We booked three days of holiday a few months back, a family trip to Astrid Lindgren's Värld over on the other side of Sweden. Not really a holiday for us, exactly, seeing as staying in a tiny holiday cottage with both of our kids, Uncle D and Cousin V wasn't likely to be restful exactly.
With the relentless inevitability of, say, a British politician being shit, F developed chicken pox the minute we got on the train.
There's no development after that punchline. No topping that. Any vestige of relaxation melted away in a wash of febrile temperatures, weeping blisters and crazed tantrums. Exhausted after three days away in a giant playpark during the worst illness she's yet had, F's crowning scream was on the platform of Katerineholm station. A car gently tooted as it left the carpark, maybe a last farewell salute to someone. F went off like someone electrocuting a Wilhelm Scream.
So if you're feeling disappointed that there was no blog post last month, you can cram it. Sorry. There is no mental health left for creativity here, just ringing ears, aloe vera balm and the certainly knowledge that C, who was licking F's feet this morning, will be doing exactly the same in around ten days.
Astrid Lingren Värld is lovely, by the way, a benevolent haven of polite Swedes in orderly queues and well-kept miniature villages. You should all go there. I feel there is probably an 'alternative to Brexit' kind of joke in there, but I'm far to miserable about that particular spectacular immolation of credibility to attempt my own.
Friday, July 1, 2016
Monday, May 30, 2016
Bad Dad
Another relentless month, in which many things have conspired to make me feel like a lousy dad.
"We're taking C to the doctor today, F, she has to have some injections. You'll get to play in the waiting room if you like."
"Can Bunbun come?"
"Yes, if you want."
"Will the doctor kill Bunbun and cut holes in her?"
What? What the? Will the who do what and cut which in the why, now? Where has that come from? What desperate horror have I inadvertently exposed my daughter to, that she thinks the doctor is going to prosect her rabbit?
F has asked this in the most deadpan, apparently unconcerned way imaginable, along the lines of 'can I have ice cream on the way home'. As flabber ghasts explosively through my head, I'm also of course trying not to react in any way that might make this nightmarish question get worse. Lids must be kept upon.
"No, I shouldn't think so. Why do you ask?"
"I'm going to leave Bunbun at home."
And that's all she says. I'm left to stew, disturbed.
"See you on Monday night!" I say cheerily, tucking myself up on the sofa. C still doesn't usually sleep through. Movement in our bedroom triggers screaming, as though we're raising a faulty burglar alarm. Because I'm getting up early in the morning to fly the UK, I'm kipping on the couch so that I won't be leaving V with an angry baby.
Except that of course I am. For three days. So I can gallivant around Brighton and Milton Keynes, working and playing and catching up with friends for a few days.
That's not the part that makes me feel like a bad parent, the leaving for a few days for mostly frivolous reasons. (And work! I am going to work too! A film job!) The part that makes me seethe with guilt is the part where I'm looking forward to it so goddam much it hurts. Two nights where I might get a full night's sleep. Three days where I won't have to pretend to be Anna from Frozen and do the awful American teen accent that F insists on me attempting.
One precious precious weekend away from my family, and I'm so happy I could just poop. What a wretched louse.
C wants to walk. C can actually walk, she's got all the relevant tools for the job. Strength, balance, coordination. Feet. It's just that it's much easier to do if there's a parent holding your hands.
In the spirit of tough parenting, I have plonked her in the middle of the living room floor, surrounded by her favourite toys and as many soft edges as I can create with throw rugs and pillows, and left her there. I'm trying to block out the caterwauling she's doing, shrill little screams that quickly turn to furious sobs. I'm hoping against hope that she's going to get impatient and just get up, pull herself up on a table edge and get to it. I know she can.
Part of this is because I have to work, trying to finish a redraft of some medical writing stuff that needs to be done by tomorrow morning. No more than two meters away, C roars her fury at me.
The spirit of tough parenting is a stupid spirit, I decide. And I can do the writing by staying up late tonight. Save draft, get up, coo benignly - stop dead, because the cartoon about animatronic aeroplanes that she likes has just come on and now she's perfectly fine.
Is it bad to deliberately neglect her (okay, not neglect, that's daft to claim - I'm right next to her, and if anything was actually wrong I'd be falling over myself to put it right) in order to 'help' her to improve her motor skills? Is it bad to try and work when I'm supposed to be taking care of her? On a scale of bad to bad, where exactly do I lie in all this?
