There’s No Flies on Me!

A friend’s daughter who is 3 years old was taken out for the day by her Grandma.

The little girl had asked to go to McDonalds, but had fallen asleep over the lunch time.  When she woke up later on she asked if they were going to McDonalds, to which Grandma, who didn’t want to upset her said "oh they were closed darling, they’re decorating", which was obviously a little white lie.

This appeased the little girl and all was fine.

The next day Grandma decided to make up for the day before and took her granddaughter to McDonalds for lunch.  As they queued to get their food, the little girl looked around her, turned to her Grandma and whispered "they haven’t done much decorating have they Grandma?"

Posted in Emma's Dilemmas | No Comments »

Duh!

While wading through a pile of washing the other day, my daughter who has a pretend washing machine asked if she could have some to do herself.

I picked out a couple of things for her to take away and ‘wash’.

Later that day I collected the items I had given her to put in with the rest of the load I was about to put on.

She followed me into the utility, watched me pick up a dress (one of the items I had previously given her), took it off me and said "I’ve already washed that one!"

Posted in Emma's Dilemmas | No Comments »

Dress Up

I still vividly remember an image of myself in our french window from when I was a child, wearing a frilly edged, long nightie of my mothers and a pair of her shoes, clip clopping up the garden path.

I felt very grown up and pretty in the ensemble.

So too do my own children now like to dress up.  They have all, at some time put my shoes on (or their father’s) and clip clopped around the house or patio.

They have all at some time worn something of mine, as a comfort and for fun.

Last night while my husband ran an errand with our eldest child, I stayed at home and was asked by one of my children for a dress to play in. 

As I knew I had been given a bag of assorted dresses that I’d put to one side until they were big enough to fit them, I pulled it out of storage and showed them off one by one.

I was met with oohs and ahhs, not the right colour, too hot to play in.  We went through all of them and although they were met with some degree of satisfaction, they didn’t fit the bill.

"Have you got any more" I was asked.  I remembered that there was one hanging up on a rack that was still too big to be worn yet and promptly showed off the item.

"Perfect" came the reply.  It was a fairly plain pink dress with limited pattern on it.  My child tried it on and went to look in the mirror with a head band they had borrowed off their sibling.

"Can I keep it?" I was asked.  "Well you’d need to ask your sister, as it’s hers" I replied.  With that my youngest son turned to his sister and asked her if he could have it.

Should I be worried by this?  I don’t know.  It’s not the first time he has asked to wear something of his sisters.  What I do know is that I don’t make a big deal of it.  I did gently ask why he liked the dress and he said that he wanted to know what it was like to be a girl.

He doesn’t wear the items for long and usually has a laugh when he’s doing it (which is also not often).  And he got offended by his sister calling him a girl.

For now I put it down to curiosity. 

Posted in Emma's Dilemmas | No Comments »

A Good Day Had By All

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.  Parenting is not easy.  Well that’s it really - blog finished.  It’s very much like being a Manager except in an office you can walk away at the end of the day and the people you are dealing with remember every last little word you say especially if it involves a promise of some kind.

You know all the common sense basics about trying to reason with children, being calm with them, not shouting and taking them to one side if you ‘have to have a word’. However, the books never tell you that this is okay if you’ve had plenty of quality sleep, no additional stresses and don’t actually have to do anything else other than be a parent.

Some lessons I feel I have learned the hard way and in some ways, too late.  I’m sure I’m not on my own there.

One of the hardest things I find about being a parent is balancing the personalities of the little individuals you have.  I am totally aware of the work I need to put in with my own children and now is the time that I have to put thoughts into actions.  Today was a really good example of that.

I decided a while ago that each of my children needed quality time on their own with either myself or my husband.  In theory this isn’t a problem, in practice not so for whatever reasons can be put in the way.  And that is the crux of the matter for me.  I have woken up to the fact that you have to ‘make time’ for the children.

With all the stresses we have in our own life (which is another story for another day) I feel as though I have, at times, worked my children around my own schedule.  When quite simply, it should be the other way round.  Don’t get me wrong, you have to have a balanced approach and find ‘me’ time, but, like I’ve been told by many people before I had the children, they don’t stay as children for long.

I started to re-dress that today.  My eldest child had an invite to a friend’s house with a sleepover, which he was excited about and gave him some ‘individual’ time.  I then decided to take my ‘middle’ child out for the day on his own with me and with the added bonus that my mother said she would have my youngest for the day, it seemed like a perfect set up.

I decided to take my son to a safari park as he’s interested in tigers.  We took a picnic and I allowed the day to be completely taken over by what he wanted to do.

As we drove through the enclosures, he became chief photographer which made him feel really important and he loved the fact that he could climb about in the car without any restraints.  (Okay, I think this was the biggest pull!)

