So, yeah, a couple of posts back I alluded to the fact that V is pregnant again. Left it hanging there, actually, unmentioned since.
Part of this is natural hesitancy - you don't necessarily want to go enumerating unhatched chicks, so to speak, especially in the weird pseudopublic realm of the internet. I wouldn't want to have to explain it hadn't actually worked out on Facebook, leaving people no easy way to use their Like buttons.
The other part of it is being busy. This post is therefore All News, All the Time. Other than the first bit, obviously. And this bit, where I'm over-explaining it.
FAQ
How pregnant is V?
V is extremely pregnant. People keep stopping her in the street to tell her she is definitely carrying twins and wonder if she'd noticed. That, or they just can't squeeze past her, we aren't sure. Along with random joint aches, sleepless nights and savagely variable hormone levels, this means she is in a really super mood and would definitely like you to tease her mercilessly. After all, you don't really need both arms, do you?
When is it due, then?
The baby is due to arrive round the beginning of June, according to medical professionals, so not that long left to go.
However, V has a history of defying professional medical opinion, to the extend that any part of her medical history could be considered more like propaganda than factual reporting. This has included deciding on her own (new and more interesting) symptoms for illnesses and a marked immunity to advice. F was early, this new baby is already beyond huge, and it's not impossible it might turn up within the next month.
Does F know she's going to be a big sister?
Yes. She says hello to Mummy's Tummy in the morning and pats it cheerfully, in the manner of a medieval peasant touching a hunchback for luck. She is aware the baby will sleep in our room and sit in the new baby chair in the kitchen, but has been keen to stress that it will not get in her bed or be allowed to use her toys.
F has helped us pick baby names, by screwing her face up to our entire list of suggestions and shaking her head vigorously. "Well, what should we call it then?" we ask, and she shrugs and says "Baby" as though this were patently obvious to any but the most gurning simpleton. Similarly, the baby will be neither boy nor girl, "just a baby".
Are you all very excited?
Yes. Also quite stressed, occasionally in mild denial or frankly completely oblivious to what on earth the fuss is about. Second time in, there's been a marked drop in the levels of starry-eyed hope and a sharp increase in flashbacks to three am nappy changes. I can almost smell the meconium.
What are you doing to prepare for the new arrival?
Stressing, I just told you. Also buying things from Blocket (a second-hand site a bit like eBay), rooting around in the cellar for F's old clothes and wondering if vasectomies can be applied retrospectively.
What else is going on right now?
F has emerged from her Pippi Longstocking phase and is now into reading letters and making things with playdough. Mostly she makes caltrops, which (for those of you less au fait with fantasy wargear than I) are multi-spiked metal shards scattered on the ground and used to hobble charging cavalry. Playdoh is by far and away the most efficient material for the contruction of caltrops ever created by man. It also makes excellent, if rather eye-catching, patches for carpets, trousers, etc. Personally, I've gone off it.
V is somehow still working full time. I've passed another language exam and am now learning SAS-G, which is what six-to-ten year olds learn. At this rate, I'll be able to communicate at my mental age before the summer, because mentally I'm about twelve.
What the Christ is that on your face?
I have a part in a play about vikings, an adaptation of one of the Icelandic Sagas I love so much in fact, that starts rehearsal in a couple of months. I'm very excited about it, as I'll be performing in Swedish (probably). I auditioned in Swedish too, but decided that wasn't hard enough and translated the piece I did, famous Anglo-Saxon poem The Wanderer, specially for the occasion. I only wish I could accurately portray the looks on the faces of the audition panel as I hammered through it with my most enthusiastic foreign acting. I also had to dance (never pretty), demonstrate my acrobatic prowess (I did a handstand) and swordfighting skills. The latter against myself. With a mop.
Regardless of this impressively insane experience, my lazily untrimmed winter beard went on to swing me the role. I was asked to keep growing it and I'm now about eighty percent facial hair by body weight*, much of which is just inside the corners of my mouth. I keep seeing movement in my peripheral vision. When I whip round to see who's creeping up on me, I find my coiling sideburns, sieving the air for nutrients like the tentacles of a hungry anenome.
*The other twenty percent is a claggy accumulation of egg yolk, herring bones and the mockery of bypassers.
Tuesday, April 28, 2015
Saturday, April 4, 2015
Har du sett min apa?
We had a Pippi Longstocking month last month.