"What are you doing, F?"
Mealtimes with F still take around an hour. You have to retell Frozen between mouthful one and mouthful two, you have to settle a tantrum about, er, well, nothing, you have to sit pleading for about half that time trying to get her to just finish whatever you served now that it's a congealed, fermenting crag of brownish glue. It's agony. I resent having to spend my time like this. Genuine, heartfelt resentment, of the kind that turns into tumours in later life.
I do it on average twice a day without the slightest hesitation because, well, I guess I just like tumours or something.
Today, F iseating having spaghetti bol. She's got a great big mouthful of it, most of which is still dangling. Swinging her head from side to side in slow, mournful sweeps, she's lashing her plate with the pasta and groaning fiercely. Why did I think I could raise children? She's three and a half, surely she should be able to eat normally by now?
"F! Come on! What do you think you're doing!" I snap, close to a tantrum myself after fifty minutes of this.
"I'm being Cthulhu," she explains patiently, almost a little hurt, and points to the rest of the food with her fork. "I'm devouring all these people."
Okay, I'll let us both off for now.
-
"We're taking C to the doctor today, F, she has to have some injections. You'll get to play in the waiting room if you like."
"Can Bunbun come?"
"Yes, if you want."
"Will the doctor kill Bunbun and cut holes in her?"
What? What the? Will the who do what and cut which in the why, now? Where has that come from? What desperate horror have I inadvertently exposed my daughter to, that she thinks the doctor is going to prosect her rabbit?
F has asked this in the most deadpan, apparently unconcerned way imaginable, along the lines of 'can I have ice cream on the way home'. As flabber ghasts explosively through my head, I'm also of course trying not to react in any way that might make this nightmarish question get worse. Lids must be kept upon.
"No, I shouldn't think so. Why do you ask?"
"I'm going to leave Bunbun at home."
And that's all she says. I'm left to stew, disturbed.
-
"See you on Monday night!" I say cheerily, tucking myself up on the sofa. C still doesn't usually sleep through. Movement in our bedroom triggers screaming, as though we're raising a faulty burglar alarm. Because I'm getting up early in the morning to fly the UK, I'm kipping on the couch so that I won't be leaving V with an angry baby.
Except that of course I am. For three days. So I can gallivant around Brighton and Milton Keynes, working and playing and catching up with friends for a few days.
That's not the part that makes me feel like a bad parent, the leaving for a few days for mostly frivolous reasons. (And work! I am going to work too! A film job!) The part that makes me seethe with guilt is the part where I'm looking forward to it so goddam much it hurts. Two nights where I might get a full night's sleep. Three days where I won't have to pretend to be Anna from Frozen and do the awful American teen accent that F insists on me attempting.
One precious precious weekend away from my family, and I'm so happy I could just poop. What a wretched louse.
-
C wants to walk. C can actually walk, she's got all the relevant tools for the job. Strength, balance, coordination. Feet. It's just that it's much easier to do if there's a parent holding your hands.
In the spirit of tough parenting, I have plonked her in the middle of the living room floor, surrounded by her favourite toys and as many soft edges as I can create with throw rugs and pillows, and left her there. I'm trying to block out the caterwauling she's doing, shrill little screams that quickly turn to furious sobs. I'm hoping against hope that she's going to get impatient and just get up, pull herself up on a table edge and get to it. I know she can.
Part of this is because I have to work, trying to finish a redraft of some medical writing stuff that needs to be done by tomorrow morning. No more than two meters away, C roars her fury at me.
The spirit of tough parenting is a stupid spirit, I decide. And I can do the writing by staying up late tonight. Save draft, get up, coo benignly - stop dead, because the cartoon about animatronic aeroplanes that she likes has just come on and now she's perfectly fine.
Is it bad to deliberately neglect her (okay, not neglect, that's daft to claim - I'm right next to her, and if anything was actually wrong I'd be falling over myself to put it right) in order to 'help' her to improve her motor skills? Is it bad to try and work when I'm supposed to be taking care of her? On a scale of bad to bad, where exactly do I lie in all this?
-
"What are you doing, F?"
