Finding Mum

Back in 2013, when my body was ravished by exhaustion and broken from a human exiting via, what used to be, a teeny tiny hole, I wrote “I had a dream…and it wasn’t like this“.

Four years on, I’m still struggling under the heavy weight of parental responsibility. I have a 7 year old now that lays on the guilt thick and fast…

7yo: Did you know that when people don’t eat food, they can actually die?
Me: Yup. They starve to death.
7yo: I haven’t had breakfast yet.
Me: I see what you did there.

I have a 5 year old, who is thriving at his specialist school for kids with autism, learning to talk like Father Jack and who lovingly punches me in the face when it all gets a bit too much.

I still hide in corners in the hope of not being asked another fucking tedious question or having to subserviently wipe arses that are now clearly no longer in need of my assistance. This act of trying to gain mental health time is usually rewarded with one child falling down a well that I wasn’t even aware was at the end of the garden or the other one eating four jars of chocolate spread in record time. Don’t ask why I have that many jars of chocolate spread in my cupboard. I just do.

So, 7 years into parenthood, what am I doing? Well, I did have a little dream and now the kids are being looked after by actual grown ups qualified to teach kids useful shit, like spelling and reading and stuff, I decided to pursue it. I’ve gone back to school.

I’m inspired by my fellow females – some I knew before we became mums, others are as a result of becoming a mum. They’re all following dreams in some way; teaching yoga and mindfulness, moving to NYC to kick American arse, quitting day jobs to set up new business ventures, expanding their families and nurturing babies, all whilst coated in the sticky crust of motherhood.

I remember the first fog of motherhood. It was all consuming and overwhelming. There were even dark moments when I questioned if I’d done the right thing. To be honest, I still do. Especially when I’ve got two kids screaming at me for answers to their intolerable lives that I just don’t have, or I have been the cause of.

I am finding me again though. Perhaps a different me that wouldn’t have been able to exist had it not been for motherhood.

So in a usual shout out to my fellow ladies, trying to adult and navigate the dangerous (for us, not the kids – I have no idea how many times a bumhole finger has been poked in my mouth) territory of Parentland, keep those dreams alive. All dreams have the same value. There is no hierarchy to dreams. No one dream is better than another. They’re yours and yours alone and they hold the power to make you feel brilliant and inspired. And if you feel like you’re a million miles away from those dreams, don’t despair. Just say ‘fuck’ a lot. It has helped me no end over the last seven years and will no doubt continue to, looooooong into the future.

Now…mental health time over…where the fuck are the kids?…*Retrieves one from a well and confiscates four jars of chocolate spread from the other*

My kids are just mocking me

Sex education for your five year old: what not to say…

My husband and I made a pact to never lie to our kids. We quickly learned this was an idiotic pact as we informed our children that the local soft play was closed. Again. (How they earn a living, I’ll never know *inserts winky face).

We changed the pact to never giving misinformation to our kids. The pact needed to exist because my husband still thought thunder was created by clouds banging together, despite gaining a physics a-level, and we didn’t want our children to feel aggrieved later in life by incorrect facts they had been told, just to shut them up.

Death? No problem. I stick to the facts. We return to the earth and feed the flora and fauna in the same way it feeds us during our lifetimes. “But I don’t want you to die, Mummy,” my five year old says forlornly. “We all die. But hopefully by the time I die, I’ll be really old and you will have spent a good few years wiping my bottom for me as I won’t be able to use a toilet any more…or not even know my own name for that matter.” See? Facts.

Sex education? Easy. Simple facts. No need to go into details of who has to sleep in the damp patch. Just cold, hard facts. But I don’t have to think about this right now. My eldest is five. She won’t ask about the birds and bees for at least another two years.

Five year old: “Mum…when I grow up to be a lady, I’m going to have lots of babies. *Thinks for a moment* How will I get a baby in my tummy?”

Shit. Really? Shit. Ok. Facts….seed. Seed in tummy. That’ll do.

