1.  Rhythm

2.  Blues

3.  Jeopardy

Wednesday is Friends’ Day.  So why oh why did I have to do painting, colouring and a long, loud session on the drum kit and ELC keyboard before anyone came round?  She is saintly, and will not  mind me crying Foul! Is That Not Why I Have Wonder Nanny?  Ahem. Excuse me.  One Wednesday  Mother had a hospital appointment for 3 year old’s adenoids and was Too Stressed To Come Out.  The other Wednesday Mother wanted to come here, which was fine. I am being unfair on Son 1 aged 4y 10m and Son 2 aged 23m.  Son 1 was up for painting. Son 2 really just likes stirring the dirty water from an upturned ramekin and splatting it on the walls with a paintbrush.  And the jamming session was great. Son 1 on keyboards “You’re too noisy! I can’t hear when I sing!” and Son 2, “Bang-It-Hard-Enough-And-The-Crayons-I’ve-Posted-In-All-The-Drums-Will-Rattle.”  Mrs Gallagher would have had this.

Best Friend and Little Brother at last came round.   Best Friend and Son 1 locked into a horrible axis and wouldn’t play with Little Brother. Little Brother, tired, rejected/dejected, was uninterested in Son 2, no matter how we tried.   Son 2 trailed after all three: “I’m 4! I’m 4! Honest!”  Son 1 and BF were in an elaborate game of pirates which involved caves, maps and treasure. LB, who must never be under-rated, was very often in possession of the treasure chest. And I was on his side.  Son 2 wore Son 1’s Captain Hook outfit, and was incredibly pleased with himself. Pa-ang.   Son 1 hasn’t worn his Captain Hook outfit since BF’s mother found him one at a car boot sale.        

The MAn came home with a Business Colleague and we all went crabbing. The tide was coming in, there was seaweed everywhere so we couldn’t see anything, all four boys stripped off.  I made Son 2 put his reins back on. “In years to come, it will cost him a great deal to walk around naked with a beautiful  blonde on the end of his reins,” I told Wednesday Mum.   Son 1 found something which i thought was a weathered old battery case with stuff growing round it. ”It’s a sea urchin,” said Wednesday Mum. “That’s its mouth.”  She did a degree in Marine Biology ahead of the PhD in Chemical  Engineering so I kinda believe her.  We still caught crabs. Big ‘Uns and Littl’Uns. Son 1 caught a whopper. Son 1 caught a titch - just by trawling his shrimp net he found the teeniest sideways-mover. We put them all in the same big bucket, worried they’d eat each other. But they all huddled under the Whopper. ”We’re running out of concrete,” observed BF.  Four-year-old speak for The Tide Is Racing In. We were also running out of bacon.  But we defeated our own record.  Twelve crabs and a sea urchin. We tipped the bucket out on the river wall so we could watch the crabs scuttle back to the water. Three huge seagulls appeared instantly.  We then had to prise the bloody crabs out of the gaps in the steps to get them safely back in the river.    It was supposed to be a race, but it turned into an airlift.

1.  Stamina

2.  Focus

3.  Energy

Son 2 aged 22m howled at 4 something am.  Which of course he hasn’t done since well well before we put him in with Son 1 aged 4y 9m.  “Mum-meeee.  Mum-mee.”  We left him.  I think he woke again.  And we…er… left him.  I think I even heard a “Sssshhh,” from Son 1.  Who pad-padded up at 0730.  There wasn’t a peep from Son 2. I never enjoy it when he sleeps late.  I dread there being a reason for it other than a lie-in. Especially after leaving him twice in the night.

Son 1 wanted to paint, so I set him up on a newspaper on the kitchen table. “And me, And me,” demanded  Son 2. They were gorgeous, sitting there side by side, Son 1 painting picture after picture, Son 2 using only the painting water to washout his pieces of paper. He tipped the water over.  He pulled the newspaper over his head. ”Boo,” he said. Granny and Granddad came round, Son 1 squash-balled off the walls, and despite the forecast of severe showers, we went out. Halfway through the Town we passed The Church.  There were service flags, uniforms, civic chains.  A band. We waited. We were rained on. We watched The Parade, Son 2 with his heavenly expression of total interest and concentration.   We followed.  “I want to hear the music,” said Son 1.