Mealtimes with F still take around an hour. You have to retell Frozen between mouthful one and mouthful two, you have to settle a tantrum about, er, well, nothing, you have to sit pleading for about half that time trying to get her to just finish whatever you served now that it's a congealed, fermenting crag of brownish glue. It's agony. I resent having to spend my time like this. Genuine, heartfelt resentment, of the kind that turns into tumours in later life.
I do it on average twice a day without the slightest hesitation because, well, I guess I just like tumours or something.
Today, F is
"F! Come on! What do you think you're doing!" I snap, close to a tantrum myself after fifty minutes of this.
"I'm being Cthulhu," she explains patiently, almost a little hurt, and points to the rest of the food with her fork. "I'm devouring all these people."
Okay, I'll let us both off for now.
Saturday, April 30, 2016
Abandonment Issues
Exhaustion kicks in. For two days, I am fairly useless unless the task in hand is sleeping. It never is. Nobody ever says "Daddy, can you sleep for ten hours?" The pillows never require test driving, the duvets are all broken in.
C is starting to sleep more consistently, merely waking for a nine 'o clock and five in the goddamn morning o' clock feed. It helps that she's getting mobile, dragging herself round on the floor. Or our bed, usually using our eyelids as handholds. This reminds me, I must trim her nails. My face looks like I've been washing it with a puma.
V is working a show schedule for most of the week, which means she has some mornings off. So I get to crash heavily out on the sofa for one of them, after doing the breakfast routines and dropping F off at playgroup.
God, it's bliss. I haven't had bonus sleep for months. Grunting and shambling is all I'm good for at the moment, everything seems too much. V shakes me awake to say she's going out to the spa after a while, and we'll meet up and do lunch later. I think that's what she says, anyway. It may equally be a dream about how my acting has won a Pulitzer during the Battle of the Somme, I'm not entirely clear.
My phone wakes me - something confusing about a voice job next week. The house is too quiet. V and C are out, I potter about fretting whether I understood the time and date in the phonecall correctly and trying to clear my fluffy head. Once I'm somewhere round the 80% functional mark, I head out to find the family.
V is at the local spa, signing up for a card. "Where's C?" she asks me as I come in.
"I thought you had her?" I say.
We look at each other for a second or two, then I sprint home in a mad panic.
Yes, I left the baby at home. Some of V's message didn't quite get through to me, namely the part where she told me C was asleep in her cot. The empty pram by the door didn't register.
She's fine, of course, happily lying in her cot enjoying the peace. I'm not. I'm rattled. All my parenting skills are immediately called into question. If something as basic as remembering to bring all the family along is beyond me at the moment, what else might I screw up? Correct sealing of nappies? Raw chicken for dinner? Instilling a functional sense of moral and spiritual responsibility that will see them through the nightmarish complexity of today's neoliberalist dystopia?
More sleep would probably help. Luckily, I'm too busy stressing about how tired I am, so I can't have any.
C is starting to sleep more consistently, merely waking for a nine 'o clock and five in the goddamn morning o' clock feed. It helps that she's getting mobile, dragging herself round on the floor. Or our bed, usually using our eyelids as handholds. This reminds me, I must trim her nails. My face looks like I've been washing it with a puma.
V is working a show schedule for most of the week, which means she has some mornings off. So I get to crash heavily out on the sofa for one of them, after doing the breakfast routines and dropping F off at playgroup.
God, it's bliss. I haven't had bonus sleep for months. Grunting and shambling is all I'm good for at the moment, everything seems too much. V shakes me awake to say she's going out to the spa after a while, and we'll meet up and do lunch later. I think that's what she says, anyway. It may equally be a dream about how my acting has won a Pulitzer during the Battle of the Somme, I'm not entirely clear.
My phone wakes me - something confusing about a voice job next week. The house is too quiet. V and C are out, I potter about fretting whether I understood the time and date in the phonecall correctly and trying to clear my fluffy head. Once I'm somewhere round the 80% functional mark, I head out to find the family.
V is at the local spa, signing up for a card. "Where's C?" she asks me as I come in.
"I thought you had her?" I say.
We look at each other for a second or two, then I sprint home in a mad panic.
Yes, I left the baby at home. Some of V's message didn't quite get through to me, namely the part where she told me C was asleep in her cot. The empty pram by the door didn't register.
