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.
Saturday, April 30, 2016
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.
-
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."
-
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.
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.
Tuesday, December 29, 2015
Panacea
Is there anything Christmas can't cure? Apart from indigestion, obviously. We went to Birmingham for Christmas to stay with my sister. Writing down the whole thing as one long best bit would be perfectly acceptable, I think. Much kinder to the attention spans of both audience and writer to do snippets.
"My like flying," F tells me as we cruise from Munich towards Birmingham. She's by a window to my right, gazing adoringly at the face of Tristan from Tinkerbell on the iPad, eating M&Ms from a box with a light-up fan on top of it. It's about half-past ten at night, later than she's been up in the last year, and she shows no sign of flagging.
To my left, V has C buckled to her lap. C is fast asleep. She has screamed herself into this state over the first half of the flight, and is now comfortable. Only if V holds her still-whiplashed spine at an awkward angle, mind you, which also precludes V reaching any of the (vile) airline food we've been served.
Appropriately, I'm somewhere in the middle of their two states. Comfortable but not too comfortable, unable to read or relax as I usually might when travelling, not too tired but not too perky either. Also between countries.
I get reverse culture shock. There's a strong urge to run in to Aldi and ask for things in Swedish.
- Kan jag få lite Marmite, as if that might get me anything other than odd looks and odder spread.
"Uncle Poo Poo!" cousin S screams at me. I feign hurt shock, and she howls with laughter.
"Uncle Poo Poo!" F screams at me as well, laughing even before I react.
"I'm your daddy, not your uncle," I tell her sternly.
"Daddy Poo Poo!" both girls scream together. Then they drape blankets over their heads and pretend to be spooks until I go into cardiac arrest and have to be revived. This is done by the two of them jumping up and down on my chest, in the time-honoured manner.
The Disney Store, Birmingham's Bullring shopping centre, early Christmas Eve. A bored shop assistant twirls a blue lightsaber and tries to avoid having to interact with any children. Hostile, hunched parents claw at piles of Big Hero Six figurines with sullen, frantic looks.
"Daddy! Look at this!" shouts F, who has found a Tinkerbell dressing gown. Or plate set. Or cuddly doll - I forget what it was exactly. Any sense of wonder is instantly banished by the news that mummy has bought what she came for, and we have a jolly good sulk for the next forty minutes.
Which is good, because we all get lost in the Bullring. V isn't sure of the way back to the bus stop, or not sure enough of it to prevent us all going in to the train station to ask at the info desk. There's a good pack of us, V, F, C, me, Farmor, Uncle P and cousins S and D. Riding on a double decker bus just to get here was the big draw, and that's been a big success.
The thrill starts to wear thin as we trek round and round Birmingham International, being sent in contradictory directions by various helpdesks and then by some joker in the street so determined to help he hangs up an incoming phonecall half way through the incomprehensible preamble to his actual attempt to send us in the right way. By the time we get there (thanks, Google maps), C is cranky and over-hungry, and only the application of Millie's Cookies stops F going fully postal.
Everyone has a long nap when we get home. Except the grown-ups, of course, there's too much wrapping and cooking and eating and catching up and waking children up from naps again to be done.
"That is where Tristan lives! And that one is Tinkerbell's house!" F tells me. The homes in question are a pair of treestumps in the woods near Auntie R's house. We knock on them, but because it's three o' clock in the afternoon and the moon is up, F explains to me that the fairies must be asleep.
"We'll have to call again tomorrow when it's early," I tell her. "Come on, let's go home!"
Her face falls. "My not want to go home! My want to stay here!"
"I mean home to Auntie R's house," I tell her, and she lights up again, trots along happily for about three metres, then tells me her feet are tired and she's forgotten how to walk and can she have a piggy back.
0300. F shunts me over the edge of the bed with both feet, using her mother as a bracing point. I manage to push myself back in by pushing off the inflatable Peppa Pig bed that F was loaned on arrival. F shunned it on the grounds that she's nearly three and can still throw incomprehensible tantrums until her wishes are acceded to. On the other side of the bed, C wakes up and shouts "Hi!" at V.