Me: “A seed gets planted inside your tummy and a baby grows.”

Lame. Really lame.

Five year old: “Do I eat the seed?”

Just say yes. Eating the seed is good…Hang on…NO! NO TO EATING THE SEED! 

Me: “No…ummmm…I tell you what…get your pjs on and we’ll have a little chat about how babies are made.”

Good. Stalling. I like it. Load up DisneyCollectorBR on youtube and she’ll forget all about it.

Me: “You know…it’s not inevitable you’ll want children. Lots of people decide not to. Both your uncles have decided not to have children. Your body. You can do what you want with it…and if that means not having children, then fine.”

Female empowerment. I like where you’re going with this…

Five year old: “So, how do I get a baby in my tummy?”

You carried on talking. Why did you do that? The feminist cause could have waited…

Me: “So…you know girls have…”

Use it’s proper name. Use it’s proper name. Say Vagina. Say it.

Me: “…minnerwins…”

It’s ok. Minnerwin is fine.

Me: “…and boys have windles…”

Well, you’ve said minnerwin now so it’s utterly pointless saying penis. You dick.

Me: “…well…the windle goes inside the minnerwin hole…the hole that bleeds…and puts a seed inside the tummy which meets with an egg and grows into a baby.”

What the actual fuck. The hole that bleeds? Why? Why? Why?

Five year old: “Do the seeds already have names on?”

Amazing question. I bloody love her so much. I love her for completely bypassing ‘the hole that bleeds’.

Me: “No, my darling. The seeds are inside…well…you know the…ball bags under the windle? They’re inside them. There’s no names on them. They’re blank.”

Are you fucking out of your mind? Ball bags? Did her question even require this explanation? No. Just stop now. Stop talking. Get DisneyCollector whatever the fuck her name is on youtube and shut the fuck up.

Five year old: “So…does that doctor that looks at babies on the computer see the name?”

Me: “No…the doctor might be able to see whether it is a boy or girl but the baby comes out without a name, unless it’s mummy and daddy decide on a name before the baby is born. We knew you were a girl and named you long before you came out of my minnerwin.”

Five year old: “Babies come out of minnerwins?”

Fuck.

Me: “Goodness…is that the time? I think it’s time for sleep now. Goodnight.”

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An Idiot’s Guide To Stains

It is usually possible to extract enough information from the location of stains on a person’s clothes to decipher whether they are indeed a parent and the age of child they are a parent to.

From the moment the baby is evicted from the mothership, it leaves clues of it’s existence around your person. This is most commonly in the form of a white smear perched happily on your shoulder and will remain there in various guises until the child leaves home.

A new game develops early in parenthood known as, “Is It Poo?” The rules are very simple; locate an unidentified stain, stare at it quizzically for a few seconds then sniff it. I would thoroughly recommend not licking as it is usually poo. In fact, the game should be renamed, “How Did Poo Get There?”

Clothes that you would have ordinarily thrown out for the wash get picked up, dusted down and put back on ready for another days onslaught. Non-parents will happily point these stains out to you at every opportunity as if doing you a favour in case you weren’t aware of their existence (you were), whereas fellow parents join in with the catharsis of picking silently at unidentified crust when stood chatting rocking together.

Smears of mud that adorn tops of thighs signal a parent of a toddler/preschooler/teenager that has momentarily lost it’s ability to walk, mere seconds after relishing the delights of stamping in muddy puddles.  These stains will remain there for the foreseeable future as the parent usually only has one pair of trousers that comfortably fit since childbirth.

No fabric is exempt from the stain-spreading abilities of a child and no surface is immune. Washable pens become impervious in the hands of a small human as they can somehow detect exactly which surface falls outside of the ‘washable’ characteristic and scribbles violently, forever leaving self expression all over the place.

