A spare room in London? No thank you.

There are some wonderful advantages to living in a small box in North London and not being able to afford to upsize. The main one being that folks tend to not want to stay. This is less so when the only thing you can offer them is the living room floor and a 6am wake up call.

I have always argued that extra bedding and rooms only invites all and sundry to stay over and do so for longer. Heck, I’d get rid of all the surplus bedding if I didn’t think we’d end up with other people’s. Hang on a minute, that happened anyway. We ended up with 3 duvets and 2 sleeping bags at one point for our 2-bed flat with three of us living in it.

Not only would spare rooms encourage more overnight guests but it would possibly mean longer stays from those who already brave the living room floor. I am thinking of two particular Mum-themed guests here who we would risk camping up and claiming squatters rights in our spare room if we blinked for too long.

Alas! That spare room does not exist and the broken shed in the garden doesn’t count. And so, it is to my amazement that we have something of a non-family recurring house guest. I don’t mind so much having a guest once in a while and this one doesn’t tend to get in the way, I am just more surprised that after last time they felt our place was so comfortable a choice of bed.

First of all, you don’t get a bed. Someone (a Mum-related guest) left a blow up air bed here. A double one at that. (This may have been the point where our problems began). Then you don’t get a room. You get the living room where the curtains don’t entirely shut, the dehumidifier blows all night and the door definitely doesn’t shut because all the records are stored in the way. But most importantly, you don’t get to sleep.

You get woken up by the boy at whatever time the sun rises and from then on be warned if you have not vacated the living room. Not even the most dulling hangover can survive a good run of Cbeebies at dawn.

Our recurring guest had something of a monstrous hangover in their last stay and our morning was punctuated by their upchucking of the previous nights lesser digested fluids. So much so that the boy started copying the sounds outside the bathroom door in a loud manner. My son is loud, so very loud, so very early in the morning. He did a wonderful job of making someone’s bad hangover, worse.

And yet, they want to stay (and drink) again. Knowing full well that come the rising of the sun will see an onslaught of maracas, Sarah and Duck and glitter glue.

I resist all attempts to move to a bigger space. If this is our level of overnight guests now, imagine if we had actual space for them to have a comfortable night’s sleep and a lie-in?

The only stressful thing about potty training is other people.

There are certain milestones in a child’s life that have an over abundance of advice available where it is perhaps not necessary. If the online deluge of tips were not enough. Well meaning friends and family like to chime in and tell you how you are going wrong and how you should be doing it (ie the way they did it.) For me, the worst part of child-rearing is the first few months where everyone needs to have their say like you are a complete imbecile incapable of having a single maternal instinct.

From the moment my son arrived I knew EXACTLY what to do and how to do it. I did not need someone telling me because I already had all the tools I needed to get by. I make no bones about the fact I read little, if anything about parenting. Before birth, I did worry but afterwards, it all just kind of fit. I may not have done everything right but I can bet the times I got it wrong was because I felt pressured to follow some advice. It was a constant battle of wills that needed not happen and made the whole experience more stressful than it should have been.

When the first few months had past, it didn’t subside, there was weaning (seriously, that is not stressful, stick food in front of child, stick food in front of self and eat. If they don’t eat, try something else next meal time). Then there was sleeping through. I wanted to scream at everyone who told me that my child should be sleeping through by x-months. My child shouldn’t do anything that is not where he naturally needs to be in his own damn time. Same with walking.

Now there is toilet training.

We are now into day 5. We had a plan, we stuck to it. My mother-in-law did not.  The evidence is below:

This is his toilet training diary. He gets stickers for a pee in the potty, more special treats for a poo. He did a pee in the potty on day 2 when the plan was stuck to. The VERY SIMPLE PLAN. Then, my Mother-In-Law offered to have a couple of days with him. By the end of Sunday morning I was agitated by hearing ‘Sit on the potty and we’ll…’ or ‘Have a sit on the pot’, ‘let’s do this on the pot’ every 5 minutes. Then I was told that he was clearly too young to start because he didn’t want to sit on the potty. No he bloody doesn’t and I don’t blame him.