It's Christmas Eve. Nobody gets to sleep. F attempted to get me to go to bed when I tucked her in earlier in the evening on the grounds that Santa wouldn't bring me presents if I wasn't asleep. I hope that's not true, or I'm not getting anything off tonight's meagre slumber.
C gets to play with Cousin H, who is about six months older than her and has just learned to walk.
"Dah?" says Cousin H, asking permission to poke C on the nose.
"Go on then," I tell her. "Gently."
Uncle M and I watch as the two tiny girls stroke each other's faces and babble at each other. C is thriving in an atmosphere of dozens of happy relatives, more desperate than ever to start walking and talking. Cousin H is clearly very interested in playing with such a small and manageable person,
We must have been like this as kids, at some point, I think, looking at my siblings P, T and R. Too small to know exactly what we were doing, but still forging relationships that last a lifetime. I'm quite tempted to go and poke their noses too.
F opens her second present.
There is a three-fold process that plays out over her face. First, the realisation that this is a big doll, of the kind she loves playing babies with. Then that it is a Tinkerbell doll, and then that it is her Tinkerbell doll. Surprise, delight and pride chase after each other. Then she flings herself full-length on V and shouts "Thank you mummy!" before ignoring almost everything else other than the new Tink for the next two hours.
When it comes to bedtime, I gently explain to F that in five minutes, it's time to go to bed. I'm reluctant, because she's probably going to have an explosive tantrum, especially because she's missed her usual afternoon snooze to watch Frozen with Cousin S.
Instead, she runs to the stairs and starts climbing, so keen to go and sleep she doesn't say goodbye to anyone. I have to bring her back to say proper goodbyes - we're leaving at 0230 in the morning, this is her last look at the assembled cousins and aunties and uncles and grandparents.
Cousins S, D and H get extra big hugs. Everyone else gets a cheery if general wave, and then she's gone, tired but very pleased with herself, carting her Tinkerbell up the stairs in one hand and dragging Bunbun in the other.
The evenings are filled with Christmas games, teams and solo but always competitive. Mastermind, with proper specialist subjects (I get a mere one point on Space Marine Chapters, because I thought I'd chosen Space Marine Chapter Masters and panicked under pressure). Pass the Pud, with angry discussions about rules. Port. Chilli nuts. Stollen. Stupidly brilliant family jokes and rotten puns.
It's exhausting and stressful, but all in the right ways. There is no time to fret about car crashes or get into tired arguments about who didn't pack what in which changing bag or wonder what kind of job I'll be doing next month. It's all just pork crackling and wine glasses and wrapping paper and changing nappies and breaking up childish squabbles and eating the last mints and just being together as a huge, sprawling, happy family.
Bliss.
"Isn't it nice to get home again?" I say, after we stumble in through the door of our flat. Eleven hours of delayed flights, trying to change both girls nappies in an airport toilet in Brussels with twenty minutes before the gate closes, endlessly popping ears and the final discovery that the baggage people didn't think we really wanted our pram at the other end. It really is nice to get home again.
F looks with some pleasure at her forgotten toys and room, then slumps on the sofa.
"No. My want to go back to Birmingland," she says. Well, you can book the flights, then, I decide.
Then we all develop the inevitable compilations of colds and coughs that international travel brings. I know I'm the only one equipped to actually have the genuine article, but the whole family gets so pathetic when we get colds that it really is a pandemic of Manflu. A Bloke Death, if you will.
0530 the following morning.
"Paaba! Hiya! Upp!" C says clearly and distinctly. She's been lying and thinking about this for about fifteen minutes, and the look on her face when I obediently come and pick her up is priceless. It's a toothless grin about a foot wide, accompanied by delighted hand-jiggling.
Good, she can talk.
-
"My like flying," F tells me as we cruise from Munich towards Birmingham. She's by a window to my right, gazing adoringly at the face of Tristan from Tinkerbell on the iPad, eating M&Ms from a box with a light-up fan on top of it. It's about half-past ten at night, later than she's been up in the last year, and she shows no sign of flagging.
