She who would valiant be

Why is being a parent of a teenager such a tough call these days?

We want the instruction manual. Remember those early days with a baby, when you thought "why doesn't it come with an instruction manual?". It's like that all over again. I don't know if it's our education system, or our nanny state, or just human nature, but it always feels like there's a right way of doing something, and our job is to find it. We know this isn't true, but somehow it feels like it is.

Where to look for the ultimate advice?

• A book - but which one to choose? 
• A bunch of friends - but they all have slightly differing opinions, and there's that dangerous thing of asking a friend, and then deciding to ignore their advice. 
• The science - which can help (folic acid during pregnancy, that was an easy one, once they'd worked out that the advice should be just to take a tablet and not to try to eat a small field of broccoli or spinach every day - which actually was the advice when it first came out and I should know because I was pregnant during that tiny window before the advice changed to a more manageable course of action), but can also be seriously anxiety-inducing (MMR jabs, anyone?), and disempowering (Vitamin K jabs for newborns - have they decided whether that is risk-free yet, or are parents still having to decide between the rare bruising disease and the unproven link with some childhood cancers?)
• Parents - can be complicated.
• Blogs - always good, but they don't know your children. Only you really know your children.
• Intuition - usually good, but I think we're a generation of parents who have totally lost faith in our own intuion. 
• The Waltons. Yes. There's always a good parenting tip or two on The Waltons, and my friend has the complete box set readily available for borrowing. I am well set up.

Seriously, though. It is hard to be a parent of a teenager, and I'll tell you why. Because it plays on our own insecurities and fears. I'm guessing that few of us reached mature adult life (and I'm talking mid-twenties here) without some bumps and scrapes. Even though we may know that those were all part of a process, and though we may know that people get through and emerge ok, we are also hard-wired to protect our off-spring, and somehow we want them to have a smooth ride. Because if we had the instruction manual, and followed the instructions, then they would. Or so says the false voice in our heads.

I have found the whole Duke of Edinburgh thing very hard to navigate through....

At this point, I wrote a couple of paragraphs, explaining the exact circumstances. Then I realised that all I was doing was justifying myself to you. So I went back and deleted them. That's the very point I'm trying to make. I feel so out of my depth when I think about how to go about parenting this son of mine, that I just slip into self-justification mode. Because I don't want to fail. I want that instruction book, I want to follow it, and then no-one will be able to say I haven't done my best. But meanwhile, instead, I have a head full of questions that go round and round, and the gist of them is this: Have I prepared him enough? Have I done too much for him? How have I done, tightrope-walking that line between being over-protective and under-protective? 

It brings back all those feelings that we went through (I say "we" because I don't think it's just me... I've read enough blogs about this...) when we were trying to do well with our babies and toddlers.  That time in the park when your toddler fell over, and you picked him up, and your friend said "he needs to learn to get up on his own... otherwise he'll be too dependent on you". Or the GP who told you you were over-reacting when you thought your child was ill. Or that new mum group where it turned out that everyone else was doing x and you were doing y, and you'd been quite happy doing y until that moment, and then you went home and tried to do x instead, and it didn't work, and you didn't draw the conclusion that y was fine after all, but you felt like somehow you were getting it all wrong, and that it was your fault, and that you were letting your baby down.

16-yo is in London today (and this is one of the complications, that he arrives back at 10.00pm tonight and then goes off on the Duke of Ed trip tomorrow at 8.00am). He's been there for 3 nights, meeting up with a group from his old high school in America, who are on a trip to Europe. Before he went, I was so full of self-congratulation at how hands-off I am as a parent, and how he will find his own way and learn from his mistakes, and just what could go wrong, honestly? While he was away, all that fell by the wayside, and I was checking my phone for texts all the time, cursing the bad reception that meant a call from him dropped just as I answered it, sneakily texting his aunt who met him for lunch, to see how he was doing... I so don't want to be an anxious mother, and I so am.

I think he'll do fine, though. I put him on the train, having bought him a cup of tea and helped him find his carriage and seat. (You forget that a seat reservation isn't an obvious thing, to those who've never encountered one before...). As I walked away down the platform, I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was him. "Mum, you're holding my tickets!" And I was. In under a minute, he'd realised the lack of tickets, tried to phone me, tried to text me, and then decided to run after me. Good call. Top marks for competence. I think he'll do fine. 

And the title? Well, you do have to be valiant, to be a parent of a teenager. 

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Enough with the gloom - here's me being positive about motherhood and inventing a new word

The last two posts have been a little gloomy, so I'm changing the mood (though staying on the theme).

This video did the rounds a few years ago, but you might have missed it. I LOVE it. It makes me laugh over and over again - I watch it regularly. But more than that, when I am at a loss for words with my kids, I sing bits of it to them. It's become part of our family language.

I hope you enjoy it.



There's a version on youtube with lyrics, if you found it hard to keep up with her.

I've decided I can't be doing too badly as a mum. I told 15-yo this morning that yesterday, after he'd cleaned up his room, there were 12 pairs of underpants at the top of the laundry basket. I counted them, as I put them in the washing machine (I wouldn't have known he possessed that many).

"That means", I continued, "that before they were in the laundry basket, they were on your bedroom floor. TWELVE pairs of dirty underpants on your bedroom floor."

"No..." he countered, with an endearing grin. "Actually, just eleven. I was wearing one. I put it straight in the laundry basket. Just eleven."

And before I could think of a reposte, he came up with another idea.

"And in fact, I would say it was only eight or nine, because some were on top of others, and not actually touching the floor at all."

