Dear Dave
Wednesday, 10 March 2010
Making a date with a diary
Dear Dave,I need to start carrying a diary.
It's not that I have any social engagements of my own to record, it's just that coordinating all the kids' clubs and activities is becoming more than my brain can handle. One of the children asks if they can have a friend round after school and I end up running through the following mental checklist:
- What day is it? By this, I mean which day of the week is it? If by some fluke I should happen to recall the actual date, it's no good to me. My life is run on a weekly basis. Monday is Fraser's drama class, Tuesday is Marie's Art Club, Wednesday is football for Lewis AND dance for Marie, etc.
- What are the kids signed up for? Knowing the day of the week is a start, knowing what that means is the secret knowledge of a primary carer.
Me: How was work, dear?
Sarah: Fine. Did Marie have fun at football today?
Me: She had art.
Sarah: I thought she did football on a Wednesday.
Me: That was last term. Lewis does football on a Wednesday now.
Sarah: Not Monday then?
Me: That was before the summer, back when Fraser had Science Club.
Sarah: Science Club has finished? He liked that.
Me: There's still Maths Challenge - that's every other Friday.
Sarah: What about Junior Explorers?
Me: That's the third Thursday of any month with five Tuesdays.
Sarah: Oh... Right...
Not that anyone other than the primary carer needs to know this information, of course. In fact, it's probably safer if they don't. The strain of keeping track of it all addles the brain:
Sarah: So did Marie enjoy the art then?
Me: Seemed to. She painted a picture of a rainbow dustbin and wants you to have it to put up at the office.
Sarah: That's sweet. It's only going to make Tracy more broody, though.
Me: Tracy?
Sarah: Tracy. You know Tracy - I've been working with her for two years.
Me: I've lost track. Which one exactly...?
Sarah: I was talking about her yesterday.
Me: Er...
Sarah: She came to our Christmas party.
Me: I don't quite recall...
Sarah (sighing): She dropped a mince pie and lost it in her cleavage.
Me: Oh, yeah, following you now... - Is there anything special on? Sometimes the weekly plan isn't enough. Annual, monthly and one-off events crop up on occasion. This is where most people would resort to a standard calendar. Since I've been known to struggle with dating cheques even on my own birthday, I tend to opt for a more ecclesiastical format. In my head, I don't pencil in Fraser's Boys' Brigade trip as the 27th - it becomes The Second Sunday after Lewis' Birthday. Marie's school show is the morning of The Third Friday of Swimming Lessons.
Getting the dentist to write something like The Last Wednesday before the Endless Expanse of the Summer Holidays on my appointment card is always hard work, however. - What do I need to do? I don't really need to know what clubs the kids are at. I just have to remember when they need to be where and what equipment they have to have with them. Remembering to collect them is also advantageous (although, if you believe their siblings, not necessarily essential.)
I really should start carrying a diary. This has been the case for a while and the main thing putting me off is that my pockets are already full. Thinking about it, though, how much would it help? For it to work effectively, I'd need to go through filling in events and times and places. What are the chances? In reality, a typical week would look like this:
Monday: Drama
Tuesday: AC
Wednesday: Dance, Football
Thursday: Ella --> here, Rob - lunch (12?)
Friday: AB, RB, no BB
Saturday: Lewis --> Dan (?), Cinema
Sunday:
I'd have to translate the shorthand code, remember the details, figure in Sarah's schedule, try to think if there was anything I'd forgotten to write down and then add in routine items such as school times, bath nights and church.
I might be as quick and accurate asking the kids:
Me: What's happening today?
Fraser: Nothing.
Lewis: There's school.
Fraser: Aw! Why did you tell him?
Me: It's Wednesday. I knew there was school. Anything else happening?
Marie: I'm going to wear a pink hair clip.
Me: Er, I meant, is there anywhere else you guys have to go?
Fraser: No.
Lewis: Yes.
Marie: France! I want to go to France!
Then again, maybe I'll stick to the checklist...
Yours in a woman's world,
Ed.
Labels: housedad
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Friday, 5 March 2010
Dirty housedad confessions
Dear Dave,Several years ago, at one of the first parent and toddler sessions I went to, I found myself sitting around discussing housework with a group of mums. Once they were past the usual shock and awe at being in the presence of a man who knew one end of a hoover from another, we had a comradely chat about how none of us was being quite as thorough with the household cleaning as we had been in the era before children. An endless succession of nappies and feeds was sapping our time and energy. Where once we'd scrubbed and polished, we were settling for only a quick wipe. Those places which had previously been fine with only a quick wipe were merely getting an occasional guilty glance.
It was good to share our angst over the dirt that had accumulated in our homes and helped reinforce our mutual relief that the world hadn't ended. We'd all settled on our own new definitions of 'clean' which we could both live with and achieve. To sum it up, one mum said, "I've learnt that skirting boards are self-dusting. Once the piled dust on top reaches a certain level, any more just slides off."
This wasn't as reassuring as she meant it to be, however. My immediate thought was, "Oh, heck! Skirting boards are supposed to be dusted?"
Thankfully, I'd had very little sleep and I barely remembered who I was. I forgot the thought almost instantly and went to find another chocolate biscuit and a refill for my coffee. I had a small child who took stupid amounts of time to look after. The housework was a secondary priority. No soft furnishings had started shambling around of their own accord and that was good enough to be going on with...
Two more children and most of a decade later and I'm finally at the point where a spring clean might be feasible. The thing is, the world still hasn't ended. Apart from having to fight off the odd mutinous cushion with a stick every so often, the gradual descent of hygiene standards hasn't produced any consequences.
Er... Not too many anyway:
- I used to think that jumpers needed washed about once a year but that was because I had several and I hardly ever wore them. I was forever doing something which required rolling up my sleeves. Washing-up, changing a nappy, bathing a child - you name it, I was doing it. So why bother with sleeves in the first place? I roamed the house in a t-shirt, ready to respond to the next mess or disaster. I was constantly on the move and the heating was turned up, so the jumpers lived in a drawer.
Now the kids are at school all day, I leave the heating off. Jumpers are my friend. I wear them all the time. It turns out they do need washed more than once a year.
Febreze only works for so long... - I dusted some black and white wedding photos the other day and discovered that they were, in fact, in colour.
- Some things obviously need cleaned. A light switch which feels sticky isn't pleasant, for instance. On cleaning one recently, though, I noticed that the entire area surrounding it was a much darker shade of beige than the rest of the wall. The lighting in the room hid this fact well but I knew I really had to do something about the grimy paw marks. The problem was, I suspected a large amount of scrubbing might be involved and that was before I took in a couple of other locations in the room which needed similar attention. Luckily, I had some of the original decorating materials handy.
Nothing shows dirt who's boss faster than painting over it. - I used to kick loose crumbs under the fridge. After having had various mouse incursions, I now hoover a lot. And keep all the food in sealed tubs. And keep a lid on the toaster. I hardly every clean inside the fridge but I'm fairly certain they can't get in there. It's not like there's ever anything in the fridge anyway. I go to the shops, buy fresh food, fill the fridge, the kids come home and the fridge is empty. It's very strange.
- We needed a new oven five years ago but we put off getting one until we were ready to replace the entire kitchen. We needed a new one of those ten years ago. One delay after another has meant we still haven't quite got one yet. Nonetheless, my heart really hasn't been into cleaning the old oven for half a decade. I mean, it gets heated up to a couple of hundred degrees in there on a regular basis. How sentient can that slime in the bottom be?
(Er, usually...)
Yours in a woman's world,
Ed.
Labels: housedad
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Wednesday, 24 February 2010
Olympic cheerleading
Dear Dave,The US Ski Team appear to have taken a guy with them to the Olympics whose sole purpose is to stand behind athletes at the start, encouraging them in the seconds before they launch themselves down a stupidly steep, icy slope. He's a big bloke called Huey with dubious facial hair but, boy, can he sound enthusiastic while freezing his extremities off at the top of a snowy mountain. He whoops, he hollers, he claps, he tells the skiers that they 'can do this' and that they 'own' things. He's still shouting as they tear off into the distance.
Sometimes he gets to watch them hurtle to glory. As often as not, he gets to see them clip a flag and careen down the slope on their face. It doesn't matter. Next time, he's whooping and hollering just as hard.
This may, of course, be because it's as good a way as any to keep warm (not to mention it's his job) but it's impressive, all the same. I could do with my own Huey following me around the whole time - giving me a little boost when I'm flagging, egging me on to one last push, making me feel good about myself.
It's a shame that half the athletes probably learnt to phase him out years ago. The other half almost certainly wish he'd shut up and let them concentrate. Nonetheless, he keeps doggedly on. He must have had plenty of training.
Do you think he used to be a housedad?
Yours in a woman's world,
Ed.
Labels: housedad
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Wednesday, 3 February 2010
Neither here nor there
Dear Dave,I was away at the weekend.
This isn't that unusual. The odd part was that Sarah and the kids stayed home. I had two whole days where all the children I saw belonged to someone else.
My own children were somewhat bemused by the experience. Normally when I'm absent, such as when they're staying with their grandparents or taking a trip with Sarah, they know I'm not likely to get into trouble. They can picture me safely at home in the armchair, remote in one hand and beer in the other. They can phone and check up on me. No one's going to steal me and I'll be there to feed them when they get back. Everything is still somehow right with world.
They found the thought of me off unsupervised while they remained in the house more troubling. They'd forgotten the last time it happened.
That said, it took a little while to hit home:
I went into the lounge to tell them I was heading off and didn't get much response. Fraser grunted without looking up from his DS. Marie didn't respond, her eyes fixed on the TV. Lewis just looked puzzled and said, "Uh? Where are you going?"
He remembered eventually... then wrapped himself round my leg and made little whimpering noises. He didn't want me to go. He clung to me, preventing me from moving. This was flattering and touching until I recalled that it was probably as much to do with his aversion to change as to any direct fondness towards me. Heck, when we had the windows replaced recently, he wanted to keep the old ones and build a little shrine out of them in the back garden. I'm equally old and familiar and he wanted to keep me around. I suspected the back garden would have done for me too, if he'd been able to look out and wave at me on occasion.
I managed to prise Lewis off but then Marie decided to get in on the act. She gave me a quick cuddle and then went back to the TV. Fraser waited until I was out the door before running after me in a panic, looking for his hug. He hadn't realised I was going that moment and had just been finishing his level...
I imagined they'd hardly notice I was gone. Fraser certainly put a brave face on it if he did but apparently Lewis missed me quite a bit. I was also rather surprised to learn that Marie missed me a lot. Usually I feel like I'm constantly arguing with her.
It's not the same as when I argue with Fraser. He's a good kid but he doesn't take orders well. Tell him to do his homework in his room and he'll grumble. Then he'll say he'll do it later. Then he'll start doing it in the kitchen. The he'll explain at great length how, by doing something else, he is in fact doing exactly what he was told... and that it doesn't matter because the homework isn't due till the end of the week... and besides, it's all Lewis' fault anyway...
