.”  “Can i see the picture?”  “I haven’t got it anymore.”  “Can I see the certificate?”  “I haven’t got that any more either.  I know I was very proud.”  In the Nursery, Son 1 showed me his snowmen pictures, up on the wall.  Son 1 with his Snowman.  The Snowman, without Son 1.   Nursery wrote us a note in Son 1’s book thanking us for the photos.  “Son 1 is very proud of them.”   

Son 1 and I went shopping.  He struggled to get past the Power Ranger toys, Ben 10 jumpers/socks, and power ranger/Ben 10 outfits.  I let him choose a cake to eat at the till.  He chose a doughnut with chocolate icing and chopped hazelnuts.  Up and down the aisles.  He sat in the trolley.  He did pretty well, although it really isn’t a good idea to take him.  At the till I gave him his doughnut.  As I packed the shopping: “Mummy can you take these bits off, I don’t like them.”  I packed up, I paid.  I pushed Son 1 to the side.  And then stood there picking off scores and scores of hazelnut pieces.  I got most of them off, and gave the doughnut back to Son 1 with just a few dotted about on it.  He spent the time from the shop to the car meticulously picking every piece off.  In the car on the way home he ate the chocolate icing and then passed me the ring with it’s top chewed off.

1.  Capitulation

2.  Corruption

3.  Celebration

A New Family Rule.  If Little Children Want To Sleep With Their Parents They Can.  Son 1 aged 4y 4m thinks this is good idea.  “Is this because of me?”  “Yes,” I said.  No.  It’s because we had the most wretched night with Son 2 aged 16m.  Plot summary:  he wanted to lie in the big bed with a grown up;  I wanted him to sleep in his cot.    Neither The Man nor I sleep particularly well when we have a child with us.  And we both get grumpy when we don’t sleep.  So when Son 2 stood up and bayed at 2315, I tried to get him back to sleep.  He roared.  He shouted till his voice went hoarse.  He screamed and screeched and shrieked.  He woke Son 1.  He finally stopped at 1am.  i put Son 1 back in his bed.  Made hot chocolate.  And was then worried that something might be wrong with Son 2 so went into his room.  In the early hours he awoke again, and I just popped him into bed with me.  He went straight back to sleep.

We had Horrid Henry again on the way to Nursery.  I am going to retire him.  Too many: “Bor-ring”s and raspberries from Son 1.  I like to think a “You’re terrible parents” was rooted in Horrid Henry, rather than any seriously thought-through conclusion.  So at Ottakars I began the re-education programme.  We now have Peter Pan, Roald Dahl, and Stories For Five Year Olds.   Back from The Office, I walked in as Son 1 had just hit Son 2.  Oh somehow he got his new CDs.  “I hope you choose Peter Pan for us to listen to tomorrow,” I said.  “Which one do you want to hear?”  “Peter Pan,” said Son 1.  Hooray hooray.  We may yet get him back from Horrid Henry.

Reading to Son 1 after bathtime, I tried to get any information at all from him about his day at Nursery.  “Who did you sit with at lunch?”  “Can’t remember.”  “What did you do that was fun?” “Nothing.” ”What was your favourite bit of the day?”  “When Mummy came home.”  He deserved every one of those new CDs.

1.  First Flower

2.  Country Roads

3.  Night Nights

Son 1aged 4y 4m and I left for Nursery ten minutes earlier than usual.  He has had enough of The Pirate’s Hat And Other Stories… he has had enough of Horrid Henry.  So this morning it was the Famous Five and Treasure Island, free with a paper some time ago.  Son 1 calls it the Famous Fights.  “I wish I was called Georgina.  If I was called Georgina I will say everyone must call me George.”   He also wishes he had a boat, and an island.  And a dog of course.  We arrived in plenty of time, and so parked up the drive and walked down the Muddy Path.  And there, in among the sodden leaves, on a little clump of bright green foliage, was a single pale yellow primrose flower.  Spring Is Sprung.  

To make up for this morning, the roads were heaving this evening, so I decided to explore some back routes to get home.  Mistake.  Tiny, flooded, debris-strewn barely-maintained tracks switchbacking this way and that as the light faded.  We went for miles.  The Famous Five had found some Ingots in a dungeon on the Treasure Island.  A Baddy threatened to shoot Timmy the Dog.  We got back on the usual route and pulled round a group of three of four cars parked together at the side of the road, broken glass, crumpled bonnets, people milling.  Perhaps a Good Thing that we were a little later than them.

Son 2 aged 16m waved from the window as we pulled up outside the house (Thank You Parking Fairy.) He was on top form.  Laughing, squealing, insisting on being held and carried.  He mineswept Son 1’s leftover smoothie from the car, and ate nearly a whole satsuma from his picnic bag.  Son 1 refused tea but accepted a couple of pieces of fruit, and listened to the end of the Famous Five on a laptop upstairs.  Son 2 is still crying as soon as I say night night and leave him in his cot.  Son 1, who used to send The Man packing when I went to see him for his bedtime stories, now says “Oh Mummy, you’ve come at exactly the wrong time.”  He fell asleep during Fairy Child.