This is my point. I might not be very good at training my children to pick up their dirty laundry (can anyone top 12 pairs of underpants?), but I am doing a good job in teaching them that a winsome grin and a clever quick answer will get you out of trouble on many an occasion.

I've just invented a new word. In this house we have floordrobes, and we also have floorndry baskets.
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Why do I feel I do nothing? - A confession

I have a confession to make. 

When I started blogging, I was an SAHM, and at that time, the blogosphere often resounded to the strains of SAHMs justifying themselves, trying not to justify themselves, feeling angry about having to justify themselves... It probably still is, but I'm not reading it so much in my own circles, because it tends to be a preoccupation of mums with younger children than mine. Anyway, as I said in my previous post, I often chipped into the debate, and waved the "SAHM and happy" flag.

Then I got a part-time job. Very part-time - only a few hours a week. Not a very glamorous job. I mean, I wasn't running my own successful business, or heading up a department in a multinational corporation. I was a Sales Assistant in a toy shop, and on the minimum wage (though I did negotiate a 50% pay rise for my second year, which I thought was pretty good going).

The confession is this. When I got the job, I loved being able to say I had one. There was a moment when I was filling in a questionnaire, and in the section headed ‘Occupation’, instead of ticking the box ‘Not in employment’ or ‘Caring for dependents’ or whatever it was labelled, I ticked the box ‘Retail’. I loved that moment.

When people asked me what I did, I no longer had to say "Oh, I'm at home with the kids". I really liked that. Which is dreadful, because I'd so often commented on blogs "Don't say ‘I'm just at home with the kids’ - it's a really important job, the most important job you could be doing, actually. Say it with pride." I don't know if I'd convinced anyone else, but I certainly hadn't convinced myself. I really liked that I'd jumped over to the other side. But I didn't want to feel that it was "the other side". For all the rhetoric about choices, doing what's right for you and your family, etc etc, fundamentally, I think I had been looking down on myself and other SAHMs.

That’s my confession. So now, I feel bad on two counts. First, I am an SAHM and therefore don't do anything (see previous post). And second, I am outed as the kind of horrible woman who looks down on SAHMs, and think they don't do anything.

I am nothing if not honest.

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Why do I feel I do nothing?

Calling all SAHMs out there...

Why do I feel I do nothing?

I know the answer, actually. It's because

• When I had pre-school children, I used to look at mothers of school age children and think "wow, you have so many hours a day to get things done". I assumed that when my children were at school, I would have everything done in a wink, and then have time for new exciting ventures too. Now those days are here, I still don't achieve everything I want to do, and I have no time for any ventures, new, exciting, or otherwise.
• Although I know I hold family life together, and I know that is an important role, it seems like not very much. It's very invisible. It's so invisible that even I don't see it.
• For all the blog posts I've written and commented upon on this issue (and believe me, it's quite a number), and for all the encouragement I've given, and for all the times I've said "it's not a competition", somewhere deep down, I must feel it IS a competition. So although I know that life involves choices, sometimes dictated by circumstances, sometimes not, somehow I feel that being out at work AND having a family proves you are a more competent person than just having a family (just having a family...). I want to be one of those more competent people. There is a corner of me that sniffs a GCSE in "being competent" that I could be working for, or if not a GCSE, at least a gold star. 
• If I enjoy the things I do (eg supermarket shopping -  yes, I do enjoy that), then somehow I can't let myself see them as "work", and if they're not "work", then they're fun/pleasure/leisure/bunking off/slacking and I can't count them. Which is clearly ridiculous, because if I was in a job, and enjoyed elements of that job, I wouldn't feel guilty and as if I was being paid to enjoy myself. I'd just think they were part of the job.
• There is far too much Protestant Work Ethic around. Who needs to work to justify themselves in any case?
• This time a year ago, I had a part-time job and I was studying part-time for an MA. Then we moved back to Britain, and although I am trying to put those things in place again (I've had TWO job interviews in the past fortnight, go Iota!), these things take time. I find it hard to be patient. But I was also slightly relieved not to get the jobs. Even a few hours a week would put a strain on me, and on family life, and after you've moved to a new place, there needs to be a bit of slack around, even if the cost of that slack is that there's often a bit too much of it. My time will come. 

Ooh, that last one sounded a bit spot on, didn't it?

Meanwhile, yes, I suppose if we're calling a spade a spade, it would be good to say out loud that this move has involved sacrifices. They don't come anywhere near outweighing the benefits, and I'm not the only one who has made sacrifices, but it's probably helpful to look at that spade and name it. Though talking of spades just makes me think about how I've done nothing at all in our new garden, and how can that be? because I have so many free hours a day, (though looking at the state of the house you wouldn't think so), and everyone likes to do gardening, right? and with the amount of free time I have, since my children are at school all day, I could be growing our own organic vegetables, so I'll just add that to the list of things I should do but haven't done.

Waah.

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Life carries on

One of the hugely under-rated skills that you develop as a mother, is the multi-tasking of the mind. You have to shift gear the whole time. It's 0 to 60 in a few seconds as you grab a toddler's hand away from the fire and explain that fire burns, and then you're digging deep to answer an imponderable question like 'why is the sky so high?' a moment later. There must be some kind of mental clutch in a mother's brain, that makes it possible.

I've found this to be the case today. Mostly, my mind has been full of big questions relating to the sale of the house. How much should we ask for it? Should we get the storm door repaired, or could we just hope that no-one notices it doesn't fit any more? Why, oh why, have the Dyson, the garage door, and the mower all picked this week to go on the blink (when I'm still just recovering from losing my mobile phone for 4 days)? Those kinds of questions. But in amidst all that, this afternoon I have had the following three conversations (no exaggeration).