Fraser simply won't do what he's told without extended discussion. He can be reasoned with, though, and will give in eventually. Marie is more prone to taking exception to something simply because she feels like it. Persuading her is a battle of wills. She makes an unreasonable demand, I refuse to do what I'm told and she attempts to send me straight to bed. We're perpetually at war for control. I stick to my guns because I know that I'm the one in charge. She does exactly the same.
I thought she'd be glad to have a break. As it turned out, she was rather concerned by the whole business. I'd barely been gone a few hours before she was asking how come it was suddenly Daddy always going out to work? I think she was worried her world had changed and she was going to have to train a new slave. I got home and she sat on my lap and refused to let me move. A taste of something different had been all very well but she was relieved to have life back to normal.
My trip was a church training weekend. (Mike's idea.) We talked about a lot of things but one of the topics covered was liminal moments. Times that are neither one thing nor another - times of change or transition or overlap. These can be great spiritual moments like the one Jesus' disciples had when they saw him filled with the glory of God on the mountain or they can be more mundane, spent sitting on a bus or twiddling thumbs while wondering if a tradesman is going to turn up as promised.
One of the points made was that it's easy to let these moments slip past, waiting for what comes next or dwelling on what went before (or pining for a domesticated parent who's managed to escape for a couple of days). It's better to accept them and make the most of them.
To be honest, my life feels like one big liminal moment right now, filled with a whole load of little ones. I still haven't worked out what I'm going to do now the kids are at school and even when they're home, things are different. They don't need me every minute. In fact, they can entertain themselves for whole hours at a time. They come home from school, I help them with their homework, they run off to play and then I find myself standing around wondering what to do. They might not need me until tea-time. Then again, if I sit down to work on something it's almost guaranteed that they'll come running back wanting attention as soon as I'm settled. It's frustrating. I'm not spending time with the kids but I'm not free to accomplish much either. The result is that I end up feeling like neither a particularly great dad nor a particularly great anything else.
I've finally figured out why this happens. It used to be that I had to grab time for myself wherever I could. Those minutes when they were all entertaining themselves were my chance to relax or get stuff done. I guarded them jealously. Now the kids are at school, I need to get over it. I've got other time. I shouldn't be trying to turn these moments into something they're not. Although the kids might leave me alone, I'm really on call. I should accept it, not expect anything other than a game of Mouse Trap!, and take any peace I do happen to get as a bonus.
More than that, I should probably actively suggest fun activities for us to do together. My children may well argue and demand to be left alone but at least I'll have tried...
Yours in a woman's world,
Ed.
Labels: housedad
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Friday, 29 January 2010
At the school gate
Dear Dave,
Have a good one. You're long overdue a night out. It can't have been easy the last year or two, dealing with Daisy's poor sleep. Thank goodness she's finally settled down and Sam's over the bout of stroppiness he was having before Christmas. Life should get easier every day from here. Another few months and nappies will be behind you; another year and Daisy will be at nursery. After that, it's only a hop, skip and jump to Sam doing chores and Daisy being at school. At some point they might even be able to say 'please' and 'thank you' without being prompted. Hey, mine can all catch their own vomit in a bowl these days, which is a major step forward, I'm sure you'll agree.
Yep, you've done much of the heavy lifting of childcare already. The amount of man-handling you'll have to do will steadily decrease as the weeks go by and you'll be able to sit down and conserve your strength for threats, bribery and shouting. This will be tiring in its own way but nothing compared to the broken sleep and physical exertion of the early days. Get out and celebrate! It's great you've managed to stay in contact with some of your old mates and that they're understanding of your situation. With luck, you might even think of something to talk to them about other than children. Have a good one.
Personally, I'm short on practice of leaving the house at night. Working up the energy to go see Avatar is almost beyond me. As a kid, I dreamed of living within walking distance of a cinema but now I actually do, I can't summon up the motivation to go. It's cold and wet out there. I'd rather curl up in front of the TV.
The downside is that I've ended up sharing a social life with my children, gleaning adult conversation from talking to the parents of their friends. This situation started during the years of eating biscuits at toddler group, continued via countless chats outside the nursery door and now persists through the half hour I spend loitering in the playground each day.
These convenient friendships are fragile, however. I've mentioned before how easy it is to lose acquaintances made at parent and toddler - I'd speak to people every week for months and then they'd simply disappear. At school, it's even stranger than that. Now Fraser's older, his class comes out of school on the other side of the building. I still have to lurk where I've always lurked, waiting for Lewis and Marie, but most of the parents of Fraser's classmates have moved round to the other door. People I spoke to every day for four years, I suddenly hardly see.
Then there are those parents whose children were very friendly with Fraser in Primary 1 but have since drifted off into other social groups (usually because they're icky girls). I've been to these peoples' houses, drunk their coffee and had long chats taking an interest in their lives. Now we just smile unconvincingly at each other in passing as we hurry round to opposite ends of the school. Another few months and their kids will walk home by themselves. The parents will become nothing more than familiar-looking faces at open days and school shows. It's weird.
Of course, Marie starting school has introduced me to a whole new load of people and the parents of Lewis' friends are still hanging around. For the time being, I have plenty of people to talk to in the playground while trying to stave off hypothermia on a snowy Wednesday afternoon. Some I regard as proper friends.
I just wonder what happens when they move round the corner to the other door...
As it is, there are occasionally days when schedules and illnesses combine to leave me standing about without my normal clique. If enough kids are off sick, being collected by their gran or heading to After School Club, then I have to hunt around for company. Of the remaining parents, some don't speak English very well and some of the mums are wary of being spoken to by a strange man. Others I've simply never clicked with, unable to strike up a conversation which goes beyond the weather. Oh, and then there are the dads who have the day off and aren't thrilled to be spending it standing around a playground in subzero temperatures. Talking to them seldom goes well. They tend to view me as a lunatic when they find out I do it every day.
Last time I was stuck for someone to speak to, I was surprisingly glad to spot Trevor hunched by the school gate, looking uncomfortably out of place as he gazed at his own boots. We don't have much in common and having a chat with him can be hard going but we've helped each other through a couple of difficult situations in the past so there's enough mutual respect to bridge any awkward silences.
"Hi, there. How are you?" I said, adjusting my scarf against the chill wind.
Trevor stood there in a khaki t-shirt, seemingly oblivious to the cold. "Can't complain."
There was an awkward silence.
We had at least a couple of minutes until the bell went for the Primary 1s to come out and probably another five for them to actually appear. I tried again. "Is Karen working?"
"No."
I was about to launch into an extensive further series of Yes/No questions, beginning with 'Is she at the shops?' and ending with 'Is she taking another rollerblading class now her instructor's out of traction?'. Then I remembered that I am not my children. "What's she up to then?" I asked.
Trevor shrugged. "Didn't tell me. Said it was my turn to collect Malcolm." His tone told me there was a whole lot more he was keeping to himself. Given the scale of conflict I witnessed between the two of them in public recently, I feared what might have occurred behind closed doors. Rolling pins and machetes were not entirely beyond the realms of possibility. (And that was assuming Trevor had chosen not to defend himself.)
"You guys doing OK?" I said nervously.
"Can't complain," he repeated.
I nodded. If I lived with Scary Karen, I'd be too frightened to complain, too. Nonetheless, Trevor has served in a number of war zones. He's never told me exactly what he did there but he's such a big block of solid muscles they may simply have used him as armour-plating. Certainly, if the bomb ever drops, it's him I'm going to duck behind for cover. This being the case, I thought he might dare to venture something slightly more informative if I pressed him. "Well, if you ever need to talk about..."
"She wants more kids."
This was significantly less pressing than I'd been expecting. "What?" I said (with a touch of deja vu).
"She wants more kids - now William's started at nursery and all."
"He has?" I couldn't quite believe it. Then I did the maths and realised that it's three years since I first met Karen and her two boys.
"Yeah. She's thinking she's going to have to stop with the... er... you know..."
"Dressing him up as Diana Ross?"
"Not that."
"Tying him to railings while she goes and gets a haircut?"
"Yeah, but, er, no. I, er..." He made some suggestive gestures near his chest.
"Oh! Breast-feeding!" I said rather too loudly, like I'd just won at Charades, and doubtless giving some nearby mums even more reason to be wary of me.
"Yeah. That."
"Oh, right."
There was more awkward silence, punctuated by the school bell.
"Isn't she a little old for...?"
Trevor winced and glanced over his shoulder. "Keep it down - someone might hear. You don't want Karen finding out. She might go for you next time." He pulled up his t-shirt and pointed to one of his iron-hard pectorals. Despite all the hair, an area of fresh scars was clearly visible. There was a pattern too them. I made out bushy eyebrows, a bulbous nose and a hideous grin. I stared, hardly noticing that every other parent in the vicinity had begun cautiously backing away from us.
"She threw a gnome at you, didn't she?"
"One of her favourites."
Karen's collection of garden gnomes is almost legendary. The live web cam feed of the dozens in her front hall now gets several thousand hits a day. You might wonder why, but watch it long enough and you'll swear the little blighters are moving. Conspiracy theorists can't get enough.
I baulked at the thought of the level of rage that would be required to bring her to harm one her darlings. "Oh, goodness."
Trevor nodded. "She thinks she still has what it takes and she won't hear otherwise. Says she misses having little ones around. Not to mention, she reckons I'm doing such a good job with Malkey and Will, she thinks I could do with some of my own... Not that I don't think of them as my own." He looked over his shoulder again. "I didn't say that. That's how she put it. 'Some of my own,' she said. They were her words."
I was focused on one word in particular. "Some?"
"There's a history of triplets in her family."
"Oh..." Our gazes met and the brief moment of wide-eyed terror we shared conveyed as much as several hours of discussion. There was no need to say anything else on that particular topic. We stood there for a while and I bobbed up and down in an effort to keep warm. The Primary 1s still didn't appear. Time dragged on.
Eventually, I couldn't help opening my mouth. "So you don't want more kids?" I said.
"I don't know that now's a good time."
"When is a good time to have your life turned upside down?"
"I 'spose," said Trevor, rubbing his chin, but he didn't seem convinced.
Finally, the school door opened and children started running out. Marie skipped over in her luminous pink coat and gave me a hug, inadvertently whacking me in a private area with her lunchbox.
"You never know," I squeaked, "the next one might be a girl."
Trevor looked at my grinning limpet with pigtails and sparkly shoes. He went pale.
Then I was dragged off to play What's the Time, Mr Wolf? and before I managed to escape, he was gone. In his place was a different set of acquaintances, already arriving for the second bell and the release of the next batch of children. I smiled unconvincingly at the ones passing by on their way round the corner, then I went to rummage about in the remains of Marie's lunch to see if she had any food leftover. I managed to bag half a tub of chopped apple. I sat quietly eating it on a bench until Lewis appeared.
