Tag Archives: children

December 24, 2010 · 4:00 pm

Christmas veg from the allotment? Snow chance.

Yes, yes, laugh at me if you will. I went to the allotment for the first time in, well, a long while today.
Somehow, stupidly, I’d retained that elusive dream of the gardener that I could have vegetables I’d grown for Christmas dinner.

The spuds ran out a while ago (the ones I’d got around to digging up) and there are about six garlic bulbs left and a string of onions.
However, still in the ground, having had the alleged flavour-enhancing frost on them, sit several rows of fat leeks and a special row of parsnips, just for me (because no-one else will eat them).

Of course, trying to dig them up was impossible. I couldn’t even find the parsnips beneath the foot of snow. A fork got stuck. The spade just hot the surface with a dull thud, sending painful shock waves into my frozen hands (even in gloves).

Meanwhile, two-year-old Bonnie, the only one of my four children to ever volunteer to come to allotment, decided she’d had enough and started moaning. Well, whingeing.
I’m trying to dig frozen leeks from ten inches of rock-solid soil while she’s making that not-quite crying noise. Then she hits me with the killer punch – “I need a wee” – while wearing an all-in-one show suit.

I gave up on the veg. Took her back to the car where the emergency potty lives and went home. With just one frozen leek with a heavy, solid cube of frozen mud stuck to the bottom. Bloke laughed.

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December 10, 2010 · 9:05 am

Top tips to keep out the cold (or how we kept warm in the 1970s)

Monster slippers

WE seem to have missed out on the heavy snow falls that have ground the rest of the country to a halt over the past fortnight.

However, the cold has been painful. And with an erratic boiler, frozen pipes and the immoral rise in fuel bills inflicted by the greedy gas and electric companies, I’ve turned into my mother.

This means recalling all the things she did in the 1970s to keep our house as cosy as possible. Draught excluders, curtains over doorways, hand-knitted jumpers and extra blankets, yes, blankets on beds.

I’ve so far resisted putting up cling-film on the windows, as fashioned by my dad circa 1978. I do have some windows that aren’t double-glazed, so I’m not completely ruling it out.

We’re a pampered generation, what with our combi-boilers and 15 tog duvets. We’ve become used to mild winters where we still have to mow the lawn in January.

But this winter has been proper chilly. Brass monkeys. Wish-I’d-remembered-my-gloves weather.

At the time of writing, it’s minus 4 outside and I’m wearing a hand-knitted poncho. In green, with a hood. It was intended for summer camping use and hand-knitted by my mum after she made some cute ones for Bonnie. But it’s so toasty, and so much better than those awful fleecy blankets with sleeves which give you electric shocks from the static. I’ve tried to convince her to make lots and sell them on eBay, but she’s too modest, and thinks no-one would want them. Even Bloke wants one. In black.

Keeping the heat in when you live in a house built in 1880 is tricky. The ceilings are high, the ill-fitting doors positively encourage wailing draughts, and some rooms don’t have radiators (like our downstairs loo, which is so cold it might as well be outside).

But it’s surprising what a difference a few old-fashioned tricks can make. You can buy nail-on draught excluders which have a brush at the bottom but I’m not sure they work as well as a sausage-dog stuffed with rags and lentils. Or a knitted snake. Or a pair of old tights stuffed with strips of old towels. In the 70s, when we had storage heaters which only warmed up at night, Mum actually stuffed rags in keyholes.

Doors can be insulated with extra curtains. It doesn’t have to be flash. We’ve used a couple of screw-in hooks and hung a blanket over one. Another has a spring-action net-curtain pole with an old tab curtain hanging from it. It’s not pretty, but it does the job.

We’ve stuck our summer duvet over our winter duvet. The kids’ beds have fleece blankets over their duvets. They kick them off during the night but at least they start warm. And there’s a lot to be said for hot-water bottles and slippers.

Ah, slippers. So under-rated. The older boys believe they are far too cool to wear them, but Billy and Bonnie were more than happy to shop for slippers last week, and now have toasty toes. Mine are cow-print, Bonn’s have pink fairies on, while Billy’s are shaped like monster feet. Perfect.

