Daily Life
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Wednesday, October 24th, 2007On Sunday (a week ago Sunday because all reportage around here went out of the window what with all that croup) we celebrated my birthday, being the closest free weekend day to my actual birthday, as the only thing worse than getting older is having to spend the day solo looking after three small children. So I got breakfast in bed, presents, a faltering rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’ sung to me by my children, Matthew doing most of the donkey work like changing dirty diapers, birthday cake for tea and a special birthday supper cooked for me.
On my actual birthday, I was taken out for lunch, my two best friends dropped by with cards and presents and Matthew brought me flowers on his return from work.
Nobody will ever be able to accuse me of growing older gracefully. Getting older is a pig. But my four lovely boys make it seem not quite so bad.
[Comments off -sorry - because I’m not around to respond, what with all this croup.]
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Posted in Daily Life
Croup, croup and then more croup
Monday, October 22nd, 2007I’m on the boat at nearby Longleat stately home and one of the seals has flip-flopped itself onto the deck and is barking at me for the cup of fish I am holding in my hand.
It keeps barking, its tail knocking incessantly on the deck.
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I stumble out of bed to find a croupy William standing at my bedroom door. ‘I’m poorly,’ he tries to say, his voice like a teenage boy who’s hit puberty.
For the next three nights he sleeps in my bed. Over the last four and a half years he has had all manner of illnesses and fevers but any attempts to get him into my bed - where it is easier to look after him - have been met with fierce resistance. Until this bout of croup.
So I don’t have to get out of bed to administer repeat cuddles, medicine, drinks and so on, but a thrashing, feverish four year old does not a good bedfellow make.
However on the fourth morning I know he is better when he declares my bed ‘boring’.
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One of the downsides of Harry being at a school other than our local one is that when one of his brothers is sick I have no-one else to do the school run. So I have had to drag a poorly, feverish William out on an hour long round trip when he would rather be on the sofa watching children’s television. (But then one of the downsides of Harry being at school is that I have to do an hour and twenty minutes in the car every morning to drop two at school when I would rather be on the sofa drinking coffee and watching television. That alone seems reason enough to be homeschooling, to my mind. Not to mention that I could probably cover an entire day’s school work in the two plus hours I am spending in the car everyday.)
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On that fourth evening Harry stumbles out of bed, footsteps across the ceiling, the telltale bark croaking weedily down the stairs. Oh goody! - another three days of looking after a different feverish, poorly son.
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Last night, Ben wakes, struggling to breath. Mama, mama, he whimpers pathetically, his arm flailing through the cot bars searching contact with any part of me for reassurance that he is not dying. Even better! - when the baby is sick I can’t even plonk him in front of a video and leave him to rest. And his IgA deficiency leaves him particularly susceptible to respiratory infections, an added worry.
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And so I sit here, eyes burning with tiredness, cursing the mother who Friday ten days ago at preschool stood next to me (I mean, how brazen!) and said to the teacher, ‘Sam is sounding a bit croupy today, I’ve given him some paracetemol, but he seems fine to be here now. But you know, I will pick him up early I think, because he’s not well.’
Yes, not well. At school, spreading croup. Thank you. Thank you so much.
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Posted in Sleep, Daily Life
Morning rush hour
Wednesday, October 17th, 2007I pause at the garage door, boots on, coat and hat pulled tight, and look up at the ominous sky. It’s still dark and more than a little bit foreboding even though I know our walk like the back of my hand and even though I know sunrise will be here within a few minutes. Yesterday the field was subsumed by thick fog, rendering me blind beyond my own fingertips. The dog, familiar with every bump in the terrain and being blessed with better senses bounded ahead, unafraid of the white wall ahead of us. Today no fog, but the rain starts to fall thick and heavy. The thick mud will be slippery enough that I will lose my footing at least once, sending me painfully over and making me flush with embarrassment and annoyance even though no-one is around to see me. As I step away from the shelter of the door, the wind blows stinging rain into my eyes and cold air down anywhere my coat is not glued to my skin. I haven’t even set off yet I long to be back, hot cup of coffee in my hands.
As I reach the gate my thickly-gloved fingers struggle with the latch. I look back at the house, lit up like a Christmas tree, lights twinkling in the rain. I see Harry, fresh from sleep and energised in the way only small boys can be, shouting and running up the hallway like a demented creature, his face distorted in the wet glass. I see William, with a twelve hour night of sleep acting as catalyst, clinging to Matthew’s legs in a dawn rugby tackle. I see Ben sobbing over the latest toddler injustice, building his daily list of grievances that we can neither anticipate nor solve. I see Matthew looking exasperated, cross and defeated in just one facial expression.
I pull my hat down against the wind and smile smugly because I know at this point of the morning, despite the cold and the rain, I definitely have the better job.