I guess I could have found someone different to talk to but, well, I'd had quite enough adult conversation for one day. I just wanted to get home to the TV...
Yours in a woman's world,
Ed.
PS Have a great time! (Maybe you could go see Avatar for me?)
Have a good one. You're long overdue a night out. It can't have been easy the last year or two, dealing with Daisy's poor sleep. Thank goodness she's finally settled down and Sam's over the bout of stroppiness he was having before Christmas. Life should get easier every day from here. Another few months and nappies will be behind you; another year and Daisy will be at nursery. After that, it's only a hop, skip and jump to Sam doing chores and Daisy being at school. At some point they might even be able to say 'please' and 'thank you' without being prompted. Hey, mine can all catch their own vomit in a bowl these days, which is a major step forward, I'm sure you'll agree.
Yep, you've done much of the heavy lifting of childcare already. The amount of man-handling you'll have to do will steadily decrease as the weeks go by and you'll be able to sit down and conserve your strength for threats, bribery and shouting. This will be tiring in its own way but nothing compared to the broken sleep and physical exertion of the early days. Get out and celebrate! It's great you've managed to stay in contact with some of your old mates and that they're understanding of your situation. With luck, you might even think of something to talk to them about other than children. Have a good one.
Personally, I'm short on practice of leaving the house at night. Working up the energy to go see Avatar is almost beyond me. As a kid, I dreamed of living within walking distance of a cinema but now I actually do, I can't summon up the motivation to go. It's cold and wet out there. I'd rather curl up in front of the TV.
The downside is that I've ended up sharing a social life with my children, gleaning adult conversation from talking to the parents of their friends. This situation started during the years of eating biscuits at toddler group, continued via countless chats outside the nursery door and now persists through the half hour I spend loitering in the playground each day.
These convenient friendships are fragile, however. I've mentioned before how easy it is to lose acquaintances made at parent and toddler - I'd speak to people every week for months and then they'd simply disappear. At school, it's even stranger than that. Now Fraser's older, his class comes out of school on the other side of the building. I still have to lurk where I've always lurked, waiting for Lewis and Marie, but most of the parents of Fraser's classmates have moved round to the other door. People I spoke to every day for four years, I suddenly hardly see.
Then there are those parents whose children were very friendly with Fraser in Primary 1 but have since drifted off into other social groups (usually because they're icky girls). I've been to these peoples' houses, drunk their coffee and had long chats taking an interest in their lives. Now we just smile unconvincingly at each other in passing as we hurry round to opposite ends of the school. Another few months and their kids will walk home by themselves. The parents will become nothing more than familiar-looking faces at open days and school shows. It's weird.
Of course, Marie starting school has introduced me to a whole new load of people and the parents of Lewis' friends are still hanging around. For the time being, I have plenty of people to talk to in the playground while trying to stave off hypothermia on a snowy Wednesday afternoon. Some I regard as proper friends.
I just wonder what happens when they move round the corner to the other door...
As it is, there are occasionally days when schedules and illnesses combine to leave me standing about without my normal clique. If enough kids are off sick, being collected by their gran or heading to After School Club, then I have to hunt around for company. Of the remaining parents, some don't speak English very well and some of the mums are wary of being spoken to by a strange man. Others I've simply never clicked with, unable to strike up a conversation which goes beyond the weather. Oh, and then there are the dads who have the day off and aren't thrilled to be spending it standing around a playground in subzero temperatures. Talking to them seldom goes well. They tend to view me as a lunatic when they find out I do it every day.
Last time I was stuck for someone to speak to, I was surprisingly glad to spot Trevor hunched by the school gate, looking uncomfortably out of place as he gazed at his own boots. We don't have much in common and having a chat with him can be hard going but we've helped each other through a couple of difficult situations in the past so there's enough mutual respect to bridge any awkward silences.
"Hi, there. How are you?" I said, adjusting my scarf against the chill wind.
Trevor stood there in a khaki t-shirt, seemingly oblivious to the cold. "Can't complain."
There was an awkward silence.
We had at least a couple of minutes until the bell went for the Primary 1s to come out and probably another five for them to actually appear. I tried again. "Is Karen working?"
"No."
I was about to launch into an extensive further series of Yes/No questions, beginning with 'Is she at the shops?' and ending with 'Is she taking another rollerblading class now her instructor's out of traction?'. Then I remembered that I am not my children. "What's she up to then?" I asked.
Trevor shrugged. "Didn't tell me. Said it was my turn to collect Malcolm." His tone told me there was a whole lot more he was keeping to himself. Given the scale of conflict I witnessed between the two of them in public recently, I feared what might have occurred behind closed doors. Rolling pins and machetes were not entirely beyond the realms of possibility. (And that was assuming Trevor had chosen not to defend himself.)
"You guys doing OK?" I said nervously.
"Can't complain," he repeated.
I nodded. If I lived with Scary Karen, I'd be too frightened to complain, too. Nonetheless, Trevor has served in a number of war zones. He's never told me exactly what he did there but he's such a big block of solid muscles they may simply have used him as armour-plating. Certainly, if the bomb ever drops, it's him I'm going to duck behind for cover. This being the case, I thought he might dare to venture something slightly more informative if I pressed him. "Well, if you ever need to talk about..."
"She wants more kids."
This was significantly less pressing than I'd been expecting. "What?" I said (with a touch of deja vu).
"She wants more kids - now William's started at nursery and all."
"He has?" I couldn't quite believe it. Then I did the maths and realised that it's three years since I first met Karen and her two boys.
"Yeah. She's thinking she's going to have to stop with the... er... you know..."
"Dressing him up as Diana Ross?"
"Not that."
"Tying him to railings while she goes and gets a haircut?"
"Yeah, but, er, no. I, er..." He made some suggestive gestures near his chest.
"Oh! Breast-feeding!" I said rather too loudly, like I'd just won at Charades, and doubtless giving some nearby mums even more reason to be wary of me.
"Yeah. That."
"Oh, right."
There was more awkward silence, punctuated by the school bell.
"Isn't she a little old for...?"
Trevor winced and glanced over his shoulder. "Keep it down - someone might hear. You don't want Karen finding out. She might go for you next time." He pulled up his t-shirt and pointed to one of his iron-hard pectorals. Despite all the hair, an area of fresh scars was clearly visible. There was a pattern too them. I made out bushy eyebrows, a bulbous nose and a hideous grin. I stared, hardly noticing that every other parent in the vicinity had begun cautiously backing away from us.
"She threw a gnome at you, didn't she?"
"One of her favourites."
Karen's collection of garden gnomes is almost legendary. The live web cam feed of the dozens in her front hall now gets several thousand hits a day. You might wonder why, but watch it long enough and you'll swear the little blighters are moving. Conspiracy theorists can't get enough.
I baulked at the thought of the level of rage that would be required to bring her to harm one her darlings. "Oh, goodness."
Trevor nodded. "She thinks she still has what it takes and she won't hear otherwise. Says she misses having little ones around. Not to mention, she reckons I'm doing such a good job with Malkey and Will, she thinks I could do with some of my own... Not that I don't think of them as my own." He looked over his shoulder again. "I didn't say that. That's how she put it. 'Some of my own,' she said. They were her words."
I was focused on one word in particular. "Some?"
"There's a history of triplets in her family."
"Oh..." Our gazes met and the brief moment of wide-eyed terror we shared conveyed as much as several hours of discussion. There was no need to say anything else on that particular topic. We stood there for a while and I bobbed up and down in an effort to keep warm. The Primary 1s still didn't appear. Time dragged on.
Eventually, I couldn't help opening my mouth. "So you don't want more kids?" I said.
"I don't know that now's a good time."
"When is a good time to have your life turned upside down?"
"I 'spose," said Trevor, rubbing his chin, but he didn't seem convinced.
Finally, the school door opened and children started running out. Marie skipped over in her luminous pink coat and gave me a hug, inadvertently whacking me in a private area with her lunchbox.
"You never know," I squeaked, "the next one might be a girl."
Trevor looked at my grinning limpet with pigtails and sparkly shoes. He went pale.
Then I was dragged off to play What's the Time, Mr Wolf? and before I managed to escape, he was gone. In his place was a different set of acquaintances, already arriving for the second bell and the release of the next batch of children. I smiled unconvincingly at the ones passing by on their way round the corner, then I went to rummage about in the remains of Marie's lunch to see if she had any food leftover. I managed to bag half a tub of chopped apple. I sat quietly eating it on a bench until Lewis appeared.
I guess I could have found someone different to talk to but, well, I'd had quite enough adult conversation for one day. I just wanted to get home to the TV...
Yours in a woman's world,
Ed.
PS Have a great time! (Maybe you could go see Avatar for me?)
Labels: housedad, Scary Karen, school
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Wednesday, 6 January 2010
Understanding working parents
Dear Dave,Happy New Year! I hope you had a good holiday. We're finally back from visiting my parents' house in deepest, darkest Norfolk - the land of turkeys, farmers and dial-up internet. Even dial-up didn't seem to be working very well this time, though. So much as checking my email became a torturous exercise in dropped calls and lengthy load times. Renting a carrier pigeon began to feel like a worthwhile option. At least it did until my cousin popped round to visit and told me his connection had been running slowly too and so he'd had BT out to check the line. The reason it wasn't working properly?
Too many people had shot it.
Presumably they'd been firing at birds which had settled down on the wire for a rest but you never know - sometimes the need to make your own fun in the more isolated areas of East Anglia can lead to pretty desperate measures. Either way, though, my avian-powered p-mail solution seemed unlikely to work. As soon as the poor pigeon stopped to get its bearings it was going to end up as the lunch of some lunatic with a shotgun. This didn't really seem worth it for the sake of a selection of spam and a load of Facebook updates about the snow. I decided to not worry about it, letting the world wide web pass me by for a few days. It was a pleasant rest.
There's only so long a man can go without receiving Photoshopped pictures of cute, fluffy animals, however, so we've fought our way home through the bad weather, taken down the Christmas decorations, re-stocked the fridge and fired up the wireless router. Hurrah!
Even better, despite the cold, the school is open and all the kids are well. I've got some peace and quiet to sort through my inbox that I wasn't necessarily counting on. I fully expected one or more of the children to wake up with a cough or sniffle this morning and thus force me to decide whether they were well enough to go. Sometimes it's obvious, as they have a high temperature and goo is streaming out of every orifice, but usually it's more debatable. A slight temperature and a minor sore throat could clear up by the middle of the morning or it could have developed into full-blown pneumonia by lunchtime. How am I supposed to tell?
Fortunately, one of the advantages of being a stay-at-home parent is that there isn't normally a problem if one of the kids has to stay home as well. I can err on the side of caution and let them doze on the sofa, dosed up on Calpol and surrounded by tissues and sick bowls. Sure, it's annoying if I've got jobs planned or I was intending to head to the shops, but I don't have to organise emergency childcare or phone my boss and grovel to be allowed to take a day off. It's all nice and easy.