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December 2, 2010 · 8:26 am

Fibs about phone loss send Ma into frenzy

I’M not very proud of it, but I really lost my rag with our eldest this week. He’s lost his new mobile phone, bought for his 13th birthday just two months ago.

It wasn’t really the phone going missing that triggered the shouting, but the fact he’d lied about it for three days.

I only found out because of a phone call from his minders at the Royal & Derngate Theatre, where he thinks it was lost/stolen. He’d telephoned them to ask if it had been found, and they rang him back on the phone he’d used: mine. Everyone feeling guilty. Me going nuts. Horrible.

What set me raging was not so much about the phone. If he’d told me straight-away, we could have retraced his steps and perhaps have found it. Three days later, no sign. Someone’s had it. Git.

Yes, it feels like a wasted 50-odd quid, and no, it wasn’t insured and the excess on the house insurance is more than it’s worth.

I always tell them, please, please don’t lie, because we’ll always find out and it will make things worse.

But as Bloke pointed out, he’d have been terrified to confess and probably hoped it would be found and no-one needed to know. Which doesn’t make me feel like the greatest parent.

We’ve now re-ordered his sim-card and relegated him back to his un-cool, ancient first phone. Lesson learned, painfully. If you do happen to find a black Samsung Tocco Lite, do get in touch.

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November 12, 2010 · 8:39 am

Welcome to Autumn Sick Week. *sniff

IT’S officially Autumn Sick Week. No really, it’s A Thing. At this point in the school year, pupils and students start dropping like flies. Sick flies.

It’s got lots to do with timing. The weather turns cold and wet. Yet anyone still living with their parents refuses to go out in anything more than shirt sleeves. Then they come home to centrally-heated homes which circulate dry, warm, dusty air.

It’s just after half-term, when everyone has confused their immune systems with lie-ins and changing clocks. Thenthey get tipped back into the bug-soup of school or university.

A year ago at my part-time job at the university, someone warned me about this particular phenomenon. “Don’t get to settled thinking you’ve got good attendance rates, they’re about to plummet.” And sure enough, the students became less numerous. I thought it was just that they’d sussed me out and decided my waffling wasn’t worth getting out of bed for.

However, true enough, after a couple of erratic weeks the classes drifted back to normal sizes.

This November too, my mailbox is littered with excuses for non attendance (I’ve got stricter). They’re all ill and “going to the doctors.” Yeah, yeah, you’ve got a cold.

When two-year-old Bonnie became uncooperative and downright whingy at the end of last week, I should have twigged. She was, to use medical parlance, ‘going down with something’.

Sure enough, after a couple of days inexplicable whining, over the weekend she became the snot monster. Uncharacteristically clinging to my knee and depositing snail-trails of nose juice all over my clothes. Refusing food at mealtimes but demanding ‘jooce’ and ‘toaaast’ at sporadic intervals.

“I poorly,” she announced to anyone who tried to change her plan to lie on the living-room floor watching endless re-runs of Peppa Pig.

When children are ill, there’s often little more you can do than dose them up with Calpol, keep them warm if their cold and cool if their hot, make sure they drink regularly and cuddle them if they’ll let you.

Bonnie only usually wants cuddles if you’re hugging someone else. But when she’s ill she wants cuddles everytime she wakes in the night (which at the time of going to press was about 15 times a night). I put vapour rub in a bowl of warm water on a heater (out of her reach) to help her breathe, and resign myself to several nights of broken sleep. It’s like having a newborn in the house again.

You do have the option of calling the NeneDoc out of hours doctor’s service if your child’s temperature gets high and won’t come down with liquid paracetamol and fewer bed covers. But thankfully, most children are over the worst of a cold or a bug within a couple of days.

And of course, once they’re feeling better, that’s when everyone else in the house catches it, one-by-one. The tissues pile up and you’re forced to re-arrange your working hours to cope.

I’m anticipating my own cold will be caught in about a week’s time, just when I’ve taken on my busiest schedule of work this year. Ho hum.

Oh, and did I mention this is also a point in the calendar when everyone starts bringing home nits again?

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November 5, 2010 · 9:14 am

‘Bring me a Minion!’ (and a cinema booster seat)

The Minions

WE don’t get to the cinema that much as a family, due to Bonnie’s refusal to sit still for more than a few minutes unless Peppa Pig is on screen.

