God made some heads perfect, the rest He had to cover with hair...

It all started when we drove past some men chopping down a tree.  For some time we had been talking about how the trees lose their leaves in winter, and the boys had thought it was sad (Miss Snoopy too, but she calls it "shame-ies".  Really showing our heritage there!).  I was trying to explain that it is not sad, that the trees need time to rest for the winter so that when the spring comes, they can put out their new leaves and look beautiful and green again.  But the chopping down of a tree was another matter totally.  

"What will happen to the tree when it gets cut down?" asked the boys.  "Will it grow again?"

Having recently had a fish die on us, it was relatively easy to go there again.  "No," I explained, "the tree dies, just like the fish did."

"But what happens to it?" they persisted.  

"I think that its body, all the bits that we can see, go to become compost for the earth and other things can grow from it," I said.  "But we like to believe that the other part of it, the bit that is spirit, goes back to God who created it and becomes a part of Him again."

They were silent after this and I imagined that we had fully addressed a difficult philosophical point.

Later in the week, when I had put them all to bed, Sam was really upset, and, unlike at other times, when he howls his frustrations to the world, he chose to cry quietly in his bed until I heard him.  I crawled under the covers with him and held him close, and he stopped sobbing.  "Tell me the story of when we were little?" he asked me in a snuffly little voice.

Whispering, because I didn't want to wake the other two, I told him his favourite story:

"When you  boys were very small, you had such soft, downy hair on your head that every time you lay on my lap, I would pat you little heads for hours and hours.  I loved the feeling of your silky little heads under my hands. After a while, because of all the patting, all your hair wore off and you didn't have even the smallest hair on your head.  But then your hair grew back, thicker than before."  We talked and cuddled for a while more and he fell asleep.

The next night, the Sweetpea came in late after I had put everyone to bed.  I did not see it, but the light was glinting off his now-balding head, and obviously the boys took note.  

"Have you been patting Daddy too much?" asked Sam, referring to the Sweetpea's bald spot.  I laughed and said no, I hadn't.

Then Paddy piped up in a sad little voice:  "Daddy's hair must have all gone back to God," he said dramatically. 

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A time to give thanks...

Mother's day is a great time for reflection - from all sides.  For me, lying in bed with my three littlies nestled up against my body, I realised that life is indeed different nowadays.  I wondered what it would have been like for me to be lying there alone - what factors of my life would be radically different without those precious littlies?  What if I had never had children, or couldn't?  My heart quails at the very thought!  But I am sure that the following things would have been vastly different on Mother's day:

I would probably have slept in.  At least until nine, and then got up to go to the loo.  Alone, and without an audience of spectators, all encouraging and excited to see what would happen.  Without knowing it, perhaps lonely and sad.

The reality:  me sitting pretty on the throne while having three expectant faces surrounding me asking "What are you doing?" and wanting to see the results.

I would have scrounged for breakfast somewhere.   I might have had a piece of toast, which I would have eaten by myself.  Every part of it.

The reality:  I lay in bed, with three little ones looking expectantly at every mouthful of the special mango and yogurt cocktail that they had made together with their dad in order to surprise me.  Did I actually eat any of said cocktail?  I believe that it was scoffed up to the last drop by my hungry brood.  And the joy on those small faces as I made a huge fuss about how tasty it was - priceless!

I might have drawn myself a long, luxurious bath and spent a few hours lying in it, only topping up the hot when it got too cold.  I might have read a magazine. The whole of it.  Without it getting wet or thrown in the bath.

The reality:  as soon as they see me relaxing in the bath, it is like a super fast strip to get into the bath too.  Then it is a mess of bubbles, cars, water all over the floor, wet hair, soap in eyes, soggy bread rolls in the bath, towels pulled in on top of us, wet bath mats and slippery floors.  Bliss!  What could be better than that?  No magazine came close.

I would not have thought twice about buying something I needed/didn't need and spoiling myself just that little bit. Invariably expensive, and decadently impulsive.

The reality:  Little presents made from small rounds of wood, straws and buttons, all glued lovingly to make a present for mama; artworks made from leftover telephone notepaper and sweetie wrappers; little clay boats decorated with feathers and sticks.  Wow - if I thought I was spoiled before - just look at me now!  Nothing could prepare me for the way in which I would treasure these priceless artefacts of their childhoods.

And then a day spent relaxing, reading books, and not doing anything else much of interest.  

The reality:  Getting a "mother's day cake" baked for me - which involved me running to the shops to amass the ingredients, mixing them all together and holding the mixer for eager little hands, putting the resultant over-beaten cake mix into the oven, and trying to fend off the hands, spoons and tongues while trying to ice the result.  