New games will naturally evolve as the children get older. These include:

Get Your Shoes Off The Sofa
Don’t Wipe Your Fingers On There
Please Use A Tissue
Stop Masturbating In Your Socks

All of which have exactly the same rules:

Player One shouts the title of the game loudly at Player Two. Player Two ignores Player One and continues with loathsome behaviour. Repeat daily.

Investing in a really good washing machine or spending out on decent stain removing products are a waste of time and money; just buy an incinerator. It will serve you much better. Or move house.

The Anatomy of a Mother

There are many documented physiological changes that occur during pregnancy. Breasts and legs look like they’ve been scribbled on by a toddler with a blue marker pen. Feet, ankles and calves all merge into one painful, fluid-filled cankle. Blotchy, dry patches and stretching skin cause incessant itching, mainly around the bumpal region. And lest we not forget the discharge. Just everywhere. From all over the place.

These changes tend to dissipate fairly rapidly post Vaginal Destruction Day, apart from the discharge.  Whereas the lesser documented changes which occur after VDD are mostly permanent.

Ears become enlarged initially to aid with detecting infant breathing, every forty seconds for the first six months. However, this also develops into an ability to correctly identify the scream of her toddler amongst forty other screaming toddlers in a hell hole known as ‘soft play’.

Nostrils are widened due to the excessive amount of crotch and bum sniffing that takes place and also when trying to determine the dirty clothes from the clean clothes that have replaced the carpet. Shoulders becomes broadened due to her child’s inability to walk anywhere and insistence on shoulder rides only (ears also useful for handles).

A women walking through town fondling herself isn’t necessarily a pervert, she may be just trying to recall which boob she last fed from. From an outsider’s perspective, this is usually easily identifiable from one enlarged breast throbbing like an alien egg about to hatch with supporting damp patch whilst the other bosom looks like a spaniel’s ear. One arm is significantly larger than the other (known as the baby bicep) due to holding her baby/toddler/child/teenager on the same hip.

One hip will be displaced significantly to the side in support of the developing baby bicep to such an extent that it soon becomes impossible for the mother to hold her baby on the opposite hip for more than three seconds before having to switch back. Groove marks just above the wrists aid with carrying plastic shopping bags as the handles of the pushchair inevitably get overloaded causing the pushchair to tip backwards at every opportunity.  Hard skin on knees develop from crawling on all fours trying to retrieve crap from under the sofa, being ridden like a donkey and scrabbling through all known varieties of disease-infested soft play, reaching peak thickness at around three years after which only a pneumatic drill can chisel it away.

Although fingernails have to be kept short to avoid lacerating her baby when getting it dressed/changing it’s nappy, a mother utilises a long little fingernail to perfect hoicking out bogies of the nose and eye variety.

The most subtlest change happens over a period of years.
The stoop. Unfortunately entirely unavoidable. It begins with the nappy changes, gets developed further trying to avoid head injuries whilst being dragged into playhouses and through tunnels and reaches a critical point after years of having to push and/or drag bikes, trikes and scooters, most commonly without it’s rider because they only wanted to use it for fifteen seconds on the way to the park.
The stoop gets cemented permanently into an almost right angled position when her child starts school and they fully expect their bike/trike/scooter to be available for their use on the way home*.

*Most likely to be having a massive meltdown and not at all interested in bike/trike/scooter.

If you happen across one of these unfortunate looking characters, don’t assume, by trying to stop that voice from coming out of her child’s face, she’s making a rod for her own back  – if she were, she’d be stood a lot straighter. Instead, give her a reassuring look and throw a chocolate bar at her.  That might help.

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The Internet User’s Guide to Internet Users

The internet is a wonderfully faceless entity which allows all and sundry to have a voice. To impart their wisdom, knowledge and opinion. I mean just thank God for this person standing up for what they believe in.

http://www.lamebook.com
Why I love the internet

In my short time of loitering around internet forums and chat rooms, I have come across many characters, but it seems the following internet users crop up time and time again:

The Know-It-All Example: You’re doing it all wrong. You do it this way.

