1.  Biting Remarks

2.  An Audience

3.   Value

Forgot to tell you. I solved The Mystery Of The Broken Front Tooth on Saturday.  Vegetarians have great teeth.  Nothing we eat is crunchy or chewy or hard.  And we’re overloaded with calcium.  Yet I lost a fragment of front incisor.  I was more worried than I admitted to myself.  Crumbly teeth = getting old = poor Son 1 aged 4y 11m and Son 2 aged 23 with their toothless crone of a mother. The hygienist on Thursday blamed wine.  But.  On Saturday on The Boat I realised that hooray hooray, I am still young, I am not a drunk…. I just shouldn’t bite Frubes open for the boys.

We had a scrum to get Son 1 and me out of the house on time, and we were doing fine till we we encountered a massive queue of traffic. Broken down double decker. “What have they done with the children?” asked Son 1, craning his neck round. At School, we went in with X from Son 1’s class and his mother. ”X is looking forward to the party,” said Mother.  Yes.  X’s father rang me last night to say he’d be coming. Son 1 answered the phone, and brought it upstairs. He came into the bedroom just as I had my head in the cot singing Son 2’s lullaby.  I ignored him because Son 2 was drowsy and I didn’t want him fired up again.  So Son 1 thrust the phone at my mouth just as I launched into a reedy (but perfectly pitched) Summer-Tiiiimmmmeee.  ”Hello?” said a tinny voice. “This is X’s dad.  He’d love to come to the party.”

I’m still not 100% so I had a Hard Day At The Office.  I took a late lunch and did a Big Shop.  Including a  birthday cake for Friday, lots of little fairy cakes, and Tesco Value Hula Hoops.  You can’t Taste The Difference.  Two Variety Packs for Son 1.  Not 5 years old and I am bribing him with sugary food to get him to have breakfast. The worst sin is not  Son 1.  It’s “And me!” Son 2 who has to have what he’s having. I picked up Son 1 and we headed home. He went in, I unloaded the shopping. Not realising that Son 2 was howling for me upstairs.  We are thinking about toilet training Son 2, so at bathtime we give him a chocolate button every time he pees in the potty.  He has amazing control, and is currently averaging four buttons per bathtime.  I’m not breaking all the Sisterhood of Motherhood rules on sugar. This is science. His brother had nothing sweet till he was two, and is now a sugar junkie. So, in the interests of research, I am plying Son 2 with sweet things to prove that once he is two, he will choose celery sticks and cucumber instead.

1.  The Mystery Of Faith

2.  Let There Be Light

3.  The Patience Of Job

Son 1 aged 4y 2m and I went to Church.  First Sunday of Advent.  We sat at the back.  He burnt his fingers on a boiling hot pipe running along the wall just above the floor.  We were taken through a side door to a little kitchenette.  The water was so cold that Son 1 soon decided his fingers didn’t hurt anymore.  He did a puzzle at the back.  Then he reached into his Parkha pocket.  “I’ve got something for you,” he whispered.  And produced a handful of bigger-than-pea gravel.  “Where did you get that?” I asked.  “From the beach,” he whispered.  He coloured in his stones with the Church’s felt tip pens to make jewels for his Treasure Chest.  

Late Afternoon we walked down to The Square for the Parade to switch on the Town’s Christmas Lights.  Son 2 aged 14m was trussed up in his cosi toe, happy in his woolly hat.  Son 1 had four layers on including a fleece and his Parkha.  He was too tired to walk down and rode on The Man’s shoulders.  He wanted candy floss, which his Favourite Thing in All The World, even though he’s never tasted it.  In The Square it was perishing.  Son 1 sulked over candy floss, Santa helium balloons, although a friend supplied some raisins in yoghurt which quietened him.  The Parade started.  We were behind the Samba band and the Mayors’ parties, but in front of Santa.  There were sweets. Lots of them.  Lollies and haribous and chocolates, handed out from great carriers full.  Carols were sung, the Lights went on.  I listed Son 1’s sugar intake as I cleaned his teeth: ice cream, yoghurt raisins, haribous, lollipop, more jelly sweets, candy floss, more haribous and raisins.  He bounced off the walls like a squash ball.

Son 2 aged 14m woke 4 times in 90 minutes after we put him to bed.  He’s been sick twice, crying himself into gagging because I haven’t rushed up.  I’ve just cracked and lay down on the double bed with him to get him back to sleep… and that’s taken well over half an hour.  He has started drooling again, so it could be teeth.  It could be separation anxiety - I don’t feel as if I saw a lot of him today… he could be coming down with something…  it could just be too much stimulus from the Lights switch on.  I really thought we were getting somewhere with his sleeping, but that was awful.  And I’ve still got to get him in his cot when we go to bed.  However.  Today I gathered up my 5 remaining feeding bras and threw them out.  Progress Has Been Made.

