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In my shoes

March 5th, 2010 · guest posts

wrongshoes2Today I’m very honoured to welcome the lovely DulwichDivorcee, journalist, writer and mother of two, as a guest blogger here as part of Guest Post Day. Please make her feel welcome!

They do say you can never understand anyone until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes. Well, I find myself completely daunted by the task of filling Ella at most | least’s kitten heels even for a short spin as her guest poster – she has how many teeny tiny children, she used to homeschool them all and she finds time to work too? One of her children has a very serious kidney condition, yet she rides all the storms of his illness so graciously. And she blogs like an angel, of course.

Now, I’m not saying life isn’t tough in Dulwich.

I’m not saying it, because it isn’t true – life in Dulwich is the reverse of tough. It’s actually lovely, and any wrinkles on the smooth surface of life here at Divorce Towers are mostly self-inflicted, I’m sorry to say. Leaving your husband is never a recipe for a quiet life, and it’s a miracle that the girls, the cat and I aren’t still in therapy.

Every now and then, though, something happens that isn’t all my own fault, and I am hugely delighted to blog about it. Take the latest Boden party.

The Boden party idea is soooo Dulwich. That is to say, it’s a ridiculously middle class English ritual. A mummy decides to host a party featuring samples of clothes from the well-heeled mummy’s bible, the Boden catalogue, and a bunch of other mummies turn up, largely to have a good look at the hostess’s taste in curtains and cushions, and, as a sideline, to peruse a couple of rails of frocks rather listlessly.

This time, the party was at the weekend, when my daughters, Child One  – the teenager – and Child Two – the aspiring teenager – were very much present. Always happy to help me rid myself of my excess pounds (that’s pounds sterling, not pounds flab, alas) they decided to accompany me, while reserving the right to turn their perfect little noses up at anything I contemplated buying for myself, the darlings.

Naturally, by the time we arrived, the place was rammed. It was like one of those adolescent parties advertised on Facebook, where 400 people turn up in half an hour, only this time it was 400 well-brought up mummies, all saying, ‘no, after you,’ and ‘you try that one – I think I prefer it in the black.’

The hostess was delightful, but firm on one point – we had to take our shoes off before coming in. Sure enough, inside the hall, before entering the party proper, there was a very long row of shoes, neatly paired up - mostly boots, as it was a freezing cold day.  Fair enough, I can completely sympathise with the hostess’s need to minimise carpet destruction – it’s just that I hadn’t been expecting to expose my feet to the public gaze for another couple of months, when the temperature might just about rise above freezing. But I bared my tattiest socks with only a slight grimace of pain (at least I didn’t have to unveil my toes, yikes) and we stacked up our shoes next to the rest and wandered in.

It was too crowded for serious shopping, too packed even for frivolous purchases. We had a quick look around, the girls grazed as much as they could on crisps and fizzy drinks, which are kept in very short supply at Divorce Towers, and we left, with no bargains snaffled.

On the way home, an email pinged into my iPhone. It was sent to everyone who’d been at the party. ‘Thanks for coming, but did you leave with the wrong shoes? Someone was left at the end without a pair of boots to go home in. Their Next Uggs were taken, size 6, and a pair of similar but smaller black Uggs were left behind, size 5.’

The girls and I snorted. Fancy wearing the wrong shoes home! Who would do such an idiotic thing? Who could possibly not notice having the wrong size shoes on? I sent a smug email straight back. ‘Not us! But thanks for a lovely party.’

The days zoomed by, till the next weekend, when we were off to a friend’s for lunch. Mustering the girls has now become almost a big a chore as when they were tiny little bitty things, and a lot of ‘we’re leaving in five minutes’ have to be yelled before we are all Good To Go. Child One, as always, was exercising her powers of brinkmanship a million miles beyond any reasonable brink, taking an armful of clothes with her to the car and struggling into them only as we got moving.

It wasn’t long before we hit trouble.  ‘Mum, my shoes have gone all weird! They’ve grown! They’ve gone all big. They’re floppy ….what have you done to them?’

It didn’t take a whole team of rocket scientists to establish the horrible truth. Child One was the twit who’d left the party with the wrong shoes on. Grrrrrrrrr does not even begin to cover it – and it definitely wasn’t my fault.