To my left, V has C buckled to her lap. C is fast asleep. She has screamed herself into this state over the first half of the flight, and is now comfortable. Only if V holds her still-whiplashed spine at an awkward angle, mind you, which also precludes V reaching any of the (vile) airline food we've been served.
Appropriately, I'm somewhere in the middle of their two states. Comfortable but not too comfortable, unable to read or relax as I usually might when travelling, not too tired but not too perky either. Also between countries.
-
I get reverse culture shock. There's a strong urge to run in to Aldi and ask for things in Swedish.
- Kan jag få lite Marmite, as if that might get me anything other than odd looks and odder spread.
-
"Uncle Poo Poo!" cousin S screams at me. I feign hurt shock, and she howls with laughter.
"Uncle Poo Poo!" F screams at me as well, laughing even before I react.
"I'm your daddy, not your uncle," I tell her sternly.
"Daddy Poo Poo!" both girls scream together. Then they drape blankets over their heads and pretend to be spooks until I go into cardiac arrest and have to be revived. This is done by the two of them jumping up and down on my chest, in the time-honoured manner.
-
The Disney Store, Birmingham's Bullring shopping centre, early Christmas Eve. A bored shop assistant twirls a blue lightsaber and tries to avoid having to interact with any children. Hostile, hunched parents claw at piles of Big Hero Six figurines with sullen, frantic looks.
"Daddy! Look at this!" shouts F, who has found a Tinkerbell dressing gown. Or plate set. Or cuddly doll - I forget what it was exactly. Any sense of wonder is instantly banished by the news that mummy has bought what she came for, and we have a jolly good sulk for the next forty minutes.
Which is good, because we all get lost in the Bullring. V isn't sure of the way back to the bus stop, or not sure enough of it to prevent us all going in to the train station to ask at the info desk. There's a good pack of us, V, F, C, me, Farmor, Uncle P and cousins S and D. Riding on a double decker bus just to get here was the big draw, and that's been a big success.
The thrill starts to wear thin as we trek round and round Birmingham International, being sent in contradictory directions by various helpdesks and then by some joker in the street so determined to help he hangs up an incoming phonecall half way through the incomprehensible preamble to his actual attempt to send us in the right way. By the time we get there (thanks, Google maps), C is cranky and over-hungry, and only the application of Millie's Cookies stops F going fully postal.
Everyone has a long nap when we get home. Except the grown-ups, of course, there's too much wrapping and cooking and eating and catching up and waking children up from naps again to be done.
-
"That is where Tristan lives! And that one is Tinkerbell's house!" F tells me. The homes in question are a pair of treestumps in the woods near Auntie R's house. We knock on them, but because it's three o' clock in the afternoon and the moon is up, F explains to me that the fairies must be asleep.
"We'll have to call again tomorrow when it's early," I tell her. "Come on, let's go home!"
Her face falls. "My not want to go home! My want to stay here!"
"I mean home to Auntie R's house," I tell her, and she lights up again, trots along happily for about three metres, then tells me her feet are tired and she's forgotten how to walk and can she have a piggy back.
-
0300. F shunts me over the edge of the bed with both feet, using her mother as a bracing point. I manage to push myself back in by pushing off the inflatable Peppa Pig bed that F was loaned on arrival. F shunned it on the grounds that she's nearly three and can still throw incomprehensible tantrums until her wishes are acceded to. On the other side of the bed, C wakes up and shouts "Hi!" at V.
It's Christmas Eve. Nobody gets to sleep. F attempted to get me to go to bed when I tucked her in earlier in the evening on the grounds that Santa wouldn't bring me presents if I wasn't asleep. I hope that's not true, or I'm not getting anything off tonight's meagre slumber.
-
C gets to play with Cousin H, who is about six months older than her and has just learned to walk.
"Dah?" says Cousin H, asking permission to poke C on the nose.
"Go on then," I tell her. "Gently."
Uncle M and I watch as the two tiny girls stroke each other's faces and babble at each other. C is thriving in an atmosphere of dozens of happy relatives, more desperate than ever to start walking and talking. Cousin H is clearly very interested in playing with such a small and manageable person,
We must have been like this as kids, at some point, I think, looking at my siblings P, T and R. Too small to know exactly what we were doing, but still forging relationships that last a lifetime. I'm quite tempted to go and poke their noses too.
