Consumption

I am wondering if I will get to sleep in my own bed, accompanied only by my husband tonight. It'll be a first for quite a while.
Before you start getting carried away with wild ideas about mad parties, swingers and other such stuff I should explain that we've all been ill, and repeatedly so. Andy started it by getting a cold with a nasty cough, the kind of cough that goes on and on, like the shipping forecast but less pleasant.The problem with the cough, at least from my perspective, was that when he tried to suppress the cough it got worse. So, as I'm trying to relax and sleep I keep getting disturbed by a man alternately coughing or shaking trying not to cough. He decided that for all our sakes, the sofa bed in the lounge was a better idea. This meant that I could sleep relatively well, but Andy kept getting woken up by the cat, either trying to get in or out of a shut door or wanting food. Cats, they're actually more annoying than toddlers and not many things can manage that.
Then it was my turn. A sore throat, a runny nose and yes, a chesty cough. It's been more than a week and a half and I still regularly erupt in noises that sound more like a dog trying speak than a  cough, but there you go. I spent almost a week on the sofa bed and Kim the Cat made my life relatively easy the first two nights (slap a big bowl of food down at 9.30pm) and Night Nurse did the rest. Alas the third night she cuddled up behind me and I was startled from my almost somnolence by a hot feeling down my back. The wretched moggy had emptied her bladder on me, my blankets and the bed. Have I said before that I harbour passive-aggressive feelings towards our pathetic excuse for a feline? They weren't so passive after that.
Still feeling very ill and quite groggy from the little pot of green goo I had downed, I called Andy and we did our best to remedy the situation. I ended up in a sleeping bag that was more comfortable than the blankets, but my pajamas needed a wash.
Thanks, I think, to my chemical assistance I have made enough of a recovery to resume my normal sleeping position, but Joseph is ill now and he has a nasty cough. Andy had him the first night and I did the second, the poor little chap just did not like sleeping in his cot. He'd only sleep in our bed, propped up on pillows. When I was looking after him I did put him back in his cot after he went to sleep, but he woke up minutes later and howled.
I know I shouldn't let him sleep in our bed. We should be strict and we usually are, but when he's ill what can you do? I think it's better to at least manage to get some sleep even if you are regularly woken up by a little pair of feet digging you in the ribs because he's moved round in the night and is now sleeping perpendicular to the recommended position.
He's asleep now in his cot and I hope he will stay that way, but it will probably last only as long as the last dose of calpol. Until then, peace reigns - but she is nervous and knows she will most likely be deposed any minute.