Bit of a departure for F. If she sees real people on the telly, she usually wrinkles her nose up and denounces them as being a 'mummy program', by which she means Dr. Phil, CSI Denver or whatever other generic daytime crap is chuntering on in the background while V does something else entirely.
But Pippi somehow passed this acid test, and we had several marathons of watching all of it back to back. And singing the theme song, which is now a bedtime staple. V called F 'my little firecracker' the other morning. "Ne-Hej!" said F loudly and angrily, as she does if you call her anything other than her proper name or do anything before she's told you to do it. "But Pippi is a firecracker," we explained, and then she grinned widely and accepted her new title.
Pippi, whose surname is actually Långstrump, is a peculiar rolemodel for children. F quite quickly understood that you shouldn't really jump up and down on top of tables, eat birthday cake for breakfast or jump off the edge of buildings. It's funny when Pippi does it, but not in real life. F realised this quickly because Daddy was extremely fast in giving serious explanations of gravity, nutrition and other science facts, as though Open University was using the show as a teaching example - "Let's just pause the action here and think about what Pippi is doing for a moment. If you consider the acceleration of a free-falling body in normal atmospheric conditions..."
It's a great bit of old telly, though, made in Sweden in the 70s with brilliantly duff special effects. Proper heritage stuff. The nearest equivalent I could think of was the old BBC Narnia adaptation, the one where Aslan was a motheaten sock puppet and the Beaver family was the Talking Animal equivalent of putting on Blackface.
F's favourite episode of the whole series was of course the one with the worst possible connotations in English. It's where Pippi, idly considering some of her treasures one morning, comes up with a strange new word. She decides to use this word for everything until she finds the thing it really means.
The word in question, sadly, is 'Spunk'. It's quite hard to stay deadpan when the episode is riddled with classic dialogue like 'all the best sweet shops sell spunk', 'oh, what a sweet little spunk!' (to a baby, as well) or 'Don't you know it's dangerous to drink spunk?'
But it's stay deadpan or explain to F why I'm sniggering, and that's a conversation for a later date. When she's, say, in her mid-thirties.
Bit of a departure for F. If she sees real people on the telly, she usually wrinkles her nose up and denounces them as being a 'mummy program', by which she means Dr. Phil, CSI Denver or whatever other generic daytime crap is chuntering on in the background while V does something else entirely.
But Pippi somehow passed this acid test, and we had several marathons of watching all of it back to back. And singing the theme song, which is now a bedtime staple. V called F 'my little firecracker' the other morning. "Ne-Hej!" said F loudly and angrily, as she does if you call her anything other than her proper name or do anything before she's told you to do it. "But Pippi is a firecracker," we explained, and then she grinned widely and accepted her new title.
Pippi, whose surname is actually Långstrump, is a peculiar rolemodel for children. F quite quickly understood that you shouldn't really jump up and down on top of tables, eat birthday cake for breakfast or jump off the edge of buildings. It's funny when Pippi does it, but not in real life. F realised this quickly because Daddy was extremely fast in giving serious explanations of gravity, nutrition and other science facts, as though Open University was using the show as a teaching example - "Let's just pause the action here and think about what Pippi is doing for a moment. If you consider the acceleration of a free-falling body in normal atmospheric conditions..."
It's a great bit of old telly, though, made in Sweden in the 70s with brilliantly duff special effects. Proper heritage stuff. The nearest equivalent I could think of was the old BBC Narnia adaptation, the one where Aslan was a motheaten sock puppet and the Beaver family was the Talking Animal equivalent of putting on Blackface.
F's favourite episode of the whole series was of course the one with the worst possible connotations in English. It's where Pippi, idly considering some of her treasures one morning, comes up with a strange new word. She decides to use this word for everything until she finds the thing it really means.
The word in question, sadly, is 'Spunk'. It's quite hard to stay deadpan when the episode is riddled with classic dialogue like 'all the best sweet shops sell spunk', 'oh, what a sweet little spunk!' (to a baby, as well) or 'Don't you know it's dangerous to drink spunk?'
But it's stay deadpan or explain to F why I'm sniggering, and that's a conversation for a later date. When she's, say, in her mid-thirties.
Thursday, March 26, 2015
Food Waist
Sorry for the long pause. It's been, in some ways, quite a tough month.