11-yo: What would you wish for if you could wish for anything?
Me (stalling): Um... I'm not sure...
11-yo: Do you think it would be better to wish for world peace, or for no-one ever to have to be hungry again?
Me: Either of those would be very excellent things to wish for.
11-yo: I think probably world peace, because if there was no war, then people could get on with organising things better so everyone had enough food, so then you'd maybe get both wishes.

8-yo: What's that thing for?
Me: It's a bus shelter. It's for people to go in while they're waiting for a bus, so that if it's raining, they keep dry.
8-yo: What happens if it's not raining.
Me: Well, they wouldn't need to be in the shelter then.
8-yo: Yes, but could they go in the shelter even if it wasn't raining?
Me: Yes.

Me: I'm really proud of you, 14-yo.
14-yo: Why?
Me: [mentions in affirming manner a few good qualities]
14-yo: Do I get money for that?
Me: No.

See what I mean? My brain clutch is wearing out. Ker-clunk. I need an automatic.

Right. Just off to write an assignment for my MA, comparing and contrasting two different theological approaches to worship. (OK, so now I'm just showing off.)

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I want the perfect muffin, or nuffin

Why can't I bake muffins? I've tried several times. They don't turn out light and fluffy, and poking over the top of the muffin case. They turn out a bit hard and a bit dry, and barely reaching the top of the muffin case. I don't do any super-healthy wholemeal recipe. In fact I've probably tried several recipes over the past few years. I don't think I can be a proper American mom until I can bake muffins (and yes, I do already make a mean apple pie).

Let's have a poll. I'm relying on you, Bloggy Friends. Don't let me down. I can't accept I have no future in muffins. You can select as many answers as you like, and/or leave me a comment with further information.

Dirty laundry

Having children is such a rich experience. You watch them grow, mature, become their own people. You give them roots; you give them wings. That is your endeavour. You do your best in the daily muddle, hoping they are learning the skills and wisdom to find their way in life. You look at the World, and your maternal heart clenches a little. Are you preparing them for it adequately? And then, the occasional glorious moment comes when they demonstrate that, yes, they can handle what comes their way. They are more than up to the task. Watch out, World.

This was one such moment.

I was having a round-up of the kids’ clothes – as you do. In 10-yo’s side of the bedroom he shares with 7-yo, there was something of a heap, which I gathered up. I opened the bottom drawer of the chest of drawers, to put some of the heap away. The drawer was full, not of folded clothes in a neat stack, but of a jumble of clothes, much like the one I was holding, scrunched up, and jammed down. I took out the jumble, to find that it was a pile of dirty, not clean, clothes, including several items of smelly underwear.

I looked over at 10-yo, lying on his bed, rapt in his book, oblivious to the laundry concerns of his mother.

“10-yo, these clothes in your chest of drawers. I think they’re dirty. I think they should have gone into the laundry basket.”

With his grinning face alight with an expression that said “I know you’re going to think this is funny and not be cross with me”, he replied,

“Last time I put a whole pile of clothes in the laundry basket at the same time, you got mad at me.”

“So you’re hiding dirty clothes in your clean clothes drawer, and you’re going to sneak them into the laundry basket little by little?”

With a beatific smile,

“Yes! Exactly!”

[Now, just to set the record straight here. He’s referring to the times when I send the kids down to the basement to tidy up. The basements here tend to become the kids’ areas. I don’t know how other people manage their basements, but I hardly go down to ours. I let the kids do what they like down there, and then from time to time, I call a tidy-up day, and I make them put the basement back to rights. By that stage it has become a fearsome task, but as I point out to my little Herculeses, they are lucky I don’t make them tidy up every night. On these occasions, out from the basement emerges a whole pile of sweaters and assorted clothes. And if I don’t intercept quickly enough, that whole pile of sweaters, which are perfectly clean - worn once, discarded in the heat of an air hockey match, and left on the basement floor - are dumped into the laundry basket, with a clean dressing gown or two for good measure, and perhaps a clean blanket. And yes, when that happens, I have been known to have a small rant the next day about washing a big load of sweaters which weren’t dirty when they reached the laundry basket, but having had a damp towel crammed on top of them overnight, now do need washing after all.]

He knows me so well. He knows that I do, indeed, think it is funny to store your dirty underwear and sneak it out bit by bit into the laundry, like the British prisoners of war digging a tunnel, and dropping the loose earth out onto the compound, handful by handful, through holes in their trouser pockets, evading the notice of the German guards. He is right: I’m not going to be cross. He knows I am amused by the intention behind the deed, and am not, when all is said and done, terribly worried about smelly small boy underwear. He knows he got away with it, when the conversation ends in a laugh, not a lecture about cleanliness. As I leave the bedroom, he probably allows himself another grin, before returning to the world of Fablehaven.

He’s a couple of steps ahead of me already. He beats me at chess easily, and even laughs sometimes when I move a piece, saying “Really, Mum? Seriously?” before mercilessly denying me the opportunity to change my mind, and switching that piece with one of his own, removing it off the board. He's just proved his ability to dodge a maternal laundry rant. He can handle a mother. Oh yes, he’s a couple of steps ahead.

But he’s not ahead of me in everything. He doesn’t know how I’ve stored away this conversation. How I, too, am grinning as I go downstairs. How I laugh inside myself at the World, and know that he will make his way through it very well. Yes, in some things he’s a couple of steps ahead of me. I came across the dirty laundry pile today, and a few weeks ago I found a secret stash of Twizzlers. What other secrets lie hidden throughout the house? What other things make him grin in secret triumph as he goes to bed with his Fablehaven friends? But aha, for the mother’s secrets that meanwhile are making me grin in secret triumph too!