She's fine, of course, happily lying in her cot enjoying the peace. I'm not. I'm rattled. All my parenting skills are immediately called into question. If something as basic as remembering to bring all the family along is beyond me at the moment, what else might I screw up? Correct sealing of nappies? Raw chicken for dinner? Instilling a functional sense of moral and spiritual responsibility that will see them through the nightmarish complexity of today's neoliberalist dystopia?
More sleep would probably help. Luckily, I'm too busy stressing about how tired I am, so I can't have any.
Thursday, March 31, 2016
Time Marches On
Right, if everyone in the house could just stop being sick for fifteen seconds?
Okay, thanks. Now I can write something.
This blog is over three years old now (like F), and it's slowed down quite a lot lately. Not that I feel an obligation to write x many posts a month or anything, actually I only write if I feel I've got something interesting or funny to write about. Wafting about soppy scenes from my children's lives is mostly of interest to me and my immediately family, after all. If I find the cutesy poos my kids do delightful even when dripping brownly off my chin, there's only a limited chance the rest of the world will find it so.
If I'm keen to avoid this merely being a 'kids do the damnest things!' type blog, nor do I want it to be the opposite, the 'actually parenting is really tough and bleak' sort of thing. It is, but it isn't - yes it's tough, obviously, but I wouldn't enjoy whining about it in a blog. Moaning solves nothing, as a rule, unless it's the kind of moaning which entertains an audience in some way.
So I've not really had much to write about for a while. We've all been either sick with flu, or exhausted with sleepless nights, or the absence of either of those states, too asleep to do anything that inspired me for some time. It's funny in a kind of 'ha ha, look at the enfeebled man failing to cope' sort of a way, but I reckon I've coped well enough that it's not really entertaining enough to share. Like slapstick, but with the custard pies replaced with something sensible and boring. Crispbread, maybe.
C has teeth now, her latest excuse for not sleeping past 0300. She won't go to sleep unless cradled in someone's arms, and unless she can also jam her fingers into the eye sockets of that same person. Videogame violence pervades our world these days. Although she has never seen or played it, I would swear C is trying to enact some kind of Mortal Kombat finishing move on me most nights.
Elsewhere F has heard the Twits for the first time. Boy, that Roald Dahl hated beards and beard-wearers! After chapter one, all about how repugnant we are, F gave me a very hard look. "It's okay, I wash mine all the time," I told her. This is a lie. I don't have generally find time to wash it, or myself, more than about once a week at present. Nor have I had a haircut in six months. I'm a case study in why Hipsters groom so assiduously, I look like two hedges colliding inside an oil tanker. F was relieved (disappointed?) that there weren't sardine tails rounds the edges of my nostrils, at least.
And F and C together, well, they're both learning about jealousy. If one sits on my knee, both must. If C has a new toy, F must bore of it before she may play with it. If F doesn't eat her food quickly, C will attempt to annex it. I, too, am learning of jealousy in this last context, leftover disposal is my chief family role. There's no room for extra labradors in this house.
So business as usual, really, even if I haven't spoken much of it lately. We're all well and thriving. Spring is finally back in Sweden, and lying exhausted in the sand of the local playparks seems like a good place to have washed up after the stormy winter. Roll on April, fools.
Okay, thanks. Now I can write something.
This blog is over three years old now (like F), and it's slowed down quite a lot lately. Not that I feel an obligation to write x many posts a month or anything, actually I only write if I feel I've got something interesting or funny to write about. Wafting about soppy scenes from my children's lives is mostly of interest to me and my immediately family, after all. If I find the cutesy poos my kids do delightful even when dripping brownly off my chin, there's only a limited chance the rest of the world will find it so.
If I'm keen to avoid this merely being a 'kids do the damnest things!' type blog, nor do I want it to be the opposite, the 'actually parenting is really tough and bleak' sort of thing. It is, but it isn't - yes it's tough, obviously, but I wouldn't enjoy whining about it in a blog. Moaning solves nothing, as a rule, unless it's the kind of moaning which entertains an audience in some way.
So I've not really had much to write about for a while. We've all been either sick with flu, or exhausted with sleepless nights, or the absence of either of those states, too asleep to do anything that inspired me for some time. It's funny in a kind of 'ha ha, look at the enfeebled man failing to cope' sort of a way, but I reckon I've coped well enough that it's not really entertaining enough to share. Like slapstick, but with the custard pies replaced with something sensible and boring. Crispbread, maybe.