Take the last day of term before Christmas as an example. Marie got up complaining that she wasn't feeling very well and then sat on the stairs moaning. There didn't appear to be much obviously wrong with her but she'd been looking forward to the final day activities and the very fact she didn't want to go meant something was up. I decided it would be best to keep her off, reasoning that it would be unfriendly exposing her classmates to a potentially nasty virus only a few days before Christmas. After all, doctors and teachers are always stressing the importance of not knowingly sending an infectious child into school. (Although, bear in mind, if you ever see a kid in the playground glowing with fever and streaming with goo, you can pretty much guarantee they have at least one parent in the teaching or medical professions.)
I dropped off the boys and got to feel smugly self-righteous when the dad of one of Marie's friends mentioned that his child was suffering in a similar way even as he shoved her through the door into school. He'd got to get to work and he was hoping it was nothing and it would be cleared up by the middle of the morning...
Truth be told, it initially seemed to be him who'd made the right call. Marie was very tired all day but not tangibly unwell. Her symptoms could be explained by a lack of sleep combined with a natural desire not to venture outside in the cold. If anything, she was more polite and better behaved than normal. She certainly whined and argued a lot less. She lay on the sofa for most of the day while I got on with packing for the trip south. I wondered whether she could have gone to school.
We had to be up early the next day to catch our train, so we set lots of alarms and tried not stay up too late. I was woken at 3am by Marie complaining she was feeling sick. I found a bowl, calmed her down and went back to bed. It took me a while to doze off again and then I was woken at 4am by Marie complaining that she had actually been sick. Luckily, she'd caught it all in the bowl so there wasn't much clearing up, but I was still rather tired when my bedside erupted in bleeping at 6:30. I wasn't entirely prepared to discover we'd had four inches of snow and getting to the station might be an issue. We got ready and I went to call a taxi, hoping for the best. Just as I reached for the phone, however, Marie threw up her breakfast.
This presented something of a dilemma. On the one hand, we were considering taking a vomiting child for an eight hour journey on packed trains through weather which could conceivably leave us stranded somewhere between Darlington and Doncaster. On the other, I'd spent an entire day packing and we had non-refundable tickets.
Taking the financial hit would have been painful enough but there were only two days until Christmas, so even if we delayed, the chances of Marie being entirely well before travelling down were slim if we wanted to make it for the big day. We wouldn't have been able to get seats on another train anyway. If we were going to go, we had to go right then. I began to regret ordering the kids' presents online and having them delivered to my folks.
It was time to make a decision.
I grabbed a handful of plastic bags and called the taxi.
It turned into a very long day. The taxi struggled to make it the solitary mile through town. Our first train was almost an hour behind schedule before it so much as made it back the mile the other way and passed our house. The carriage was overcrowded with extra passengers who'd had to abandon plans to drive or fly. I almost got left behind in Newcastle as I transferred our luggage to the guard's van in order to free up space for people to stand. We missed our connection...
And all the while, my little biological warfare unit breathed in and out, adding an exciting cocktail of germs to the warm air circulating around us and dozens of others. Every so often, she made retching noises. I hid her up a corner by the window where her pale, drawn features weren't so obvious and I tried not to picture one of those contagion maps they have in the movies, showing bright lines of infection spreading out across the country in an intricate web from the initial source as carriers split up and move on to the next leg of their journeys. I'd probably have felt less shifty if I'd left her with the neighbours and taken a backpack full of anthrax instead.
We got steadily closer to our destination, however. We changed at Peterborough, then Norwich and eventually found ourselves with only one more stop until we reached The Middle of Nowhere. We were almost there. So close...
Then Marie retched. It had a different sound quality from previously on the trip. It was deeper. More liquidy. Kind of ominous.
"I'm going to be sick," she wailed.
I grabbed one of the bags and shoved it under her chin. (Having learnt my lesson with random carrier bags, it was a see-through plastic freezer bag to minimise the chance of holes.) I was barely quick enough. A torrent of evil burst forth from my daughter and flowed into my proffered receptacle. Then she took a deep breath.
...
There was more.
...
And a little bit after that.
...
Then she was done. We'd caught all of it. Delighted, I tied a knot in the top of the bag, inspected it for leaks and then wondered what to do with it. Since Marie had had nothing but water for hours, I was able to marvel at how thin and clear the vomit was.
I have a very vivid memory of going to the fair when I was around Marie's age. There was a game where you had to bounce a ping pong ball on a table and attempt to get it to land in one of a number of jam jars. Success brought a prize - a goldfish swimming around in a freezer bag full of water. I had several shots at that game and then spent the rest of the evening proudly clutching my trophy. It was the only pet I ever had that was completely mine.
As I made my way along the aisle of the swaying train, clutching my bag of sick, I couldn't help musing how my lot in life had changed over thirty years. I staggered past the ticket collector, inadvertently waving my prize at her as the train juddered round a bend, and I felt slightly bereft without a gleaming goldfish to show off.
Admittedly, it would have been the world's unluckiest goldfish but, hey, it might have gone some way to disguise the bio-terrorism I'd been involved in. As it was, the poor woman looked afraid, gave me a wide berth and hurried off to phone Special Branch. We only just got off the train in time. It wasn't out of sight before a couple of helicopters full of commandos caught up with it and the whole thing disappeared in a cloud of tear gas and abseiling men with guns.
Greeting me with a hug, my mum raised an eyebrow but didn't say anything.
I think I'll be a little more understanding next time one of the kids' friends gets sent to school despite having a sniffle.
Yours in a woman's world,
Ed.
Labels: children, housedad, school, sickness, travel
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Tuesday, 29 December 2009
The Housedad Interrogation
Dear Dave,Today's letter isn't here. It's over at OurMilkMoney.com trying to act nonchalant and blend in.
If you want to know what really makes me afraid, you should head over there now...
Yours in a woman's world,
Ed. Thoughts? Responses? Got a funny story about your children? Add your comment here. 10:30 PM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post
Monday, 21 December 2009
Guest post by Chris Loprete
Dear Dave,Well, that's another year almost over - another year of parental peril, another year of housedad adventures and another year of unsolicited parenting advice from me. Only Christmas and Hogmanay to go and we're safely into 2010. Phew!
Wonder what I'll write to you about next year, though? I must have covered almost everything by now. Our kids can't have many more tricks up their sleeves, can they?
Er... Don't answer that.
Anyway, thought you might be interested in this by Chris Loprete over at The Daddy's Den. He's a comedy writer for TV, not a stay-at-home parent, but it seems like he's picked up on the housedad experience a little:
Thanks. I got it.Pass out helpful pointers to anyone who's within earshot? Who'd do something like that?
Why is it that when women see a father alone with a baby, they immediately assume we don’t know what the hell we’re doing?
Now I don’t want to generalise here. I’m not talking about single women. In fact the single women tend to gravitate towards the daddies at the park or in other public places. Chicks LOOOOVE guys with babies. Babies and dogs. They say, “I want that.” Now of course we men are kidding ourselves because ‘that' is not specifically us, but rather a stable man who’s a good father, and the fantasy is fun. Anyway I’m probably already in trouble with my editor who happens to be my wife, so I’ll go on. No, I’m talking about the annoying mother who wants to give all kinds of unsolicited advice on how to raise your child. And rightly so. OBVIOUSLY I MUST need this unsolicited advice because my child’s mother is nowhere in sight. I therefore MUST be doing something wrong. And then, I imagine this “guardian angel” will go along her merry way and later at the dinner table tell her family how she saved a child’s life today.
Take this little encounter for example. It was a summer Saturday afternoon about two years ago. I was in my townhouse downstairs and my wife was upstairs with our infant son. I was watching a baseball game and cleaning. The cleaning part is not important to the story but I specifically remember doing it and I always like to remind my wife/blog editor that it does happen on rare occurrences. Anyway I could hear my son crying upstairs pretty loudly. He was probably getting his diaper changed - which to him has always been the baby equivalent to a root canal. There was a knock at the door. When I answered it I saw a woman who was walking her dog in front of our door. She asked, “Do you have a baby?”
“Why yes,” I said, waiting for the inevitable compliment. Something along the lines of, "I see you walking him. You have a lovely family," or, "Well, he’s obviously going to grow up to be a very good looking man." Why else would she take the time out of her dog walking to knock on our door?
This is why: She looked at me and said, “He’s crying upstairs.”
I paused to make sure I had heard her right. Then I said, “Yeah, my wife’s upstairs with him.”
She replied, “Oh, I heard the game on pretty loudly so I wasn’t sure you if could hear him.”
Yyyeeeeahhh. Handled, honey, but thanks. I’m sure the children of our housing complex are a lot safer with you roaming the sidewalks knocking on doors. Hey, hero, I think I hear a baby coughing a couple of houses down. Do you want to call child services or should I?
Or how ‘bout the woman on the beach later on that same summer? I was walking on the beach, my son safely strapped into the front loader on my chest. I felt good. First of all the Baby Bjorn completely covered my huge gut so I wasn’t nearly as self conscious as usual. And secondly, it was a beautiful day and I was walking with my new son at the place I’m always the happiest: the beach. So when I saw a woman walking toward me and eyeing both of us, I started to feel even better. I was sure she could sense the good energy coming off of me and, like I said, the baby was covering up my huge white shirtless girth, so I thought, 'Hey, I think she’s checking me out.'
So when she passed by and asked, “Does he have sunscreen on?” I was a bit nonplussed. First of all, I had practically bathed him in SPF 560 or whatever the strongest baby sun goop is nowadays. This kid could have crawled across the surface of the sun and come away with nothing but a nice base.
So I told her, “Uh…. yeah… plenty.”
She replied, “Oh. Cause his legs look a little red,” and passed by me never breaking her stride.
I immediately turned and shouted after her, “Yeah? Well they call his chubby legs and butt baby fat. They call yours cellulite!” ZING! That got her. Of course I didn’t actually say that but ooooh I wish I had.
And these brilliant pieces of parenting wisdom are not confined to just me when I’m alone. My wife has had to endure some slings and arrows of her own. It’s like divide and conquer. Once my wife and I are divided, they love to conquer. I don’t ever want to hear a sentence that starts with, “Y’know what WE do…” I don’t even like hearing it from our parents, but that I understand and tolerate because “parental interference” is in the grandparent’s code book. It’s a God given right. To tell you the truth as my wife and I get ready for baby #2, we’ve learned to tolerate buttinskys a little more. In fact I’m amazed how laid back we are about having another child and we’re only 3 months out. I guess we think of ourselves as old pros now. In fact it probably won’t be long before we’re handing out some advice of our own to other parents who obviously don’t have a clue what they’re doing. I’m sure they’ll thank us for it.
Oh...
Ho, well. Thanks for reading for another year. Maybe in 2010 I'll let you in on my top tips for cleaning light switches safely or the three most important things to remember when pretending to listen to your kids while you're secretly playing Peggle on your iPod.