Something about the end of winter - I've become more Swedish in that sense. When the first rays of spring sun come out, I'm not standing askance and looking wryly at the desperate Swedes standing pathetically out in them, almost lapping at the air to extract the warmth. Rather, I'm there with everyone else, strung out like sun-tolerant vampires and feebly glad to have made it through the dark months. Instead of struggling through another bitterly cold, gloomy day, you can wash up on the shore of spring for a bit, and take a breather.
F continues to be a bit over two. Last year, she was pretty cheerful most of the time, easy-going and playful. Now, she's either like that but ramped up to about thirteen and extremely insistent that I join her, or she's lying bonelessly on the carpet, screaming. She lies in bed in the morning saying "Come on, Daddy! Open the door!" even though she's quite capable of getting out of bed and doing it herself. She'll demand specific foods, then shun them if they're produced.
Given that I have the heart and soul of a labrador, it's not really surprising that I eat everyone's leftovers at home. This is starting to tell, rather, especially at the moment when F's appetite is pretty capricious. If I cook fishfingers for lunch, I have to try and guess how many she might eat, factor in how I want, then cook the total. There's always one more than I can comfortably eat, maths is not my strong point. I feel a little heavy these days.
Even though I balk at eating, say, a half-platched bowl of yoghurt containing soggy Special K, I still feel terribly guilt throwing it out. But what else can you do? Sack after sack of perfectly edible grub is tossed either down the hatch in the hallway or the one in my face. Neither feel like good solutions.
To compound this, F has decided sharing can be fun.
"Please can you pass the blueberries," I asked her at breakfast.
"Lots and lots!" she said, and kept passing big, mildly crushed fistfuls to me and sniggering.
I know I shouldn't complain. But V did more or less the same last night. It was National Waffle Day (how I love Sweden) yesterday. V's appetite is a bit all over the place right now, so she ate half of one, then tossed the rest over to me. I must have looked a surprised, because she explained that she didn't want it slightly defensively.
"You don't have to eat it," she said. Of course I do, you've put it on my plate! Don't you know what happens to people who don't clean their plates? They get no pudding! That's what I was thinking, anyway. I couldn't say anything, there was too much waffle in the way.
And why is V's appetite all over the place, you might ask? Ah well, there's a thing.
Här kommer en till.
Something about the end of winter - I've become more Swedish in that sense. When the first rays of spring sun come out, I'm not standing askance and looking wryly at the desperate Swedes standing pathetically out in them, almost lapping at the air to extract the warmth. Rather, I'm there with everyone else, strung out like sun-tolerant vampires and feebly glad to have made it through the dark months. Instead of struggling through another bitterly cold, gloomy day, you can wash up on the shore of spring for a bit, and take a breather.
F continues to be a bit over two. Last year, she was pretty cheerful most of the time, easy-going and playful. Now, she's either like that but ramped up to about thirteen and extremely insistent that I join her, or she's lying bonelessly on the carpet, screaming. She lies in bed in the morning saying "Come on, Daddy! Open the door!" even though she's quite capable of getting out of bed and doing it herself. She'll demand specific foods, then shun them if they're produced.
Given that I have the heart and soul of a labrador, it's not really surprising that I eat everyone's leftovers at home. This is starting to tell, rather, especially at the moment when F's appetite is pretty capricious. If I cook fishfingers for lunch, I have to try and guess how many she might eat, factor in how I want, then cook the total. There's always one more than I can comfortably eat, maths is not my strong point. I feel a little heavy these days.
Even though I balk at eating, say, a half-platched bowl of yoghurt containing soggy Special K, I still feel terribly guilt throwing it out. But what else can you do? Sack after sack of perfectly edible grub is tossed either down the hatch in the hallway or the one in my face. Neither feel like good solutions.
To compound this, F has decided sharing can be fun.
"Please can you pass the blueberries," I asked her at breakfast.
"Lots and lots!" she said, and kept passing big, mildly crushed fistfuls to me and sniggering.
I know I shouldn't complain. But V did more or less the same last night. It was National Waffle Day (how I love Sweden) yesterday. V's appetite is a bit all over the place right now, so she ate half of one, then tossed the rest over to me. I must have looked a surprised, because she explained that she didn't want it slightly defensively.
"You don't have to eat it," she said. Of course I do, you've put it on my plate! Don't you know what happens to people who don't clean their plates? They get no pudding! That's what I was thinking, anyway. I couldn't say anything, there was too much waffle in the way.
And why is V's appetite all over the place, you might ask? Ah well, there's a thing.