We said that we were not offering the potty to begin with but just getting him used to wee-ing in pants. If he used it, great. If not, no worries. I know my son, that whole ‘sit them on the potty every 15 minutes’ was never going to work with him.

It got worse. Aside from using my specially saved treats as just normal snacks after I’d spent time not giving him them as an ordinary event, she then told us how she used to train her children by sitting them on the potty at breakfast while they ate. I asked her to please not do this as I do not want the food/toilet events to be in any way connected. Aside from anything else, IT WAS NOT THE PLAN.

So guess what? She sat him on the potty with an ice cream and told us how long he sat there for and did not do anything but eat. We try so hard to not feed our son crap and allow treats to be fruit or things to do. It all goes to bedlam when we’re not supported. Aside from this on Tuesday morning my son decided to eat his toast in the bathroom. Just lovely.

And the greatest Mother-in-Law-ism of the weekend.

Me: “how was football?”

MiL: “oh good but he hasn’t had a wee since we left.”

“oh that’s only 2 hours so he should have one soon, he has only been having around 4 a day”

“That’s not good, he must be dehydrated. He needs more water”

“It means he isn’t peeing as he goes but waiting and if he wanted water he would ask”

(MiL promptly pulls out water bottle and asks again to sit on the pot).

Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate her help. She does not normally go against our wishes however much she disagrees with it. But my poor son had 3 adults telling him 2 different things about having a wee when for the past 2 years he has been doing this quite happily in his pants. Our way is a more organic way, following his lead about what he needs to do, including the timing of the training. It’s stress-free, it’s fun in some parts when I see him picking out his own pants to wear. The joy on his face when he gets to put a sticker on the diary. I don’t really need to know how anyone else has trained their child, because that is not my child.

This weekend we are going to my Mother’s who has less respect for my wishes than anyone else and outwardly does what she wants anyway. I am trying not to put up battle front already but have come up with one big rule of toilet training that she must abide by: only one person can talk to the boy about the toilet and only when he shows signs of needing it. That one person is first and foremost my husband because he gets such a better response for going to the loo.

The proof that we’re right is in the toilet training diary. When I’ve been hanging out with my son (or our childminder who is complicit in the plan), then he does fewer wees and even got a hit today.

—

As a slight aside regarding the food thing. I keep getting told it is cruel to not allow him sweet and cake when everyone around him is eating that. I don’t think I should bring my child up to the values of others but to what I think it right and if that means he doesn’t eat sugary, processed foods then so be it. Other people around us disagree and feel we are doing him a disservice. So to counteract that, today my son sat opposite a child who I look after, both eating their lunch. The other child was saying he was having chocolate and yoghurt and why can’t B have some and asking him if he wants some. My son politely ignore this as he was so happy chowing down falafel, lentils, carrots, cucumbers and broccoli. I’m not saying this to show off, believe me it can be hard to get my son to eat anything some days, but to say that all the hard work fighting off the well-meaning advice givers paid off with a son who is now making the best (as I believe) food choices.

Pants.

It was D-Day for nappies today. The boy’s last nappy fell off in Tesco earlier this evening and I couldn’t be bothered to put another one on. We both agreed that was it – good bye nappies. I raise my cup of earl grey to the stirling job they have done over the past two years of wrapping up the poo and wee.

I estimate that the small collection of cloth nappies has saved me a fair bob along the way. They cost £150 with all the crap you need with them such as bucket, netting and wet bag. I suspect the wet bag is named so because it will get everything else in your bag wet with wee. I gave up and used carrier bags in the end. Taking into account that it took an extra load of wash the once in a while I cared to run them through separately and not with my husband’s sports stuff, I reckon over the two years they have save me around £500. Maybe more.

There were downsides to cloth nappies. Mostly the washing part. They did stink up pretty badly when my son was teething but then so did the disposables; he did seriously strong wee that could have probably cut through metal. Nothing that good old white vinegar didn’t sort out. Is there nothing that white vinegar cannot do?