Then again, who knows what the New Year will bring? All the best.
Yours in a woman's world,
Ed.
PS If you like Chris' stuff, you should also check out his paternity leave experience and his scary Star Wars incident.
Labels: housedad
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Monday, 23 November 2009
Always have a back-up plan
Dear Dave,Last week was the week.
The week when I didn't have any school holidays to contend with. When my calendar was free of tradesmen and essential errands. When I didn't have parents staying, cleaning to do or school trips to help out on. Barring a quick visit to Iceland to pile a trolley with food and arrange a home delivery, last week was the first week in nine years when I was totally free to concentrate on getting some writing done and plan for the inevitable future in which I'm no longer a housedad.
With fear and trepidation, I sat down just after nine o'clock on Monday morning and began to type. Time was spread out before me, rich and fertile and filled with seemingly infinite possibility. At last! A chance to think and create, an opportunity to -
Whirr. Click.
At five past nine, my screen went suddenly blank.
It would be nice to say that this was due to some sort of epiphany on my part - that I realised I should really have a lie down and then go for a coffee somewhere in celebration of my freedom. There would be something almost inspiring about me switching the computer off and walking away to enjoy a well-deserved rest from all my housedad labour. It would be a simple lesson to all the crazy, over-stretched people out there run-ragged by the goading of self-imposed expectation. Just relax, take a deep breath, think about what you're doing, go eat a muffin...
Unfortunately, the reality was that the hard drive in my laptop died.
As you can probably imagine, this wasn't very relaxing. By the time I'd figured out the problem, replaced the drive, re-installed everything, recovered as much data as I could and sobbed into my coffee, it was Wednesday. On Thursday, Fraser woke up with symptoms which, when described to other parents in the playground, had them backing away, making little signs of warding and muttering about swine flu.
Then Sarah got it. Then I got it. Now Marie has it.
It's Monday again and Fraser is still off school. Lewis appeared slightly disappointed to be the only one fit and healthy and able to go. He cheered up, however, when I pointed out the alternative was to stay home with his brother and sister and listen to them grump and whine all day about not feeling very well. In fact, I suggested a swap - I offered to go to school for him if he stayed behind to look after the others.
He was out the door like a shot.
Ho well. Maybe I'll get some writing done next week. You never know, perhaps I'll even have a lie down or go for coffee instead.
(Assuming Lewis hasn't come down with this by then, of course...)
Yours in a woman's world,
Ed.
----------------------------
To all the American Daves and non-Daves out there,
Ally at OurMilkMoney.com is looking to talk to housedads about their experiences in order to write an upbeat article about involved fathers. You can contact her via the site. (Her email address was one of the things which I didn't manage to save!) It's a nationwide directory of local businesses run by self-employed parents, so it's worth checking out. Thoughts? Responses? Got a funny story about your children? Add your comment here. 10:15 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post
Thursday, 12 November 2009
Edge of the Otherworld
Dear Dave,I should be lying around enjoying the peace and quiet, revelling in the fact I've lived through the pre-school years and finally got all three of my kids out of the house on a regular basis.
But...
Nine years of limited sleep and constantly running around like a headless chicken have acclimatised me to being busy. Half an hour of sitting about during the day, and I get this urge to be productive. Writing to you fills up plenty of time but, well, it's clearly not enough. I logged onto the internet recently and this:
EdgeOfTheOtherworld.com
just kind of happened.
If you're looking for some thoughts, reflections and humour involving much more spirituality and far fewer embellished anecdotes about children, then check it out.
Yours on the Edge,
Ed.
Labels: housedad
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Monday, 28 September 2009
Haven't they grown
Dear Dave,Thank you for your congratulations on my survival. It does feel fantastic to have experienced my kids' pre-school lives at close quarters and yet to have come out the other side still sane enough to tell the tale in an almost coherent manner. Best wishes with the three more years of tribulation you have left yourself. Not long now and it should all start getting much easier. I know that's small consolation at the moment, what with Daisy's poor sleeping and Sam's stroppiness, but there's a great chance that the hardest physical trials are already behind you. The kids' demands on your time and energy should soon begin to decrease. Believe me, the light at the end of the tunnel is approaching and it's NOT an oncoming toddler intent on whacking you over the head with a illuminated fairy wand that makes a Diddly-ding! noise. (Although there could be the odd false alarm. If the light flashes and looks kind of pink, you might want to don protective headgear and prepare to dodge.)
Yep, just keep on plugging away. Sure, there'll still be plenty of difficult situations before your children finally leave the nest but, whatever ways they find to test your patience as teenagers, at least you won't be crazy from sleep deprivation nor exhausted from carrying them around on your shoulders for hours. That's got to be an improvement...
Having all three of my kids at school full-time hasn't really sunk in yet. I had a couple of restful days and then I cleaned the house. It was refreshing not having to do the housework late at night or at the weekend but I spent most of the time spotting all the crannies and high shelves that I haven't investigated in years. After much practice, I can get the whole house looking clean and tidy in four hours; to get the place actually clean and tidy, I'm going to need to put in a day or two per room.
I'm also going to have to hire a skip.
Strangely, this realisation was both demoralising and reassuring. Each potential chore I discovered booked up more of my new-found 'free' time over the coming months but also added a little extra justification for my continued housedad status. It's good to know there's plenty to keep me usefully occupied while the kids aren't sick, on holiday or out of school.
Of course, I've always known this. In any rational analysis, I've clearly got more than enough to be getting on with. That's not always sufficient, though - I've met too many people in my time who've wondered what I do all day apart from eat biscuits and sit around watching Tweenies. I'm used to explaining myself.
The problem is, the explanation I've been using for years is no longer true.
I still tend to describe myself as a housedad with three small children. This works a treat. It's short and simple and contains all the information anyone needs to know - if they don't immediately appreciate how busy I am, no amount of extra explaining would make them understand anyway. As a bonus, it's a particularly useful description when dealing with large companies that are messing me about. If I drop it into the conversation when reporting a heating fault, for instance, the person on the other end of the phone suddenly gets a mental image of a newspaper article headed with a photo of a bloke sitting on a sofa surrounded by adorable toddlers looking glum and covered in icicles. The only way the potential negative publicity could be worse is if we had a pet panda with us, huddled under a blanket and staring mournfully at the camera with its big round eyes. They usually dispatch a service engineer pretty sharpish. (If they don't, I shout to the kids to make sure Ling-Ling's woolly hat is on properly and then I chew loudly on some bamboo. That always does the trick.)
Unfortunately, the last repair bloke turned up to discover not only a lack of photogenic livestock but that Fraser was taller than he was. The other two children played so quietly upstairs, the guy didn't know they were there. When he learnt I'm a housedad, he smirked and commented on how he wouldn't mind doing that himself. I had to give the kids a sugary chocolate bar each, wait five minutes and then encourage them to all go say 'hello' at once, just to teach the guy a lesson...
Nonetheless, the incident brought home to me that although I'm a housedad, I don't have three small children. Let's face it, I don't even have one small child anymore. In a double-whammy for my status as a full-time carer, not only is Marie in school but she had her fifth birthday yesterday. She's learning to write, she can coordinate her fashion accessories and I now have to pay for her on the bus. She's no longer small.
Three years ago, when my kids chased each other round the aisles of Tesco, they were cute. When they did it three days ago, they were a danger to old ladies and displays of soft fruit. If they try it again in another few months, I'm liable to get a caution from the police.
They've long since moved on from being toddling bundles of need. As such, my role involves far less hands-on maintenance than it used to. Instead, there's plenty of supervision - during the holidays, the boys are up at 7:30 and don't go to bed until 9:30. That's little enough peace already and, before too long, a point will come when Fraser is always about while I'm awake. I'll need to have adjusted from commanding a gaggle of infants, to sharing the house with three adolescent people.
By then, it might be worth changing career merely to escape... For now, I'm going to have to come up with a new job description. I'm a little sad to let go of the old one but I think it's time.
I was asked recently which of Marie's toys is her favourite. "Whichever one she's just lost," I replied. There's a lesson there in appreciating what we have. Despite many happy memories of looking after small children, new challenges await.
I'm looking forward to them.
Yours in a woman's world,
Ed.
PS First up is investigating the decade of accumulated junk beneath Fraser's bed. Goodness knows what's been shoved out of sight over the years - broken toys, odd socks, small aliens, chewed raisins, hankies. There could be anything lurking under there by now. I can barely imagine...
...
...
On second thoughts, maybe I'll leave that till next week...
Labels: housedad
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Wednesday, 23 September 2009
Dipping a toe in the temporal sea
Dear Dave,I'm still feeling peculiar.
Yesterday was just strange.
I mean, totally odd...
Marie finally had her first full day of education. I gave her a hug, shoved her towards the school door and then waved at her fruitlessly as she ran off to join her friends without a backward glance. Once she was inside I didn't know whether to shed a tear or let off a couple of party poppers. There was a temptation to simply lie down on a bench and groan quietly to myself.
I've been working towards having all three children at school for so long, I found myself at something of a loss once they were actually there. Six child-free hours stretched before me like a vast ocean of possibility and yet every drop of time felt precious and not to be wasted. As ever when faced with such opportunity, I was paralysed by indecision.
It wasn't that I couldn't think of things to do. Far from it. I just didn't know where to start. So much has been put on hold for the nine years since Fraser was born, six hours didn't feel like very long to catch up on lost time.
On the other hand, it was far longer than I felt capable of dealing with effectively. Nine years of small children has accustomed me to sprinting through everything. It started when Fraser was a baby - he'd often nap for three hours during the day but I never knew when those three hours would be or whether they'd come all at once. Sometimes I'd get an entire afternoon to myself; sometimes I'd get half an hour here and there. On occasion, I'd get nothing. I became expert at grabbing opportunities. I'd leave tasks set out, ready to go, and launch myself into them the second Fraser's eyes closed. I didn't faff around checking my email or drinking a coffee first. There wasn't time. I dashed through chores, hoping to get them finished before I was onto the next round of milk and nappies.
As the number of children in the house increased, the windows of opportunity shortened to the point where they disappeared and I seemed to be running through the day merely to stand still. This situation has obviously eased greatly as the kids have got older but, nonetheless, I've rarely had large chunks of time to fill. When the kids are all home, they can entertain themselves for hours... but they seldom do. I'm left to scavenge the time scattered between family activities and requests for help and attention. Meanwhile, the two hours or so I got each morning while Marie was at nursery were wonderful but they were also frustrating. I only had long enough to do one significant task in a hurry. Then it was a case of gulping down a coffee while skimming my email and putting on my shoes, before having to jog along the road to arrive promptly to collect her. I had a short stretch of time and I always raced along it...
Then suddenly, yesterday, I had six hours all at once.
I was a 400m runner presented with an open road. I was mesmerised.