Watching Joseph

He takes the wooden puzzle pieces from their cardboard box and transfers them one at a time to the body of his toy Noahs ark. It's not a very good ark, the sides have animal shaped holes in them. This would make it nice and easy for the animals to enter two by two, or even up to six by six. It would also most likely mean that they leave just as quickly through the other side and I doubt it would be any good at keeping rain or sea water at bay.
When the puzzle pieces are all in the ark he takes them out one by one and puts them back in the cardboard box.
They don't stay there, soon they are back in the ark. To make things a little more interesting the small cardboard box is now moved from next to the ark to next to me as I sit drinking a much needed cup of coffee and writing this blog. Ah caffeine, the parents friend. The puzzle pieces are now ferried across the room, one at a time until the box is full. When this happens the whole box is picked up and the pieces poured en mass back into the ark. A change from the previous pattern, but it does make a good noise. The box is returned to where I am sitting and the slow transfer process begins again.
Now they're on the sofa and he's picking them up and looking at them. The box is discarded as is the ark. I don't believe it, he's actually trying to do the puzzle.
No... wait, he's not. He's seeing if he can poke them between the sofa cushions. Whoever gets to use the sofa bed next had better check to make sure their slumber isn't interrupted by the hard wooden edge of a piece of wooden puzzle.
Actually, the ark is back in play now. He's ignoring the main body of the boat and just concentrating on its detachable deck with rather improbable house section. Many of the pieces will fit into that bit, although not all of them.
It gets me wondering, you know, the things we show and tell our children. Noah, when building a suitable structure to save all those animals from a watery apocalypse would probably not have built a comedy boat with a little house on the deck. I spent many years thinking that the Jewish Tabernacle had black and white chevrons up and down the roof due to a verse stating that it was made of "badger skins", which is a mistranslation but I still can't get the image from my mind. I wonder what little things will stick in Josephs mind. How many of those funny ideas you get as a child - based purely on somewhat inaccurate information that an adult has given either because they don't know the real answer or they think the child wont really understand - will Joseph have?
It's cups now, stacking cups. They have numbers on and Joseph thinks they're all four, five or sick - we think he means six. He's not too interested in stacking them, just rolling them along the floor and along my computer table. There are puzzle pieces all over the place but he does not care. I'll end up treading on one and screaming in a comedy fashion, no doubt.
Cups and blocks scatter the room, thus demonstrating how a toddler is the biggest generator of entropy. This room was in an ordered state whilst he was having his not-quite nap upstairs. Now it is chaos. Upstairs was chaos when I went to get him, now he is gone from it I have returned it to its ordered state and it will remain so until he is upstairs again.
And can anyone explain why it is that when I go to tidy up the toys he has discarded he gets upset and wants to play with them again? I suspect some psychology is involved, but I think I need more coffee to deal with it.

Marathon Mum

He's getting close to two years old and never has parenting seemed more like an endurance sport. I've got a minimum of sixteen more years of this, it's certainly no sprint.
He had another bout of probable rotavirus recently. Not as bad as the first time round, but not a lot of fun either. We were on holiday when it started and I was struggling to cope changing his nappy as the floors were quite hard and played murder with my knees. Even at home it was hard, on the first day back I was very tired and missed a nappy change, thinking I'd done it later in the day than I actually had. This aggravated his nappy rash to a nasty degree and probably meant that he was in a lot of discomfort.
It's all healed up now and the rotavirus is gone, but the nearly terrible twos appear to be here to stay.
You can't tell a two year old (well, nearly two) that they need to stay out of the kitchen as you're getting things in and out of the oven and it's dangerous. The more I escort him from the room, the louder the tantrum becomes. We have a small kitchen step and he likes to stand on it next to the counter to see what I am doing. This tends to keep a check on the tantrum and he does tend to stay put, but it does spoil his dinner. He tends to eat the scraps, especially if I'm cutting out biscuits.
Speaking of biscuits! Oh boy, now there's a tough one. If he knows we have some and he knows where they are...
You'll usually be dragged into the kitchen by the finger. If you try to resist then it's a straight fight between the coefficient of friction between your skin and his and the strength of your finger joint. Don't resist too much, it's safer.
When he's got you where he wants you, the real battle starts. He points at said sweet treats and says "More! More!" You, of course say: -
"No! You've already had one."
He reacts as if he's just watched you shred his favourite teddy. As if I'd do such a terrible thing! But you're still not getting another biscuit.
You'd think he'd get the message, but no. No amount of wailing, sobbing,  throwing himself on the floor and pummelling it is going to make me give in. You can pull all my fingers out of joint and you're still not getting one, my boy.
When he started banging his head on the floor I did feel a little more kindly to him in that I went to the living room and got a cushion to put under his head.
Alas  it continues. This tantrum has been going on for more than an hour and a half and I am now doing my best to ignore the attention seeking behaviour, even if it does mean this blog takes longer to write as he keeps trying to grab the keyboard. You're still not getting a biscuit.
Gah! I've got a headache now. Just how do I keep this up? It's not just biscuits either. He's tall enough to open the kitchen door and get inside and open up the drawers now. I had to wrestle the can opener off him earlier and you'd think world war three had started in my house. Dear neighbours, the noise is not me hurting my son, but me trying to prevent him hurting himself with random kitchen equipment. Just what kind of damage can a toddler do to himself with a garlic press and a bag of plastic clips? I don't know, but I don't want to find out.
No, Joseph, go and put that empty can back in the recycling. No, go and put that old newspaper back too. Ok, you can destroy that piece of junk mail that came through the door. In the grand scheme of things it's probably not important and it's taken your mind off the biscuits.
Briefly.
Why does doing the right thing feel like the wrong thing? I know I can't let him eat as many sweet treats as he likes and I know he needs to learn who's boss round here but right now it feels like he hates me with a passion and all I'm doing is being a real kill-joy. I keep getting visions of him as an adult lying back on a therapists couch saying "Well it all started because my Mum wouldn't let me have another biscuit....."
Still, got to go and tidy up now, I've managed to distract him with an old mobile phone case that has a magnetic flap. That can opener needs putting away again.