-
F opens her second present.
There is a three-fold process that plays out over her face. First, the realisation that this is a big doll, of the kind she loves playing babies with. Then that it is a Tinkerbell doll, and then that it is her Tinkerbell doll. Surprise, delight and pride chase after each other. Then she flings herself full-length on V and shouts "Thank you mummy!" before ignoring almost everything else other than the new Tink for the next two hours.
-
Instead, she runs to the stairs and starts climbing, so keen to go and sleep she doesn't say goodbye to anyone. I have to bring her back to say proper goodbyes - we're leaving at 0230 in the morning, this is her last look at the assembled cousins and aunties and uncles and grandparents.
Cousins S, D and H get extra big hugs. Everyone else gets a cheery if general wave, and then she's gone, tired but very pleased with herself, carting her Tinkerbell up the stairs in one hand and dragging Bunbun in the other.
-
The evenings are filled with Christmas games, teams and solo but always competitive. Mastermind, with proper specialist subjects (I get a mere one point on Space Marine Chapters, because I thought I'd chosen Space Marine Chapter Masters and panicked under pressure). Pass the Pud, with angry discussions about rules. Port. Chilli nuts. Stollen. Stupidly brilliant family jokes and rotten puns.
It's exhausting and stressful, but all in the right ways. There is no time to fret about car crashes or get into tired arguments about who didn't pack what in which changing bag or wonder what kind of job I'll be doing next month. It's all just pork crackling and wine glasses and wrapping paper and changing nappies and breaking up childish squabbles and eating the last mints and just being together as a huge, sprawling, happy family.
Bliss.
-
"Isn't it nice to get home again?" I say, after we stumble in through the door of our flat. Eleven hours of delayed flights, trying to change both girls nappies in an airport toilet in Brussels with twenty minutes before the gate closes, endlessly popping ears and the final discovery that the baggage people didn't think we really wanted our pram at the other end. It really is nice to get home again.
F looks with some pleasure at her forgotten toys and room, then slumps on the sofa.
"No. My want to go back to Birmingland," she says. Well, you can book the flights, then, I decide.
Then we all develop the inevitable compilations of colds and coughs that international travel brings. I know I'm the only one equipped to actually have the genuine article, but the whole family gets so pathetic when we get colds that it really is a pandemic of Manflu. A Bloke Death, if you will.
-
"Paaba! Hiya! Upp!" C says clearly and distinctly. She's been lying and thinking about this for about fifteen minutes, and the look on her face when I obediently come and pick her up is priceless. It's a toothless grin about a foot wide, accompanied by delighted hand-jiggling.
Good, she can talk.
Sunday, December 20, 2015
Yule
Christmas looms, unyielding. At six in the morning, I am often woken by F wandering in and asking if we can open the advent calendar door now. C likes the baubles on the tree and swipes at them like a cat if placed near enough. Outside, the streets are full of glowing chevrons, lit-up stars, jangling nets of lights and Gothenburg's traditional windy drizzle. Come January, it'll just be the drizzle.
We are better, as a family, than a fortnight ago. The car crash has receded. Both girls are fine, bar occasional screams in the night. No more than they'd have anyway, I think. V's whiplash is down to an inconvenient pain, worse when she laughs. My thumb can oppose once again, and therefore often does. You get used to doing things one-handed quite often with a baby in the house. Doing it with only one hand was quite the challenge.
Second-hand, I heard the account of the driver of the other car. He was on his way to work, of course, not speeding much by his own reckoning. Because he was in a hurry (his work was important, clearly, although not so much that turning up drunk was going to be an issue), he was indicating to other drivers that they should move aside by flashing full beam headlights at them. And then ramming them if they didn't? It's incredible, that this is his official, sober and collected statement. "I was driving really badly, officer, but it's okay - I was doing it deliberately."