He even managed to attract an animal to eat out of his hand which was a big confidence boost.  I then let him decide what rides and shows we would go to for the rest of the day.

Without going into all the ins and outs of our day, he thoroughly enjoyed himself.  He laughed, he smiled a lot and I had no whining or whinging from him at all.  Even when he got really tired.

He had had my total and undivided attention and it was worth every penny I spent to see him happy.  Even when we came home, there were no arguments with his sister and we had a very happy camp.  If my eldest had been home, it would have been a lot different, the dynamics change and not always for the better.

For today, he was in charge, he was the big brother and I know the day was special for him as he asked if we could go out on our own again tomorrow!

Posted in Emma's Dilemmas | No Comments »

Surreal Moments

Do you ever have moments when your mind and brain just work in opposite directions?  As I get older it seems to happen more often and in particular it happened the other night and involved my husband.

One of my children wanted to kip in with me, so my husband said he would have their room to give me more space.  When I actually went to bed one of my other children had been scared by a noise outside and had also crept in to be with me.  No problem, still enough room for me.

I went to bed and left it to my husband to lock up downstairs.

I was just dozing off when I suddenly remembered that the back door had been open.  I sat up and shouted out loud "Have you locked the back door?".  I then realised that neither of my two children would actually know this, I had just forgotten they were in with me.

I jumped out of bed, went to where my husband was sleeping and without a thought shouted out to him "have you locked the back door?".

As I thought he had just come to bed and wasn’t asleep I was thrown when he said back to me "what about the laptop?". 

I hadn’t realised he was in a deep sleep, therefore woken him up and had confused him completely. 

Especially as we don’t even have a laptop!

Posted in Emma's Dilemmas | No Comments »

Parenting - Wrestler More Like!

Don’t the storybooks fill your head with crap when you’re growing up?  I mean, come on who has been swept off their feet by a knight in shining armour (more like a shite in Knighting Armour!), lives in a cottage with roses round the door, bakes cakes all day and lives with a permanent soft glow around them.

If that’s you, then I’ll be honest - I’m jealous and I don’t want to hear about your perfect life. 

Do I sound a little bitter and twisted?  Hell yes I am feeling that right now, but that’s because of complete and utter lack of sleep.  Why, because I’m a PARENT.

For some reason when we have children a little cell is lit up in our body that says ‘wake up at every teeny, tiny sound’  while your partner/boyfriend/husband has a little cell that is lit up that says ’sleep through EVERYTHING!’

Maybe in cavemen times when roles were carved out in stone ie women cook, look after children, ug, men hunt, protect ug, that would have been okay.  But times have changed and roles are really mixed up.  Yet women may have more work piling up on them and still need the ability to wake in the night, be on call 24/7 and still smile.   Or is that grimace!

The reason I am tired is I let my 9 year old have a friend for a sleepover last night.  All fun and good, the child that stays over is very well behaved. 

I also allowed them a little freedom and let them stay up until 11.00 pm because everyone was having a good time and it was a Friday night.  (I shall so pay in moods tomorrow, but hey ho my own fault!). After having had a computer ban for the last week and a half, I allowed them back on last night so hence why they were having more fun.

I sent everyone up to bed and my 9 year old declared that he and his friend were going to get up in the middle of the night and come downstairs.  "I don’t think so darling" I said.  "We’ll creep down and you won’t hear us" he said.  "Don’t forget mommy is a very light sleeper" I said. 

And so the conversation continued with me declaring that if the sirens didn’t get him, then the invisible dogs would.  This kind of freaked my younger son out a little, but what the hell!  (Only joking it was all done in the best possible taste and fun.)

One of the syndromes they don’t write about in parenting books concerning 9 year old, hormonal raging boys is the SA syndrome.  That’s Smart Ass Syndrome if you want to know the latin term. 

The secondary syndrome by the way is LB Syndrome (latin name Little Bugger syndrome - more on that another time). The third one for future reference is SOIFOMF Syndrome (latin name Show Off In Front Of My Friends Syndrome).

My 9 year old was obviously on a mission to outwit me.  Can’t be having that . . . . .

I got them all off to bed.  And what was my first move? I password protected the computer so he couldn’t get on it without adults around.  Not that they can get on to the internet, but we don’t believe in children having free reign without adults about.

And note I am a VERY light sleeper.  So at 4.18 am this morning I heard noises on the landing.  "What are you doing?"  I boomed.  Silence.  I lay still and heard another noise.  "What are you doing?" I repeated.  Nothing.  At the same time, very opportune for me,  a cat must have run across our garden and set the security light off.  Instant lighting!

I crept downstairs, went into the living room and no immediate sign of them.  I gazed around the room and spotted my son hiding up a corner and his friend hiding under our table.