However, after much nagging by the boys, over half-term we went to see the new animation Despicable Me at Cineworld. (Billy and Bonnie have trouble pronouncing ‘despicable.’ So of course, we make them say it as much as possible.)

We have two cinemas in town but tend to always go to the older one at Sixfields, because the parking is so much better and the staff are good. But their top-brass could do with bunging some money at the tired old loos. Yuk.

If you have small people with you at the cinema, make sure you grab a plastic ‘booster’ seat on the way in. It prevents you having to fish out your distressed and doubled-over offspring from the innards of the folding seats when their bottoms inevitably fall through the gap.

The film was great, thanks mostly to the Minions, an army of little yellow pill-shaped workers whose toilet humour and sniggering noises made the kids belly-laugh every time they were on screen.

The basic plot involves grumpy, lonely, wannabe villain, Gru, adopting three little girls, Margo, Edith and Agnes, to use in a sinister plot to steal the moon.

Without becoming Disney-sentimental, it is a poignant and hilariously funny depiction of the modern family, and for once, little girls are the heroes.

We chose the 2D version over the ubiquitous 3D showing, because Bonnie just won’t wear the ill-fitting glasses.

Usually avoiding 3D makes little difference, but when the credits rolled, there was obviously an amazing spell of visual brilliance with the minions (who have names like Mark, Phil, Stuart and Dave) popping out of the screen towards the audience. So if you get a chance to go, it might be worth the battle with the specs.

As we were leaving, Bonnie said: “Mummy, my have min-yin.” (Translation: Mother, get me a minion, now.”)

And while I’m sure she’ll want plenty of minions running about after her when she’s older, for now a toy minion has shot to the top of her letter to Father Christmas.

Let’s just hope he can track down somewhere that actually has them in stock. . .anyone. . ?

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November 4, 2010 · 8:45 am

Swapping childminder for nursery: farewell second mum

 END of an era for the kids this week, as Bonnie left our faithful Childminder Claire and moved to nursery.

The change has come after six years, on and off, of family-home childcare, and it’s a bit of a wrench.

Our older boys went to nursery when just a few months old. Things have certainly changed in a decade.

Back when I had Child 1, if you hadn’t been at the same job for two years then you only got three months maternity leave. Now you can have up to a year off (mostly unpaid).

At one point having Child 1 and Child 2 in nursery cost me over £850 a month. Which was more than I earned. I was £10 a month down. But I did it to hang on to a full-time job and (I thought), career.

Scroll forward to 2003 and time for one year old Child 3 to need childcare. Fees had gone up, while our wages stayed stagnant.

I was recommended Claire through a primary school teacher pal. It was not only cheaper to hire a childminder, but I got a good friend into the bargain.

She looked after Billy full-time until he started half-day nursery at three-and-a-half, then went had him part-time before he started school.

When I was running late she collected the boys from school for me. When I needed holiday cover she took them all in. Naturally, when Child 4 Bonnie came along, I went to Claire for childcare again, although this time I was a freelance, and my hours were much more erratic.

When her own daughter, Leah, came along after two sons, Bonnie had a playmate the same age. The pair of them have been partners in crime ever since. They giggle like, well, little girls.

Bonnie might be older by a few months, but two-year-old Leah is definitely the boss.

But Claire has decided to pack in the childminding, and spend some one-on-one time with her own offspring. So Bonnie is off to the same nursery that her eldest brothers attended.

It was funny and touching when we visited nursery with the boys, who haven’t been there for seven or more years. Lots of the same staff who looked after Jed and Doug as nippers were still there, and recognised them. There was much hugging and cheek-pinching, and bashful delight as the boys were told how tall and handsome they’ve grown.

Bonnie’s started this week, and the early signs are that she loves it. Tables with dough on? Painting areas? Brilliant!

But I suspect that despite all the new friends and excitement, she’ll miss her little mucka. I think we’ll be popping around for lots of cuppas to stay in touch. After all, Claire’s been like a second mum to Bill and Bonn. She’ll be missed.

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October 7, 2010 · 8:30 am

Having a lollypop head and stupid eyelashes is not a talent and not alright

 THE TV watershed is all very well for younger kids – as are strict bedtimes – but what do you do about your older children watching things you don’t want them to?