Här kommer en till.
Thursday, February 26, 2015
Pappagris
I seem to have become indispensable.
F's morning chorus starts with vague murmurs that gradually mutate into a two-tone cry of "Mummy! Daddy!" like a clingy ambulance. That doesn't mean she's awake, though. If you fall into that trap, you get crossly told "Nej! Sleeping," as she rolls over and pulls a stuffed bear over her head.
You know when she is awake, because the two tones become one. "Daddy daddy daddy, daddy daddy. Daddy! Daddy daddy. Pick up." Then it's mummy's turn to roll over and go back to sleep, and I can go and make breakfast.
Daddy must also come and play. And hold her hand. And this morning, come and watch her watching the iPad. And run and get her paper and crayons. And get a glass of milk. Daddy must not, on pain of screaming death, be on the computer, talk to mummy, fold laundry or do cooking until instructed so to do.
It's sort of fun being in demand? Up to a point. That point being the point at which you need to do any chores, or even (god forbid) entertain yourself in any way. There's only so much rapt beholding I can manage before even the joy of seeing toy cars being repeatedly extracted from a smurf mushroom house palls. Five minutes, in all honesty, is the absolute maximum, and that's when it's still seven in the morning and I can stare into the middle distance for weeks without seeing anything.
It's certainly not fun seeing how rude F is to V at the moment. "No! Vill inte ha mummy! Mummy is bleh!" is a typical rejoinder to an offer of a kiss or a cuddle. She can be pretty chilly for no reason to either of us, but V definitely gets the worst of it. There's nothing much behind such vehement rejection, no more than there was behind the expertly executed right hook to the jaw she gave me last week. She tearfully went straight to the naughty chair all by herself when she saw my face after that particular stunt, which rather tore the heartstrings out of my ire. Canny wee lady, her.
Knowing that she just hasn't got the hang of the polite no just yet doesn't help it feel less personal, though. And her polite yes is no better. Asking her if she'd like some breakfast gets the most sullen sounding 'yeah' I've heard from anyone outside their teens. Then you have to dash through the obstacle course of her wildly flip-flopping demands (Butter on the bread! No butter on the bread! Milk! Red milk, not blue! In the other glass! With the pink bib! Too slow - give me yoghurt now!) to make sure she eats anything.
Luckily it's balanced with occasional displays of extremely generous affection, which leavens what might otherwise be bitter bread. "Mmmmm, nice warm daddy," for example, with a big pressing cuddle. Or "I'm stroking mummy's hair," whilst curled up on the sofa. So if it's tough work right now, at least it's very rewarding.
F's morning chorus starts with vague murmurs that gradually mutate into a two-tone cry of "Mummy! Daddy!" like a clingy ambulance. That doesn't mean she's awake, though. If you fall into that trap, you get crossly told "Nej! Sleeping," as she rolls over and pulls a stuffed bear over her head.
You know when she is awake, because the two tones become one. "Daddy daddy daddy, daddy daddy. Daddy! Daddy daddy. Pick up." Then it's mummy's turn to roll over and go back to sleep, and I can go and make breakfast.
Daddy must also come and play. And hold her hand. And this morning, come and watch her watching the iPad. And run and get her paper and crayons. And get a glass of milk. Daddy must not, on pain of screaming death, be on the computer, talk to mummy, fold laundry or do cooking until instructed so to do.
It's sort of fun being in demand? Up to a point. That point being the point at which you need to do any chores, or even (god forbid) entertain yourself in any way. There's only so much rapt beholding I can manage before even the joy of seeing toy cars being repeatedly extracted from a smurf mushroom house palls. Five minutes, in all honesty, is the absolute maximum, and that's when it's still seven in the morning and I can stare into the middle distance for weeks without seeing anything.
It's certainly not fun seeing how rude F is to V at the moment. "No! Vill inte ha mummy! Mummy is bleh!" is a typical rejoinder to an offer of a kiss or a cuddle. She can be pretty chilly for no reason to either of us, but V definitely gets the worst of it. There's nothing much behind such vehement rejection, no more than there was behind the expertly executed right hook to the jaw she gave me last week. She tearfully went straight to the naughty chair all by herself when she saw my face after that particular stunt, which rather tore the heartstrings out of my ire. Canny wee lady, her.