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Marvellous mothers

As you know, these days I am hot on the case of Mummy Guilt. I am the masked crusader in the cape (the freshly laundered cape), battling that particular evil vilain. And in that spirit, I thought I'd just tell you what a fabulous mother I've been this morning, before rushing away to my secret hideaway, changing out of my superhero identity, and emerging into my real life as a humble toy store sales assistant. Ha! If only they knew...

The best 'fabulous mother' bit of the morning was the 15-minute car journey from the State Chess Tournament (10-yo participating) to the soccer pitch (13-yo participating). So for that to happen, you already have to imagine the whole mullarkey of getting two children to two places at the same time, each wearing different kit, needing different equipment, bla bla bla, which involved calling in favours from friends. Overnight favours on this occasion. So let's take that whole bit as read.

Then I need to tell you that I was on check-in duty at the Chess Tournament. This is a front-line job. It's not a front line you want to be in. I don't want to say too much, because I've never organised a big competition and I imagine it's not easy, but I think it is true to say that those who are good at chess (strategic thinking skills), are not necessarily those who are good at designing and supervising check-in systems for large numbers of children (organisation skills, people skills). Suffice to say, that one element of my job was to comfort a child in tears who'd been shouted at by one of the other organisers.

So anyway, after an hour of front-line duty and disorganisation, I then drove to the soccer match.

In the course of the journey, I answered the following questions:


what happens if you break a law?

how do the police find out?

how much is a fine?

what's a trial?

how do pet shops get birds to sell?

what does 'breed' mean?

can you unbreed animals?

what's the biggest pet you can have?

you can't really have a horse if you live in a town, can you?

do we live in a town?

what kind of party did you have for your 7th birthday?

when you play soccer, how do you not be the goalie, if you don't want to be the goalie?

would you like to be an ant?

really? did you know that they only live two days and they have people trying to squish them all the time?

would you really really really like to be a bird and be able to fly?


You have to admit, that for someone who has been up since 6.15, doesn't drink caffeine, has been dealing for an hour and a half with the potent cocktail of chess officials under pressure and members of the public, is mentally preparing a strategy to winkle out small shreds of information about her oldest son's first formal dance (yes, age 13) the previous evening while also enthusing about the goals he has scored... to be able to find the brain space to explain the judicial system in language a 6 year old can understand, recall childhood memories, ponder the metaphysical questions of creaturely existence, AND keep a car on the road in a straight line... I think it's pretty darn impressive. And let's admit it, this is standard fare for most mothers. You've all done this stuff too. You do it all the time. We are marvellous things, and should stop feeling guilty and inadequate.

Oh, and did I mention that Husband is away at the moment for nearly two weeks? Did I hear someone offering me a gold star to sport on my cape? Ooh, yes please (so long as it's an iron-on one).


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Mummy guilt

I have been thinking recently about guilt (she says darkly and mysteriously). One of the main ways I come across guilt is that syndrome known to all us mummy bloggers: Mummy Guilt. Here is what I think we should all do about Mummy Guilt (and I include myself as a prime culprit): stop it!

Mummy Guilt is actually a misnomer, if you think about it. It’s not really proper guilt, is it? It’s not guilt as in “I’ve done something that is ethically and/or morally wrong, and I feel remorse” is it? It’s an indistinct sense of inadequacy. It’s the feeling of being not good enough. And… (drum roll at this point, as you all wait for Iota’s pearl of wisdom to drop from your computer screen and roll across the table onto your lap)… of course we’re not good enough, because that is part of the human condition. In fact, here is a paradox (ooh, I love paradoxes). If you were the perfect parent, you wouldn’t be a good parent, because you wouldn’t be preparing your child for a world where people are imperfect. Ta-da! Mummy Guilt solved.

I think we English speakers need a few more words to cover the guilt spectrum. I’m told that in other languages, there is a bigger vocabulary for the thing that we gather under one guilt umbrella (though of course we are good at gathering things under umbrellas, what with our climate being the way it is). Guilt, inadequacy, shame… we tend to put it all in the same basket. The basket that’s keeping dry under the umbrella. So Misnamed Mummy Inadequacy gets in with proper “I’ve committed a heinous crime: guilty as charged, M’Lud, life sentence coming my way” guilt. That’s a bit of a pity, if you ask me. Just makes us mummies feel even worse, labouring under such a weighty term. So, if you’re a passing linguist, perhaps you’d like to toss in your ha’penny worth. In the murky recesses of my memory, I catch a glimmer of a recollection that someone once told me that Russian is good in the guilt arena. Any passing Russian-speaking bloggers?

This is what I notice about Mummy Guilt. We confess to it for random irrelevant things. Things like not taking home-made mince pies to the school Christmas party, or helping your child do her homework ten minutes before you have to leave for school because you forgot about it the night before. Everyone knows that shop-bought mince pies taste nicer, and that you are doing your child a big favour if you are developing in her the ability to produce a piece of work quickly at the last minute and make it look like you spent hours over it. That is an indispensable life skill, if I ever saw one.

Here’s another thing I’ve spotted. Mothers feel bad about not always putting their children first, and sometimes putting themselves first. They know, however, that they must bring up their children to be sensitive to other people’s needs and wants, and not to be selfish. Another paradox. Yum! Why does pursuing the first half make us feel guilty (ie putting ourselves first), and not the second half?

