1.   Fruit

2.   Health Food

3.  Unexpectedly Vegetable

Gadzooks.  Son 2 aged 17m woke us with foghorn blasts at 0430.  “I’ll go,” said The Man.  “No I will,” I said.  “I didn’t see him last night and I miss him.”  I took half an hour getting him back to sleep.  He woke again at 0530 and I got into bed with him.  He wanted food.  I clung to a dopey wish that if I just stuffed him with food he would go back to sleep.  At 6am I took him down to the kitchen, where he ate everything he could see: a plum, a bagel, a banana, grapes.   Son 1 aged 4y 5m came down.  We were up. 

We had a 5th birthday party; one of Son 1’s Old Nursery friends, run by his Old Nursery Nurse.  We’d bought him a Power Ranger.  Son 1 had stood in front of the Ben 10 shelves, fingering each packet, clearly in love.   “We don’t know that Five Year Old likes Ben 10 do we?” I’d said.  “But all Little Boys like Power Rangers.”  Five Year Old opened the door.  He was wearing a Ben 10 outfit.  They played, we went outside and Son 2 had a great time playing with the diggers and building toys.  At lunch, Son 1 ignored the chocolate fingers, pizza, crisps, sandwiches and flapjacks in favour of some long breadsticks and cut up strawberries.  Never happened before.  Later, when I asked him why he hadn’t eaten much he said: “I wasn’t hungry.” I just need to get the hang of doing that and bingo I’m size 12.

I washed 3 cashmere jumpers this afternoon.  This is an Exceedingly Good Thing.  Two have been in the bottom of the linen basket for months.   The boys played making potions in the sand table while The Man watched.  This was also a Good Thing.  He is Obsessive Compulsive… and they were trashing everything.  Son 1 was painting the shed with a Big Paintbrush and water.  Son 2 was mixing plants, mud, stones and twigs with a watering can and then drinking it.  At tea we told Son 1 pudding was yoghurt, because of the huge slice of chocolate cake he’d eaten from his party bag.   “Wonder Nanny lets us have raisins after tea, they’re not too bad for us,” he said hopefully.  “Then she takes us upstairs for books and bath and bed.  And then Mummy comes home.”  He looked at me.  “And sometimes you don’t.”  Cannon ball shaped hole in middle of body.  At bedtime, he was on the bedroom floor looking at a dinosaur book with The Man.  I was lying in his bed, trying to get him to hurry up.  The Man told him how tired I was.   “Put your hand up if you like cucumber,” said Son 1.

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.  Garden Party

2.  Sliding Down

3.  Wrapping Up

A Little Friend is 3 today.  His party was at a Nearby Garden.  I’ll take all the Christmas presents, I thought, taking a pile of five downstairs to wrap.  In front of Son 1 aged 4y 3m, while Son 2 aged 15m was napping.  Son 1 went nuts.  He wanted the little plastic paint-me figures, he couldn’t keep his fingers out of the Meccano boxes, he lifted the flaps in the  books.  Of course I gave up, and we just took Birthday Boy’s.  Son 1 wore his Santa outfit.  We went straight to see Santa in his grotto; 8 little boys aged 4 and under, 1 two-year old girl.  Santa was great, the grotto was great.  Is it me or are they getting better?  Santa asked all the little boys what they wanted for Christmas.  Son 1 couldn’t speak when it was his turn.  “A Knight’s Tower,” I said, “with some Monsters.”  “And what about this little one? ” said Santa.  “An iPod,” I said. “Or a mobile phone.” Santa stared and waited for a sensible answer, while small boys giggled and said “No-o,” Teletubbies fashion.  I made up a Farm and some bath toys.  Outside, Son 2 stared, rapt, at the mighty camera wielded by Birthday Boy’s parents, reaching out his little starfish hands for the buttons.  Sorry  darling, Santa didn’t believe me when I told him what you’d like for Christmas.      

The children had their faces painted.  They were all blue Power Rangers, which made Son 1 a Santa with a blue face. Lunch was served in the playground.  It was a dry, clear day so the children ate chocolate sandwiches and chased and slid and climbed and squabbled.  Son 2 reached for me every time Wonder Nanny picked him up.  That matters more than it should.  She lay him down on his back and dropped him down the slide… I caught him at the bottom.  He laughed and laughed and then started panicking in case we weren’t going to do it again.  Son 1 complained that Older Brother had hit him.  “You don’t need to tell me,” I said.  “Santa is very close and he’ll be watching Older Brother and won’t bring him any presents.”  They made up.  Cake was served.  Two more boys we know, aged 4 and 2 turned up, with their dad.  The children played, the grown ups chatted.

Some went home, we went back towards the grotto so Son 1 could make a Christmas Table decoration.  Red candle, a bit of clay, a base and all the foliage you can get in for a pound.  Son 1 did a very good job.  We put the boys in the car, they were both asleep by the time we got back to The Town, so I did a quick shopping run around Asda.  Trolley logjam.  Granny and Granddad came round to see the boys, who were fizzing with tiredness.  After bedtime, The Man and I wrapped present after present after present.  Son 2 has about 6 things, Son 1 about 15.  Must get something for Granny and Granddad tomorrow.  And for The Man, I suppose.

1.   Battle

2.  Festival

3.  Party

There is another Festival in the Town.  The Plan was to celebrate stopping breastfeeding with champagne in The Square.   We dawdled and dilly-dallied over getting up.  Son 2 aged 13m was yawning, eye-rubbing, high-pitched shrieking and falling over every three minutes.  I got the hint and put him back to bed. Son 1 aged 4 had Mummy Time.  Playing on CBeebies on the computer.  And then out came The Pirates.  I’m ambivalent about Pirates.  My tens of thousands of regular readers will know that Son 1 first became enchanted with Pirates in Feb 2007, aged 2y 5m.  There was a Pirates 3rd birthday. A Peter Pan 4th birthday.  I was kinda hoping that maybe somehow Power Rangers or Spider Man or dinosaurs would move in at 4+. But then I wasn’t. Because everything we have is Pirates.  And, bored out of my tree as I am, I will miss them.  Like the breastfeeding.  So.  The Pirates were going to raid the new treasure chest.  But… exciting new twist… a Power Ranger Megatroyd was defending it.

We trogged down to the Festival.  It was packed, and we were hugely popular, with our Big Pram and rickety MacLaren.  We’d told Son 1 he could paint shells, like he did last year, and the year before.  He wanted his shells, I wanted my champagne, The Man wanted seafood.  Son 1 and I fought our way to shell-painting, and he was happy.  The Man got seafood, stuck a bottle of English sparkling white in the back of the Big Pram and shoe-horned it in the Marquee.  Son 1 painted earnestly, Son 2 ate the glitter pens and painted his own shell.  My plastic glass of bubbles stood on the table in front of the pre-schoolers. We met friends. The children played.  They all went on the bouncy castle, and Son 2 loved it, trying to dive-bomb it afterwards when I was taking him for a nappy change.  I shopped and bought cut-price Usbourne  books and  a birthday present for Granny.     

Son 2 spotted there was something missing.  There was an Office retirement party which I had to go to.  It was really lovely.  One colleague was retiring, one colleague - someone I’ve worked with for 17 years - was leaving to become a childminder.  Everyone came, so there was much reminiscing, pouring over old photos and laughing.  I took Son 2’s great babyring for the childminding colleague.  One of those we-could-get-thirty-quid-on-ebay-or-the-local-paper-oh-you-have-it-I-hope-it’s-useful decisions. It was a great do, and I got back way after midnight.  We bought the retiring colleague a star.