Unable to decide between all the glimmering alternatives for relaxation and productivity, I went home and had a nap. Then I pottered about the house and ate some crisps. I didn't achieve anything. It was great.
I did feel a bit guilty, though. I'd give you a list of all the stuff I'd planned to do with the time but it would be the same list as when when Marie started nursery. Thanks to one thing after another, I'm not sure I've done a single activity I mentioned then, apart from go for coffee a couple of times and buy some clothes. Those clothes are now starting to look a little shabby. I could really do with buying some more... Drat.
I have a huge backlog of chores and tasks. When it came time to collect the children, I'd enjoyed myself but it was as if so much potential accomplishment had slipped from my fingers. What with Sarah at work slaving over a hot keyboard, and plenty to catch up on round the house, I felt that I should have had more to show for my day than an empty packet of salty snacks...
Today is different, though.
The thing is, I woke up this morning to realise I had another six hours. Tomorrow there'll be yet another. Next week there'll be six hours for four days running. I can weep, shower myself with streamers, groan quietly on a bench and still have time to go for coffee and then buy clothes.
It'll take some getting used to, but the road just keeps on going...
Right. I'm off to buy a huge telly to celebrate.
Yours in a woman's world,
Ed.
Labels: housedad, nursery, school
Thoughts? Responses? Got a funny story about your children? Add your comment here. 9:20 AM - Permanent Link - 2 comments - Post comment - Links to this post
Wednesday, 9 September 2009
The housedad knowledge
Dear Dave,Looking after children takes more thought than you might imagine.
Well, I guess you don't have to imagine - as you read this, you're probably going over a mental list of household tasks you have to perform in a minute. There's a good chance you're also wondering how to entertain Daisy for the rest of the day. Perhaps you're even deciding whether to take a few moments and finish your coffee in peace or to give in and immediately investigate the strange smell and mysterious giggling coming from upstairs.
Speaking of which, if you feel a need to put me on hold for a bit and just go check, I'll understand...
...
...
Sorted? Child, furniture and pets back to their normal colour and fragrance? Great.
Shame your coffee's gone cold. Never mind - that's what microwaves are for. Want another forty-five seconds?
...
OK, right. As I was saying, looking after children takes a surprising amount of brainwork. Obviously I'm not talking about raw computing power here. Making their tea isn't rocket science. It does present a constant barrage of decisions, however. How many grapes constitute a portion for a particular size of child? What are the odds of them all liking ham today? Is the bread brown enough to placate the child who likes brown bread but not too brown to put off the child who's less of a fan? Is potato a vegetable? Does pizza three days running count as a balanced diet if the toppings are different? Is jam healthier than honey? Where's all the cutlery gone? How mouldy is too mouldy? What is that smell from upstairs?
The list goes on. When they ask me how many sweets they're each allowed for dessert, saying 'a few' is never adequate. They want an exact count. Stating an actual number sets a precedent for next time, though, and is liable to cause arguments when they realise they're not getting the same. (I make every effort to treat my children equally but, the fact is, Fraser is twice Marie's size and so has a higher tolerance for sugar. Honestly, she's bouncy enough as she is.) Thinking up arbitrary, and yet consistent, answers to this type of question can be a struggle.
And then there's the cups.
We have a stack of plastic cups in a variety of colours. They're not piled in any particular order - when they're clean and dry, I just plonk them on the stack at random. When the kids want a drink, I pull the first three off the top and fill them up. It's not hard. The problem is, who gets which cup?
It used to be easy. Pink for Marie, green for Lewis and whatever was left for Fraser. If there wasn't a green one, Lewis could probably cope with something different. If there wasn't a pink cup... well, I'd usually hunt through the stack to find one and avoid an argument. Gradually, all the pink cups found their way to the top. This made life simple.
Marie has laid claim to everything pink in the house. Fuchsia is apparently her divine right. Unfortunately, she's begun to realise that if pink stuff is clearly hers, then people may take it into their heads that other stuff is theirs. She's not so keen on this idea. She's begun demanding different colours of cup on rotation in an attempt to establish ownership of all of them. Fraser is also at an age where he believes himself allergic to pink. Lewis just prefers to have whatever he had last time.
Life has become more complicated. Every time I fix them a drink I have to have an internal debate over which cups I can get away with. Sometimes it seems obvious; other times I get dealt two light blues and a yellow. What am I supposed to do with that? The kids eventually get hungry and come looking for food, only to find smoke rising from the oven and me staring blankly at a stack of plastic cups. Then they're confused when I tell them it's all their fault...
Orange is out of favour at the moment.
I suspect it's not just me. Children simply have a knack for ensuring there's an awful lot to think about in any task, however mundane. Even the cutest kids can hide an awkward streak. In fact, I always make sure to give extra sympathy to parents with happy smiley babies. Mine were like that for strangers, too. It was usually because they were feeling satisfied with a long night of quality screaming and arguing. They were delighted to be out of the house and able to smugly show off an exhausted parent to anyone who was prepared to take an interest.
You've been doing this housedad thing long enough now that you may not notice all the minor decisions anymore. Nonetheless, someone else stepping into your shoes would quickly be swamped in a thousand minor technicalities, from where to store the jumbo crate of bargain loo roll, to who gets which spoon at breakfast. Taking care of kids isn't tricky but there's plenty to keep on top of. That's why your children frequently return from their grandparents with socks full of cheese and why Liz always looks a bit stressed when you ask her to help out and fix the little darlings' lunch. The choices involved in childcare can be overwhelming for those who aren't used to them. Try to be understanding.
Now, hang on, didn't you finish that coffee a couple of paragraphs ago. Haven't you got work to do? Better get to it. (That way, you'll have time to sneak off for a chocolate biscuit and a lie down later.)
Good luck with the rest of the day. And remember, look after yourself... or leave really detailed instructions.
Yours in a woman's world,
Ed. Thoughts? Responses? Got a funny story about your children? Add your comment here. 9:30 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post
Monday, 17 August 2009
Porridge stains aren't sexy on anybody
Dear Dave,The holidays have gone by rapidly and it's only another couple of days until the new term starts here in Scotland. I'm going to miss the laid-back schedule of the summer but it will be nice to return to routine again.
We've stocked up on all the necessary equipment - gym shoes, uniform, stationery, etc - and we're nearly ready to go, despite being slowed by Lewis' resistance to change. He had a meltdown when he learnt the trousers he's had for the last two years are now too small. He promised to stop growing at once if allowed to keep wearing them, and he assured us that the hole in the knee isn't a problem (even though it's so big that a passing family of rabbits have taken up residence). We've insisted the trousers are replaced, however. Now he just wants to erect a shrine to them in his room... Ho well, doubtless he'll become equally attached to new leg-wear in a few days and I can sneak the old pair to the recycling centre. I'll tell him they've gone to live on a farm.
Marie is still excited about starting school. I made the mistake of reading the reassuring pamphlet for parents of new pupils that we were sent, though. It lists all the concerns I might have about my daughter's primary school experience, describes them in detail and then briefly attempts to quell them. Somehow, it wasn't entirely soothing. Despite having had no qualms about shoving my boys through the playground gate on their first days, I'm now a bit nervous about how Marie may fare during her introduction to formal education. What if she gets bullied or forgets to go to the toilet or gets mistaken for being English? What if she joins a gang or is allergic to the class hamster? The stress is beginning to get to me.
Deep breaths.
...
...
I'm sure she'll be fine, really. She's bright and she's good at making friends. She'll only have problems
Teacher: Look at this picture of a dog.
Marie: Don't be silly. That's not a dog, it's a puppy.
Fortunately, thanks to her two brothers, the majority of the teachers in the school are all too familiar with this kind of behaviour by now and should be able to counteract it quickly and efficiently without the surreptitious use of blunt instruments.
Yep, she'll be OK. I suspect I'm merely channeling some of my own angst in her direction. She has five weeks of half days before she's in full-time and then I'll have reached another housedad milestone. With all my kids at school, I'll have to re-evaluate my purpose and my position in society. Given the grief it's possible to get sometimes for being a housedad, I'm kind of wondering what becoming a part-time housedad will be like.
We had a salesman round the other day to give us a quote for a new front door. As he talked at length about security hinges and neoprene seals, Marie sat quietly at the kitchen table, threading beads and smiling sweetly. Then the man needed all our details for some reason. (I suspect he may have been gathering ammunition for a later attempt to sell us windows as well.) When he learnt that I'm a housedad, he seemed quite taken with the concept, affirming me with the apparently genuine assertion that he wouldn't mind being a housedad too. Sadly, his grin suggested that he was envisioning a tranquil life of supervising some gentle bead-threading while his wife was banished down a coal pit.
I felt the need to summon the boys to view the guy's product samples at that point. A quick whistle brought the sound of stampeding elephants from upstairs, closely followed by a tangled blur of flailing limbs surrounded by a cloud of dust and body odour. There was some arguing and hinge juggling and then they were gone again.
The man went a slightly odd colour and his grin wavered somewhat. I'm not sure if he got the full picture of my life but the conversation rapidly returned to the subject of nine-point locking mechanisms. I felt I'd won another small victory for our housedad revolution.
Just as well really. Housedads have had more bad press recently. The Daily Mail ran an article about how lots of career women are dumping their stay-at-home partners. Mixed in with the dubious statistics, there are even quotes from an expert to explain that it's all down to a loss of respect brought about by the wives feeling a lack of support because their men aren't pulling their weight financially. The essence of the piece is summed up by the line, "In short, having a man whose primary function is not as alpha male breadwinner, but domestic drudge, just ain't sexy."
Cheers for that.
It would be easy to dismiss the whole thing simply on the basis that, rather than being a psychologist, the expert in question is a divorce lawyer but... erm... No, actually, that's a pretty compelling reason.
The only really valid point in the article is that, when it comes to custody, divorce courts in the UK are weighted heavily in favour of the mum - even if the dad has been the primary carer for years, it can have no bearing on how often he has access to his children after a break up. Apart from that, there's nothing much to the article but scare-mongering. In reality, relationships where the man looks after the kids aren't under any kind of unique stress. The accusation of being a financial lightweight could be levelled in any situation where one partner is earning less, whether they stay home or not. Loss of respect can (and does) happen in families where the roles are 'normal'.
Being dropped on from a great height is nothing new for stay-at-home parents. It's just that in the past they've all been female. Housedads aren't particularly asking for trouble by defying the perceived natural order, it's simply that when any relationship goes south, the partner with control of the money is bound to be at an advantage. It turns out that given the security of being the one with the income, women can be as sneaky, underhand, self-centred and ungrateful as men.
I suppose this is equality but it's not a very happy situation. The Daily Mail may not approve of housedads but I'm fairly sure they're in favour of mothers spending more time with their kids and, oddly, the only way for things to improve for stay-at-home mums is for there to be more stay-at-home dads. The Mail really should be on our side. You see, sexual equality is usually portrayed as being achievable by getting plenty of females into high-powered jobs. Traditionally female roles will only gain the respect they truly deserve, however, when they're also seen as perfectly legitimate avenues for men. We don't just need women in board rooms, we need men at toddler group and the school gate.