C has teeth now, her latest excuse for not sleeping past 0300. She won't go to sleep unless cradled in someone's arms, and unless she can also jam her fingers into the eye sockets of that same person. Videogame violence pervades our world these days. Although she has never seen or played it, I would swear C is trying to enact some kind of Mortal Kombat finishing move on me most nights.
Elsewhere F has heard the Twits for the first time. Boy, that Roald Dahl hated beards and beard-wearers! After chapter one, all about how repugnant we are, F gave me a very hard look. "It's okay, I wash mine all the time," I told her. This is a lie. I don't have generally find time to wash it, or myself, more than about once a week at present. Nor have I had a haircut in six months. I'm a case study in why Hipsters groom so assiduously, I look like two hedges colliding inside an oil tanker. F was relieved (disappointed?) that there weren't sardine tails rounds the edges of my nostrils, at least.
And F and C together, well, they're both learning about jealousy. If one sits on my knee, both must. If C has a new toy, F must bore of it before she may play with it. If F doesn't eat her food quickly, C will attempt to annex it. I, too, am learning of jealousy in this last context, leftover disposal is my chief family role. There's no room for extra labradors in this house.
So business as usual, really, even if I haven't spoken much of it lately. We're all well and thriving. Spring is finally back in Sweden, and lying exhausted in the sand of the local playparks seems like a good place to have washed up after the stormy winter. Roll on April, fools.
Sunday, February 28, 2016
Achievements
Last post, I was complaining about what a shitstorm January had been and how I wasn't going to mention it again. Come on home, January, all is forgiven. I've rewritten my will, you're going to get the farm.
V went back to work this month, so I've been home on paternity leave. What am I taking paternity leave from? Er, not a lot, fair point. Mostly my senses, I think. One kid good, two kids better, as Orwell put it. I don't think he made it to four. Nor will I.
This month's statistics just in:
Nights of Unbroken Sleep: 0
Times I Fully Hoovered the Entire Flat: 2
Fishfingers Cooked: 26
Fishfingers Eaten: 17
Days Spent Convincing F to Finish her Meals Without a Fight: 19
Hours Spent Ladelling Children Into and Out of Clothes: 372
Diets Begun: 1
Diets Broken: 0
Jobs Obtained: 2 (flexible hours and long term contract, wheee! I'm earning again! Plus a short film in Stockholm)
Babies Taken to Work With Me: 1
Recording Jobs Incomplete due to Technical Staff Flirting with Babies: 1
Children's TV Series Theme Tunes Stuck in Mind: 3 (Raa Raa the Noisy Lion, Lassie, Pelle Kanin)
Pictures of Daddy Drawn in Crayon: 4
Years Spent Cleaning the Kitchen Surfaces: 14
Seconds Kitchen Surfaces Remained Clean: 8
Nights Out Drinking with Friends: 3
Nights In Drinking with Wife: 1
Liverpool: 3 West Bromwich: 0
Average Temperature of Gothenburg in Celcius: 1
Average Time Spent Crawling on Floor/Day: 3 Hours
Average Pairs of Jeans Ruined by Floorcrawling/Day: 9
Average Number of Personal Artistic Projects Postponed Due to Tantrums, Colds or Fatigue: 3/day
Average Mental Age of Parents: 4, accounting for exhaustion
Nappies Changed: 300
V went back to work this month, so I've been home on paternity leave. What am I taking paternity leave from? Er, not a lot, fair point. Mostly my senses, I think. One kid good, two kids better, as Orwell put it. I don't think he made it to four. Nor will I.