The Aggressor Example: You’re doing it all wrong. Are you some kind of dick?

The Diplomat Example: It’s a good idea, but it might be worth trying it this way.

The Please-Join-My-Club Example: This is how I do it. Give it a try.

The Peacekeeper Example: I think both ways are right.

The Self Righteous Example: You should be ashamed of yourself for doing it any other way.

The Passive Aggressive Example: I’d think very carefully about what you do or you might be sorry.

With so many emotive subjects on the internet, many hitting right to the heart of humanity, such as breastfeeding versus formula feeding, UKIP versus the rest of the world, Corporate Monsters versus The Common Man, and not forgetting gary rights, it doesn’t take long to find a forum that houses many of the aforementioned characters in one place, impassioned and ready to fight for what they believe in.

Real comments taken from a hard hitting article entitled Max George: The Wanted Broke Up Because of One Direction Rivalry gives you the following examples:

There was only one person missing from this particular conversation, however, I found her not so far away in a heart wrenching and deeply resonating discussion about who is best; One Direction or Justin Bieber:

See how many you can spot today and if you know of any Internet Users not listed above, then please get in touch. If any of you are wondering which category I belong to, you’ll find me filed firmly under ‘Sarcastic Twat’.

Exercise? I have kids

So I had to go to the doctors the other day for a check up. I’m at that age now where they’re calling me in. Just to check.

The nurse asked me her collection of questions about my lifestyle:

Nurse: Smoke?

Me: No.

Nurse: Diet?

Me: Good. (Lie)

Nurse: Exercise?

Me: Ummmmm..I have kids. 

Nurse: Any cardio exercise? Running, cycling, the gym?

Me: Ummmmm…I have kids. I don’t have to pay for a personal trainer. I have kids. (She clearly wasn’t getting my point)

Nurse: That doesn’t really count (she didn’t get my point). You’ve scored ‘moderately inactive’. Here’s a leaflet on how you can improve your health.

Me: But. But. I have KIDS…*voice trailing out the door as I’m ushered back into the waiting room, fingers still clinging to the door frame*

Had I been given the chance, I could have explained how a child could easily qualify as a personal trainer for the marines.

It starts immediately. The moment they squelch unattractively out of an orifice or surgical incision.  It consists mainly of mental exercise from chronic decision making and maintaining stress positions akin to planking whilst trying to carry out the much frowned upon act of feeding to sleep/feeding back to sleep/feeding back to sleep again. However, the exhaustion from decision-making fatigue eases off after the first twelve months, as they start to be able to distinguish between choices:

Me: What would you like for breakfast? Marmite toast or porridge?

Child: Crisps.

Bosh. Decision made.

The personal training really starts from the moment they start to crawl. Physical exhaustion follows quickly. This increases tenfold when they start to walk especially around other people’s houses. Every button pressed. Every switch switched. Every door opened. Every cabinet climbed. Whilst you follow around trying to look the picture of control and calm, but inside sobbing uncontrollably because all you want to do is BE STILL. And not have to remortgage just so you can replace their flatscreen tv.

But all this pales into insignificance when it comes to one thing.  Indoor soft play.

You go there with the intention of wearing your kids out, whilst you chill and watch. But it never happens. You very quickly realise that you’re fully expected to run the tiny, piss-stained gauntlet with them. I wouldn’t mind but the signs say ‘don’t bring your children if they are ill’. They weren’t before I took them, but the 143 recognised strains of Streptoccocus found incubating in all the crevices of the snot soaked cushiony, brightly coloured hell hole will soon sort them out.

As I’m scrabbling around on my hands and knees, out of breath from squeezing myself through rollers and climbing up into holes that lead to nowhere, I see something out of the corner of my eye. The world goes into slow-mo. I see….I see….a woman. A mother. I know she has kids because I was behind her in the queue coming in. But where are they? And she’s doing something? Is that….a newspaper? She’s reading a newspaper!