Then there's... Oh, hang on, that reminds me - I need to go and collect the navy pinafores and knee-length socks I ordered for Marie. She looks so sweet in her uniform. I can't believe she's going to be in Primary 1 already! I... I...
I'd better go. Remember: Being a housedad - it's a public service.
(For my part, I'll try and remember not to cry when my baby skips into the playground on Wednesday.)
Yours in a woman's world,
Ed.
Labels: discrimination, housedad, school
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Wednesday, 12 August 2009
For posterity
Dear Dave,I mentioned something about time capsules to Fraser the other week and he didn't know what I was talking about. This made me despair slightly.
"Remember when you were three and you forced me to read that story about Bob the Builder and a time capsule every night for several months?" I asked.
Fraser looked blank. "No."
"Really?" I was incredulous. "The posh teacher woman puts in a school cap and Mr Bentley makes a matchstick model of the town hall."
"A what?"
"Er..."
Seeing I wasn't getting anywhere, Sarah chipped in. "A time capsule is something people put interesting objects into so people in the future can dig it up and find out what life used to be like."
"Oh, OK," said Fraser.
"Farmer Pickles puts in a welly," I muttered, still miffed he didn't remember. A little more gratitude would be nice. It's almost worth having another a child just to show him how much effort he was when he was small.
Er, actually, on second thoughts...
Anyway, he probably still wouldn't get the picture. Perhaps in twenty-five years time, when he has kids of his own, he'll appreciate all the effort that's gone into raising him. Then again, maybe he won't have kids. If that's the case, convincing him of my Herculean ordeal will be difficult. I'll doubtless still be regularly recounting various tales of when he and his siblings were spectacularly sick over me on public transport but he'll have learnt to ignore my bitter, broken ramblings long before then. I'll need some hard evidence of my parenting endeavours.
Hey, perhaps I should make a housedad time capsule - that way I can disguise a blatant attempt to wangle myself a place in a better nursing home as a selfless effort to inform the people of tomorrow about being a father in the early twenty-first century. Excellent.
Let's see, what do I need to put in?
- A homemade greetings card. Nothing says 'Welcome to your fun-filled slice of yester-year!' better than a folded bit of paper plastered with a hundred scraps of wool, fifteen feathers, some dry pasta, half a roll of sticky tape, three shells and a pebble. Of course, the card will also need plenty of glitter in a variety of colours stuck on using a glue stick. Since the half-life of such adhesive is around three months, I'll need to use an awful lot of glitter to make certain any is left attached in two and a half decades. I'm thinking about three buckets of the stuff should do it...
- A pile of VHS cassettes featuring the Teletubbies. Sure, there won't be any functioning VHS machines left to play them on, but that's the point. Housedads of the future will be used to downloading exactly what their children want to watch at the touch of a button. They won't have had the experience of a small child demanding digital channels on an analogue telly or a DVD in a room that only has a video player. It will be educational. Besides, I really, really want to get rid of the tapes.
- Detailed photo documentation of my housedad life. This would come recorded on an array of unmarked memory cards of varying formats, all put in a small bag and gently shaken together.
- A selection of fridge magnets. Also in a bag. Possibly the same bag.
- Cheap nick-nacks. I can't move through the house without standing on a spinning top or a comedy moustache that came from a Christmas cracker. If I open a cupboard, I get showered in whistles and tooters and sliding-tile puzzles from party bags. My sock drawer is full of yo-yos. The tumble-dryer is packed with souvenir key rings from a hundred different trips. I can't even have a bath without being attacked by a dozen empty bottles and a wind-up shark. The people of tomorrow should see the big heap of plastic tat that seems to naturally accumulate around children...
...
Oh, hang on... - Some letters from school, demanding money. These turn up all the time, asking me to fill a little envelope with coins to pay for milk or snacks or excursions. My favourite ones request cash in return for a supply of little envelopes. Between the three children, it's very easy for an occasional letter to go missing in my filing system, thus forcing the school to send round a crack team of ninjas to inform me at sword point that, if I don't cough up £1.20, Lewis will be left at the zoo and Marie will be eBayed to cover legal expenses.
If I put the letters in the time capsule, at least I'll know where they are. - A packet of baby wipes. Despite my youngest child being nearly five, I still try to remember to carry wipes with me. I never know when another parent is going to start handing out jam doughnuts at the swing park or at what point in a family holiday one of my offspring is going to be quietly, and yet copiously, sick all over the luggage. You can never have too many wipes.
- A Wii. Just in case any good games have come out for it by then.
- Some sunflower seeds. Every year, at least one of my kids brings a sunflower plant home from school. I don't know why. By including seeds in the capsule, I can share the fun of desperately trying to keep the unlucky specimens alive for more than a few days. Also, if the heap of plastic tat outside the capsule has got really big, WALL-E might be needing them...
- A packed lunch and three changes of clothes for my entire family. Force of habit.
- Coffee. It's a housedad essential. I would put in some beer as well but I'm keeping that.
Hmmm... Maybe I should put the beer in after all.
Yours in a woman's world,
Ed. Thoughts? Responses? Got a funny story about your children? Add your comment here. 1:45 PM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post
Thursday, 23 July 2009
Leaping to conclusions
Dear Dave,When I'm out and about with the children, I'm used to people assuming that it's my day off from work and I'm giving my wife a break. (Unless it's the weekend, of course, in which case they assume it must be my turn to have custody.) We seem to have moved beyond the stage where a man out on his own with three small children is strange, however. The birthrate is now so low it's apparently peculiar for anyone at all to choose to shepherd more than two kids around without back-up:
Sarah took the children to visit a castle yesterday. Since there was a special offer on, they all signed up for annual memberships. It cost only a little more than the normal entrance charge and they can now all go as many times over the coming year as they wish for free. We're unlikely to visit more than once in the next twelve months, though, so there was no point signing me up too.
The lady at the desk took the forms and for some reason felt it necessary to say, "There are lots of families with only one parent these days."
"Actually," replied Sarah, "my husband's at home getting some peace and quiet."
The woman smiled. "Oh, I thought he might be dead."
"Er... no," said Sarah, then paid the money and backed away slowly...
Yours in a woman's world,
Ed.
PS You have to wonder what was going through the woman's mind but it maybe wasn't as scary as the thoughts Lewis had when we were explaining the concept of inheritance to him. We told him about how, when one of my elderly relatives died a few years back, we'd been given some money.
His response was, "Why did you get paid for that?"
Labels: housedad
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Tuesday, 7 July 2009
And then some
Dear Dave,I can't believe how old I am. I think I need another mid-life crisis to cope.
I must have reached my third or fourth now and they're getting to be an almost annual event. This one was brought on by buying some wine as end-of-term gifts for the kids' teachers. The assistant behind the counter checked that I was over twenty-five and everyone within about ten metres chuckled to themselves. I was initially flattered the guy had asked but then I got to thinking about exactly how much over twenty-five I am.
He wasn't really supposed to be checking if I was over twenty-five anyway - he was supposed to be checking anyone buying booze who looked under twenty-five to make sure they were over eighteen. I realised that it's nearly eighteen years since I turned eighteen. I felt old. Since I was at the checkout in Tesco with a basket containing six bottles of wine and a bunch of bananas, I also felt somewhat eccentric. I had an image of myself coming across as an ageing chimpanzee with bushy eyebrows and an alcohol problem.
I considered rescuing some dignity by pointing out the wine was for my children. Fortunately, I resisted. I joined in the chuckling, typed in my PIN and made a hasty retreat, clinking loudly as I went.
Ho hum. Cue yet another bout of self-analysis as I wonder what I've been doing for the last goodness knows how long and then try to figure out where my life is headed. Going by previous experience, I should now attempt to recapture my lost youth by locking myself in a room with some loud music and a games console for a week, only emerging to play a complicated war simulation involving painted plastic figures.
Except...
Actually maybe youth isn't all it's cracked up to be. Thanks to my housedad training, I'm stronger and more co-ordinated than I used to be. I also have increased stamina and I'm a bit more savvy. I'm confident I could take my eighteen-year-old self in almost any physical competition.
(Well, any that didn't involve a quick start or a keen sense of timing anyway, but that's not because my reaction times and rhythm have got worse, they simply haven't got any better. A 100m Guitar Hero Dash between different temporal iterations of myself would have no winners, only a mangled heap of losers, broken controllers and on-lookers clawing at their ears.)
Along with having an athletic advantage over my younger self in the time-travel Olympics, being a parent has taught me how to negotiate a head start and reinvent the rules. Not to mention the fact I'd have three small minions to set on my younger, spottier twin and he wouldn't have a clue how to defeat them.
Victory would be mine.
Besides, life is generally much more pleasant now I'm not eighteen. Maybe my youth should stay down the back of the sofa, or wherever else it is I lost it.
Then again... Even as I was thinking all this to myself, I went to collect Marie from nursery. As I pushed open the heavy, red door to enter the building, I remembered it was her last day. After six years of turning up to collect one child or another, I knew I'd never have to do it again. No more waiting in the lobby staring at collages, no more swing park before lunch and no more grinning sheepishly at Miss Nolan. Next term, I'll be standing around the playground in the rain to collect Marie along with the boys.
I have three school-age kids. I can't believe how old I am. I think I'm going to have to go fire-up the Xbox, play some Del Amitri at full volume and eBay myself a game involving little plastic Space Marines...
Yours in a woman's world,
Ed.
PS I just got back from another trip to Tesco. The pensioner in front of me had nothing in her basket apart from six bottles of wine and ten cans of gin and tonic. She loaded them into her wheeled shopping bag and tottered off down the street.
I'm guessing she's looking after her grandchildren for the holidays. Thoughts? Responses? Got a funny story about your children? Add your comment here. 10:30 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post
Sunday, 21 June 2009
Taking my elbow off the brakes
Dear Dave,Ah, the perfect Father's Day:
A long lie, a cooked breakfast and an afternoon spent dozing in front of the British Grand Prix. Then some quality time with the Xbox, followed by a couple of beers and a film featuring explosions, giant robots and Megan Fox. Meanwhile, the children tip-toe around quietly, being polite to each other and clearing up after themselves.
This is the life...
Not my life, unfortunately, but, hey, I can dream. Marie's attending a birthday party and so I'm writing this surrounded by yelling three-year-olds at the softplay.
Great.
Still, at least there's cake and these days I don't usually have to go into the ball swamp myself. I can shove Marie through the entrance of the giant maze of ramps and netting, and then retreat to a safe distance. I can drink a cup of coffee and make use of the free wi-fi while remaining oblivious to her dare-devil antics dancing on tottering piles of squishy shapes.