Knowing that she just hasn't got the hang of the polite no just yet doesn't help it feel less personal, though. And her polite yes is no better. Asking her if she'd like some breakfast gets the most sullen sounding 'yeah' I've heard from anyone outside their teens. Then you have to dash through the obstacle course of her wildly flip-flopping demands (Butter on the bread! No butter on the bread! Milk! Red milk, not blue! In the other glass! With the pink bib! Too slow - give me yoghurt now!) to make sure she eats anything.
Luckily it's balanced with occasional displays of extremely generous affection, which leavens what might otherwise be bitter bread. "Mmmmm, nice warm daddy," for example, with a big pressing cuddle. Or "I'm stroking mummy's hair," whilst curled up on the sofa. So if it's tough work right now, at least it's very rewarding.
Monday, February 2, 2015
Eat Your Browns
"Go on, just try a little bit."
"No fank you."
"Go on! It's nice! You like it!"
"NO! Will inte! Will har den här!"
"You've finished all of that, there's no more. Come on, try this."
"No! NO!"
"Look, here's just a little tiny bit on a fork. Put that in your mouth and taste it."
"BLERGHHH NOO ARRRGH WAAAAAAA"
This would be an entirely standard mealtime conversation with any toddler, certainly, And therefore unremarkable, bar the facts that
There is no pleasing some people.
"No fank you."
"Go on! It's nice! You like it!"
"NO! Will inte! Will har den här!"
"You've finished all of that, there's no more. Come on, try this."
"No! NO!"
"Look, here's just a little tiny bit on a fork. Put that in your mouth and taste it."
"BLERGHHH NOO ARRRGH WAAAAAAA"
This would be an entirely standard mealtime conversation with any toddler, certainly, And therefore unremarkable, bar the facts that
- I'm offering F chocolate cake
- She wants to have more boiled carrots instead
There is no pleasing some people.
Monday, January 19, 2015
The Lessons of January
F is getting stroppier by the second. Her favourite words at the moment are:
And her least favourite things at the moment are:
Last week was her birthday. The tally of tantrums got too many for me (F currently counts by saying "en, två, many" which is about right), but included such classics as her cousin V being offered some birthday cake, Daddy sitting next to her on the sofa and anybody looking at her new toy cars.
This is tiring. Ignoring the tantrums, which are at least mercifully short-lived on the whole, takes the shine off my otherwisecynically blackened sunny disposition. When your daughter is as likely to respond to an offer of play, food or attention with room-engulfing mood disintegrations, its hard to know what to do with your time.
We all have terrible colds on top of this. which hasn't helped. And it's either raining, snowing or the middle of the night in Gothenburg right now, adding seasonal cabin fever to the stew. Why on earth I think this is a good time to press ahead with potty training, I've no idea.
J: Would you like to sit on the potty?
F: No! Inte! Vill ha en bottle of milk!
J: That's not on offer right now.
(Mummy, who is in the bathroom getting ready for work, moves the potty a quarter of an inch with her foot as she moves past)
F: NOOOOOO! Det är min potty!
(Divers alarums)
V was doing the run-up to an opening night over the weekend, Dagis will not accept a child who is either febrile or was febrile yesterday, I've been at tantrum ground zero for five days. We tried combating the cough and fever with medicine. F has learned that medicine tastes vile and can be spat vigorously out. When I started coughing the day after, she nodded wisely and suggested I have some medicine for it.
As an aside, Dagis is getting on my wick at the moment. (This is not hard, all tantrums and no sleep make Wick a long chap, and it's hard to stay off him.) One of the teachers insists on speaking English to F although we've said we prefer them not to. Fair enough, F's Swinglish probably means that's needed. But having tasked us to weaned her off her dummy (about 90% done although she still sleeps with it) and in a rather patronising 'we know best' manner I might add, F seems to have it every time we pick her up. I don't know if this is mere testament to just how stroppy F is or whether they just need a kick in the pants, but there's a parent teacher night coming up soon and I'm looking forward to snarling all through it.
Anyway, after five days in a row of being home to take care of F and her hacking cough, I'm fairly rock-bottom-y. Back in class today, I fell asleep on the tram on the way in, whilst doing a writing exercise and then on the tram home. Snoozing before, during and after a lesson is not indicative of a ready-to-learn state.