The world stays slowed down and I become fixated on what I see below me.  I quickly absorb all the information like Sherlock scanning for clues. A hot tea…it’s still steaming…no kids climbing on her….her hair looks…washed…no stains on clothes….she looks……..relaxed.  I look for others…a man….an iPad…..he too is reading. They’re not being made to exercise.

I lock the image away in my mind.  I keep it there as a beacon of hope that my instincts were right. One day I will be able to come here and be a spectator and not be worked out like a recruit for the French Foreign Legion. One day.

I’m quickly yanked back into reality, literally, as I’m then expected to endure a form of 30-second torture, balancing bare-footed on ropes whilst small children use me as a bridge to escape the ‘crocodile infested waters’ below, followed almost instantly with tumbling my way through punchbags, leopard crawling through a tunnel that smells of yesterday’s vomit, down a slide, ready to start the circuit all over again.

I continue my viral-infested workout for another hour and a half, sweating, getting repetitive strain injury from shoving the balls into the sucky-tube machine thing, dodging small children as they come firing out of tunnels without a warning and constantly hoofing my jeans back up so the poor parent behind me, also being personally trained by a tiny tyrant, isn’t scarred by the image of my arse crack all the way up the squashy ladder.

They really need to start including a tick box for soft play in medical questionnaires. It changes everything.

“Mum…I think there’s a turd in here…”

Kids on a plane

Thank you, Mary.  You even managed to get my children to hold hands

It’s nice to know what it feels like to be at the receiving end of ‘the look’, especially as I dished it out willy nilly when I was a childless, carefree, parent judger.  But now I know the difficulties in restraining a thrashing child, with an unnatural strength of several titans, who really DOES NOT want to be restrained just because the plane is landing.  I was bitten for my efforts.  Had I been more rebellious, I would have kept the Mary Poppins DVD going under a blanket but I didn’t want Mary to be responsible for the plane exploding.  I mean, they say electrical items can mess with the radar systems, or something.  They were Duracell double A batteries in the DVD player.  I’ve heard they were responsible for the great plane crash of 1916.

I also received a look from a lone female passenger when my child decided that she didn’t want to use her legs anymore, preferring to lie down in the busy customs queue. Understandable.  I wanted to join her.  I also wanted to smack those little bare legs for pushing her brother over, smacking his head on the concrete floor and pulling out the, “I really need a wee *holding self looking desperate*” card whilst I tried to show authority by quietly snarling at her through gritted teeth.  Another incisal edge bites the dust.

It’s also comforting to know that there are people that genuinely care and aren’t afraid to speak up.  So my thanks goes out to the young, clearly childless, Japanese chap who told us in broken English that it was dangerous to leave our daughter lying on the floor. If only he knew how to get her leg bones solidified again, it would have been an exemplary example of citizenship.

Perhaps the highlight was the lady passenger’s look of horror when I let The Boy loose for a moment or two.  Probably because he lunged for the emergency door handle that she was sat next to and imagined her self and all the other inhabitants being sucked from the plane, all because I let my son fiddle with a door nob.  She confirmed this by saying, “perhaps it’s best,” when I led a stamping toddler away from the said handle and towards a man looking engrossed in a good book that The Boy also liked the look of.  Cue slightly crumpled page and more foot stamping.

All in all, though, the kids were excellent.  The Boy slept for most of both journeys after being sedated like Mr T with a large bottle of milk.  Yes, he still has a bottle at 18 months and I know he’ll have rotten, goofy teeth with an XXL waistline, but I’ll save that blog for another day.

It was worth it

The true cost of parenting

Before the kids arrived (a rather polite way of putting it), my husband and I would think nothing of spending ridiculous amounts of money at the weekend, always eating out, drinking far too much and lazing around in bed.  It was a shallow and meaningless lifestyle that always had nothing to show for it on a Sunday, apart from a blocked toilet from the Indian the night before, a sleep/drink hangover and severe bed/head ache.  If we’d actually saved some of that money, instead of frivolously whittling it down the toilet, we could have cleared half our mortgage by now.  Apart from the Jeremy Kyle style drunken arguments down the street and pissing myself a few times, I enjoyed every moment.