All in all, the most perfect day I could imagine.  And not one book or minute of relaxation in the whole of it.  Who would have it any other way?

In a league of my own...

The Sweetpea often has to travel to other parts of the country to do locums when there are not enough obstetricians to cover, and occasionally, we get to go with him.  It is a time of not having to worry about keeping the house clean and tidy, because they put us up in a motel, which, although not the lap of luxury, is still a great deal better than having to clean up after five messy people.

We usually go away for the weekend, and because there are very rarely any call-outs for the Sweetpea, it ends up being a luxuriously relaxing family weekend away in a little-known part of the country.  

Well, mostly relaxing.  The Sweetpea had to do a ward round early on the Saturday morning, so I chose to get up late (about eight - wow!!!) and spent a wonderful thirty whole minutes in the bath getting all steamy and relaxed.  To fully understand this story, it is vital that you know that the motel room we stay in is actually a suite, with two bedrooms both opening off a central bathroom, a small lounge-dining room, and a tiny kitchen - all you could actually need, really.  The main bedroom looks over the South Park, a lovely flat grassy stretch where people walk their dogs and kids can play.  On the Saturday in question, I lazed in the bath, and reluctantly decided that it was time to emerge. I felt around on the bathroom sink for my glasses (I am really short-sighted without them) but couldn't seem to locate them anywhere, so eventually gave up and strolled naked (come on - like you've never done it!) into the bedroom to get dressed.  After taking a leisurely look in my suitcase and eventually deciding on an outfit for the day, I took my time getting dressed, and as I was putting on my jersey, the glasses fell out of the pocket. "Yay, found them," I thought, as I put them on.  My joy was extremely short-lived.  As soon as I put them on, I realised that while I had been in the bathroom, the boys had taken the opportunity to open the curtains of the bedroom.  Nice and wide.  And now I had a lovely view of the park, where about 150 small kiddies were playing soccer, with an assortment of fathers, mothers, uncles, aunts, grannies and grandpas and the coaches of six Little Dribbler league clubs looking on.  Even more distressing, they also had a wonderful view of me.  And had been having a wonderful view of me for my entire naked promenade from bath to room, my reverse-strip routine, and my eventual mortification when I discovered this vital fact.

The Sweetpea had by this time returned from the hospital and was standing in the lounge looking out of the window onto the melee of Little Dribblers running around screeching and kicking outside.  "Wow," he called to me, "it's like a free-for-all out there!"

"Yes," I thought sadly to myself, considering all the spectators outside my bedroom window, "in more ways than one, Sweetpea, in more ways than one." 

The usual suspects

The baby monitor is the parent's best friend (apart from a full-time live in house-keeper slash child minder, but who actually has one of those?).  I was in the kitchen when the three musketeers decided to go and play elsewhere.  I was in a crucial stage of clean-up, with my hands encased in long rubber gloves and involving a broom and copious amounts of strong detergent after someone had tipped a whole mess of who knows what out of the dust-buster and onto the floor and painted a picture with the result, so I decided to let them go for it.  They disappeared into the depths of my bedroom.

"Don't create havoc up there!" I yelled after them as a precaution that mainly satisfied my own misgivings only.

"No, Mama," they yelled back down.  "We're not doing anything."

For a while, all was quiet, and I went on with the mess disposal.  Then I had a brain-wave - switch on the baby monitor.  The child-part of it is located in my room so that I can tell if they are going to sleep or not from downstairs, but it is normally off during the day.  Nervously, and with my teeth, I managed to switch it on, my hands still out of action in the industrial-strength gloves.

And that's when I heard the fateful words from Sam: "And then if we move this, we can put all the animals into the tent too!"  

I started running, but I was too late.  Too late, as it turns out, to do anything about the makeshift "tent" built in the middle of the room out of the king-size duvet, all of the pillows off the bed, and inexplicably, a set of about ten DVD covers (minus the DVDs).  How on earth, in the space of a few minutes, did that happen?  And if not for the trusty monitor, what else could have happened?

It might have made the mess I was cleaning up in the kitchen look positively pretty...

Caught napping...

I have been enjoying the development of what I call "The Art of Dissembling" which I see coming to the fore in the twins at the moment.  To put it simply, they are becoming cunning, not in a sneaky or underhand manner, but in a blatant, open manner that makes the Sweetpea and I laugh out loud at times.  Their comments are so witty and observant, most times unintentionally so, but at other times, just down-right calculating.

The Sweetpea had a cold last week and so was thrown out of the communal bedroom to sniffle, cough and snore downstairs in the guest bedroom by himself while he got over it.  I actually personally believe he quite enjoys these times of "freedom", where he can do his manly thing, lying sprawled across the extent of the king-size bed down there without a wife or small daughter kicking him in the ribs or asking him to turn over.  Needless to say, when I suggested that he remove downstairs, he agreed with almost insulting alacrity.

