swimming pool dads

As I drive home from swimming lessons, instead of praising my wonderful children for their efforts, I find myself ignoring them and trying to thing of apt nicknames for the mums and dads I see in the changing rooms. This is what I came up with last week.

First is rugby dad. When he thinks no one is looking he is perfectly nice and normal towards his kids. But when anyone is close by he feels the need to display what excellent control he has over them. Barking out one word commands he has the whole room on tenterhooks to see if they do what he says.

“Max! Shoes! Now!” 

Max, unperturbed, takes his time. Dad breathes through his nose and pretends he is answering an urgent message on his iphone. Then he ties the laces on his huge, huge shoes.

Then there is blow dry dad, who spends a minimum of forty minutes drying his daughter’s hair. When they finally leave, giving the rest of us a chance to get at the dryer, her hair is salon perfect.  Gleaming, smooth, shiny and bouncy without a flyaway in sight.  Actually I have to hand it to him, he does a fantastic job. I'd say something if he didnt look so smug.

Next, parenting book dad.

For starters he is a show off. For seconders, his hair is cut in a pageboy style, which I am definitely narrow minded enough to judge him by. He arrives nonchalantly swinging his daughter’s teddy.

“Look at me! I carry a teddy without a thought for my own image. The safety of teddy is my first priority!”

Then, when the lesson is over and they are ready to leave, he gets down on his knees in front of the children to very slowly and carefully explain the day ahead. Following the usual parenting book advice (I can imagine the pile on the bedside table) he makes eye contact and outlines exactly what is going to happen next. Both to the children and to the rest of the people in the changing room. All of us are of course, closely following the whole exchange. Then they all skip happily out. Him flicking his pageboy and giving teddy a swing. First to Daddy’s office to check something, then to Marks and Spencers to meet Mummy and then to the restaurant, for a yummy lunch with ice cream for desert!

This leaves us, looking for socks and turning coat sleeves the right way out, wishing we were meeting Mummy and getting ice cream too.

grrrrrrrr!

It was mortifying. We were just walking back to the car it in the school car park and everything was going fine. The toddler wasn’t screaming, no one fell over their bag, everyone had their coat and there was no awkward artwork to manage. Then I heard it. A low growl that lasted about thirty seconds. It was my eight year old (eight for Gods sake!) menacing a boy from another class. I don’t know, is menacing the right word? What I mean is he was standing in front of him (the boy was walking with his mother. I almost felt like saying “if you want to scare him, at least try and catch him alone. You know, in the toilets, in the school yard when the teachers back is turned. Not when he is with his mother.”) And like I said, growling and baring his teeth.

 The boy didn’t look remotely bothered and kept ambling along with his hands in his pockets but his mother was clearly disgusted. I had seen Colm do it before but to be honest, pretended I hadn’t as there was always something else to be dealt with at the time. Anything else was preferable, verucca's, blunt pencils, car seat belts, anything. But this time I couldn’t avoid it. I had to acknowledge the doggy behaviour publicly. To stop it of course but mostly to show the other mother I had some modicum of control over my children. Or at the very least knew that growling is not an acceptable form of communication.

So, cringing (I use that term a lot but this time it was literal. I could actually feel my insides compressing into a tiny ball) I said “….” My voice didn’t work the first time so I tried again and said “Colm! Colm!” in a firm voice. That was as articulate as I could manage. Hoping she heard me I considered going over to her and apologising but I really couldn’t. It would mean saying out loud that my son growls.  I had to stand by my man. You see I knew the reason he did it. Just over a year ago her son (let’s call him John) had pulled mine from behind by his jacket hood. He  had firstly, terrified him and secondly, hurt his neck. At the time I comforted my boy and agreed that Johns behaviour was unkind and he was someone we would not invite to our house.  “Just stay away from him.” I said. However, since then I have ended up having small chats with the mother at the school gates, about teachers and swimming lessons and the usual shite. She was friendly and normal and sometimes had make up and looked great and sometimes looked like she got dressed in the dark. So we were pretty similar. It was never going to develop into anything because our children were clearly not friends but still, it was pleasant. Until the growl. There was certainly no chat that day.