I have plenty more to say on the subject of guilt (dark, mysterious) but I’m going to stop now, because it is 10.30pm on a Sunday night, and I’ve had at least one glass of red wine and am ready for bed, or at the very least a hot bath, and still haven’t come to a satisfactory conclusion on whether 13-yo can do soccer AND tennis in the last quarter of the school year, or whether one sport is enough, and whether we are going to be able to be fair to the younger two children and treat them all the same as they grow up if we set the bar as ridiculously high as to allow for TWO sports as well as TWO musical instruments, and talking of setting the bar high, would perhaps track (that’s 'athletics' or 'field events' to you British readers, at least I think so, I can't really remember any longer - it's not something I ever talked about very much when I lived in the UK) be a better option than tennis anyway since the school has recommended it as a help in transitioning from the middle school to the upper school because the two teams train together? and thinking that whatever we decide, this one issue will seriously scar them all, the three of them, for life, and therefore I am a TERRIBLY BAD MOTHER.

Mother's Day

It was Mother's Day here in the US on Sunday, so I was thinking about, well, being a mother. I know. Pretty original, huh?

I have a confession to make. I cyber-stalk people about to have babies. I do. Not many - just one or two, here and there. If I come across a blogger about to drop, I add them to my reader, and await the birth. I love the excitement. Ooh, there's a post! Has she had that baby yet?... No, just another post about being fed up with waiting, and a trip to the hospital for monitoring... Ooh, another one! This time?... (Hello, Stockholm.)

I used to love waiting for friends' babies, but now I'm of an age and stage where there aren't too many of those in my immediate life. So I have to get my fix of enjoying babies arriving via the internet (the fix arriving via the internet, that is, not the baby - though in this galloping century, who knows? maybe that will be the next thing).

I love those first exuberant announcements. I love seeing the photo, and the details, and the boasting comments of the parent. We become all childish in our excitement, don't we, when we see them? It's a bit ridiculous, honestly. I mean, take the photo. Let's be honest, that photo of your beautiful newborn... it looks like, well, a baby, doesn't it? Not very different to all those other photos of newborns. Maybe less or more hair, maybe sleeping or awake, maybe scrunched up or not quite so scrunched up. But there's not a whole lot to remark upon, is there?

Then we read the details. Weight, length, and um... there's not much else to say about a baby at this stage. Usually these days there's not even a surprise regarding the gender. Weight - well, there's not a huge variation, honestly, is there? Length - no-one ever even bothered to measure my babies so we couldn't tell people their length, but I didn't feel it was a huge loss. (Isn't it interesting, incidentally, that we talk about length, rather than height? I suppose you have to be able to stand up to have a height.)

So it can't really be the photo and the information. No. I'll tell you what it is. It's the pride of the parents. The bursting, unembarrassed, overwhelming pride that they can hardly contain, in this little scrap of humanity. When we sent out an email announcing the arrival of our third, a friend emailed back "May you always be as proud of her as you are today".

I have often thought of that comment. With a newborn, it's pride at its purest. You're not proud because your child has learnt all his spellings, or because she's got into the netball team, or because he's been nice to his brother and shared his lego, or because she's on the podium at graduation, or because she looks unbearably sweet with her first pony tail, or because he's managed a poo in the potty. You're not proud because anything. You're just proud that the baby is who he or she is - which actually, you know almost nothing about at that point. In fact, all you know about this creature is that it has caused you 9 months' worth of pregnancy complaints, then a few hours of exquisite pain, and that it has the ability to yell, blink a lot, and fill a nappy. It's not a great list of endearments.

Pure unprocessed pride. When you are wanting to throw open the door of the maternity wing, and say to the assembled company "Look, look, LOOK at my baby!... MY baby!..." surely that is parenthood at its finest. Unconditional, all-accepting, unquestioning pride. Dare I say it reflects the divine? Yes, I think I dare.

Of course some people don't feel the parent pride thing straightaway. It may take hours or days to feel much for that scrap of their own, that everyone else seemed so excited about. And that's fine too.

I wonder if animals feel it. I saw a duck with a brood of 10 ducklings in the park the other day. She kept a watchful eye on me as I stopped to watch them, but I didn't think she was very afraid. I wondered if she was actually enjoying showing off her brood (and yes, I did talk to her, out loud, congratulating her on her fine off-spring and saying what a good job she'd done with the eggs, and that's why I like being anonymous in my blog, so that I can confess to weird behaviour like that).

Mother's Day. Well, I wasn't at my best on Mother's Day. I shouted at my kids, and I'm never proud of that. So I'm preaching to myself here. "May you always be as proud of her as you are today." Of course it gets a bit more complicated as life trots on. It is part of the job of a parent to teach good behaviour, good attitudes, spelling, so it becomes appropriate to be proud of your children's achievements and efforts (though can't we just drop the spelling, now they've invented Spellcheck?). But it's good to remember, as much as we can, the more important pride that undergirds it all: pride in them just because they are. And now I sense I'm beginning to ramble, so I'm going to go to the park and see if I can find a few more mother ducks and geese to talk to.

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An unusual childhood complaint

Day Four of 'The Daily Post'.

There is a place here which is a favourite for kids' parties. There are lots of games where they earn tickets, and then they trade in the tickets for small prizes. It's like Chuck E Cheese's, without the mouse.

8-yo went to a party there yesterday. As we were setting off, he was desperately looking for a collection of tickets which he earned last time he went. That time, over a year ago, he spotted an electric guitar and decided he would save his tickets, until he had enough saved up for it. Now, a year older, he has worked out that if you earn around a hundred tickets each time, and the guitar is priced at several thousand, it's not a goal you're easily going to reach. Plus we have a kind babysitter who has an old electric guitar she doesn't want any more, and she is going to give it to him.