I did have to make it all right again, though, so various apologetic emails later, I was sitting in a frozen carpark,  feeling like a spy in a very low budget Cold War movie, waiting for the irate lawful owner of the shoes to turn up.

Inevitably, when she’d slammed the car door a couple of times to make her feelings ultra-plain, the cross mummy asked the very same question I had asked myself. ‘Who on earth could leave a party with the wrong shoes on?’

This time, I could answer. A teenager, that’s who.

A very big thank you to the lovely Ella for letting me walk in her shoes and an even bigger gggrrrr to Child One for not being able to walk in hers.

Blog: www.dulwichdivorcee.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/dulwichdivorcee

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A big thank you to the lovely DulwichDivorcee for a wonderful post, and thank you to the ever-innovative Erica at LittleMummy for arranging today’s inaugural Guest Post Day. And I’m blogging about being stuck in the mud (or possibly a stick-in-the-mud) over at DulwichDivorcee today, please come over and give me some support because I’m quite nervous!

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Where does my time go?

March 4th, 2010 · Not Enough Children, Parenting

I held you, mottled pink and silicon-fat arms. I gazed at you, with amazement and fright. I fed you, in the dark hours when the world had stopped except for us. I rocked you, when nothing else helped.

I changed you, picked up after you, I helped you to walk. I weaned you, I tickled you, I helped you to talk. I read you books, and again and again. I answered ‘what’s dat?’ and ‘why?’ and ‘but when?’

And each day passes and I realise: You’ve grown!

And now I teach you, though it’s nothing like school. We read, because there are never enough books. We talk, because there are never enough questions. We play and race and chase in the cold and collapse, laughing, in a heap in the warm. And always I save time to make time to spend it with you.

We dance, though we can’t and laugh, because it’s funny. And it’s hard to remember a time before you. (Though not impossible.)

Then evening comes and one by one you fall into my arms, your head on my shoulder, your tired body folding into me. And I love you so much: more than anything.

That’s where my time has gone.

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Tired dork

February 22nd, 2010 · Daily Life, Sleep

Sleep deprivation is a bitch.

But when I’ve had a bad night, or two, or twenty I only have to look at one of the many mothers (and oh, there are so many right now, it must have been rutting season last May in this part of the country) at the school-gate carrying a newborn baby with that flash of pride that only a new parent has, to remember that my sleep deprivation is never as bad as theirs.

Still, I get my fair share of it, but after twenty child-years of sleeplessness I would say have become vaguely accustomed to it in the way one becomes accustomed to their husband’s farts – unpleasant but tolerable. Unless it was curry night the night before, in which case ’sleeplessness’ stinks. Literally. But after a bad night, or two, or twenty, I wake much the same as I would if I had had a whole night’s uninterrupted beauty sleep: ugly and needing coffee, so it seems irrelevant most days how much sleep I did actually get the night before.

This morning is no different: I drag myself out of bed when number two son whispers right in my ear that he needs a wee (why right in the ear? is it a joke to see my body flail in fright as I spend that nanosecond deciding whether I am about to die of a fright-induced heart attack or try and defend myself again a would-be attacker?). The baby slumbers on after our busy night dealing with his incredibly important teething pain,  so important it required me to be awake for most of the seven nightime hours to deal with it. I look at his baby sleep with a mixture of longing and jealousy.  I’m nauseous with tiredness and also the shock of being woken slap-bang in the middle of the three minutes sleep I had last night/this morning/whenever it was. But I stumble out of bed and dipstick wee, wondering how I will remember the relevant readings from the dipstick in my head long enough to write them down. I get the children up one by one, help them dress, look desperately at the coffee machine, help them get breakfast and then go back upstairs to shower. I think about finding clean clothes and decide there isn’t time, go downstairs to make sandwiches and find all the endless necessary faffy bits to go in lunchboxes, help everyone brush their teeth, look desperately – longingly – at the coffee machine, rush everyone to get coats, hats and gloves on and as I look out the window, I see it has started to snow. Thick, blizzardy snow. Thick, bloody-blizzardy snow.