Instead of grabbing him by the ankles and slamming him into the car violently which I really felt like doing, I decided to be mature. (Anyway, there might have been security cameras). He seemed so happy too, sitting in the front seat on the booster singing “I love rock and roll, put another dime in the shoe box baby..”

We talked about not bearing a grudge and putting things behind us and then when that got too complicated, just forgetting about the coat hood incident. 

So he agreed to stop growling and we went home. There’s a sentence I never thought I’d write.

on the first day of Christmas my true love..

My tree is perfect. No gaps in the middle, no interminable, offending spindle on the top, just loads of evenly spaced branches, growing at the perfect angle to hold decorations. The downside is that to get one in such perfect shape we had to buy it on the 8th of December and it is now very, very dry. We got an early one a few years ago too and I remember my husband burning it in the garden after Christmas. There were no orange flames at all, just one big, blue flash.

Anyway, this morning it contributed nicely to the perfect Christmas scene. Nat King Cole singing in the background, mince pies warming in the oven, kids peacefully examining the contents of selection boxes just delivered by their Godmother, extremely dry but beautiful tree lit up in the corner.

“Would you mind if I just put that new dress under the tree for you?” said my husband.

What new dress? Oh. The one I chose from bananarepublic.co.uk aeons ago, then waited until it went on sale, and then waited again until there was a special offer of free shipping. That dress? As a present from you to me?

You see, I want it every way. I want the shiny clementines and holly and all that Dickensian Christmas stuff, plus the joy and home made-ness(often resulting in home mad-ness) of spray painting our own wrapping paper, baking sausage rolls and icing a Christmas chocolate log.  Plus the twenty first century comforts of nice movies, luxurious gifts as recommended in Sunday supplement magazines and champagne.

But if ones husband is out trawling the shops for the perfect gift for a demanding and martyred wife, then one is home alone all day with the kids, realising that spending family time watching Christmas movies and eating Cadburys roses is nicer with him there too. And now the inevitable guilt has set in as I wait to see if he arrives back grim faced - no present buying success, irritating cosmetic salespeople who are baffled by his surprise at their exorbitant prices and heavy traffic or rosy cheeked - present buying success followed by festive pint and sambo in Nearys.

Price is born!

Well, the nativity play is done and dusted.  I arrived at the last minute and because of the season that’s in it and because I was carrying a baby, a kind dad gave me his seat in the front row. So I sat beside his wife and toddler who kept kicking me and saying through clenched teeth “I just kicked her” to his mum. He had a point I suppose. They got there early in order to secure seats and I waltz in late and take one. However, I thought as I smiled to myself and ignored him, I am a grown up and you are a child and I’m not moving! No matter how many times I ingratiatingly said to his parents “are you sure?” I was keeping that seat. Then joy of joys, my tired baby, instead of getting fractious and wriggly, became transfixed by the singing and angels with wobbly wings and sat quietly for the whole performance. Haleluia. My own angel threw me a few filthy looks and frowned whenever I caught his eye and gave him the thumbs up, but that was to be expected. He sang “Price is born!” with the others and didn’t cry or trip over his white shirt. Verily, there is show business in his veins.

On a completely different note, (notes of orange flower and white rose, actually) has anyone noticed the DKNY perfume advertisement on tv?

“Occasionally” I watch E! in the mornings, during that lovely quiet intermission when the schools kids have left and it is still early enough to have dirty cereal dishes on the kitchen table without feeling irritated by them. Anyway, in an add break in Kimora - Life in the Fab Lane(at least I'm honest) the perfume was promoted. It’s called DKNY Golden Delicious. It shows a heap of shiny green apples and Lara Stone salivating over them. Sitting on the couch with my tea, I found myself expostulating “But they’re not golden delicious. They’re granny smiths!”  