Immediately afterwards, I picked F up and took her home and she helped me cook dinner. Egg fried rice with beef, which she was very excited about until I added her beloved plain rice to the wok, at which point she wanted a bottle of milk instead. Once I'd finished ignoring this volte face and eaten my food, I made the bottle of milk, at which point she got into bed and wanted a night night story instead. Once I'd got her into pyjamas, cleaned her face and teeth and read a book (twice) to her, she wanted to get up and play instead. Once I'd put her back to bed, turned out the light, sung to her and said goodnight, I got to listen to a steadily cresendo of "daddy daddy daddy" for an hour and half, culminating in a shriek, then a surprisingly polite and calm request for the bottle of milk again.
I mean, ever get the impression you're being played?
- No!
- Inte!
- Stop it!
And her least favourite things at the moment are:
- Not getting what she wants on demand
- Getting what she wants on demand
- Not knowing what she wants
Last week was her birthday. The tally of tantrums got too many for me (F currently counts by saying "en, två, many" which is about right), but included such classics as her cousin V being offered some birthday cake, Daddy sitting next to her on the sofa and anybody looking at her new toy cars.
This is tiring. Ignoring the tantrums, which are at least mercifully short-lived on the whole, takes the shine off my otherwise
We all have terrible colds on top of this. which hasn't helped. And it's either raining, snowing or the middle of the night in Gothenburg right now, adding seasonal cabin fever to the stew. Why on earth I think this is a good time to press ahead with potty training, I've no idea.
J: Would you like to sit on the potty?
F: No! Inte! Vill ha en bottle of milk!
J: That's not on offer right now.
(Mummy, who is in the bathroom getting ready for work, moves the potty a quarter of an inch with her foot as she moves past)
F: NOOOOOO! Det är min potty!
(Divers alarums)
V was doing the run-up to an opening night over the weekend, Dagis will not accept a child who is either febrile or was febrile yesterday, I've been at tantrum ground zero for five days. We tried combating the cough and fever with medicine. F has learned that medicine tastes vile and can be spat vigorously out. When I started coughing the day after, she nodded wisely and suggested I have some medicine for it.
As an aside, Dagis is getting on my wick at the moment. (This is not hard, all tantrums and no sleep make Wick a long chap, and it's hard to stay off him.) One of the teachers insists on speaking English to F although we've said we prefer them not to. Fair enough, F's Swinglish probably means that's needed. But having tasked us to weaned her off her dummy (about 90% done although she still sleeps with it) and in a rather patronising 'we know best' manner I might add, F seems to have it every time we pick her up. I don't know if this is mere testament to just how stroppy F is or whether they just need a kick in the pants, but there's a parent teacher night coming up soon and I'm looking forward to snarling all through it.
Anyway, after five days in a row of being home to take care of F and her hacking cough, I'm fairly rock-bottom-y. Back in class today, I fell asleep on the tram on the way in, whilst doing a writing exercise and then on the tram home. Snoozing before, during and after a lesson is not indicative of a ready-to-learn state.
Immediately afterwards, I picked F up and took her home and she helped me cook dinner. Egg fried rice with beef, which she was very excited about until I added her beloved plain rice to the wok, at which point she wanted a bottle of milk instead. Once I'd finished ignoring this volte face and eaten my food, I made the bottle of milk, at which point she got into bed and wanted a night night story instead. Once I'd got her into pyjamas, cleaned her face and teeth and read a book (twice) to her, she wanted to get up and play instead. Once I'd put her back to bed, turned out the light, sung to her and said goodnight, I got to listen to a steadily cresendo of "daddy daddy daddy" for an hour and half, culminating in a shriek, then a surprisingly polite and calm request for the bottle of milk again.
I mean, ever get the impression you're being played?
Sunday, January 11, 2015
Taking Steps
"Right, okay, if you're not going to put your toys away, you can sit on this chair until you decide to behave." I think I probably threw a "young lady" in there somewhere for good measure, just in case I wasn't sounding enough like a huffy teacher.
F is generally pretty biddable, but had decided the collection of toy ketchup bottles she'd brought to the loo this morning was going to stay there unless I wanted to move them. When I disagreed, we had a battle of wills for the next hour. Fifteen minutes of screaming reduced me to trying the only parenting trick I know, which of course I learned from obnoxious junk TV.
Supernanny was actually on TLC earlier, bullying some grotesque American family for your entertainment. Look, the program (all programs ever on TLC, in fact) seems to say - your family isn't this insanely screwed up. So you must be good people and should feel good about yourselves. Stay tuned, Burkina Faso's Celebrity Next Top Wig Maker coming up next!