Birthday presents consisted of nice things and more meals out.  Visiting friends was a relaxed affair that meant more consumption of alcohol, listening to music loudly and talking bollocks until the wee small hours.

Holidays were sunny and carefree, often looking at all the parents that had inconveniently brought their kids to make the airplane journey hell, screaming and shouting annoyingly around the pool (the parents, not the kids) and whinging incessantly because the sand was too hot down the beach (the kids, not the parents). Oh, how we judged those parents to within an inch of our lives.  The selfish bastards.

Work was a career.  I revelled in it.  Lived and breathed it.  Travelling two hours each way to get to my well paid job in London.  Yeah, I suffered with monthly kidney infections because of the stress (and probably lifestyle) to the point that my left kidney now only functions at 17% but hey, I’ve got two of ’em.  So what?

So what’s changed?  Well, I still piss myself but that’s for different reasons now. Apart from that, I’d say pretty much everything.  But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

The thought of living without alcohol used to scare me a bit.  That’s such a sad thing to say but it’s true.  Now, the thought of having a hangover whilst two small children climb all over my head from 5am till 7pm scares the living bejebus out of me.  Having a conversation with a 3 year old whilst hanging out your rear-end, literally makes your brain synapses spasm.  Long gone are the days of pushing through the drink wall where you know you’ve had too much but aren’t quite dribbling incoherently enough so you heroically push on, ordering doubles just to man yourself up.  I can actually stop myself from drinking too much now.  I have control.  I think that’s quite a positive achievement and must have saved a bit of cash, and probably a kidney.

Meals out are rare but don’t often descend into a night of chaos and debauchery.  I can remember them.  Enjoy the flavours and the conversation.  Our tastes are more discerning and cultured.  We splash out on restaurants with om-bee-once (thank you, Micky) instead of Frankie & Benny’s or TGI Fridays (oh, how we loved our Friday night Frankie & Benny’s).  Plus, I get to judge the shit out of the yoof, walking past the window to the pub, in their ridiculous get up without a hint of regard for an invisible panty line or well-fitting bra.

Holidays…well, we haven’t actually tried that yet but next week, for the first time in 5 years, we’ll be back on a plane and will be the joyous parents with screaming kids. No doubt, the Boy will insist on poking his pokey finger into every crevice and fiddling with every switch in the cockpit, along the aisles, in the toilets, in other peoples’ belongings. I’ll let you know how that goes…

Unfortunately, most of the money saved on not getting drunk and eating kebabs has been eaten up by the drop in wages and cost of childcare. I’m less enthused by the working day but do enjoy the peace and quiet.  I still dream of work-related projects every now and then, but just like my ambition to travel the world, it’s been gently put on the back burner.  One day.  When I can be bothered.

The biggest cash saver though has to be presents.  No longer requiring expensive gifts, the husband just wants a blow job or even a hand job; any kind of inside trouser job will do.  I long for something that is as rare as chicken teeth. The Lie In. In fact, The Lie In becomes an extremely valuable commodity.  It has roughly the value of Queenie’s pay rise and you have to negotiate hard to earn The Lie In.   The Gift Lie In has rules though.  No just staying in bed whilst listening to the chaos unfolding downstairs until you angrily throw the covers back and stomp downstairs like a hormonal teenager.  The Gift Lie In is a proper, silent affair.  The kids fully removed from the premises for about two hours. Any longer and the worry sets in, but just long enough to sneak in a soak in a toy-free bubble bath. Bliss.

We are still are no closer to paying off the mortgage but life has got a bit more interesting with a little more to show for it, and still, two functioning kidneys.