Fun on the school run!

I hate the school run with a passion, even on the best of days. First day back after the half term break, feet dragging, snow falling, and it’s worse than ever. I drop one child after another at correct doorways, check they have what they are supposed to, pick up rancid lunchboxes that have been sitting unloved in a closed school for ten days and make sure I take away the requisite number of children with me  (once left the one year old in the class of six year olds – he loved it. The teacher? not so much). I pick up another child to take to preschool with us, creating added danger to my already precarious arrangements to get everyone safely to the correct place. I think about coffee. I try not to think about how tired I am.

At the last drop-off the baby wants to play in the playground. I think of everything I need to do that morning, the first of which would be TO MAKE COFFEE. It is still blizzarding so I haul his screaming, tired body home and put him on the sofa, where he continues to show me how indignent he feels. I share your pain, Son, I haven’t had my coffee either.

So tired.

I’m on autopilot now. The snow is falling. Must phone Matthew and warn him about the snow, tell him he’ll need to start making his way back home from the office or else risking being snowed-out, so rural is our village  – and our road – that he won’t be able to get back safely. I call his office and his secretary answers. Matthew must be in a meeting.  Hi Sarah, I say, forcing as much tiredness out of my voice as I can muster, could you pass on a message to Matthew? Could you tell him it’s snowing heavily here and he might need to make his way home soon if it carries on like this?

There is a pause.

And it is in that split second that I remember that my husband is five thousand miles away in America, and has been since yesterday morning. And I am a dork.

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Remission

February 19th, 2010 · FSGS and Nephrotic Syndrome

balloonrelease2We got lab results back today and my boy is officially in (medicated) remission!

(If it seems like you have read this before, the last one didn’t last.)

His blood results are looking fab. His albumin is still a bit low (although higher than it has ever been) and his cholesterol is still too high so he will go back on statins. Also, he will not taper any meds for fear of relapsing and his ciclosporin trough level is at near-nephrotoxic levels so we may not be able to use it more than another year or so – next year’s biopsy will tell us – but for now, he is stable and all is well. (And for my neph friends, we will continue to give William Galactose every three months, because as far as we are concerned, we think it may just be a wonder drug!)

It’s a year today since his biopsy. We never thought he would see remission and that he would go straight to renal failure. He was so sick when he diagnosed that every night for months after his diagnosis I would stop outside his bedroom every evening and prepare myself to find him dead in his bed. No parent should ever have to do that.

So he is in remission and I am so thankful and so, so bloody happy.

Photo: josephpetepickle

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On being more patient

February 17th, 2010 · Me, Parenting

patience2Luckily, Lent – and therefore my efforts to give up being impatient – begins on Ash Wednesday because yesterday was Trying. That is the most patient word I can think of to describe it.

First, number three son -  already a tricky boy and already the difficult age of four – was poorly with ongoing nausea. Luckily/unluckily, depending on your point of view (and I’m not saying which one mine was), he was not so ill as to be in bed, sleeping it off quietly, but rather was whining about how poorly he felt, how his tummy hurt and how he just had to STOP BREATHING IN AND OUT. Also WHY DOESN’T HE HAVE MORE LEGO?

I know poppet, let’s lie you down sweetheart so you can stop breathing in and out, I could be heard voicing over and over, in a vain attempt to ameliorate everything about him. Or for him, if I were a better mother.

Not content with having to deal with one nasty virus, I then had a second patient when my laptop contracted a different, but equally nasty virus. On the afternoon I had a deadline. So my plans to stuff the children silly with pancakes and hope they pass the afternoon in a semi-coma in front of their favourite film as a special half term treat as we couldn’t go out due to Four being sick, worked. But then my laptop didn’t.

Yes, my pre-Lenten attempts at patience were sorely tested yesterday.

But I did it. I remained calm and patient. Despite cancelled plans, missed deadlines, dead computers, sick children, inclement weather and cabin fever. I can congratulate myself that I can do it, can be patient, not shout, not boss everyone silly to get out the door on time, not be irritated by life’s ongoing, niggling, annoying challenges.

So now Lent is actually here I’ve got no chance have I?