I’m not necessarily talking about rude stuff – although sitting in the same room as your pre-and-teen sons watching rumpy is as excruciating as it was watching with my own parents. The slightest hint of an impending snog still sends my mother diving for the remote.

Anyone who was a kid when there were only three/four channels will remember how much easier it must have been for our parents. Many people I know weren’t allowed to watch ITV. The whole channel. There was a terrible snobbery about watching anything but the BBC.

We weren’t subjected to a complete commercial television ban, mainly because my parents have a Coronation Street addiction stretching back decades. #

So we got to see Saturday morning wrestling hosted by Dicky Davies, while many of our posher friends were left out of the loop.

Having a television in your bedroom wasn’t an issue. There was one telly in the house in the 1970s and 80s, and it was rented. My brother got the use of a portable black and white set when he was about 16, which we were only allowed to watch when ill.

Now we’re the parents, there are trillions of channels. We have three tellies, but none in the kids’ rooms. It’s hard enough to spend any time with them as it is. If they had TVs in their rooms they’d only see us at feeding time. Routine bedtimes would be impossible. If children have TVs in their rooms they will attempt to watch it, even/especially if you tell them not to.

In our house there are restrictions on children’s telly. Yes, even children’s telly.

Then there’s the X-Factor. Damn you ITV, you’re proving those 1970s parents right with your ‘reality’ programmes.

We watched one of the earlier series of the X-Factor together, I think it was the one where Leona Lewis won. But it is what it is: a load of sadistically entertaining guff.

Bloke opts out completely, he just thinks it’s exploitative rubbish. I usually avoid it until the final couple of live shows.

But the boys will set their watches by it, from the earliest audition to the tear-sodden final. Much like adults around the proverbial water-cooler, they know that the following day’s school conversations will involve why Cheryl should have chosen Gamu over stupid fame-hungry Katie, and how daft Storm looks/sounds/is.

I haven’t banned the X-Factor because I think the boys are at an age where they should be able to make up their own minds on whether someone is an idiot or not. I despair that they think the frighteningly thin, lollypop-headed Cher with her ridiculous false eyelashes is “alright.”

I take every opportunity to remind them not to give the show any emotional investment. I point out the dodgy showbiz connections and explaining the way they make their money is to con poor sap members of the public into actually giving enough of a toss to vote.

The X-Factor might be classic Saturday night entertainment, but don’t for a second think that it’s reality.

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October 2, 2010 · 1:05 pm

There’s a teen in the house: Y’get me?

MY little boy became a teenager this week. Scary, huh? Everyone tells you, when you have kids, how quickly time will pass. And how right they are.

That 13th birthday is a milestone. It may not really mean anything much legally – I think you can take on a paper-round and Facebook is no longer a no-go – but it’s the first tangible step out of childhood.

As well as having an embarrassing mother who puts embarrassing photos of you in the paper, Jed’s become unlucky by virtue of birth dates. His youngest brother, Billy, was born six days before his sixth birthday. He went from being the subject of unadulterated September celebrations to having to share the same week with someone younger.

Billy is still able to have a knees-up in the traditional manner, with the chaotic pass the parcel, cake and ten friends party, because he’s seven.

Jed gave up the ball-pit, bouncy castle and party-bag fun at the age of ten. It must be hard. What fuss is made when a boy turns 13? Nothing much. He’s chosen his present. He gets to choose where we go for a family meal to celebrate. He’s altogether underwhelmed with the whole birthday thing and has perfected that teenage ‘not-bothered’ shrug already.

There’s a famous parenting book from the 1970s which says you have to view teenage boys a little like babies rather than adults. For example, a 13-year old will forget all means of communication and you’ll need to do everything for them. A 14-year old will be frustrated at everything and everyone and throws tantrums, much like a toddler during the terrible twos. A 15-year old will try to push the boundaries and will argue with inanimate objects if there’s no adult around to appreciate their wisdom.

I’m pretty sure he’d hate me saying so, and God knows I don’t want to tempt fate, but so far, Jed’s been a pretty great, easy-going kid.