Back home we roasted a chicken, and I tried to make a tiny amount of vegetables go round four adults and two small boys. I cannot count the number of times I have had a mountain of veg box bags to go through. Today I had about four carrots, some broad beans, 125g of out-of-date asparagus and half a head of rather old greens. We got away with it. I am Nigel Slater. After the meal Son 1 decided that the ribbon from the one helium filled balloon leftover from Nanna’s birthday was the finishing tape for sports day. To start with, he and Son 2 had running races. Then, as the excitement cranked up way beyond acceptable levels for 6pm, I told him to have a slithering-like-a-snake race.  We did a sideways race, a backwards race, a crawling race, a hopping race and snapping race.  Son 2 joined in for the egg-and-spoon race, run with wooden balls from a skittle set and old silver spoons. Again, that brilliant expression of concentration, and then unbridled joy when he got his egg across the line. Son 1 used the string shopping bag as the sack in a sack race. He was of course the only competitor in most of these races, which meant that he won them all.  He loved it.

1.  Junior Showtime

2.  Long-Standing

3.  Learning To Talk

Days 1 and 2 of The Trade Show.  Son 1 aged 4y 8m and Son 2 aged 20m went with Wonder Nanny yesterday.  They apparently walked round, went on rides, looked at animals (pig and mooing noises from Son 2,) collected stickers, pencils and assorted oddments from stands, had lunch and then went in the Play Tent till I collected them.  Son 2 appeared to have also found a shirt-painting stand.  He was in white linen. I told Wonder Nanny not to worry about the shirt as You Can Get Anything Out Of Linen.  Son 2 was cheerfully testing the theory, with strips and splodges of paint, ice cream and pen all over him.  The children painting in the Play Tent were using washing up bowls to clean their paintbrushes, so there were large bowls of shallow, deeply coloured water perched on kiddies’ chairs.  Son 2 had borrowed a tea cup from a toy box and was using it to scoop out blue water and tip it on the floor in front of him.  Nice.

Son 2 was having a day with Wonder Nanny, and Son 1 was at Nursery today. We got him there on time, which was a Good Thing, and he plopped down, cross-legged, with the other children with nary a glance up at me.  I took a colleague into The Trade Show, and we had a Good Day.  Very busy, great people, saw loads of contacts, walked miles, worked hard, left late. As I was leaving I rang home to tell The Man to start putting the boys to bed without me.  Wonder Nanny answered.  Past her leaving time. ”Isn’t The Man back yet?” “No… I  know he was picking up Son 1, but we’ve not seen them here.”  I rang The Man.  Doing a Big Shop with Son 1. Hadn’t worried about Wonder Nanny and Son 2  because he’d assumed I’d be home.  Oh Dear. 

 Back home, Son 2 hung round my neck, Son 1 screamed and squealed.  “Do you want to go to the Trade Show again tomorrow?” I asked Son 2.  He nodded, made his pig noise, and moo-ed.  He really does understand everything.  His speech bounds onwards: “Up Up Up,” is a new favourite, said mostly with two arms wound round my leg as I try to shake him off so I can get things out the oven. He has recognisable words for bread, toast, butter, cheese, milk, juice, tea, shoes, chair, bath, bubble, bus, book, bear, boat, cat, dog, stop, spot, please, peas, ice cream, chocolate, toes… I must do a proper list one evening. His most used sentence is “And me!”  Which he uses indiscriminately every time I ask Son 1 if he wants something.

1.  Never Land

2.  Creative Conflict

3.  A Whole New World

Son 2 aged 15m woke when The Man went up last night.  I couldn’t get him back to sleep.  Son 2 went in with The Man.  Son 1 aged 4y 3m woke screaming in the small hours I went downstairs and got in with him.  He still soothes himself by stroking my eyebrows and/or eyelashes when he’s tired, and I have to lie on my right side with my face towards him so he can reach them.    He slept, I dozed, until a whispered: “Mummy.  I need a poo.”  We read his new pop-up Peter Pan book till next door woke up.  The Man and I competed over who had had the worst night’s sleep.