Photo: lepiaf.geo

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What to give up for Lent

February 16th, 2010 · Parenting

pancake3
After much deliberation, I have decided: I am giving up impatience for Lent. NO LAUGHING AT THE BACK.

(I’ll let you know how I get on!)

Photo: me

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Blog confessions

February 4th, 2010 · Daily Life, memes

Adrenalynn recently posted some confessions and I was inspired to do the same because I like to share. So here are my top five confessions:

Confession Number 1

I tell my children I cannot come out and play with them in the garden because I am busy doing chores. In reality I am on Facebook, and I occasionally wave out the window to them and look like I am busy at the sink. My justification: I didn’t go through childbirth four times and provide them each with three siblings just so they could whine that they are lonely outside and need me to come and play.

Confession Number 2

When my children don’t want to go to school I tell them I am going to work, even though I work at home. My justification: I work. They need an education. It stops them having a meltdown on the way to school. (They’re still self-centred enough that they haven’t thought to ask where I work. Which also means I should be good for another fifteen years or so.)

Confession Number 3

I have been known to be late for school once or twice. In the late book I write something grown up like ‘overslept’ or ‘couldn’t find car keys’, you know, something that makes me sound super-organised when in fact I just needed a few minutes to stand in my achingly blissful silent kitchen, watching the children’s behaviour slowly disintegrating in the car like a U-rated horror movie and say to myself   …….and BREATHE. About fourteen times. My justification? I may be late for school, but I look completely together about it.

Confession Number 4

I am having Botox. Don’t judge me, because I’m having the Botox in my ass.

Confession Number 5

Sometimes, just very very occasionally, although almost never you know, I am happier writing about parenting my children than I am actually parenting them. OK so shoot me, but come and meet my children first and then make that decision. Come during the arsenic hour. It’ll be fun!

So, have you posted your confessions?

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Counseling

February 1st, 2010 · All Gone Wrong

counseling2
On Friday we went for family counselling.

I could stop there and leave that loaded sentence to show how crappy things have really become round here. But there’s a reason I blog anonymously and it’s so I can share with you the, err, let’s call it grittier shall we, side of life. Basically, I’m everything you’re looking for on a Monday morning!

So on Friday we went for family counselling. I was apprehensive to say the least about talking to strangers about our circumstances but then I thought, hang on, it’s just like blogging! And so I smartened us all up, wiped a few snotty faces and off we went, me with pockets stuffed with bribes at the thought of the one hundred and twenty minutes ahead of us with someone who would be writing down everything, which would consist almost entirely of notes about my inability to control my rowdy children. Except, ha! I took ammunition in the form of food. Lots of it. About a hundred and twenty minutes worth in fact.

The counsellor talked to the children in turn, small talk at first to make them feel right at home, ALTHOUGH I’M THINKING THE LEGO BOX WITH ITS CONTENTS SPREAD ALL OVER THE FLOOR DID THAT, and then she gradually ramped it up to start getting to the heart of issues affecting us as a family. The bigger children were reasonably forthcoming, Harry actually giving them a ten minute impromptu presentation explaining how he behaves: ‘I hit, scream, kick and throw things‘ he said and I half expected him to turn and point to the whiteboard, or give a Powerpoint presentation entitled ‘Ten Things that Set off My Bad Behaviour’. If nothing else, he’s got a good future as a public speaker. Although given he didn’t try to put a spin on his actions at home, I’m guessing politics is out of the question.

William was equally forthcoming but given he has speech difficulties it was often up to me to interpret for the consellor. But he explained how he always picked the sad and angry faces when trying to tell his teachers how he was feeling. He told her how he had no friends and when he did make a friend, the friend was Someone Else’s Friend when he returned from another period off sick. He told her how he was too tired to play in the playground and often had to sit on the friendship bench. Then when someone offered to play with him, he said no thanks and that friend wondered why the hell he was sitting on the friendship bench (it doesn’t occur to him to tell them that he is tired). He told her about the pain and the medicines and the worries about having to go to hospital. He told her about the times he wished he was dead.

I can tell you that it feels like having a knife stabbed through your heart to hear your child talk like that.