Joe Strummer

As I write, an entire pack of kitty treats is being given to the cat.
Joseph likes the cat, he really does. The cat does not like him, not one little bit. She hates him so much that Joseph has learned from her that the correct way to greet a cat is to hiss at them as that's what she always does to him. When she sees him coming, she runs away. Joseph runs after her, he thinks it's all a game.
When he learned to give her treats I thought she'd come round. She hasn't. She eats the treats all right but then goes back to hating and despising him. If I feed the cat treats then she can never get enough. If Joseph feeds her cat treats then, though she can get over herself enough to take a few from him, eventually her evil feeling towards him will win the day and she will take no more.
Poor Joseph, he'd give her the whole pack if she'd only take them. He has now grown bored of holding out treats to a now totally unresponsive cat and has wandered off in search of different entertainment, leaving a trail of treats in him wake. He did try and pick them up, but the pot tipped and they're scattered again. I've picked them up because I don't want them to make the carpet dirty and to be frank, the cat doesn't deserve them.

Joseph has discovered a love stringed instruments.
It started at my nieces birthday party when he was allowed to play with a ukulele and then didn't want to give it back. We had a tantrum for most of the way home after that.
Ever since, he's tried strumming things. He has a little drum that he'd rather pretend to strum than drum. One of his story books has a circular picture on the back that he pretends is a guitar and he sits and strums it. Andy found a ukulele app on his tablet and that is strummed - a lot. He downloaded it yesterday morning and I could hear the noise upstairs, but I could not tell what it was. It was a tinkly sort of noise, almost magical and very musical in a totally tuneless sort of way. It's anyone's guess where this will go, but there are quite a few musicians in his family so he may do quite well if he puts the effort in.  Will he be more of a Dave Gilmore or George Fornby? As long as he doesn't end up like Slash from Guns n Roses, I'm not too bothered.