This month's statistics just in:
Nights of Unbroken Sleep: 0
Times I Fully Hoovered the Entire Flat: 2
Fishfingers Cooked: 26
Fishfingers Eaten: 17
Days Spent Convincing F to Finish her Meals Without a Fight: 19
Hours Spent Ladelling Children Into and Out of Clothes: 372
Diets Begun: 1
Diets Broken: 0
Jobs Obtained: 2 (flexible hours and long term contract, wheee! I'm earning again! Plus a short film in Stockholm)
Babies Taken to Work With Me: 1
Recording Jobs Incomplete due to Technical Staff Flirting with Babies: 1
Children's TV Series Theme Tunes Stuck in Mind: 3 (Raa Raa the Noisy Lion, Lassie, Pelle Kanin)
Pictures of Daddy Drawn in Crayon: 4
Years Spent Cleaning the Kitchen Surfaces: 14
Seconds Kitchen Surfaces Remained Clean: 8
Nights Out Drinking with Friends: 3
Nights In Drinking with Wife: 1
Liverpool: 3 West Bromwich: 0
Average Temperature of Gothenburg in Celcius: 1
Average Time Spent Crawling on Floor/Day: 3 Hours
Average Pairs of Jeans Ruined by Floorcrawling/Day: 9
Average Number of Personal Artistic Projects Postponed Due to Tantrums, Colds or Fatigue: 3/day
Average Mental Age of Parents: 4, accounting for exhaustion
Nappies Changed: 300
Monday, February 1, 2016
Happy New Year
Let's not talk about January. The deaths of numerous beloved famous people (and Terry Wogan) was just the tip of the iceberg. Not that it wasn't without some bright moments...
"Look, F! What's this?"
This is a bright red sled with a steering column and slick black leather-effect seat big enough for two. It's been placed strategically outside F's door, so that it will be the first thing she sees when she wakes up from her afternoon snooze. There's about six inches of snow outside, which means that V has spent about six hours hunting this down. Everyone else in Gothenburg has been buying them too, and it's been quite a trek to get it.
F looks at it with wide eyes.
"No!" she says, the eye widener revealed as horror. "No! I wanted one with wheels one!"
Much screaming ensues. Quite what she means by a wheeled sled (a snowcat?) remains mysterious, but buying one without is a hideous crime committed only by the worst parents.
C flips over onto her stomach, then grins enormously up at me.
"It's a Tristan!" says F. Her third birthday has been and gone. Tacked onto the rear of Christmas (of which we had second helpings once we got back to Sweden), she's been getting presents solidly for about a month. As the sled incident proved, this has made her rather spoilt.
On her birthday proper (breakfast in bed, new play-doh, duplo abundant) and on her birthday party (trainset from her Swedish family, awkwardness when she opened the 'don't feel left out' presents for all the cousins and claimed them as her own, Tinkerbell cake), she was swift to remind us of her wish list.
"I want to have a train and a Tristan, Daddy and Mummy."
No Tristan dolls exist, further proof of how sexist toyshops and toy makers are. Someone I know on Facebook was angrily decrying the lack of female Force Awakens action toys - the lead protagonist is a woman, but the shops here in Sweden aren't going to stock any of the merch because 'girls won't buy it'. Tristan is a male character, one of about three, in a predominantly little-girlsy franchise. There were two dolls made, several years ago, and both are out of production.
About eighty quid later, we found something that could be shipped from the States somewhere. It arrived late, but was worth it for F's delight. It lasted until she discovered the dandelion airship toy it came with was top heavy and wouldn't stand up easily, about five minutes.
"Augh! It's not working!" she screamed, the 'augh' at the beginning being her equivalent of 'fucking hell' in terms of vehemence and deployment.
C screams penetratingly. It is six a.m. Sometimes three a.m., usually most of the hours from seven until nine in the evening. It is an angry, hurtful noise. It can only be stopped by allowing her to clutch your face like a cuddly toy, or occasionally by feeding her whether it's feeding time or not. Her cot is just at the right height to give you back ache after about two minutes of reassuring contact.
She tries to walk whenever you hold her hands, and she wants to let go and do it by herself. F never did that, she was content to be led around. Not C, she wants to get into F's room and try out all the tiny choke hazards in there. Now. Or she'll scream.
She likes eating. She sulks if she doesn't get food while we're eating, so either V or I has to let our food go cold as we feed her first. I can't play with F without C issuing piercing demands to join in. Luckily, the two of them clearly love each other and love playing together. Sometimes I can let them get on with it from a small distance, and rest my knotted back for a while.
Now it is eight a.m.. I've been up for two hours already, and am lying on my face on the sofa, trying desperately to stay awake. F is hitting me in the face with a purple balloon and telling me to read her Tinkerbell and the Great Fairy Rescue. C is in her baby walker, two metres away, and screaming because she wants to go back to bed. I wish I could do that. I wish it would work. I get up, tuck C up, slump on the sofa and try to oblige F.