And now the last of the nappies are sitting in a bucket waiting for one final wash before being resigned to the loft for all eternity. Or until I get around to trading them in or a pigeon decides to nest in them.

We are going for the cold-turkey method of potty training. He ain’t getting those things back so had better learn to poo in the loo fast. Nor am I sitting at home for the next week. Kitchen roll is my new best friend.

I breathe a sigh of relief for the end of the nappies and am slightly envious of the choice of undercrackers my son has now. Seriously, Superman pants?  Yes please.

 

Oh heck, in bother again.

We moved not so long ago, only a couple of miles away from where we used to live but it still meant a new circuit of parent and toddler groups. Now I am a pretty easy going person and feel that there really isn’t a difficult formula for running a successful toddler group. Put a load of toys in a large room, take a few quid off incoming parents, leave coffee and biscuits readily available and unleash the kids. Two hours later pack up and go home.

Yet, some places seem to think they need to improve on this formula. Create things to comply with a Government paper on what children need to be doing in order to develop. I always thought that was simple; give them love, pay them attention. But apparently not. So, playgroups in my new local area are doing THINGS in their large spaces of toys. This has led to some disputes over the past few months, with me. Mostly centered around singing.

The first disagreement happened in January at a church at the end of my street. They had some silly idea about structuring children’s play time and so when I rocked up an hour into the playgroup session, sat down to help my son smash playdoh into the table I found I was confronted by a volunteer requesting that I pack up the jigsaws. Hang on a second, I just paid £3.50 to come here to tidy up? I could do that at home for free and it is what I came here to avoid. Feeling miffed but shutting up I packed away mess that other children had made only to be told I was putting the jigsaws in the boxes wrong and why hadn’t I found the missing box for one? I politely said I had only been there 10 minutes and was unaware I had sat next to a missing jigsaw box. The helpful volunteer then gave me pointers on how to put away playdoh so that it didn’t dry up. Exasperated, I walked off.

Did I mention coffee was rationed to one cup per adult, one biscuit per adult and do not dare try drink this potential danger outside the allotted time? Somewhere along the line this group had forgotten that parents are adults who are aware of the basics of what to do with hot drinks near small children and I don’t think it was balance them on their heads to speed up their walking ability.

Next came the singing session. My son doesn’t always want to take part in singing, much preferring to use the time to have free reign on the empty toys instead. This being jumping up and down on a wooden slide while shouting with glee. I was asked to stop him, he was disturbing the others who then wanted to join the jumping and not the singing. I had a word with my son, he ignored me as children tend to do when they are having fun. The woman then came to tell me that the slide was very old and might fall apart at any moment. I questioned why they had such a dangerous contraption in a place with children freely using it and should OFSTED find out, they might have a few ideas about updating equipment. I had a lecture about how it was 21 years old and had served her children well. I left.

Next came last week at a regular group we attend on a Tuesday. It is basic but nice, they don’t offer tea or coffee but don’t insult your intelligence or child-rearing skills. At the end there is a lovely singing and story time from the library. That is until you try placate you toddler with a rice cracker to stop him slamming a chair into the door repeatedly every week during the songs. I was asked not to feed him during song time and if that had been the end of it then I wouldn’t be writing this. The song leader then went on to tell me that I was damaging my son’s speech and language development by allowing him snacks in song time and also posing a risk due to the jumping about. How can he sing back if he is eating, she asked. Oh to not shout out that my son had wonderful speech for his age and he could either eat or slam chairs into doors, her choice.

I wondered if perhaps the problem was with me. I am sometimes quite shy and not comfortable talking to people all the time. I also don’t tend to do the nursery rhyme thing too often. I took my son to all manner of crazy singing groups when he was younger but he just gets bored these days. Besides, toddler songs have always seemed like some sort of an indoctrination into a cult. They either get stuck in your head half the day and I find myself humming about zoom-ing to the moon, someone decides to sing the hideous version of that hideous wheels on the bus song (Yes, women spend their days nattering like fish-wives on the bus and this offends the gentle ears of the men around them), or have a very peculiar effect on children. If you have ever seen your child lie-down perfectly still at the first note of Sleeping Bunnies you will know what I mean. Although I have been tempted to just leave him there for an extra 10 minutes waiting to ‘wake up bunny’, while I take a power nap myself.

