I Blame the Pooh Chocolate

Earlier I blogged about the fact that my day was going to hell in a bucket.  I thought you might like to know that it did improve slightly in some ways, the main one of which was that by quarter to one Oscar had absolutely worn himself out, and just as I was thinking that I might actually have to take him out on a long walk and just try not to make contact with any other human beings in case he savaged them, he rubbed his eyes, which was tantamount to throwing down his weapons and saying: ‘I surrender.’  I hot footed it up the stairs as soon as possible and deposited him in the loving arms of his horse hippo duvet.  I was mildly euphoric.  I did a very quiet little dance on the landing.

I went to bed.  I lay under the duvet, rigid as a board, stressed to the nines and unable to get to sleep.  I had drunk so much coffee, and done so many cunning Jedi mind tricks to keep awake that all ability to nap had flown out of the window.  I was quite annoyed.  I then thought about how hellish my afternoon would have been if the boy Genghis had still been up, and counted my blessings.

I think the main thing that contributed to my already stratospheric stress levels was that while he was refusing to go to bed Oscar decided that he was going to take his self induced potty training to the next level of chaos and I spent the final hour before the trip to bed mired in spaghetti hoops, pooh and wee.  Not quite how I had planned to spend my morning.

When I finally gave up after my initial blog, and dragged him from his cot, his nappy was rather full.  I took him downstairs to change him and then realised, after I had taken his soggy nappy off, that I didn’t have any nappies to hand.  I pulled up his new bee bop pants in a feeble attempt to fool him into thinking that this was a wee proof shield of some kind and went nappy hunting.  I found the nappies in the middle floor bathroom, but they were hermetically sealed into an adult proof bag which I had to rip asunder with my teeth.  By the time I got downstairs he had widdled through his bee bop pants onto the hall floor and soaked half the door mat in the process.  He was paddling in it in his socks when I found him.  I was, as you can imagine, overjoyed.

I stripped him off, rinsed him down, put his nappy on and washed the hall floor.  I was slightly at a loss as to what to do with the door mat.  I hung it over the stairs and flapped a tea towel at it.  I don’t think it helped much, but it made me feel better.

Oscar then announced that he wanted to use the potty.  I stripped him off and he straddled it very professionally whilst clutching a small card with a picture of a balloon on it.  It seems he’s following in the great manly tradition of having to have something to read on the toilet.  While he was enthroned I made him a fabulously nutritious dinner of spaghetti hoops on toast.  He announced just as dinner was served that he was done.

I looked into the potty, expecting to see nothing, as usual. Instead there was the smallest pooh in the world.  It even had a flag attached to a cocktail stick that said it was the smallest pooh in the world.  Oscar was also staring into the depths by now. He looked at it, looked at me, turned very awkwardly to survey his bottom and looked back at mini pooh.  He than raised his eyebrows as if in total incredulity that it had emerged from his being.  He shook his head and announced definitively that it was in fact a ‘chocolate’ and not a pooh at all.  He wanted to eat it.  We had an earnest discussion.  I explained that he was getting that chocolate in his mouth over my dead body.

We wrestled it to the toilet with me praising him furiously for being a clever boy and him looking totally bewildered about the fact that he had just pushed out a chocolate and he had no idea why we had to throw it away.  We flushed it away, we said goodbye.  We washed our hands.  Then he announced that he needed another pooh.  I offered him the potty.  He refused.  He clutched his knees together and looked pained, demanding a nappy.  He filled two nappies full and refused to go near the potty at all.  I resigned myself to years of trauma and changed to subject by presenting him with his congealed dinner.

He ate an entire tin of spaghetti hoops but decided that unlike normal he couldn’t possibly shovel them onto his spoon himself.  I ate a spoonful of my dinner. Then I responded to the plaintive cry of ‘More Ooops!’  It took about an hour to eat dinner.  We were both smothered in hoops.  The stain on my right breast is definitely hoop related.  It took me ten minutes to hose down the residue from the high chair.  I blame his feeding regression on the shock of producing pooh chocolate.  It’s all going downhill.

He slept all afternoon until it was time for school when the heavens opened and we sploshed to and from school in a thunderstorm.  Horrid Henry won’t work on the television because of the rain.  I couldn’t go to the library.  I couldn’t go to the supermarket.  We are under water and starving and the children are hitting each other under a duvet that is apparently an underground den.  I blame the pooh chocolate.

Still, at least he had a nap.

Monday 7th July – The Words Hell on Wheels Spring to Mind

I am tired.  I am almost dead to the world.  The only things keeping me awake are extra strong coffee and the incessant shrieking of my son.  He is also tired.  He didn’t want to get up this morning.  A weekend of partying with older women has settled his hash.  He insisted that he would just stay with his ‘hippo horses’ (he has moomin shaped green hippos on his duvet).  I dragged him, protesting violently from the covers, and manhandled him into his high chair whereupon he began flicking Shreddies round the kitchen in protest. 