We're going to Birmingham tomorrow, four hours of flights via Munich. C has been fighting our renewed attempts to get her to sleep through the night with an intense vigour. If I shift position by more than 2cm in the bed at 0400, she immediately gasps with delight and says "hi!" in a loud voice, indicating that I should leap to her side, feed her and then play bouncing games for two hours. At 0400, I generally have other ideas. C is not a fan of other ideas, they aren't hers and don't suit.
F is excited about the pending flight. "I love going on planes!" she told me earlier. "Hairclip Tinkerbell is coming with me when we go to Birmingland."
(Hairclip Tinkerbell is exactly what she sounds like, a hairclip featuring a Tinkerbell figurine. Tinkerbell remains foremost in F's hopes and dreams right now, and seeing her playing with a hairclip in lieu of more official ranges of toys has influenced our choice of Christmas presents somewhat. Particularly as it's a hairclip V found lying on the floor outside, brought home and washed.)
Last time we flew, F was just over one year old. We dreaded it so much that the actual event was a halcyon moment entirely free of our expected worries and seen in hindsight as full of clinking cocktail glasses and snappily dressed hilarity, like something from a Cary Grant film.
Tomorrow we have to change in an unfamiliar airport with one child apiece, whilst suffering from some kind of combination cold and nausea bug. We depart at 1900 for a midnight arrival, to maximise the sleep disturbance. I hope C loves going on planes too, for all our sakes.
Thank-you, in passing, for all the good wishes expressed on Facebook and elsewhere, it is much appreciated! Thanks also for continuing to read this blog, and I hope you all have excellent Christmasses. Christmassi? Christmatrix? Yeah, I like that last one, we'll go with that.
We are better, as a family, than a fortnight ago. The car crash has receded. Both girls are fine, bar occasional screams in the night. No more than they'd have anyway, I think. V's whiplash is down to an inconvenient pain, worse when she laughs. My thumb can oppose once again, and therefore often does. You get used to doing things one-handed quite often with a baby in the house. Doing it with only one hand was quite the challenge.
Second-hand, I heard the account of the driver of the other car. He was on his way to work, of course, not speeding much by his own reckoning. Because he was in a hurry (his work was important, clearly, although not so much that turning up drunk was going to be an issue), he was indicating to other drivers that they should move aside by flashing full beam headlights at them. And then ramming them if they didn't? It's incredible, that this is his official, sober and collected statement. "I was driving really badly, officer, but it's okay - I was doing it deliberately."
We're going to Birmingham tomorrow, four hours of flights via Munich. C has been fighting our renewed attempts to get her to sleep through the night with an intense vigour. If I shift position by more than 2cm in the bed at 0400, she immediately gasps with delight and says "hi!" in a loud voice, indicating that I should leap to her side, feed her and then play bouncing games for two hours. At 0400, I generally have other ideas. C is not a fan of other ideas, they aren't hers and don't suit.
F is excited about the pending flight. "I love going on planes!" she told me earlier. "Hairclip Tinkerbell is coming with me when we go to Birmingland."
(Hairclip Tinkerbell is exactly what she sounds like, a hairclip featuring a Tinkerbell figurine. Tinkerbell remains foremost in F's hopes and dreams right now, and seeing her playing with a hairclip in lieu of more official ranges of toys has influenced our choice of Christmas presents somewhat. Particularly as it's a hairclip V found lying on the floor outside, brought home and washed.)
Last time we flew, F was just over one year old. We dreaded it so much that the actual event was a halcyon moment entirely free of our expected worries and seen in hindsight as full of clinking cocktail glasses and snappily dressed hilarity, like something from a Cary Grant film.
Tomorrow we have to change in an unfamiliar airport with one child apiece, whilst suffering from some kind of combination cold and nausea bug. We depart at 1900 for a midnight arrival, to maximise the sleep disturbance. I hope C loves going on planes too, for all our sakes.
Thank-you, in passing, for all the good wishes expressed on Facebook and elsewhere, it is much appreciated! Thanks also for continuing to read this blog, and I hope you all have excellent Christmasses. Christmassi? Christmatrix? Yeah, I like that last one, we'll go with that.
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