NS April 8th, 2010

Doing funny voices all day? I can deal with that.

Waiting patiently for a tantrum in public to subside? Unpleasant, but doable.

Breastfeeding a baby for hours on end and then a toddler who pinches and kicks and squirms? I bear it.

Changing nappies, preparing meals, rounding up all the items needed for an outing, arranging playdates, doing the school run, ensuring they are eating well, meeting their developmental milestones, learning manners, empathy, self-confidence, the alphabet and how to navigate this complex world successfully? That seems like the easy part most days.

You know which bit I absolutely cannot abide, the bit that, no matter how many times I am confronted with and know I cannot escape still manages to drive me up a wall?

The mess.

The endless, self-perpetuating, infinitesimal cycle of spills, crumbs, soggy towels, muddy shoes, water all over the bathroom floor, every nappy taken out of its package, every item of clothing removed from the dresser, made beds instantly unmade, toys underfoot: toys on the sofa, under the bed, in the washing machine, in the car, in my handbag; marker pen dragged along the recently-painted wall, cat food dumped out, containers placed (empty) back in the fridge, overflowing bins no one else seems to notice and a pile of laundry that moves from body to floor to hamper to basket to machine to airer or radiator to basket to bed to drawer and back onto the body where it will remain for perhaps three to four hours before being soiled and removed yet again.

These things —  not the tears or fighting or whining or being jumped on, poked, awakened, kept up, tried, tested and put through the wringer — is what usually ends up being the straw that broke this camel’s weary back. Maybe camels and mothers have more in common than previously thought — we both store reserves of fat and patience to see us through the long, hard slog in the brutal, relentless desert but eventually, if provoked, we get mean and spit; we lie down and refuse to move, dumping our hapless hangers-on headfirst into the quicksand.

Sometimes I look at another mess I have to clean up, another lovingly-prepared meal uneaten or another load of laundry I have to fold and put away and I do one of two things (and on a really, really bad day, both): explode or cry. I have seen a bowl of purposely-dumped cereal turn me from a normal person into a seething, shaking, quivering ball of internal fury that manifests itself with a clenched jaws, fistfuls of hair, eyes filled with teary, apoplectic rage and a river of self-pity and hatred that rushes through me so suddenly and with such force that it dulls the sharp edges of my heart a little.

It can’t be normal to have such a strong reaction to water dumped out of the bath, can it?

It’s not about the mess itself. I know that kids will be kids and that they don’t mean it (most of the time) and that it will get better as they get older. I know that in the grand scheme of things (and even in the not-so-grand), messes don’t matter. I know that Noble Girl doesn’t know how bat-shit crazy it makes me when  she starts chanting, “I’m hungry!” every 30 seconds right after lunch and while I’m doing my daily freelance gig, on deadline; I know that Noble Boy doesn’t know how soul-destroying it is to have to say, “No. No. NO. Don’t touch that, please. No. Please, don’t touch it. No. No! I said NO!” about 90 billion times a day.

But it’s not that.

It’s more about the monotony and knowing that if I don’t do it or say it, no one else will. It’s knowing that while I’m busy cleaning up one mess another will be created in the next room, and then the next, and so on. It’s knowing that even if get down on my knees and look them in the eye and do everything a good parent is supposed to do in teaching their child about appropriate behaviour, it will go in one ear and out the other and I will feel like a broken record, scratched and spinning out of control with no one listening. It’s knowing that nearly every other mother on the planet feels or has felt this way too, and even that is not much of a comfort.

It’s knowing that I will do this every day, several times a day, for years to come, because I have to.

Tags: cleaning, housework, mess, mothering, SAHM

• Family , Home and Hearth , Parenting 101 , That's Life
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NS February 2nd, 2010

Is a lot of ‘screen time’ for kids really as horrific as people like to make out? Are children rotting their brains, giving themselves virtual lobotomies, by watching television, playing video games, working on computers and using hand-held music devices/e-readers/mobile phones? A recent report showed that children in the US spend nearly eight hours per day consuming media — nearly as long as the average adult spends at work. I’m sure statistics are similar for children in the UK. This has really freaked some people out. It used to freak me out. I felt (and still feel) guilty for the amount of time The Noble Child spends staring at a screen. But increasingly, I’m asking myself why children consuming media is considered such an atrocity and why we are so panicked about it.