He couldn't find the tickets anywhere, and eventually had to leave without them. After the party he told me

"I'm really annoyed I can't find them, because I thought I was being smart. I looked them out the night before, and I put them in a safe place, and now I can't remember where that is."

My child has a touch of Mommy-brain.


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Identity crisis

I’m typing this with 4-yo sitting on my lap. She has just stapled round the perimeter of a piece of paper, very prettily, and is now copying out words that I am writing for her. She turns 5 tomorrow, and we’ve just had a conversation about the fact that this is her fifth birthday. It needed clarifying, because we’d had a conversation earlier about how she is kind of having 2 birthdays, what with taking cookies into preschool on the ACTUAL day, but having her party on the NEXT day, because it’s a Saturday, and I could see that her mind was heading down a path that involved having 5 birthdays all in a row, so that her fifth birthday would be next Tuesday, with continuous celebration till then.

So why am I telling you this? I’ll confess. I’m feeling the need to reassert my mummy blogger credentials. For those of you outside the Members’ Enclosure that is the mummy blogging world, let me tell you that there’s a quiet but busy revolution going on among British mummy bloggers. Look at the pretty new button on my sidebar (or, until I've managed to upload it, click here). There have been mummies blogging in Britain for ages, of course, but the creative Modern Mother has set up a ning (which is a new one on me, and may be what the Monty Python Knights who say 'ni' were trying to say), which has got everyone more organised. It's a happening kind of a place. I say “Members’ Enclosure”, but that’s not a fair comparison, because the British Mummy Bloggers isn’t an exclusive site. Anyone can join. Even Dads. Ah. Dads. I wish I hadn’t started on that “Members’ Enclosure” analogy.

What about me, though? Am I a mummy blogger? The original purpose and identity of this blog was to write about my experiences of adjusting to life in America, so no. I’m an expat blogger. But inevitably much, most, of my experience has been related to being a mum. So with that, I’m a mummy blogger. I love reading other mummy blogs. I love hearing about the antics of your kids, sharing your joys and woes, puzzling over your requests for advice, laughing at your humiliations, saying a big “Ay-men” to your insights. If you all lived in my town, I tell you, we’d have a ball.
But there’s this. I am very soon going to be a mummy blogger without a preschooler. Of course that doesn’t make me any less of a mummy. Of course not. But it’s a fact that the great mass of mummy blogging is to do with that intense phase of life, when we try to make sense of the awesome responsibility of bringing this small person into the world, a phase full of highlights, struggles, and unbelievable amounts of wee, poo and vomit.

What am I trying to say? Being the perceptive bloggers you are, you’ve probably worked out that this isn’t really about my identity as a mummy blogger. It’s about my identity as a mummy. It’s about having made the transition from mummy to mum (and long ago). It’s about not being in touch enough to have an opinion on the best stroller to buy. It’s about not remembering what routines my babies were in at what ages (or not, as the case may have been). It’s about smiling at a woman with a baby in the checkout queue, and saying “what a gorgeous baby”, and realizing, when she politely responds “how old is your little girl?”, that we don’t have an immediate conversational common ground. She knows that (what a mysterious and closed world is the world of a 4 year old, when you have just embarked on a small baby!), but I’ve properly realized it only recently. I’ve noticed in passing plenty of times along the way, of course I have. Part of the mother’s job description is to be painfully aware of time whizzing by faster than you can say “bugaboo” (and incidentally, they weren’t around when I bought my pram, and yes, it was a pram in those days, which converted into a pushchair, a pram/pushchair, not a buggy, stroller, or complete travel system). I tell you, though, it feels very different when you’re staring into the jaws of the school application form of your youngest child.

At this point my expat blogger side wants to butt in. “I’ve got something to say here. My turn. You should tell them how different that is, over here. In Britain, they’ve had their kids in preschool funded by the government since their third birthdays, and the kids start school at 4 or 5. Here, lots of kids don’t go to preschool at all, and school starts at 5 or 6. The whole 0 – 6 realm has a different feel to it. Starting school is a bigger deal, a bigger milestone for the mothers. You can explain how you don’t have a green card, so can’t go out to work. You can justify yourself here, Mummy-side, if you let me get a word in edgeways.”

Actually, Expat-side is feeling quite aggrieved. You see, this whole post started off as hers. It was going to be a short little piece, about the fact that 4-yo had asked me to write out ‘Mom’ for her to copy, and how I’d had to decide whether to write ‘Mom’ or ‘Mum’ (I wrote ‘Mom’). Then Mummy-side completely took over. She started out by establishing her multi-tasking credentials (look at that very first sentence) – an old mummy blogger favourite. Then she followed up with a cute story about her child (that first paragraph) – another mummy blogger staple. Then she was away, as if to say “Identity crisis? What identity crisis? She may be 5 tomorrow, but I’m not finished. Oh no. I’m not leaving the Enclosure yet.”

Blogging and Margaret Thatcher

One of the things I love about blogging is how it’s really just an extended conversation with a bunch of friends. You see, I’m sitting here saying “now where were we? Ah yes. Margaret Thatcher.” It feels to me like we were chatting away over coffee, everyone chipping in, and I was just about to say a big thank you to you all for dropping by, and then the doorbell rang. It was an award being delivered. So then I had to show off the award, decide who to pass it on to, and just as I was rewinding to what I really wanted to talk about, there was a phone call, about a picture meme. I’d been dying to show off my mural to you all anyway, so I had to dig out some pictures and pass them round. So here I am, still drawing breath, and still saying “where were we?”