To cut a long story short I made them go back up to their room.  Did I do the right thing, I don’t know.  But how would it have sounded if when the friends mom came to pick him up I’d have said "yeah, they had a really late night, then they got up just after 4.00 am and did their own thing".  How would you feel?

It didn’t end there.  And this is where the LB syndrome comes in.  It went quiet for a bit, so I though great, they’ve settled down.  No, they were just biding their time until after 5.00 am when they obviously thought it would be okay to start playing the guitar!

I am not kidding.

I went into their room and quietly explained that they weren’t being fair on the rest of the household, to keep the noise down and to save arguing I shut the door on them to minimise the sound of their voices, which worked. 

At about 6.00 am they went back downstairs and in fairness they kept fairly quiet until nearly 7.00 when the noise level started increasing and found out they had got the playstation out.  I had completely forgotten this was in the living room as this had been part of the ban as well.

I still can’t decide if I should drop this or tackle my son later when his friend has gone home.  I am taking time out to consider how to deal with this, but won’t make a fuss in front of his friend.  I did however ensure they weren’t allowed the computer until 8.00 after they had eaten breakfast, washed and dressed and then only for an hour or so.

Oh yes and while all this was going on, my husband was blissfully fast asleep.

Posted in Emma's Dilemmas | No Comments »

Just a Bit of Lettuce!

I’ve had many a conversation with friends of mine about how much we love our husbands and we wouldn’t be without them. 

But sometimes, just sometimes, we don’t like them.

I decided the other night that it would be really good if my husband would sort tea out for the children and myself and I duly asked him nicely if he wouldn’t mind.  He was up for it, especially when I helped him choose what we could all have.  Great, a night off for me.

That night was what we in our house call a muck up night, when we all might have something different, something snacky but are all happy with the choices we make. 

The reason I asked him to do tea was because I’d had a really busy week trying to sort the mess out that is our home including a massive pile of ironing.  Plus, like many women I don’t sleep very well at night and it catches up with me.  Thirdly I had started another period just over one week after finishing the last one.  And the doctors tell me I’m not starting the menopause!

My husband and I decided to have chicken in a lime and sweet chilli sauce with rice.  Now, I don’t like dinners that are too dry and I asked my husband if he would chop up a bit of salad for me.  All I wanted was a bit of lettuce, tomato and cucumber.  Nothing fancy.  It’s just sometimes I crave salad.

You’d have thought I was asking him to fly to the moon and back.  The sulking I got and the response of "you know I don’t like doing salad, won’t you do it?" didn’t bode well with me.

Well, yes I could have, but I really wanted a night off from feeding everybody else.  So I asked him again and this time I got a shirty response of "in my top 10 of things I really don’t like doing, chopping salad is one of them" and a really pathetic "please don’t ask me to do it".

I’m not a material person and I certainly don’t ask for expensive items for the house, and for pity’s sake I was only asking for a bit of salad.

Yet he refused. 

Perhaps it’s my hormonal state and I didn’t cry, but it really upset me that he wouldn’t cut up a bit of salad.

Maybe it upset me that he knew his own mind enough to be able to refuse and I’m not like that.  But maybe, just maybe it’s more to do with the fact that I wear myself out (like most women) looking after the children, house and working and it made me feel very unimportant for that few minutes.

I have since had an apology and have made my feelings known, but for that day he was not in my list of favourite top ten people either.

Posted in Emma's Dilemmas | No Comments »

Stop Being Childish

I really wish I could be one of those very laid back mums but something in my genes makes me a little (okay a lot) uptight.  It’s not even over the important things.

They never tell you in the parent manuals that sometimes when you have children you still feel like a child yourself.  There are times I want to have the biggest tantrum and walk out the front door (slamming it on the way of course) to make everyone realise how important I am. 

Three things here.  I’m not as important as I think I should be. I am the adult.  And, finally I probably wouldn’t even be missed.  You also have to think ahead to what the children may say at school after the weekend.

Teacher: "Okay children I would like you to tell me what you did over the weekend?"

Child: "My mom left home and slammed the door!"

Sounds reeeaaalllyy good doesn’t it?

I even admit to asking my son what to do sometimes.  But in this case it’s because he is very sensible and more often than not knows better than I do.  He is intelligent and older than his years. 

This can of course be bloody frustrating as he does have an answer for everything and he isn’t even into double figures for his age yet.  I swear he’s been on this planet before. 

When he was younger he used to say things about his previous life and linked himself to my father (who passed away before he was born).  Even the health visitor who used to come and see me said he’d been here before as he was so aware of his surroundings.

I am a believer in reincarnation and the spiritual side of things, but when you have someone standing in front of you that tells you of a previous life it is a little spooky.

I therefore watched, the other night, with utter fascination, a programme all about this very subject.  I have to say it really made me cry.  They had this gorgeous little boy called Cameron, who was convinced he had been part of another life.  His home was in Glasgow and he kept talking about his other house in Barra, which he had never been to before.