Full disclosure: my three-year-old watches a couple hours of television a day. She knows how to play simple games aimed at pre-schoolers on the computer. She can take photos on our digital camera. She instinctively knew how to use an iPhone when first exposed to one, with little explanation or demonstration. She could double-click and click-and-drag by the time she was two years old. The girl is tech-savvy. But so are her parents. My husband’s career is in computers. We are both active members of online communities; he on his sports forums and I with the blogosphere and Twitter. We both have iPhones. We both like to watch films and a few select TV shows. We stream videos. We take photos and upload them. We read a lot of our news on the computer screen, not from a newspaper spread over the breakfast table (though I do buy a broadsheet a couple times a week — nothing beats the weekend papers in bed). We’re fully linked in, wired up and logged on. So why wouldn’t our daughter (and eventually our son, too) be?

If that’s ALL she did then, yes, it would undoubtedly be unhealthy. If she lacked imagination, social interaction, literacy and communication skills or physical energy then, yes, I would be concerned. But she doesn’t. She is unimaginably sociable, friendly, outgoing, polite, empathetic and energetic. She can watch Finding Nemo contentedly but then jump up (sometimes in the middle of it) and want to play Bears or Hot Lava or Horsey Ride. She’s plainly thriving and developing at a normal pace. So the more I hear and read about the hysteria and see chests being beaten and hair being torn out by guilt-inflicted parents and drama-loving media sources, the more I think we’re blowing this all out of proportion. We all know that “studies say” and “experts suggest” that children have limited screen time, but what is the impetus for all these studies being conducted? Why the money, time and resources spent on finding out whether something that is unavoidably a part of our lives, and our kids’ lives, should be kept away from them?

The first response is to say they are being done for legitimate scientific and social purposes, to ensure that consuming all this new media will not have detrimental effects on us (which is a legitimate concern, certainly), but I have to wonder if at least some of this concern stems from the fact that advances in technology and our lifestyles have changed so rapidly in the last 10-20 years, leaving us little time to grow accustomed to it gradually, that our heads are left spinning, unsure how to process all of the information, choices and consequences. I also wonder if it’s something every generation does, where those who were once young and hip all of a sudden realise that they have grown older and a new modernity has set in, one which vastly influences the way they, and particularly their children, live their lives and spend their time. Often, it is our children who are least scared of these changes and we are the ones left scratching our heads and muttering phrases like “Back in my day…” while fixing whatever newfangled invention is ‘taking over the youth’ with a suspicious stare.

Rock music used to be considered the devil incarnate. Then it was films and TV. Then it was rap music and racy ads. Then it was video games. Now it’s mobile phones and computers. Different decade, same ol’ worries. Old/familiar = good, virtuous; Young/new = scary, unknown.

I saw a poll recently (can’t remember where or I’d link) where parents were asked how much TV their kids actually watched versus how much they told other people their kids watched and the discrepancies were not marginal. More than three-quarters said they felt their children watched too much television but, when asked, most halved that time. So are kids consuming too much media or are we just making each other feel guilty about it by under-reporting and hiding it because we don’t fully understand it? Is this just one more way in which parents are blamed for not being perfect, or are the ‘experts’ right to caution us about the effects of the Age of Tech?

I haven’t fully made up my mind yet. I vacillate between beating myself up and trying to curtail media usage to embracing it and reminding myself that my children are well-rounded, loved and properly cared for, regardless of ‘screen time.’ After all, you wouldn’t be reading this post if it wasn’t for CBeebies. I get time to ponder and write (which makes me a better person and mother) and my children learn yoga poses from cute little animated figures, set to soothing music and chattering laughter.  Is that really so bad?

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Tags: children, guilt, hype, media, parenting, TV

• Antics of The Noble Child , Home and Hearth , In The News , Parenting 101 , That's Life
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NS January 25th, 2010

And after all that waxing lyrical about staying indoors, what did we end up doing yesterday afternoon, less than two hour after I wrote about looking out windows and staying warm? Strapping the wellies on, driving out to Richmond Park, tromping up and down exceedingly muddy paths and then having a good run around the playground.