Perhaps this is why blogging is such comfortable territory to people with small children. Which of you hasn’t had a conversation along the following lines?

“It’s not the same as going out after work for a drink and chatting to someone all evening. Huh. Lucky if we get an hour before ‘someone’ gets tired and we have to head home.”

“Yup, and it’s not like it’s proper conversation anyway. [Sigh] I guess that’s just one more skill we all develop. The art of talking while chasing a snotty-nosed toddler round the room with a tissue. Come here, you.”

“Right. They never warned us how we’d have to talk in two-sentence chunks all the time. Share nicely please. I mean, it’s fine. You get used to it. I said ‘Share’. But it’s not the same. Anyway, what were you saying about your mother-in-law’s ingrowing toenails? If you can’t take turns, we’ll have to put that Postman Pat V-Tech learn your shapes and colours talking boomerang right away. Surgery?”

Those of us who are a bit longer in the motherhood tooth no longer even have the novelty of self-congratulatory awareness that we are doing new things. Get me. I’m so multi-tasking. We’re the ones who would now probably struggle to talk to the same colleague for a whole evening and would be thinking of a way to leave the pub politely. We merely furrow our brows, and search each other’s faces in companionable memory-lapse silence, until one of us says “Margaret Thatcher”, and the other slaps the table, takes a gulp of tepid coffee, and replies:

“Yes. Margaret Thatcher. Well, I loved everyone’s comments, and what an interesting read they made. As for my own opinion, well, it rather changed as a result of the debate. I’ll even confess to lying awake at night not being able to sleep for thoughts of Margaret Thatcher.

I started off with several of you, thinking she wasn’t a proper woman, because she got to the top by being like a man. Then I realized what a very unfeminist position that is. We women really are our own worst enemies. I mean, what would I want a woman Prime Minister to be? Someone younger, more attractive, more fashionable, whose choice of outfit would make the news alongside her policies? Or a mother of young children, so we could all smugly wonder whether she found time to help her children learn their spellings in between meetings at Number 10 and voting at the House of Commons? How we love to do down women who achieve. Yes, we are our own worst enemies. This article, put my way by A Modern Mother, says it so well. It’s about Rachida Dati, the French politician who took five days’ maternity leave when she had her baby. Five days. I can't even imagine... But I don't need to. She's not me. She doesn't have my life, I don't have hers. That's the point.

So I have shifted. I now think Margaret Thatcher was a proper woman (handbag and all). I think she found her way, fought her way, to where she wanted to be, regardless of her gender. She was a feminist without having a feminist agenda. And yes, I think it did make a difference. I don’t think she was exactly a role model, but having a woman PM did prove to us all that no sphere of life could any longer be considered the sole preserve of men.

I’ve just created a picture of her for myself (and this is pure whimsy) losing her thread, and scanning Geoffrey Howe’s face in a moment of silence, before slapping the cabinet room table and exclaiming 'The Single European Currency. Yes. I knew there was something else I wanted to talk to you about.'"

Happy Birthday

So, 3-yo turns 4. She was the first of us to have a birthday here in the US. Now her second birthday-in-America has come round, it feels like we are here well and truly here, not just here finding out what it’s like here.

Her third birthday was, for me, one of the saddest days of this whole moving-to-America lark. I didn’t dwell on it, not wanting to cast a gloom over her special day, but the day brought for me both a focus on what we had left behind in Scotland, and a meeting head-on with the very worst of the culture we were seeking to embrace.

Before you have children, you imagine that the world of mums and babies is a shiny smiling place, in which groups of women happily congregate to share experiences, and where deep friendships are formed. Then you have a baby, go to a few babies and toddlers groups and activities, and find that it can be quite different. Why would there be so many Mommy blogs if the myth were reality? I had done my fair share of all this with the two boys, and had found a bit of reality and quite a lot of myth. With my third, I struck lucky. Two women who were already friends happened to have daughters at the same time as I had mine. We lived within walking distance of each other. They each had 3 older children, and sons in the same classes as mine. I was even in the maternity hospital at the same time as one of them. Our due dates were a month apart, and throughout the pregnancies, we’d joked that she’d have to give birth two weeks early and I’d have to be two weeks late. And it happened. I woke up the morning after laboring and delivering, to a cheery familiar face and a “fancy a cup of tea then?”

The little girls, even at the ages of 1 and 2, liked each other’s company, and, perhaps for having 8 older siblings between them, seemed able to play together beyond their years. They sat up in high chairs in the local coffee shop, at that lovely stage where a teaspoon to bang on the table is all that’s needed to occupy a baby for half an hour. Luxury. Then they staggered round the coffee shop, giggling at each other, plopping down on their padded bottoms, while we tried (and by now, failed) to have a conversation. They reached the stage where crayons and paper might work for 5 minutes, but a decent conversation is beyond possiblity. We met at the local toddler group, where it just so happened there was a whole bunch of other fun mothers. Women who week by week would ask how my plans for America were coming along, who would listen to the tedious details, whom I bullied into buying the furniture and gadgets we didn’t want to ship (“who’d like a paper shredder? or a desk that’s a bit broken?”), who I knew would feel a space on a Thursday morning where 2-yo and I had been.

By the time of her third birthday, we’d been in America for just over 3 months. We were beginning to find our feet. There was no-one, though, to invite to a party. I couldn’t help thinking what pleasure a party would have given her, her small friends, and me, if we were still in Scotland. We’d have had it at home. Little girls in pink frocks. Old-fashioned games: the farmer’s in his den, pass the parcel, musical bumps and musical statues (all with a bit of parental help and varying degrees of chaos). Older siblings hovering around the edges. Little nibbly snacks and a cake. Singing happy birthday. Balloons and decorations. I know that children's parties strike fear into the hearts of many a braver mother than I, but I've loved the parties I've hosted. It's not hard to give half a dozen preschoolers a good time.