The little two had really nothing constructive to say, which is hardly surprising given that the one year old can’t speak and the four year old’s world revolves around using the Force. But Ben’s stammer was apparent and she wrote it down in her notes. And possibly that he likes to Strike A Pose (I didn’t explain his ‘using the Force’ action – she’s the counsellor, it gives her something interesting to wrestle with).

I told her about my postnatal depression but how I had recovered and was better at looking after myself now. I told her how I basically fell apart between February and September last year after Wiliam was diagnosed but was doing better now.

Doing better.

I’m doing better, but as a family we are not.

She summed up at the end when the children had lost interest in spreading the lego into every corner of her office and I think she had us pretty much spot on. Although given I was doing a passable impression of a sheepdog trying to keep all four children rounded up and not bleating too loudly while she was summing up,  I’ll no doubt be marking her letter for mistakes, when it arrives, possibly with red pen because it will make me feel like I have JUST A LITTLE BIT OF POWER IN THIS WHOLE PROCESS. ‘Cos that sounds a bit more proactive than seeing the bottom of a wine bottle.

We have long term help in front of us. I think of all the intervention we have had in the last year and ahead of us and I think about the files being compiled on us, the private things being written about us not coping. It leaves me sick with worry, if I’m honest.

But then I imagine what our family might look like a few years down the road without help and I think it is my family is that is important. My family. Nothing else.

Photo credit: macinjoshdotcom

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What a week

January 24th, 2010 · Daily Life

Matthew returns today after ten days away in the US. He is frequently away so it is not like the last week has been anything particularly out of the ordinary. Still, I am surprised that I have survived.

Let’s see. What did I do?

Well, I parented four naughty boys without any of us really losing our cool. Result!

I billed a client for 30 hours of work. (Awesome.)

I cooked twenty meals from scratch, baked ten salt-free loaves of bread and prepared five low-potassium dishes (which required extra forward planning). Domestic goddess!

I only ate one chocolate bar. Honestly.

I went running. Round the garden with the boys, but it’s exercise right? I say great, my body say NO.

I entertained ten other children here and no-one ended up in ER. Again with the awesome.

I gave to charity and then, unsolicited, my children gave their pocket money to charity too. Gotta love their big hearts.

We tidied out a certain boys’ bedroom. This took WAY longer than it sounds.

I managed ten showers which is an outright miracle. The clothes may have only been changed once or twice though (getting four others looking presentable means number five – me – usually doesn’t, but I was clean underneath at least, right?)

I dealt with a certain four year old who likes to whine all the way from bed to school and back again. It was fun!

I got three children off to school with lunchboxes and bags and all their other crap and nobody got left behind. I did try to leave the whiny one behind but he insisted in getting in the car.

I was kept awake many nights by a one year old coming down with an ear infection. Gotta love how they like to do this when Daddy is away!

In short, COME HOME MATTHEW.

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Bloggers for Haiti – shelterboxes

January 19th, 2010 · Ways you can help

I don’t know about you, but this picture makes my heart soar. These are the first shelterboxes arriving in Haiti.

shelterbox_Boxes-on-ground2

Bloggers for Haiti are on their way to raising the money for our seventh shelterbox. Seventh! That’s shelter and help for seventy people for many months while Haiti recovers from the devastation.

shelterbox

Each box contains:

  • a ten-person tent, designed to withstand extreme temperatures, high winds and heavy rainfall.
  • a range of other survival equipment including thermal blankets and insulated ground sheets, as well a life saving means of water purification.
  • a basic tool kit containing a hammer, axe, saw, trenching shovel, hoe head, pliers and wire cutters can be found in every box. These items enable people to improve their immediate environment, by chopping firewood or digging a latrine, for example.
  • every item is durable, practical and brand new. The box itself is lightweight and waterproof and has been used for a variety of purposes in the past – from water and food storage containers to a cot for a newly born baby.
  • a wood burning or multi-fuel stove – that can burn anything from diesel to old paint. This provides the heart of the new home where water is boiled, food is cooked and families congregate. In addition, there are pans, utensils, bowls, mugs and water storage containers.

Won’t you join us in raising money? You can donate via Just Giving here: The Bloggers for Haiti .

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