He’s had the pressure of being the eldest, with his next sibling very close in age, and the expectation that he should help out with everyone else. He’s good company, but has the advantage of a brother close in age so doesn’t feel he has to go knocking on doors to see friends. He cooks, he cleans (when nagged), but still leaves underpants and damp towels where they fall and argues about how unfair bedtime is every, single night.

He’s suddenly had a much-longed-for growth-spurt, and is now taller than his brother and both grandmothers, and almost as tall as me. He’s now enduring the hilarious voice-breaking stage, and can waver from sounding quite manly to literally squeaking the next. He’s cynical, exasperated with life and if he wasn’t disturbed, could sleep until noon. I know I’m biased, but he’s delightful. I wish I could give him everything he ever wants. I’m grateful that he still talks to me, and will even deign to give his old Ma a hug. How long this will last, well, only time will tell.

It seems an impossibly long time ago that I became a mum, and was handed that tiny, scrunched-up, red-faced baby boy, who is now on the cusp of becoming a man.

Happy 13th birthday Jed, oh, and don’t forget to pick up your laundry from the bedroom floor. . .

Jed and Doug, some years ago. Aww.

Sorry, poor quality pic but they hide when they see a camera now

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October 1, 2010 · 8:30 am

They broke my house

I once got hate mail from a reader who was incensed that I recommended not giving out party bags, on the grounds they are full of plastic junk and the kids just want sweets.

She took the time to write and tell me she thought I was a slobby mother who obviously didn’t care for her kids. She said this was evident by the home-made cake and drinks cartons in a picture of one of my boys’ celebrations.

She was glad her daughter wasn’t acquainted with my offspring as she would be devastated not to get a party bag. I was sorely tempted to fill a party bag with something from the park bin and pop it through her door. I resisted. For once.

However, when it was party time for Billy this weekend, as he reached the grand-old age of seven, I did do party bags: they were Lidl freezer bags with two tiny bags of Haribo, a collectible Bean and some cake. Job done.

Some of the other mums and I were discussing how our attitudes to parties changed the more children we produced.

I’ve always been disorganised (and tight), so I never managed to stage the truly spectacular children’s party, with entertainers and bouncy castles, matching tablecloths, paper plates, treat bags and wrapping paper.

We agreed these were only ever staged once, usually early on with your first-born. We quickly realised the kids wouldn’t even notice the Bob The Builder theme and were most happy to be stuffing down cake and running around bonkers with their friends.

As I’d left it too late to book a party at an-oh-so-easy-no-clearing-up-venue like the Wacky Warehouse or Berzerk, Billy asked to have some friends over to the house. I groaned, silently. OK, but none of this North London nonsense about inviting the entire class.

To make one party: Ten friends, invites hastily printed out on the home computer. Two hours on a Saturday lunchtime, balloons, a load of cakes, sandwiches, pizza and crisps, two older brothers to marshal party games, some confectionery bribes and a DVD set up to calm them all down before handing them back. It’s never as bad as you first fear.

Everyone behaved well, even if the noise levels were ear-splitting. No one cried and all seemed to go home happy.

However, I’ve just noticed a new crack across the living room ceiling, which must have been made when Dougie had 11 under-sevens hopping and jumping up and down in the bedroom above.

Perhaps I’ll diary in an early booking for next year’s party to be held somewhere else. I’m not sure the house can take them getting any bigger.

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September 27, 2010 · 8:58 am

Simple pleasures are easily ignored

Six-year-old Billy and I decided spontaneously to stop at Abington Park and introduce Bonnie to the joys of the horse chestnut harvest. 

I know it’s a cliche, all this running about being at one with your kids, but it’s memory of my childhood that’s still vivid. 

It was an annual treat for my brothers and I, skiving off on a Sunday morning to the conker trees with Dad, fighting over the best ones. 

They might not be allowed in the playground any more, what with the paranoia of Health&Safety, but there’s still plenty of pleasure in finding conkers. 

From the anticipation of carefully breaking open a fat prickly windfall, to scouring out that perfect, polished brown ball, it was a satisfying and absorbing hour’s play for all three of us. 

Bill and Bonnie with their haul of conkers

 

Bonnie ran back and forth, utterly engaged with the task in hand, filling her pockets. She now insists on carrying around a handbag stuffed with them. 

Still, this means I avoid stabbing myself with a skewer trying to get a piece of string through them.

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