Someone even bought us a toddler music CD for the car to ‘keep him entertained’. That went into the re-gifting pile before even taking the wrapper off. My son has rocked out to Carcass at full pelt in the car, requested I play Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy again and when he was a baby only Metallica’s Ride The Lightening was good enough for play time. We sing and dance together to music that we both like. Believe me he can hold his opinion in high regard and, to my disappointment, about his dislike for Minor Threat.

It made me wonder just whether those awful, crappy songs are actually doing any good for our children? My son did not learn to talk from singing them but from sitting in the sling talking to me; he did not learn to count from hearing about ducks and fish, we walked down the stairs counting each one and now he counts to 15; he did not learn animal noises from singing about a farm but actually going out to one instead and seeing animals. He is learning a love of music from exposure to instruments every day, from being allowed to pick whatever he likes from our record collection and that will be our day’s soundtrack, from going to gigs and seeing what real music is when played live.

I love it that he can wind the bobbin up, pop bubbles from the turtle in the bath and row row his way down the river, stream, shore and bay. But I do not take it for anything more than what it is; my son showing an interest in music of his choosing when he wants to do so.

Frugal

This was the year we were to embrace frugal living, clear debt and seriously consider our house-buying options. It has not gone to plan.

It started well. I got a new job that paid more than childminding and meant I could hold a conversation past 10pm without having to yawn. Heck, I have even started staying up past midnight once in a while. I am a night-owl that needs sleep. Mornings do not agree with me, lack of sleep less so.

We acquired an allotment, which is as rare as a lottery win in London. It’s a lot of work but should save us money in the long term.

Here is the allotment in March. There is still a lot of work to be done and we have found various nests of beasties that need moving.

Then we went to Australia. Our year of frugal living kind of ended there. Australia is quite possibly the most expensive place in the world. And yes, we have been to Oslo. It was ruddy beautiful though.

There were some pretty amazing beaches and the sun shone for almost half the time there.  Worth every penny.

I also got to do some photography practise and got to grips with a few more of the features on our big family camera. Something we haven’t done yet. So being frugal as in making the most of what we have in the home. Here is my proud sunset shot over Sydney Harbour.

Then there is the little thing of childcare to account for. Oh and my son turning 2 so his growth spurted his way out of all his clothes and that was the end of the hand-me-downs so we had to invest in some more. Which kind of makes this all so far not such a frugal year.

Toilet training starts in two days so I am hoping that will cut down on washing cloth nappies, which should pay for the trip to Barcelona planned for August and Shetlands in September. Sort of. This is starting to sound like bad maths again without taking into account the cheapness of those breaks. Budget I shall!

As I type this there is a loaf of homemade bread baking in the oven for the fraction of the cost and multiple of taste of the shop bought. I have had some great charity shop finds to supplement my wardrobe recently and we rarely waste any of the veg box. I even saved some money this month. That felt good.

Besides, I think that having a child is actually saving me money for every night that I can’t go to the pub is money not over the bar.

 

 

A small way of sending a prayer to the people of Boston.

Yesterday, as I travelled home on a packed rush hour tube train, I thought for the first time in many years about the events of July 7, 2005. The feelings are more prominent as Summer approaches anyway but it surprised me because I tend not to feel any anxiety on the tube any more and it often goes unnoticed. It also highlighted how much life has healed since the explosion went off on my train.

It was probably the packed train, being held in the tunnel for an extended period of time and the first whisps of Summer that brought back the memories of that day for me, on my journey home last night. The images of what happened flickered through my mind like someone else’s dream and then the train moved on through the tunnel again and I went back to my book.