Twenty minutes later, F pries my eyes open again.
"Say thank-you, Daddy," she says, "because I let you rest."
It's the third time down the slope on the sled, and F is still screaming furiously.
We get to the bottom, and she turns to me. "I wasn't screaming because I was scared!" she tells me amazedly. "I was screaming because I was happy!"
...it's just that most of last month was eaten up by tantrums, illness, darkness, sleet and the dull, growing acceptance that I'd eaten far too much for about a month and already couldn't fit into my new shirt properly. Diets, potty training, early mornings, broken sleep, an oppressive winter sky, horrible news about the right-wing violence against immigrants in Sweden, the deaths of friends - January was a grim month. I'm no rush for another.
So I'm taking it off the record. Happy New Year! I hope you enjoy 2016. Hard to accept I've been writing this blog for three years now. V's back to work tomorrow and I'm back to being a Lattepappa. Perhaps this time I'll actually score some lattes.
-
"Look, F! What's this?"
This is a bright red sled with a steering column and slick black leather-effect seat big enough for two. It's been placed strategically outside F's door, so that it will be the first thing she sees when she wakes up from her afternoon snooze. There's about six inches of snow outside, which means that V has spent about six hours hunting this down. Everyone else in Gothenburg has been buying them too, and it's been quite a trek to get it.
F looks at it with wide eyes.
"No!" she says, the eye widener revealed as horror. "No! I wanted one with wheels one!"
Much screaming ensues. Quite what she means by a wheeled sled (a snowcat?) remains mysterious, but buying one without is a hideous crime committed only by the worst parents.
-
C flips over onto her stomach, then grins enormously up at me.
-
"It's a Tristan!" says F. Her third birthday has been and gone. Tacked onto the rear of Christmas (of which we had second helpings once we got back to Sweden), she's been getting presents solidly for about a month. As the sled incident proved, this has made her rather spoilt.
On her birthday proper (breakfast in bed, new play-doh, duplo abundant) and on her birthday party (trainset from her Swedish family, awkwardness when she opened the 'don't feel left out' presents for all the cousins and claimed them as her own, Tinkerbell cake), she was swift to remind us of her wish list.
"I want to have a train and a Tristan, Daddy and Mummy."
No Tristan dolls exist, further proof of how sexist toyshops and toy makers are. Someone I know on Facebook was angrily decrying the lack of female Force Awakens action toys - the lead protagonist is a woman, but the shops here in Sweden aren't going to stock any of the merch because 'girls won't buy it'. Tristan is a male character, one of about three, in a predominantly little-girlsy franchise. There were two dolls made, several years ago, and both are out of production.
A Short Poem About Parental Anxiety Just Before A Birthday
Hooray
For eBay.
About eighty quid later, we found something that could be shipped from the States somewhere. It arrived late, but was worth it for F's delight. It lasted until she discovered the dandelion airship toy it came with was top heavy and wouldn't stand up easily, about five minutes.
"Augh! It's not working!" she screamed, the 'augh' at the beginning being her equivalent of 'fucking hell' in terms of vehemence and deployment.
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C screams penetratingly. It is six a.m. Sometimes three a.m., usually most of the hours from seven until nine in the evening. It is an angry, hurtful noise. It can only be stopped by allowing her to clutch your face like a cuddly toy, or occasionally by feeding her whether it's feeding time or not. Her cot is just at the right height to give you back ache after about two minutes of reassuring contact.
She tries to walk whenever you hold her hands, and she wants to let go and do it by herself. F never did that, she was content to be led around. Not C, she wants to get into F's room and try out all the tiny choke hazards in there. Now. Or she'll scream.
She likes eating. She sulks if she doesn't get food while we're eating, so either V or I has to let our food go cold as we feed her first. I can't play with F without C issuing piercing demands to join in. Luckily, the two of them clearly love each other and love playing together. Sometimes I can let them get on with it from a small distance, and rest my knotted back for a while.
Now it is eight a.m.. I've been up for two hours already, and am lying on my face on the sofa, trying desperately to stay awake. F is hitting me in the face with a purple balloon and telling me to read her Tinkerbell and the Great Fairy Rescue. C is in her baby walker, two metres away, and screaming because she wants to go back to bed. I wish I could do that. I wish it would work. I get up, tuck C up, slump on the sofa and try to oblige F.