They are!

seeing the midwife who delivered my baby in Dundrum

I saw the midwife who delivered my baby in Dundrum last week. It was just a flash of her face as she walked in the opposite direction and my first impulse was to turn and run after her. Then hug her and insist on paying for anything her heart desired. She was such a wonderful midwife. From the moment she said (as I leaned against a corridor wall, breathing through my nose) “Yep. You’re in labour alright.” to the time she broke it to me that no, the contractions didn’t get any easier after my waters broke, she was supportive, capable, calm and cheerful. She smiled a firm no when I pleadingly suggested an episiotomy and I knew throughout those long hours that I was blessed her night shift and my labour coincided.

But before turning I hesitated. She might be sick of mothers bothering her while she shopped. Maybe I should leave her be? And then I remembered something else about the labour. Something that was swept to the back of my mind as soon as it happened and only popped (or pooped) up again in Dundrum last week.

Not long after I started pushing I noticed her getting some of that hospital papery sheet stuff, and putting it on the bed under me. Yay! I thought, this must mean the baby is nearly here! Oddly though, she didn’t say anything about seeing a head or any words at all to suggest the end was nigh. So I was puzzled until the next wave of pain washed over me and just concentrated on getting through it.

Once the contraction passed there was a funny silence, and I waited for someone to congratulate me on getting the baby’s head what felt like about a foot down the birth canal. Again, no one said a word and I heard a papery rustling.   Out of the corner of my eye I saw my husband wave his hand in front of his nose saying “phew! I don’t know how you do this job!” and she smiled, chuckling “I know!” 

So yeah, I thought I'd just keep going, and headed in the direction of the car park.

What age?

I relaxed my boycott on toddler groups yesterday. Its not that I was avoiding them for any high minded reason, just purely because I had my fill of the pre school social scene. However, once again I have a toddler in the house and he deserved a chance to give it a try. After a few minutes there, I realised I was finally the mother of the child who got stuck in, played with the toys and simply enjoyed himself. I have previously been the mother of the child who ran insanely around the church hall like a nutter, the mother of the child who sat on my knee resolutely ignoring all the toddler toys around him and the mother of the child who prompted a “kind” observer to irritatingly say “Your son is trying to put play-doh in his eyes. I just thought you’d like to know.”

As my youngest joyfully lay back in the ball pool, I looked around at the other mothers. There were two on the couch having a chat not really worth eavesdropping.

 “And my friend just told me she is pregnant! She’s so pleased!”

“That’s amazing.”

And another at a table with two small kids. She was giving off those smiley, lonely, desperate vibes, guaranteeing the couch pair was not going to include her. Ignoring all the signs, in she waded, asking

“Is your sons top from Tesco?”

The couch mother cautiously nodded.

“My tiny girl has one like it in pink! It’s so cute!”

The pair skilfully moved their eyes away from her, and kept chatting in low tones.

The lonely mum took a few minutes to recover and moved on to me.

“What age?” she said, gesturing to my boy, smiling as if she thought he was adorable. Which, I then remembered, is how mothers look at other peoples kids in toddler groups. Now that I am hardened by school and soccer and Fitzone, other people’s kids are generally the enemy in my book. Oh god, I thought, I’m going to have to start smiling at them again. The little ones at least.

When I was in my thirties, with a double buggy and an obsession with Boots baby aisle, I was a toddler group junkie.  No one was going to say my boys were under stimulated. I even attended an Irish speaking group for a while, hoping, I suppose, that someone would lapse in to English every now and again. But they were die hard gaeilgeoirs and never did. I had one conversation (one sided) where a woman wearing what could only be described as a “guna” told me that she and her husband locked their bedroom door every night. Or she could have said they held their bedroom door open with a clay box? I wasn’t sure but nodded knowingly anyway.