The Man went shopping, I put Son 2 down for his nap and went up to where Son 1 was watching telly.  “Shall we paint your Power Rangers now?”  “No, I want to watch this.”  I got my paper.  “No.  No newspapers.  Watch telly with me.”  “Your telly is your fun, my paper is my fun.”  “Reading papers isn’t fun.  It’s stupid.”  We went downstairs and started to paint the Power Rangers.  Every time I mixed a colour for Son 1, he painted the plate we were using with it, rather than putting it on the Power Ranger.  After the third or fourth time of telling him, I started to get annoyed.  “Stop doing that. You’re wasting your paint and I just have to mix even more colour.”  He got cross with me for getting cross.  “Stop it.  You’re a grown up and I’m only a little boy and I don’t know.”  I was forgiven very soon.  “Mummy I don’t want to grow up.”  “Why not?”  “I want to stay with you forever.”   After our artistic differences and deep meaningful exchanges about our relationship, Son 2 woke up.  We had painted one Power Ranger blue, and the other… er… red.

I gave the boys lunch and let them have chocolate cake for pudding.  Hell unleashed.  Every atom in Son 1’s body zinged up and down, back and forth and round and round.  Son 2 juddered about shouting and falling down.  And they fought.  Stepping over the contents of the recycling box - Son 2 is enjoying putting lids on and taking them off milk bottles - the crayon pack from the bottom of the pram, and the bits of washing they’d dragged away from the laundry pile, I packed them up and took them out in the freezing Easterly.     Later we went down The Terrace to see some friends.  The Ones With Girls.  The house was tidy.  The toys were wooden.  Son 2 dived into the olives thinking they were grapes, spat one out, picked another, spat it out, picked another and then gave up and started stuffing them into my mouth.

1. The Man in the Shower 

2. Footprints

3. Reading with Mother

Son 2 aged 9m babbles on.  In the morning, if The Man is having a shower, he has to go to look.  Today I was holding him as he peered upwards at The Man’s wet hair, craned over to watch the water running away into the path, reached out a starfish hand to pat The Man’s back, and blinked as he got sprayed with water.  Saying Da da da da da da.  I get Ma ma ma ma of course, but it’s more in a “hither, wench” or “bring food now”context.

The Man and I are off work this week.  It is Granny and Granddad’s Golden Wedding Anniversary on Saturday.  I got them the most enormous card I could find, which seemed to have a short, fairly neutral bit of wording.  When we opened it out today we realised it has about 10 cloying pages.  Son 1 aged 3 y 9m got out the crayons, then the pens, then the paints.  Then he started painting his foot, because toeprints are fun.  Then a neighbour came round to ask something, and began to help him paint his toes.  Then the Easter box came out, and Son 1 glued fairies onto the card I bought from the boys.   Then he got his fans out to make them for Granny and Granddad.  The Man, who is obsessive compulsive, was slowly disintegrating as each craft activity was added to the junk heap on the kitchen floor.  But he held it together, and patiently helped glue little Valentine’s hearts in place.  It has to be said that Son 1 has made an amazing job of it.  If I’d tried to sit him down and said “Get all your stuff out and do something bumper, and odd and beautiful for Granny and Granddad,” he’d have run off for a sword fight.

Son 2 refused his tea, so I put him on the floor to play while I got ours.  He tummy-shuffled over to the bottom of his highchair, where he lay prone, stuffing his face with abandoned Cheerios.  So I put him back in the highchair, gave him some Cheerios to feed himself and managed to get a few more spoonfuls of nourishing, lovingly-made puree inside him. Then I took him upstairs to do some reading.  I read to Son 1 all the time when he was a baby, and his speech now is amazing.   I’m trying to do the same for Son 2, but it never works because Son 1 always plonks himself inbetween us.   And Son 2’s always got something else he’d rather be doing.  So today I left Son 1 having his pudding, and took Son 2 up for 5 books before his bath.  A success.  That’s Not My Car and Hello Little Bird the faves, followed by Archie’s Animal Friends, Postman Pat’s Peephole book… and then, a long way behind, The Gruffalo.   “What are you droning on about, change that giraffe into a zebra again.”