I replaced the Shreddies with pineapple and strawberries.  He frowned, said: ‘No like it pine Apple,’ and then ate seven metric tonnes of it before lobbing the remains the same way as the Shreddies.  He demanded toast, and when it arrived, refused to believe that he had ever done such a ludicrous thing in the first place.  He then wriggled like a silverfish, shrieking until I let him out.  My eyebrows now look like Spock from Star Trek due to the fact that they are full of pineapple juice and mashed Shreddie.  My vest has a large lump of something on it.  I’m not sure what it is, but I am sure I didn’t want it stuck to my left breast.  Particularly as I didn’t notice it until after I got back from the school run.

Tallulah, who had her fifth birthday party yesterday, was obsessing all through breakfast about the fact that it’s her real birthday tomorrow and what are the chances that if the postman brings something juicy today that she’ll be allowed to open it after school.  Despite my dampening; ‘None!’ she carried on speculating, including what her dad will give her on Wednesday when she goes to his house, and what it will be like when he takes her out for the day to Gulliver’s Kingdom on Sunday.  I think I preferred Doctor Who.  I never want to see birthday cake again (which is fierce coming from me), which is a shame, because there will be more celebrations tomorrow (and tomorrow, and tomorrow).

When we got to school Oscar had to be dragged away screaming from his fan club of five year old girls, who he loves dearly, but nevertheless tries to batter to within an inch of their lives if they try to hug or kiss him.  I have explained to him that he will change his mind about this when he is about fourteen, but all to no avail.  I have explained to them that it is vital that they stay out of jabbing range as I do not want to be sued by malevolent parents because Oscar has ruined any chance that Jacinta has of becoming world shot put champion, due to the fact that she now has only one eye.  This too seems to be to no avail. 

As I hoiked him from the grasp of one particular young lady who he was just about to jab in the eye (must cut his nails when the tranquiliser darts take effect), I noticed he had weird reddish streaks in his hair line.  My initial thought was: ‘Oh my God! He’s bleeding, and I’m such a crap mother I didn’t notice.  God will smite me down for this.’  Then upon closer inspection it turned out to be strawberry juice where he had obviously run his juicy little mitts through his hair before demanding his release from the breakfast table.  I was relieved.  Then I was ashamed that I hadn’t thought to wash his head before taking him out in public.  Then I thought: ‘I wonder how many mothers have to wash their sons’ heads before taking them out anywhere? Am I the only one?’  Answers on the back of a strawberry…

We got home.  I rang my mother.  We agreed that we were washed up after a weekend of frantic partying and that we were putting off until tomorrow what we should do today.  I have to go into town to the sorting office to collect a parcel that arrived on Friday while I was out.  I thought about going today.  Then I cast my mind back to Tallulah’s wonderings on all the acres of presents that she hopes will be being borne aloft by a weary postman.  I thought: ‘If I went all the way into town to the sorting office to get a parcel and then came home to find that there was another cryptic note saying that I had to go all the way into town to get another parcel, I would be really pissed off.  I’m not going.’  I felt pleased with this executive decision.  I told my mother.  She said that it was a piece of expert reasoning and that she wouldn’t go either.  I felt cheered by my brilliant rationalization of the fact that I am a lazy, lazy woman who fears the number 94 bus and its inhabitants.

I had another cup of coffee.  It didn’t help.  Oscar demanded milk and my presence watching Mama Mirabelle’s Home Movies on Cbeebies.  It was actually very soothing, despite the fact that he insists that all animals fall into several basic categories and won’t brook any arguments.  Thus the entire programme was populated with horses, bears, birds, frogs and elephants. That is all.  He has spoken.  David Attenborough knows nothing.

He insisted that we snuggle together.  He insisted on milk being provided.  He insisted on laying his head down every few minutes.  He was tired.  I asked him if he was tired.  He nodded and said ‘yes!’ then he realized just what that admission meant and immediately shrieked: ‘NO! No like it! No like it!’  I said; ‘What don’t you like Oscar?’  He said: ‘No like it BED!’ and immediately got down from his snuggle to make like a boy who wasn’t insanely tired.  I refused to watch.  I refused to be charmed that while I was changing his nappy he was insisting that we play together and that I have his dummy because he didn’t need it.  I carried him upstairs to his cot, making soothing noises to drown out the screams of protest, thinking: ‘He’ll go down in ten minutes because he’s shattered, and then I will have a power nap.’  That was half an hour ago and he is racketing round the cot shouting: ‘Din nah ready now!’ and making the floor vibrate.  I am depressed.

I keep thinking. I’ll give it another five minutes and then I’ll give up and get him out.  The only thing is that I know he is shattered, and now he has wound himself up to fever pitch he’s going to be hell on wheels.  He is a boy who needs naps.  He is not a boy who can sail through his day with aplomb, spreading sweetness and light to all around him when he is sleep deprived.  He is a boy who when he doesn’t have enough sleep turns into Genghis Khan after a particularly heavy night on the Mongolian Yak’s butter.  He is vile and unmanageable and far too hitty for anyone’s liking.  I have tried explaining this to him.  He tried to hit me in the eye with his milk bottle. I expect that’s what Genghis did to his mother as well.