It might be worth checking on her later but there are plenty of adults about. After years of crawling through large PVC pipes to rescue her from foam-filled disaster, I'm more than happy to stay in the viewing area and let her fend for herself for a while.
Besides, the bruises haven't entirely faded from last time I was here, a fortnight ago.
It was the turn of Scary Karen's younger son, William, to have a party. With him and his brother in the softplay, I thought I should keep a closer eye on proceedings than normal. (They're the only pre-schoolers I know who've been banned from gymnastics classes for bringing power tools.) They were the least of my worries, though. I'd just followed Marie up to the top of the apparatus when Karen got carried away doing a Tarzan impression. Letting rip with a ululating cry, she swung across the cargo net on a rope and then let out a shriek as she went flying and body slammed me. I yelled and we both fell backwards and went head-first down an enormous slide in a tangle of limbs and cleavage. She was on top. I think I may have screamed.
The rest I've blanked from my mind. The next thing I remember is staring up at a circle of wide-eyed toddlers and then crawling away to the café, whimpering quietly to myself...
On the whole, it was not a pleasant experience. Oddly, however, it was less sore than the only time I've been down that slide voluntarily:
When Fraser was small, I encouraged him to have a go, only to realise as he disappeared that this meant he was at the bottom and I was still at the top. We were a couple of minutes of clambering apart. There was no telling what trouble he might get himself into in that time. To catch up with him quickly, I had no choice but to follow him down the chute. Undaunted, I launched myself in. After all, how bad could it be?
Within half a second of beginning my descent, I regretted my decision. I was hurtling to my demise in a highly-polished, neon red tunnel of doom, and I didn't even have headroom to sit up and see where I was going. In an instinctive bout of self-preservation, I stuck out my arms to slow myself down.
My speed barely altered and I had to spend the rest of the afternoon with my elbows dipped in a couple of Slush Puppies to soothe the friction burns they suffered.
Ow. Fear, and a need for control, brought me pain. I'm not doing that again.
Although...
I can't recall ever having seen this happen to a child. They just whoosh down. More than that, it doesn't matter whether they come out laughing or crying, they're back for another go within minutes.
There's probably a metaphor for life, parenthood, faith, marriage and/or bull riding there if you can be bothered to look for it.
Hmmm.... Bearing this in mind, maybe I've been a bit hasty. Maybe I should stretch my boundaries a little and live life more to the full... I think I'll go have another shot on that slide while Marie is still small enough for me to sneak into the softplay on the pretense of looking after her. Who knows? It might be fun.
If you hear a distant, terrified scream, you'll know it's me. Hopefully, this time, it'll be due to the slide and not Karen...
Yours in a woman's world,
Ed.
PS Happy Father's Day! Here's wishing you more than a mildly insulting card and a badge which reads, 'Best Dad Ever!'. Put your feet up. You deserve it.
Labels: father's day, housedad, Scary Karen
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Friday, 12 June 2009
Parental precognition
Dear Dave,That's shocking.
I mean, how thoughtless. Some people really have no consideration for others, do they? You must be devastated...
I seriously can't believe your parents have arranged to be busy the entire school summer holidays. Couldn't their once-in-a-lifetime cruise wait until September, for example? If not, I'm sure the visiting cousins from Australia could have been persuaded to postpone until Christmas. And as for the week giving respite care to terminally ill, blind donkeys...
I guess you're going to have to take your kids with you when you go away this year. No more lying quietly on the sand, soaking up the sun, for you. You'll be running around kicking a ball, collecting shells in a bucket and changing nappies full of beach as well as poo. The closest thing you'll get to a rest is being buried alive by an over-enthusiastic toddler with a sharp spade. Enjoy.
You might be as well staying closer to home and finding somewhere with an activity club and creche facilities. Forget about proximity to art galleries, vineyards, intriguing shops and night life - you're a parent. The first thing you need to ask about a hotel is whether it has a softplay.
It's just another example of how life has changed. There's not much you can do really. File it in that mental list of stuff you're simply going to have to put up with until the children leave home. You know, like not getting enough sleep and being unable to cross the road unless there's a green man. Before you become too distraught about your loss of freedom, however, remember that parenthood does have its advantages. (Besides supplying a selection of adorable little munchkins who'll grow up to push your wheelchair around in your declining years.) For instance, now I'm a dad, I can see the future.
It's true. I only need one look at a situation and I can tell exactly what the outcome is going to be. Take what happened on Sunday: At church, Marie was delighted to find some sparkly beads on the floor and, as we headed home, she bounced along, clutching them in her hand. With my paternal sixth sense, I had a very clear vision of what was going to happen next...
"Keep them in your pocket or you'll lose them," I said, trying to avert the disaster I'd foreseen.
Unfortunately, Marie wasn't having any of it. "I'm holding onto them really tight."
"That's as maybe but..."
I didn't get a chance to prophesy further because we bumped into an old friend I hadn't seen for a long time. I was suddenly busy explaining where I've been for the last ten years while still trying to stop the boys from wrestling next to a busy road.
After a couple of minutes, Fraser shouted, "There's a key here!"
He was right. It was balanced on top of a low wall next to the pavement.
"Someone must have found it and put it there," I said, "so whoever dropped it will be able to find it."
"OK," said Fraser. Both boys immediately started wrestling at the same time as attempting to climb the wall within inches of where the key was precariously placed. My special powers kicked in again.
"Don't jump around next to it. If you knock it over into that garden, it really will be lost."
They started to argue that they weren't that close, all the while waving their elbows around right next to the key. I ordered them away from the wall. They argued some more and then ran off behind me.
I turned back to my conversation but Marie started to cry.
"Lewis bumped me and made me drop my beads!"
On further questioning, it transpired that she couldn't recall how many beads there were, what they looked like or exactly where she'd been standing when they fell out of her hand. Nonetheless, she was inconsolable.
I sighed.
Then all of us began crawling around on the pavement, searching for an unknown number of minuscule beads of indeterminate colour. Well, nearly all - the friend suddenly remembered an urgent appointment elsewhere...
Somehow the whole thing was both inevitable and unavoidable. Having parental precognition is all very well but there are only so many times I can tell the kids off for stuff they haven't done yet before it becomes oppressive. I don't want to live in my own little version of Minority Report.
I suppose it might be better to relax, let the predictable disasters happen and then encourage the kids to learn from their mistakes.
Actually, no, I tried that. If I don't warn them of impending catastrophe, I'm the one who ends up having to clean the dog poo off their shoes, bandage their wounds and/or explain to their teacher why their homework smells of curdled milk. Worse than that, I have scientist children. They know that merely because something went terribly wrong last time, it doesn't necessarily mean the same thing will happen again next time. They have to verify the results.
Then they have to do it a few more times just to make sure.
When I first became a dad, I didn't see that coming. It's very tiring. I could maybe do with a holiday lying quietly on the sand, soaking up the sun.
Oh...
Drat.
Yours in a woman's world,
Ed.
Labels: children, housedad, science
Thoughts? Responses? Got a funny story about your children? Add your comment here. 9:30 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post
Monday, 25 May 2009
Play hard, work hard
Dear Dave,There are many issues facing a stay-at-home dad. Some are practical, such as when to get sleep, where to take the kids when it's raining and how to avoid standing in puddles of pee. Others are more psychological, from maintaining a healthy level of self-worth in a society obsessed with status and the acquisition of material goods, to learning to phase out children's television before suffering excessive mental trauma. It always surprises me, however, that even with all my preparation and experience, I still face fresh challenges on a regular basis.
My current dilemma is to do with hobbies:
Try as I might, I can't keep the kid's TV out of my brain entirely and I've noticed many stories about pushy fathers teaching their hobbies to their offspring, desperate for their children to be like them. You know the kind of thing: lumberjack dad wants short-sighted, geeky son to turn off his computer and take up bear wrestling, or professor dad wants girlie daughter to cast aside her dreams of pop stardom and give entomology a proper chance... It usually plays out with the child gaining the self-confidence to argue back and persuade their parents to let them be themselves.
Real life is seldom as extreme. For instance, my dad would probably have liked me to enjoy sailing - he enjoys sailing himself and having an extra crew member is always useful. Unfortunately, I have mild agoraphobia which is brought on by a light wind and lots of open sky and that is exacerbated by engine noise. A hobby involving flapping sails, the Norfolk broads and an outboard motor was never really going to be my thing. I put up with our infrequent Sunday afternoon excursions but I didn't volunteer for them.
I have fonder memories of making Airfix models with my dad. The smell of solvents still takes me back to happy times attempting to glue little bits of plastic together to produce a vaguely recognisable representation of a ship or airplane. In retrospect it must have been torture for him as I waved a sharp knife around and then clumsily attached pieces squint.
We frequently stuck our own fingers together.
Even when I was eight, I couldn't help noticing that HMS Victory was a trifle shonky and Titanic looked somewhat post-iceberg (particularly after it fell off its display on top of the TV a couple of times). Nonetheless, I'm glad we had those evenings together. Dads sharing the occasional evening or Sunday afternoon inflicting their favourite pastime on their children is part of growing up.
Well, at least it is when the dad is out at work the rest of the week. My boys have a different experience. Just like me, they love board games involving little plastic orcs and also any sort of computer game. They're always wanting to share my hobbies.
Always.
Don't get me wrong - it's great digging out a board game I haven't played for twenty years and playing it with them. The problem is that I'm not merely around at weekends and for the hour before bed-time. I'm here all the time. They can pester me constantly and demand to play games over and over again.
Worse still, they have a tendency to beat me. I can hold my own when playing them one-on-one in a game of pure strategy, such as Chess, but in a three-player game which involves both strategy and luck they've quickly learnt that the best tactic is to gang up on me first before fighting it out with each other. I lose a lot. Although that's better than when I play them at computer games - with those, the boys have had so much practice, they can defeat me before I've entirely worked out which buttons to press. This leaves them extra time to remorselessly mock me...
Getting soundly thrashed ten times in a row at New Super Mario Brothers, despite my best efforts and spraining my thumbs, isn't fun. Having to set up an army of plastic goblins for the third epic battle of the afternoon (while also entertaining Marie) starts to wear thin. It's all a little too much like work.
I suppose, on the bright side, it's better than having to repeatedly play Scrabble or Mouse Trap with them but sometimes I'd love to slip away to get some peace. What would I do, though? My favourite pastimes are becoming subverted. I normally take a break by playing a game. What do I do to take a break from playing games?
I need to find a new hobby that I know the boys will hate, just to get some space. Let's see. What's going to put them off the most?
- Being outdoors.
- Plenty of physical work.
- A lack of gadgets.
- Wind and rain.
- Having to go a long way to get there.
- Loud engine noises.
- A high probability of getting wet.
- Lots of...
Yours in a woman's world,
Ed.
Labels: computer games, housedad
Thoughts? Responses? Got a funny story about your children? Add your comment here. 9:30 AM - Permanent Link - 2 comments - Post comment - Links to this post