The Inner Artist

A new creative side has woken up in my son. Its arrival was heralded by a two hour tantrum, but all genius is born through pain and it was my eardrums that had to suffer.
He wanted the crayons and I couldn't tell what he meant, as his only was of communicating with me was to shout "Da! Da!" and point roughly to where the crayons were, at the back of the detritus on my sewing table. I hadn't let him play with them for a while as he'd not shown a lot of interest, had struggled to get them to make any sort of mark on the paper and had been more interested in trying to colour in the carpet. We've got a buyer for this house now (wehey, woo-hoo let's have a party) and the last thing we want is for them to change their minds because the the carpet has developed large purple marks.
Grandma has been letting him have a go with colouring pencils while she looks after him during my one working day of the week. It's obviously made an impression, but you have to watch him like a hawk or he draws on the walls. At least ordinary HB pencil can be rubbed off.
Now, at least, he's big enough to sit at the table. When we bought our nice Ikea table I also bought some plastic coated fabric and made a table protector to go under the table cloth, lest one of us should happen to be enjoying a nice glass of port and lemon and accidentally spill it on the table in a humorous middle class manner and the top of the table is ruined for ever.
The great thing about it is that it is wipe clean, even from the waxy lines left from large Crayola crayons. The best thing about crayons is that they're much softer than pencils and if he gets a bit carried away then it's the crayon that gives way and not the surface of the table.
So far all his works have been something akin to post-modern impressionism with a touch of post-pointilly abstraction (I studied some art history at college, not by choice). There's a great deal of energy in his work, perhaps showing the inner frustrations of what it's like to be a toddler.
At the moment all his work begins the same way.
A piece of plain paper is presented to him and he carefully selects a crayon. He looks up at me, looks at the paper, looks up at me again and smiles. Then he whispers his favourite phrase - "Go vroom!" and looks at the paper again. His left hand, clutching his crayon, slowly touches the paper and he draws -
A small ovoid shape object. It is carefully and gently done.
He looks up at me and points to the shape - "Voom." he states. Then he draws another one.
After that it gets trickier. A line is drawn on the paper, sometimes connecting the two bean-like objects, sometimes more random. Either way, he usually states "Car!" looking proudly up at me.
At this point it can go two ways. He gets bored and runs away or he selects another crayon and decided to express himself a little more energetically. Now we see bright swathes of colour appearing in big swiping motions across the page. It's now I'm glad of the plastic fabric as he's never totally sure where the paper stops and starts.
Eventually he has had enough. The paper is presented to me, sometimes still flat, sometimes crumpled. Perhaps he has a touch of the artists self-loathing and wants to destroy his work if he feels it's not up to scratch. Either that or he just likes the scrunchy noise.
Anyway, my fridge is starting to groan under the weight of accumulated paper.
By the way, if any of the brands mentioned in this blog would like to send me stuff then :-)

Last Day of Summer

Summer is now on the way out, indeed it has turned off the lights and left the building.
This weekend we were predicted a sunny Saturday. Going by the forecast for the rest of the week it was going to be the last time we'd have a sunny dry day for a long time and probably the last time the temperature would be right side of 20, or even in double figures for that matter.
If life gives you a sunny day - go to the beach!
To be frank, I'd spend the day in Weymouth even if it was tipping it down. I have spent a wet day in Weymouth, but it is nicer when it's warm and dry. It was a good day to pick, with the schools back it wasn't as busy as peak times and as it's the wrong end of September there's enough of a chill breeze coming from the sea that people keep their clothes on. Nothing spoils a nice day at the beach more than sharing it with people who seem to think that the whole world wants to see their blubber.
First stop lunch and the best fish and chips you'll find. The restaurant is called King Edwards, it's on the sea front right opposite the ornate clock tower. I don't know how they do it, but the fish is so very, very good. I like a fillet of plaice, but so many places over cook it and you end up with something that has the consistency of wet tissue and all the flavour. Not here, here they get it right on that nice balance, not underdone but still nice and moist in the middle so all the flavour is still there.
Joseph ate what I can only describe as a mountain of chips and followed it up with some ice cream. He wasn't so keen on the fish, but he'll learn. Eventually, I hope. He showed his appreciation by producing the nastiest nappy I have ever seen and King Edwards, though good with the food, have a lot to be desired for nappy changing facilities. You can either precariously balance your unhappy toddler on the narrow shelf by the sinks or lay the mat on the floor, as long as you don't mind that the only space to do it is right by the inward opening door to the toilet. Either way, injuries are a risk.
We spent quite a long time sat on the beach. Andy spent quite a lot of time putting up our wind break and Joseph went to have a good look at the sea. He was happy to stand getting his toes damp, he found the waves rushing up to him quite funny. We put him in his swimming nappy and Andy took him for a proper dip, but both soon concluded that it was really too cold and much more fun was to be had by building sandcastles and trying to bury a toddlers legs in the sand. Joseph found this very funny.
We took a walk along the beach and Joseph spotted some furry four legged animals that looked like fun. A few minutes later and three pounds lighter in the pocket I was walking up the beach behind Joseph as he had his first donkey ride. He loved it, he spent most of the time hanging on with one hand with a massive grin on his face. The donkey didn't seem to mind.
Alas time was getting on and with a two hour drive ahead of us we went home, but not before stopping to have a special hot chocolate which is like a normal hot chocolate except it has spray cream, marshmallows and a flake. Joseph ate quite a lot of flake.
When we got home we scraped as much sand off as we could and put the little lad to bed. All that fun really takes it out of you.