The lazy, cosy morning and the outdoor, active afternoon…they were perfect. Each on their own but especially together. And when we pulled up in front of our home, just as darkness was throwing its blanket over the half-lit, golden hue clinging to the edges of the sky, The Noble Husband and I turned to each other and smiled. I switched the ignition off and we sat in silence, holding hands for a moment before we turned around to see our children, both asleep and with their faces turned upward in identical, open-mouthed poses, the very picture of vulnerable, lovely innocence. Our eyes met as we gathered our things and silently relayed every emotion our hearts were bursting with. Before we scooped them up and woke them from their peaceful reveries, we looked once more at their soft faces, breathtakingly beautiful, and watched their chests rise and fall, rise and fall, with the breath that we gave them.

“Is there anything more incredible and wonderful then this?” my heart asked his.

The trembling of his lips and the brightening pools of his eyes said that, indeed, there was not.

Tags: children, love, outings, weekends

• Family , Home and Hearth , Parenting 101 , Squish Squish
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NS January 24th, 2010

Quiet contemplation and frenzied scribbling (or typing, rather) may not make sense to many as a suitable and entirely worthwhile pursuit on which to spend an entire Sunday when the sun is shining and there are ruddy, muddy outdoor romps to be had, but to me it is perfection and bliss. My husband does not understand it. My children…do they suffer for it? Or, rather, do they benefit from the happiness and satisfaction it gives me?

My method of Sunday mothering may not involve wellies, mountaintop picnics or forest adventures but instead hot chocolate kisses, counting raindrops on windows and reading stories of wizards and cats and little girls who won’t go to bed. We may only venture outside to gather the necessary supplies for baking more chocolate chip cupcakes but does our quiet, near, indoor adventure mean any less simply because it wasn’t undertaken beneath the grey sky and through the long, wet grass?

Perhaps my children will look back at winter Sundays — their mother curled cosily under her blanket, fingers poised motionless above the keyboard as she takes in a scene of familial merriment with a smile as broad as a river on her lips — and they will not be disappointed that we weren’t somewhere new and dangerous, but familiar and safe and warm. Together.

Tags: family life, mothering

• Family , Home and Hearth , Parenting 101 , Squish Squish
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NS December 23rd, 2009

My sister is here visiting and we’ve been busy catching up, going out, preparing for Christmas and just spending time together as a family, hence the silence for the past week. But I wanted to do a quick update for everyone who commented and emailed after my last post, which ended on a pretty miserable note. The Noble Husband went into work the day after I wrote about him losing his contract and was called into a meeting with his boss. It looks like they will be able to keep him on at their offices after Christmas, even though in a different capacity and without overtime. So while his job is secure at the moment, if he can’t squeeze a bit of extra money out of them he will be on a bit less pay then he was before. Still, it’s not as doom and gloom as we originally thought and is a pretty big relief, considering the stark alternative.

Posting will continue to be sporadic and light until after the New Year as not only is my sister here visiting until the 6th and TNH is off work until the 4th, but I’m also working on launching another website, the details of which I will share as soon as it’s all been ironed out and finished up. In the meantime, I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and peace and joy this holiday season.

I’d also like to thank you all for reading and commenting on my scribblings in this teeny little corner of the blogosphere;  interacting with you and getting feedback on my writing, not to mention the incredible ‘real life’ support I’ve received, is one of the real bright spots in my life and something I truly cherish. Your readership, along with being listed as a top parenting blog in both the Tots 100 Index and by media communications company Cision in the last few months, has really bolstered my confidence that maybe I really can do this writing malarkey for a living, which is pretty much my lifelong dream. So from the bottom of my newly-Santified heart, I thank you.

Now stop reading this and go be festive and merry! Drink and eat too much, laugh ’til your sides hurt and your pelvic floor feels like it might give, and file away in your heart’s memory this time spent with your loved ones and the looks of contentment and joy on their faces. See you in 2010!

• Home and Hearth , Miscellaneous Missives
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