In the end I had an epiphany. Walking out of a group where everyone knew everyone except me and I was offered that “moving away” smile too many times I realised I didn’t have to do it anymore. Pushing the double buggy against the wind we went home, put the telly on and gave in to The Den. Jakers, Pickme and Scooby Doo. Better than any Fisher Price tool bench.

But this fourth baby has me back in the zone. Now however, instead of magnanimously giving the sought after plastic hammer to someone else bawling child, I’m going to keep it and give it to my own smiling one. 

mid term break

Mid term break. Here is how it was for me.

Monday

We always go to the Marathon. Always do a bit of cheering and “Keep going!”ing. My parents were joggers and it has been an annual thing for me since I was eleven. And this year it was an even bigger deal. My two best friend’s husbands were running, there was going to be free face painting at our local Centra and the day fell on Halloween, which meant the kids were in excited form from the start.

We got there as the 3.30 balloon went by. With so many people running I was surprised we even spotted Lorcan, but there he was, right on time and doing fine. Then we had about twenty minutes before Kevin was due so I agreed to find the face painter. There were four of them at a table on the footpath and about six people ahead of us in the queue. Every once in a while I tried to peer at the road to see if I could spot Kevin.  As time went by it became clear I was going to miss him but had promised the face paint, so I stayed put. Finally we were at the top of the queue and my six year old was on a stool explaining what colour dragon he wanted to be.

“Excuse me!” I looked up to see a very angry man beside me. “She was next!” He pushed past me, marched up to my son and told the face painter that it was not his turn. She acquiesced, the mans' daughter sat down and my little boy came meekly back to me. I said in a loud voice not to mind the very rude man. Then he came over again and continued saying forcefully that I had deliberately skipped the queue. I protested that I hadn’t and hadn’t even seen his daughter but there was no stopping him.  “Just because you didn’t see her doesn’t mean she wasn’t there!” he shouted and I finally realised that the best thing to do was not to argue.  As well as that I was painfully aware that all around me were other parents I half knew from school and now I was the mother involved in a loud fight about free face painting. So I shut up, we got the dragon done and I returned to the sidelines, shaking a bit.  

And needless to say I went over the whole thing hundreds of times in my head for the rest of the day.

Tuesday

In a desperate attempt to have an uninterrupted cup of tea, I put one boy on the Xbox, one in a highchair with a penguin bar and two giddy boys into the shower. Just as the kettle boiled I saw water dripping through the light fitting in the kitchen.

Wednesday

I went to a playground with my four kids plus one playmate. Met my friend, a lovely mum whose son has played with mine many times. To my great discomfort today he decided to ignore her son and play with his other friend. We had an extremely awkward chat while I gave him filthy looks, which he ignored.

Thursday

Went to Tesco. Everyone behaved, mostly due to the three bags of cocktail sausages, (a euro each) three bread rolls (finished by the time we got to the checkout) and three cartons of strawberry milk (not sure about the price. At that stage I was way too frazzled to check). As we headed out to the car with the full trolley, my eight year old ran ahead and was the first to open his door. Smack, it hit the car beside us and I looked in to see a teenager sitting in the passenger seat. She looked at me and then back at her phone.  Figuring she was either texting her Mum to say their car had been damaged or texting her friends about boys, I prayed for the latter.  

While loading the boot I had a quick glance at her car. There was a noticeable scrape and he had definitely taken the paint off. I heaved a sigh. Why couldn’t one week pass without my having to face a moral dilemma? Although now I am not being completely honest. There was no dilemma. I threw the food into the boot, got my euro back for the trolley, jumped into the driver’s seat and put my foot on the accelerator.  

“Mummy!” came a horrified shout from the back seat “the car is moving and I don’t have a seatbelt on!”

Friday

Well, that’s tomorrow. I’m hoping for a quiet, uneventful day. A break. As it is after all, mid term break.