Toddlers and Viruses

I took Joseph to toddler play group for the first time last week.
You know things are off to a shaky start when the first thing that happens is that a woman who I'm pretty sure I've never met before says "Is he yours?" in quite a shocked tone as I walk through the door. Not "Is that your little boy?" or "I didn't know you'd had a little one, how old is he?" but a shocked sentence with the stress on the worst two words, giving me the impression that the idea of me having a child is somehow shocking and a bit wrong.
I could have replied "Well no, but you need a toddler to come in here so I just grabbed one wandering around outside." but my brain wasn't coping too well and I simply said "Yes?" with such a puzzled tone in my voice that she replied "Oh well, it's a while since I've seen you."
I still don't know who they are! I've been twice now and I don't know why she thought she knew me, she's not spoken to me since.
Joseph found the push along cars and got in one and wouldn't get out. He remained in the car for the best part of an hour, only wanting to come out to try a different car. When it was drink and biscuit time I took him out to join in and the mother of all tantrums kicked off. I thought he'd be happy with a snack, but he waited until I'd got myself a cup of tea and a piece of cake to manage before really kicking off. You can't handle a stroppy toddler when you've got a hot beverage in one hand. I tried balancing my cake plate on the mug and dealing with him with one hand, but it was no use. Back in the car he went and he did not stir.
I have to confess to feeling a little wobbly at this point. I crouched down by the car, sipping my tea and utterly mortified by my sons terrible behaviour. He used to be so good in public, and now I feel like I'm being judged by every woman in the room as having the worst son in the world. Uh-oh panic attack.
Remember to breathe, it's not all that bad! Mortified I may be and a terror my son may be but there's no sense making it worse by totally freaking out in the middle of the room. Breathe! Drink the nice cup of tea... ah that's better. Right you young terror, it's time to tidy up and we're going home.
A few days later I went to bed and from the door to the bedroom I could hear a funny sound. It was as if someone had taken my cute little boy and replaced him with a grumpy rottwieler. The cot was full of snorts and growls.
This means three things - Joseph has a head cold, he's going to be keeping us up all night for days on end and just when you think it can't get any worse I'll catch it.
Poor little mite, he was really snotty and uncomfortable and he had a cough that had me worried. The magic of calpol did help, but we were still regularly woken up and in the end we took it in turns to sleep downstairs on the sofa bed so only one of us was disrupted at a time. I went to work feeling quite spaced and high on caffeine, probably not making a lot of sense to anyone. Someone did have a go at me for not answering a summons to the tills. I don't remember hearing it, though I am told it was quite audible. I must have been zoned out at the time, probably as a result of lack of sleep.
He's on the mend now and well enough that I risked another attempt at the toddler group. There's no point letting anxiety get the better of me, for Josephs sake I must persevere and the cake's pretty good as well. I don't seem to have caught the cold in the end, although I've been a little sniffly. It must be the super-immunity I developed when I caught swine flu a few years ago. Don't laugh, it's a known scientific effect. I've caught a lot less colds since I had that.
He went straight for the car again. Here we go again, I decided. At least he hasn't worked out how to make it move about so I can sit down for a bit.
After half an hour he wanted to get out! He tried another car, got bored and started looking at other toys. I was shocked, but happy. He played with a toy farm, handed random toys to people he'd never met before and sat down quietly for a biscuit and a drink with the other children and he didn't even try and steal anyone elses biscuit which is usually his trick. I had a cup of tea and a nice piece of chocolate cake without any problems at all to disturb me. We tidied up, sang some songs and Joseph had a good run around and didn't want to leave.