When I got home, I heard the news on the radio along with everyone else around the world; there were two explosions at the end of the Boston Marathon. I know how those people there are feeling today, those who felt the panic of not being able to contact loved ones, who are suffering mental and physical injuries and are still in a state of numbed shock.

Pictures in the paper look so frighteningly familiar of other significant explosions in New York and Madrid. Boston has now become part of a family of Cities scarred by a war against ideology that cannot be won on either side or, it seems, ended. While there is no information why this attack was committed, it seems that events like this are becoming a shocking part of life for this generation. They rebound across the world.

When I was on the Kings Cross train on July 7, it wasn’t just me who was impacted on that day. My husband ran from Highbury where we lived, through Finsbury Park and down through Camden just to get to me at Kings Cross because all he had was one short text before the phone signal went. My housemates located each other online that morning and I read afterwards their concern about not being able to get hold of me but not knowing I had gone to work that way at that time. And my Mother, who I called to say what had happened and not to worry when the news came on but I was safe in Kings Cross, was then told at work a second bomb had gone off in that station in all the misinformation of the day and could no longer get hold of me. All those people wore scars of the day without even being in the vicinity. And more besides that we don’t know will have been impacted.

I want to say to the people whose lives have been torn apart by what happened, to go talk to others who were there. What they are going through and feeling, so are others and only they can really understand. That real genuine fear that you are going to die, that your life is over and you are about to feel it, really feel death is so powerful that it is hard to describe. The need to say just one more thing to the people you love is overwhelming, to let them know you are okay when you know you might not be. It affects you and it changes you for better and for the worse.

Parents

A strange thing happened at the weekend; I didn’t actually want to say goodbye to my Mum and leave. We had had such a nice weekend, a really good time as a family – taking her to meet some friends and just hanging out doing things together. It was fun and I was sad to travel back  to London. I felt I needed to spend more time there with my parents.

At the same time, my biological father had made another attempt to contact me. My relationship with him is much more straightforward: non-existant. I haven’t seen the man who fathered me, (I refuse to call him a parent because he failed so spectacularly at that), since my 14th birthday. He turned up unannounced, berated me for being a ‘slut’ after having seen me with my friends in town the weekend before. He had taken umbridge with all my friends being guys, who liked metal and skateboarding. Oh and that I had bright purple hair, thick black eyeliner, and ripped up punk clothes. It wasn’t really anything to do with him, he just saw an opportunity to ball my Mother out about something. He didn’t even realise it was my birthday. So, I had not seen nor heard from him since and was quite glad.

Over the weekend, I received a badly written message on facebook about why it was my Mother’s fault he hasn’t contacted us and wasn’t around while we were growing up. That, in fact, he always thinks about us and would like to explain. I am conveying his message somewhat more eloquently than he did.

I have spent a lot of time thinking long and hard about whether to reply to him or to simply block him. I do not want to enter into any debate with him, I simply do not want contact. However, I want him to know, if not understand, that it is wholly unreasonable to pass off his decisions and actions onto my Mother. He made the choice to not take part in our lives. For many years, he lived at the top end of our street; we would see him out with other children who lived on the street but he didn’t want to see us.

This isn’t a sob story; my life and that of my family is better off for not having him around. It is a blessing.

I decided in the end to draft a letter, saying everything I had always wanted to say to him. That even if I didn’t send it, the process in itself would be cathartic. Laying out all the things he had done to fail his children, the selfishness of his actions and what consequences they had. In the end, I sent a much editted version, stating the facts and what they meant. I doubt he will feel guilt, just anger and defensiveness if anything at all. I told him I can forgive him for all the things he has done, even though he has not once offered an apology. I also thanked him for showing me all the thing a man shouldn’t be in his life; all the things a parent shouldn’t be. I sent it for myself so that I can use this to draw a line fully under the issue. And it felt good.

I have one wonderful Father, who walked me down the aisle and understood I did not want to be ‘given away’, who respects me for who I am and makes the best Granddad a little boy could hope for. I have a Mum and a Dad who are making a success of marriage. He might not be the Dad who fathered me, but he is the only Dad I need.