Worse still, 2-yo had tagged along when I had taken her brother to a party, and already had a firm idea of what constituted an all-American birthday experience. She was fixed on having her birthday celebration at Chuck E Cheese’s. Oh dear. Chuck E Cheese’s. Even the locals say things like “the kids love it”, as if to absolve themselves of any guilt attached to the decision to take their children there. With my freshly-arrived British sensibilities, I can only say that the words “culture shock” came nowhere near describing the experience. Chuck E Cheese’s is a games arcade designed for the 3 – 8 age range. You buy coin-like tokens, which your beloved darling then feeds into various game machines. If they win, the machine spews out tickets, and when your child has finished for the day, you take your tickets to a counter where they can exchange them for a prize. The prizes on display on the wall behind the counter are Nintendo DSs, or huge Hot Wheels playsets, or diamond-studded Barbies. These have price tags on them of thousands of tickets. Your child has probably collected 50 tickets. They will be directed to the glass display cabinet where they can choose between an array of small plastic items. They could get two yo-yos and a plastic ring, or three 4” fake snakes. Those too young to understand that a number with 0s after it is a big number are sorely disappointed. Those old enough to grasp the concept can take their tickets home to save up, and try their luck at persuading their parents to bring them again. I speak from experience. 7-yo has a bag of about 80 tickets in his bedroom, against the day when he might get another 8,000 or so for the electric guitar. This makes for happy parent-child conversations, as I’m sure you can imagine.

If kids are not going to a party, but have come along simply to enjoy a pleasurable Saturday morning, they will have queued for a long while to share the privilege. If they have come to a party, they will by-pass the queue, feed tokens into machines for a period of time, and then sit at long tables, eating oily pizza, until a large mouse with an over-sized plastic head emerges with a cake. This is Chuck E Cheese himself.

I think it is at Chuck E Cheese’s that the consistent Iota “not wrong, just different” philosophy of life in a different culture is stretched to the ultimate limit of its elasticity. Surely, surely, this is not a good way of entertaining young children. The place is small, crowded, smelly, greasy, loud, and thoroughly unpleasant. The food (pizza or burgers) makes a McDonalds happy meal look nutritious; the music is brainless. The adults sit in booths looking bored or anxious or both, and avoiding each other’s eyes. If this was a police state, I would say that everyone was trying not to see who else was there. It’s the kind of place you could report your neighbours for visiting. The annoying thing is that, as the locals say, the kids do love it. I can’t help feeling, though, that they have all been so thoroughly brainwashed by so many TV advertisements telling them that they are going to have a gratingly fantastic time, and then subjected to the peer pressure that the adverts engender, that they arrive without much choice.

I hate Chuck E Cheese’s so much, I’m not even going to provide a weblink. If you want to visit him, you can google him yourselves. I don’t want to be responsible for a single extra visitor to his site. The only redeeming feature about Chuck E Cheese’s, is that, along with the shiver of hatred that makes me clench my molars together and suck in my breath every time I hear his name, there is a little glimmer of amusement provided by my English ears. You see, the way they pronounce it here, it sounds for all the world like Chuck E Jesus. If I was feeling very irreverent, I might even say it sounds like Chucky Jesus. I’ve even tried saying “Chucky Jesus” to people in the right context, and they don’t notice anything wrong: “you went to Chucky Jesus on Saturday? How fun!”

So my daughter had her third birthday at Chuck E Cheese’s. She had no friends to invite, and I had no friends to share it with. She enjoyed every moment with her two big brothers, though, which was all that mattered. And if I could have seen ahead to her fourth birthday, I would have felt a lot happier about being here. More about that next time.

When is a joke not a joke?

A 10 year old boy walks into a kitchen and tells a joke:

A man walks into a bar, and says "Ouch".

A mother pauses, thinks, and laughs. “That’s funny” she says. “That was a first” she thinks. He has told her a joke that she didn’t already know, that she found genuinely funny, and that wasn’t followed by “d’you geddit?” and an explanation.

Ten years ago, she wrote his milestones in a book. They came thick and fast. The first tooth, the first steps, the first words. They come less often now, but they still come. The first filling, the first soccer goal, the first real joke. She doesn’t write them down any more. Then there are the kind that she couldn’t write down anyway. They’re not “firsts”, they don’t stand out, they creep by slowly, and when she notices them, she is already looking back. He doesn’t need a spoon to eat peas. He doesn’t always choose from the kids’ menu in a restaurant. He sometimes empties the dishwasher in the morning, not because he’ll get a sticker on a chart, not because he's proving he can do it all on his own, but just to be kind. When she sorts the laundry, his socks are easy to muddle with hers. The golden window between his bedtime and hers is getting smaller; it’s more of a chink than a window already. The park is no longer about the swings and slides. She can’t dribble a soccer ball past him, but he can get one past her, every time, easily.

She needs his advice on school matters. She remembers it was she who decided it was time to replace the Bob the Builder lunch box, but now it is he who tells her that Spongebob valentines won’t do for fifth graders (though he can't tell her what will).

Soon will come the milestones hidden from her view. The first joke he hears that he doesn’t think he should tell her. She knows these days are not far off. Perhaps they are already here.

A mother walks into a milestone, and would say “Ouch”, but mothers don’t say that, and anyway, this one is a fun kind of a milestone. A mother walks into a milestone, and keeps on walking.