1. The face in the dark

2. Birdy mouth

3. Rory’s story

Son 2 aged 8m woke at 4am, howling still.  He ate very little tea last night because he was too tired, had only  a tub of shop-bought stuff for lunch and didn’t have much breakfast.  = hungry child in the middle of the night.  I fed him - much to The Man’s disapproval.  I’m not really keen to get back into the midnight feeding thing when we both worked so hard to drop it, but he was hungry. exhausted, flung back into childcare after our week together… so For One Night Only…     Then, when he’d gone back to sleep, I couldn’t.  My brain-train decided to chuff through The Office, our mortgage, our power bills, our untidy house and all stations inbetween.  Be Here Now, I told myself, yogically.  I peered, in the gloom, at fluffy hair, long eyelashes on pale round cheeks and a little peaceful mouth.    And I fell asleep.

Mother came round for lunch and I did salmon steaks, new potatoes, parsley sauce and peas because The Man has decided he needs to lose weight.   I’ll just take some salmon off Son 1’s plate for Son 2 I thought, he’ll never eat all that.  No.  Son 1 was not going to donate any of his to Son 2 so The Man had to oblige.  Son 1 did manage to eat about half of his, which was pretty good.  But Son 2 was the revelation.  He had salmon, potatoes, peas and cheese sauce all mouli-d up.  And ate a bowl and a half.  That little peaceful mouth opening wide again and again and again.  We have sheepishly concluded that he.. um… cries when when he’s hungry.    

One of the bedtime books was “Rory’s Story.”  A tiger with a new little sister, so Mummy and Daddy are sometimes too busy for Rory.  Rory was feeling sad, and left out and lonely.  “Do you sometimes feel sad and left out and lonely if Mummy and Daddy are busy with Son 2?” I asked gently.  “Yes. Today when I went to the loo on my own. ”  “Where were Mummy and Daddy and Son 2?” “In the garden with Nanna.”  Great throaty chuckle.  “I ate three spoonfuls of sugar from the sugar bowl ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.”      

1. The Beach

2. The Pop Up Tent

3. Ratatouille

There were four small boys, one babe in arms, three mothers and a boyfriend with a broken collar bone at the beach by the time we arrived.  Our friends couldn’t stay long, so the three of us were left to it.  Son 1 aged 3 and a half had found a pirate cave, and I decided to move there with Son 2 aged 7m because it offered some shade.  I must find one of Son 1’s old sun hats for Son 2.  He did look great in a muslin with a knot at each corner, but I need something to mop up the spills.  Son 1 was digging and filling buckets of sand… Son 2 was banging plastic scoops and toys together.  A seagull flew off with Son 1’s Twiglets.  Hardly anyone else was on the beach.  It was all going beautifully.  Then Son 1 fell flat on his face in a rock pool, and in the same instant, Son 2 toppled sideways on his face in the sand,.  What with his snotty nose, dribbly mouth and watery eye he ended up looking like an emery board.    Son 1 had refused to get into his sun suit, so I changed him out of his wet things into that… Son 2 just went doolally with tiredness, and was asleep in the pram by the time I got them both up the cliff to the car.

At home it took me a long time to settle Son 2.   Poor old Son 1 kept peeking round the bedroom door to see if I’d finished feeding, and I kept saying “ten more minutes.”  He must have had to look after himself for nearly half an hour.  When Son 2 was at last asleep, Son 1’s bedroom looked like a bomb site but he was nowhere to be seen.  At the bottom of the stairs was his pop-up tent.  I could hear the chinking of what sounded like broken pieces of crockery inside.  I looked in through the gauze and he was curled up like a little woodlouse, so I went in through the door and was greeted by a triumphant, beaming face.  In one hand was a teaspoon, in the other the sugar bowl.  He’d eaten the lot, a spoonful at a time.  Mind you, it was 20 past 2 at this point, and he’d had nothing  but 2 lollies since breakfast.  He had peanut butter sandwiches for lunch.  Sort of.  He in fact ate most of the peanut butter straight from the jar with a child’s knife… and then stuck his fist in and clawed a handful out.  I know they get their table manners from their parents but I swear I’ve never done that with a jar of peanut butter.

This afternoon we watched his new DVD, Ratatouille.  I felt a bit sorry for him, all he ever wants to do is watch telly with me, and yet I use the time’s he’s watching telly to Do Things.  So I said while Son 2 was asleep, we would watch it together.  Son 1 got about 10  minutes sitting on my knee before Son 2 joined us again.  Then we decided to make Ratatouille for tea.     I made a big deal of letting him choose from rice or pasta, yes you can put the courgettes in the pan if you don’t touch the pan, yes you can put the pepper in, yes you can dig the seeds out from the pumpkin (it wasn’t a traditional recipe.)  I mouli-d an unsalted, unsugared pile of it for Son 2… put rice, sauce and grated cheese on the table: “I don’t want the sauce.”  Fortunately Nanna had brought a packet of very unorganic Mr Kipling’s Viennese Whirls and he was bribed into eating the sauce with the promise of a cake afterwards.  So he ate two.