Seeing the show at least reminded me that I was doing the Naughty Step thing right, anyway. I wasn't convinced. Not least because we live in a flat and don't have any steps, the corner chair in Mummy and Daddy's room had to suffice. It was the most boring place I could find, although I did have to remove three Scandinavian-knit jumpers, a replica viking sword and a giant yoga ball from it first. What an interesting house we have.
F went through every classic manipulation she could find: -
I left her to it for the most part. Which is hard. Basically, I don't really care about the toys. It's the principles at stake! I told you to do this one tiny thing, little daughter, and now I shall put us both through emotional hell until you concede I was right! It's for your own good! It certainly wasn't for mine, I'll tell you that. If F could see how much guilty remorse I was having to mask by hiding in the next room, anxiously Googling the authentic method of the Naughty Step, she'd have cracked me in minutes.
I went back in to try and start a reasonable conversation in the occasional lulls. Which would go fine until I reintroduced the whole sorry 'pick up your toys' thing, and then we'd be back to square one and redoubled weeping. But after a mere hour of fairly continuous wailing, she suddenly tried a new tack. Earnest smiles through the grubby tears:
"Feya be happy now, cuddle daddy."
"Oh good!" I said, and then suspiciously added "so will you pick up the toys?" because I wasn't born yesterday.
"Yes. Cuddle cuddle."
Maybe the day before yesterday. She'll have worked out how to beat this new parental ploy in a week or two, doubtless. But I'm chalking this round up to me.
*Her opening moves consist of throwing everything she can't get to work or doesn't like the look of off the board and then holding up the King and chanting his name proudly, which I believe is called George Osbourne's Gambit.
F is generally pretty biddable, but had decided the collection of toy ketchup bottles she'd brought to the loo this morning was going to stay there unless I wanted to move them. When I disagreed, we had a battle of wills for the next hour. Fifteen minutes of screaming reduced me to trying the only parenting trick I know, which of course I learned from obnoxious junk TV.
Supernanny was actually on TLC earlier, bullying some grotesque American family for your entertainment. Look, the program (all programs ever on TLC, in fact) seems to say - your family isn't this insanely screwed up. So you must be good people and should feel good about yourselves. Stay tuned, Burkina Faso's Celebrity Next Top Wig Maker coming up next!
Seeing the show at least reminded me that I was doing the Naughty Step thing right, anyway. I wasn't convinced. Not least because we live in a flat and don't have any steps, the corner chair in Mummy and Daddy's room had to suffice. It was the most boring place I could find, although I did have to remove three Scandinavian-knit jumpers, a replica viking sword and a giant yoga ball from it first. What an interesting house we have.
F went through every classic manipulation she could find: -
- Telling Daddy to go and clear the toys away for her
- Turning entirely boneless with rage and sliding off the Chair like a paralyzed eel
- Stopping crying and until I came to look at her again, then picking up where she'd left off
- Getting off the Naughty Chair to play chess* when I wasn't looking
- Claiming she actually quite liked the Naughty Chair and was going to stay there indefinitely
- Playing with a nearby clock until it was removed (I didn't think of it as interesting enough to remove it in advance)
I left her to it for the most part. Which is hard. Basically, I don't really care about the toys. It's the principles at stake! I told you to do this one tiny thing, little daughter, and now I shall put us both through emotional hell until you concede I was right! It's for your own good! It certainly wasn't for mine, I'll tell you that. If F could see how much guilty remorse I was having to mask by hiding in the next room, anxiously Googling the authentic method of the Naughty Step, she'd have cracked me in minutes.
I went back in to try and start a reasonable conversation in the occasional lulls. Which would go fine until I reintroduced the whole sorry 'pick up your toys' thing, and then we'd be back to square one and redoubled weeping. But after a mere hour of fairly continuous wailing, she suddenly tried a new tack. Earnest smiles through the grubby tears:
"Feya be happy now, cuddle daddy."
"Oh good!" I said, and then suspiciously added "so will you pick up the toys?" because I wasn't born yesterday.
"Yes. Cuddle cuddle."
Maybe the day before yesterday. She'll have worked out how to beat this new parental ploy in a week or two, doubtless. But I'm chalking this round up to me.
*Her opening moves consist of throwing everything she can't get to work or doesn't like the look of off the board and then holding up the King and chanting his name proudly, which I believe is called George Osbourne's Gambit.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)