He was down there for about a week, and the boys started liking the new management of the bedroom.  Nromally, when he says it is sleep time, it is actually sleep time.  He does not tolerate the scratching around, shining of torches on the ceiling, rustling in the beds to get comfortable (which can really be overdone at times), and general commenting on the nature of life like I do.  Normally by that stage of the evening I am so exhausted I lie in a stupor on my bed and listen to all of the shenannigans going on.  It is as much as I can do to lift my head and say "Sleepies time now" every so often. Most often not even that.

Last night, a night I like to refer to as "The Return of the King", the Sweetpea was finally deemed better enough to return to the family fold.  He was lying in our bed with me pressed up against him and the Litte Miss Snoopy sprawled over the other three-quarters of the bed, when a small voice piped up: "Daddy, are you going to spend the whole night here?"

Thinking that the little one needed reassurance, the Sweetpea answered him:  "Of course I am, darling.  Don't worry."

There was a long silence while this was being processed.  He was wondering how to let on that he wasn't strictly worried about his dad leaving.

 "I am worrying that you will catch me being naughty," the boy eventually said.

What's up, Doc?

The concept of "Man-flu" starts at a very early age.  And after today, I can confidently say that it is definitely a mother that starts it.

Today was the twins' immunisations.  I am not sure which health professional decided that it would be a wonderful idea to combine the two sets of injections into one clinic visit.  Obviously someone not in tune to kids or with no children of their own.  I mean, even the village idiot is bound to have thought it through:  another injection will have to be given to a child who has just had one; a child who knows what is coming next.  Obviously it's not rocket science to conjecture what is going to happen next.  Anyway, the twins were no exception to the rule. I have to admit, I chickened out a bit and sent them along with the Sweetpea to the doctor.  I think I would have set them off before the time and we would never have made it past the doctor's threshold.  But the Sweetpea had some story about tiny superheroes being injected in to them to fight all the bad bugs, etc. and what ever, it seemed to work.  Both boys were quite excited to go to the doctor to see these little super heroes.  That is, until after the administration of the first injection.  On the first child.  There is definitely such a thing as twin-to-twin non-verbal communication.  By the time the injection came for the second one, there was a mutiny occurring in the ranks. As the Sweetpea put it, he had to "hold them down a bit".  It could not have been pretty.  

But after all of the tears were dried, and the emergency sweetie stash administered, they perked up a bit and all was well again. Until they saw me.  Both ran up to me crying and whining.  "A bad man pricked me hard!" yelled the one.  

"I don't want the injection ever, ever again!" wailed the other.  


And manly stoicism in the presence of their dad morphed into a whiny, sniveling, rest-of-afternoon-and-into-evening pity-fest of some caliber for their patient mom. I think the Sweetpea might have told them to suck it up at some stage, but I ran around like the aforementioned village idiot, getting sips of water, administering panadol, and picking stuff up off the floor that they had dropped, because "my arms are too sore to pick it up, Mama".  Even though I knew they were milking the situation for all it was worth, I still complied because, after all, they are my babies, and some bad man had just pricked them with a needle.

And thus the next generation of "Man-flu" sufferers is born.   

Oh well, I guess I'll just let some other woman deal with it in about another 25 years time...

Addendum to the saga of the Laundry Spider

Sometimes I think a post just begs for a follow-up - this one is no exception to that rule.  

After the Sweetpea hurled the hapless Laundry Spider into the bushes, having rescued his child and woman from the ravages of the beast, we did not see the creature for some time.

I have off-loaded several (thousand) baskets of laundry, each time shaking out the pants and jackets in the off-chance that the spider has made his way back into the house again from his exile in the nether reaches of the garden.  Yet for a while, we have been ominously spider-free.

Until last week.  


I was walking into the house, carrying the large tub of laundry.  I know what you are thinking - there is the spider in the basket as usual.  Well, you would be wrong.  As I was walking into the house, the cat rushed past me from its hunting safari in the garden.  He was acting very suspicious, darting around and behaving in a generally sneaky way.  I followed him into the house and in the middle of the lounge carpet, he spat out his ill-gotten gains.  It was the Laundry Spider.  Or if it was not him, it was his twin brother.  Before we could stop him (we have grown quite fond of the spider in the loosest possible terms), the cat pounced on him and ate him down to the last wriggly scrap.

I have faith in that spider's ability to bounce back from all sorts of adversity, but I have a feeling that even he, with his numerous lives and sheer dogged tenacity, will have a hard time returning from this ultimate exile.