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Posted in Too Many Children, Daily Life
Should she stay or should she go?
Tuesday, September 25th, 2007Meriel looks annoyed with me. She’s been annoyed with me for a while.
‘I’ve cleaned the loos so there’s no need to do them again and please don’t worry about cleaning the sideboard in the kitchen this week because I haven’t had a chance to clear it,’ I say as I rush to get ready to take William to preschool.
‘Is there a reason why you don’t want me to do the loos each week?’ she asks, almost proprietorially.
‘With four boys in the house and a toddler who has learnt that playing in the loo is really good fun, I clean them every day anyway so there’s no need for them to be done again,’ I explain, thinking about how I find Ben fishing about in the water from time to time despite my repeated appeals for the older boys to keep the bathroom doors shut.
She still looks annoyed though.
I’ve been so sick that the levels of clutter in the house have reached new levels. But when I come back from our morning out it looks like a burglar has broken in. Clothes have been swept to the floor, books that were piled up have been moved and scattered across tables, even the bottles in the shower looked like they have been thrown about by my toddler in a tantrum.
So Meriel cleans, but leaves me almost more work to do when I get back than if she didn’t come at all. She leaves early every week, thinking I don’t know (my neighbors tell me because they love to be involved in everyone else’s business). I turn a blind eye to this because cleaners are hard to come by here. And most importantly if she didn’t come, I don’t know where I would find the time to do even the most basic of cleaning around the house.
At the beginning of the year I was talking to a mother at William’s preschool. ‘I hear Ben isn’t doing so well,’ she says. I look a bit confused because I hardly know her. ‘Meriel comes to you, doesn’t she?’ she says by way of explanation. ‘She was telling me about Ben.’ I feel my heart sink. Does Meriel repeat everything she hears in our house to other people she cleans for, people I know?
Since then I have been careful what I say to her. I didn’t discuss Harry’s schooling plans because every week she would turn up and say to him (until I had to ask her to stop) ‘have you found another school to go to then?’ to a confused boy who was frightened about school and thought, rightly, that he was being homeschooled for the forseeable future. I didn’t tell her right away about the pregnancy, not wanting it broadcast around the surrounding villages until I reached the end of the first trimester. That would be reason for her to be annoyed. I suppose. If it were ANY of her business.
So instead I get back to a house that looks like it a tornado has swept through it.
This was the woman who arrived a couple of weeks after my beloved dog died, when I could still scarcely keep from crying when I talked about her and said to me, ‘but have you noticed how much less hair there is to clean now?’
Because, yes, when your dog dies there are so many hidden benefits.
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Posted in Daily Life
Sitting on the floor in tears
Monday, September 24th, 2007I peed in a cup. I waited an hour and a half. Then the consultant spent three and a half minutes telling me that a VBAC was entirely possible seeing as I had achieved one already and that was it.
The upside of the appointment is that she said I don’t have to go back to the hospital unless I go overdue (I’m pretty sure I went several times last pregnancy) so I will not have to endure such another waste of a morning.
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I find it really interesting that those who commented on my last post and those I have spoken to who have had c-sections have found them (me included) to be such a positive birth experience. I know that there are a lot of positive vaginal (sorry, awful term, but can’t think of another less awful term) birth experiences but there are also a lot of awful ones (mine included). I know that a VBAC is the right thing to attempt (best for mine and the baby’s health, especially if the consultant has said it is safe) but I’m already dreading it (but in a bury-my-head-in-the-sand kind of way) even though it’s 25+ weeks away.
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Finally, FINALLY, the sickness has stopped. The nausea remains, sometimes as bad as ever, but my appetite has partly returned so I am at last eating something other than chocolate cake and this baby stands a chance of getting some basic nutrition. And I no longer fear throwing up in worrying places, like the grocery store, or at preschool, and that helps. Not to mention the fact that the people who work in these places no longer need to look at me with that wary look like I’m a shoplifter.
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So you’d have thought that I would be feeling pretty good, right? But I feel really low. Lots of stuff going on, Matthew may be away a lot more over the coming months, we may be moving (hassle), we may not be moving (just as much hassle because we need to), homeschool is not working, I’m tired and Harry is going through a phase - of being frightened at night, frightened of being left in the car when I pop back inside to get my bag even though he can still see and hear me, crying several times a day and annoying the hell out of his brothers. I need a break from him and as usual I can’t help but feel that school might be the answer, especially as things get set to get more busy and tiring around here in the next few months.
I find it hard to judge if I need help for these low periods. I’m just coming to the end of ten terrible weeks and I’m feeling physically very low. Is that, combined with a few weeks of poor sleep and my eldest son going through this ‘tricky’ phase enough reason to be feeling so low? If I’m sitting on the floor dissolving into tears because I’ve had enough, that makes me think I should be doing something to deal with it.
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Posted in Parenting, Daily Life
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