Twenty minutes later, F pries my eyes open again.
"Say thank-you, Daddy," she says, "because I let you rest."
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We get to the bottom, and she turns to me. "I wasn't screaming because I was scared!" she tells me amazedly. "I was screaming because I was happy!"
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...it's just that most of last month was eaten up by tantrums, illness, darkness, sleet and the dull, growing acceptance that I'd eaten far too much for about a month and already couldn't fit into my new shirt properly. Diets, potty training, early mornings, broken sleep, an oppressive winter sky, horrible news about the right-wing violence against immigrants in Sweden, the deaths of friends - January was a grim month. I'm no rush for another.
So I'm taking it off the record. Happy New Year! I hope you enjoy 2016. Hard to accept I've been writing this blog for three years now. V's back to work tomorrow and I'm back to being a Lattepappa. Perhaps this time I'll actually score some lattes.
Friday, January 1, 2016
Resolve
On completing her morning feed, C pukes an entire bottle up milk back up along the left hand side of my lower torso. Then she smacks her lips, turns to the right and repeats this performance, somehow finding a second entire bottle of milk in the recesses of her stomach. As I am half-sitting, half-lying in bed, this leaves a sort of Spewrin Shroud imprint of my crotch and thighs on the bedsheets, replicated entirely in milky sick.
V is also sick, stricken with a hacking cough that wakes her every other half hour (C, who has the same cough, fills in on the hour). F had it, and is now boisterously better, so now it's my turn too. I have, if I follow established patterns, about a week of nasty sore throat, headaches, fevers and generally crappiness to look forward on. Being vomited on does nothing to lift my spirits.
Being a sick parent is rubbish. The very worst. V and I grouse at each other. It's not that you don't feel sorry for your partner, but the news that they need a couple of hours to sleep means you're going to be handling the rest of the household solo. What you're thinking is "what bad luck, poor you, go and sleep, you've earned it after all your hard work and of course I'll look after everyone while you rest."
What you say is "Oh. Right. I'll look after the kids, then," and then go and sulk in a corner of the kitchen, having unreasonable conversations with yourself about how really it's your turn to have a morning off and don't they appreciate everything you've already done and what the hell? Who said you could be ill anyway, we didn't discuss that!
It was my turn to malinger today, creeping back to bed after breakfast. "Ha, welcome to my world," V said darkly. C's upchucking had reduced the available dry space in our bed to a narrow strip down one side, which I gratefully balanced on for a couple of hours. Then we took it turns to try and get C to eat something, adding juice or milk to her with the nervous air of two people playing late-game Jenga.
Happy New Year. Obviously I am filled with revitalised cheer and a spirit of optimism, although if anyone else wakes my children up with fireworks, I shall have words.
V is also sick, stricken with a hacking cough that wakes her every other half hour (C, who has the same cough, fills in on the hour). F had it, and is now boisterously better, so now it's my turn too. I have, if I follow established patterns, about a week of nasty sore throat, headaches, fevers and generally crappiness to look forward on. Being vomited on does nothing to lift my spirits.
Being a sick parent is rubbish. The very worst. V and I grouse at each other. It's not that you don't feel sorry for your partner, but the news that they need a couple of hours to sleep means you're going to be handling the rest of the household solo. What you're thinking is "what bad luck, poor you, go and sleep, you've earned it after all your hard work and of course I'll look after everyone while you rest."
What you say is "Oh. Right. I'll look after the kids, then," and then go and sulk in a corner of the kitchen, having unreasonable conversations with yourself about how really it's your turn to have a morning off and don't they appreciate everything you've already done and what the hell? Who said you could be ill anyway, we didn't discuss that!
It was my turn to malinger today, creeping back to bed after breakfast. "Ha, welcome to my world," V said darkly. C's upchucking had reduced the available dry space in our bed to a narrow strip down one side, which I gratefully balanced on for a couple of hours. Then we took it turns to try and get C to eat something, adding juice or milk to her with the nervous air of two people playing late-game Jenga.
Happy New Year. Obviously I am filled with revitalised cheer and a spirit of optimism, although if anyone else wakes my children up with fireworks, I shall have words.
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