His mom, who I thought was fantastic, took him to Barra with an expert on this type of behaviour and to cut a long story short, they found the house he had talked about and traced it back to people that had owned the house.  Everything he had described was there, even down to a black and white dog.

I had been doing my usual programme flicking, looking for something mundane to watch when I came across it - ’The Boy Who Lived Before’ - and it was well worth watching.

For me it was Cameron’s reaction on finding the house that made me reach for the tissues.  He just went really quiet absorbing everything around him.  Along with the fact that how his mum handled the situation and how she gently questioned him was very touching.

So I don’t knock it and now I wish I’d taken more notice or written down things my son used to say to me. They say that at school age children tend to start forgetting about their previous life as they get absorbed into their new life.  For the full story on Cameron click here.

And now it’s too late to really check it out.

Posted in Emma's Dilemmas | No Comments »

To Be a Child Again

Oh to be a child again. 

I love that children can stare at people quite openly without being asked "what are you looking at?" or "do I know you?"

I love that they try to be sneaky about things, when you clearly know what they are doing.  My son hasn’t yet worked out why I always know he is trying to sneak ‘goods’ like chocolate biscuits out of the kitchen.  It has something to do with the hands being held in a funny way at his side, away from me and that half twist of the body.

I love the way my children can tell me quite innocently that they have drawn me a picture, but you just know from the way they’ve said it, that it’s not on paper. 

This happened recently and the big give away was that my daughter had used mascara all over her eyebrows and lip gloss, well . . . just all over her face.  I found a lovely ‘abstract’ painting in lip gloss on my living room door. 

I love that in particular scenarios if they hurt themselves they just shrug it off.  We went out for a lovely family meal once and sat at this huge square table that was big enough for the children to hide under. 

My son really banged his head on the table (despite us having said several times, be careful).  He just popped his head up over the table top, laughing and said "It’s okay, I’m not hurt" and carried on playing.

I love that they can laugh out loud at slapstick comedy.  The Chuckle Brothers are a big hit in our house.  So too is Laurel and Hardy.

I just love the innocence of their questions.  My son who is of junior school age came home once and asked me "is f**k, a rude word mommy?"

When do we pass that age and become the cynical grown ups, who still want to do all these things but feel we shouldn’t?

Posted in Emma's Dilemmas | No Comments »

Be on Time - Never!

I think I mentioned in a previous posting that I sometimes leave the house with my brain behind.  Today was another day like that.

I had arranged to meet a friend who I haven’t seen for over 6 months (there’s another story at all the attempts we’ve made and failed).  As we both have children we opted for McDonalds (personally don’t like it, but hey ho the children do) in a town half way between both of us.

I knew I needed to get some cash out, but with three children to get ready, time ran out plus I had a visitor at home just before I was getting ready.  No problem I thought, I’ll get the cash in the town we’re meeting at.

So as I approached the town heading towards the car park I suddenly realised that the car parks were pay and display.  I had the sum total of 13p in my purse.  My dilemma was how was I going to get cash to pay for the car parking when the town is pedestrianised.

On our way in we saw a garage up ahead with a cash machine displayed.  Great I thought.  I gave my son my mobile phone, gave him the hurriedly scribbled down mobile number of my friend and asked him to phone her to tell her what we were doing, as at this point we were late.

He did this while I queued in the traffic but realised that the mobile number I had for my friend was no longer valid.  She had changed her number, but I didn’t have it.  I just hoped she wouldn’t think we weren’t coming.

I pulled into the garage forecourt away from the petrol pumps and headed towards the cash machine to find that it was out of order.  Damn.

Plan B then.  I opted to drive past McDonalds and get my son to run in to my friend and grab some change off her.  We drove down the high street, before it becomes pedestrianised and there in the window was my friend.  I bibbed the horn and thankfully she saw us, so at least she knew we were around.

However, I couldn’t pull over because of other cars and there was a pedestrian crossing right outside McDonalds.  Oh well, at least my friend knew we were here.  I drove round to the car park found a space.  I now had two choices.  I could leave a note in the window saying I’d gone for cash, but would it be believed or I could pull my damsel in distress card.

I did the latter.  There was a man sitting in his van near us and I knocked on his window and asked if he would mind giving me 20p.  With my measly 10p I could afford half an hour to get cash out and take the children down to my friend while I came back to the car park.

This is what I did.  Luckily it all worked out and I even put the money back on the man’s window for him for when he came back.  The only thing is instead of costing me £1.20 in parking it ended up being £2.50 as the machine didn’t give change and I only had a 50p to give back to the kind man.  Small price to pay for reducing stress levels.

So to the man in the van, a big thank you and I hope you have a win on the lottery for being so nice.

Posted in Emma's Dilemmas | No Comments »