Grin and Tonic

Time to Smarten Up

Posted on January 8, 2009 by Grin & Tonic by Alana Kirk

The time has arrived. My abilities to Deceive to Achieve (see February 2008 blog …) are increasingly limited – those little white lies are not suffice to fuddle muddled minds anymore, and full-blown lies are necessary. Now, I know mothers with a moral conscience can be dangerous things, but even I draw the line at blatant bare-faced lying (recent Santa shenanigans notwithstanding).

Last week I was luxuriating in the snugginess of our usual morning bed read-in. The books were just out of reach on the windowsill, and sandwiched between two very warm and wriggly girls I suggested Daisy go and fetch them.
“You get them mummy,” was the reply.
“Well, you’re closer love, you get them.”
Without a second’s hesitation, she rolled over on top of me, squeezed in between Poppy and me, and looked up angelically,
“You’re closer. You get them!”
Stunned into silence by a smart three year old, I’d reached a new low.

Somehow, while I’ve been dumbing down, they’ve been smartening up. This is not a good situation for a mother to be in. I always knew babies were cute in more ways than one. Poppy knows the exact pitch to aim her danger-decibel screech at to have me jump out of my bed/chair/wits in a second (usually to present me with a toothy grin once I’ve staggered to her side).

But are they getting too smart? Am I going to be able to keep up or am I going to turn (more) into my mother who after 20 years of me showing her, still can’t work the video? I’m just about computer literate – admittedly more Peter and Jane level, than War and Peace. But my children will never have known as age where computers are not a fundamental part of everyday life. It recently took me three days to work out how to put the SIM card into my new iphone, only to handle it gingerly without actually using it for another week, so scared I was of it. Not sure what I thought it was going to do, but it sure felt like a ticking bomb of technological danger to me. So maybe it’s a good thing my girls will be smarter than me. With my husband even more of a technophobe than me, it might be very useful to have at least one person in the house who knows how to work the digital TV.

In the meantime I have to keep my wits about me – I have children to outsmart.

Posted in motherhood, smart, technology | 1 Comment

Jingle Bells

Posted on December 24, 2008 by Grin & Tonic by Alana Kirk

“Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells” and so sings my three year old morning, noon and night. The fact that she’s not blessed with dulcet tones makes it even funnier. An off-key screech greets us in the morning, and a hushed hum lacking harmony filters down the monitor in the evening. This is it. My first Christmas in 32 years that Santa will Ho Ho his way down the chimney again and I’m as excited (possibly more so) than my apoplectically animated daughter who has been wearing her Santa dress every afternoon for 5 weeks in eager anticipation. We’ve just put the finishing touches to Santa’s cookie which we made (looking forward to that I must say!), and have decided which carrot to leave Rudolf. Somehow she’s got it into her head that it’s Santa’s birthday tomorrow and Christmas is his party – and who am I to rain on her parade? So apart from Jingle Bells we have to sing Happy Birthday to Santa on a regular basis.

We’ve given them their stockings which we’ll hang with great ceremony at the fireplace before they go to bed – although my 18 month old, Poppy, has gotten into hers and refuses to come out.

I think more than any other part of Christmas (apart from creeping downstairs in the morning with them to see if Santa has made his delivery of course), is putting them to bed tonight, whispering excitedly about Santa coming down the chimney (I love the fact she has accepted this with absolutely no doubt, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world) and then hubby and I will open a bottle of wine and wrap their presents and fill their stockings (and eat the rather yummy looking cookie). I am so excited I actually feel giddy.

It’s like the Christmas day of parenthood. This is what it’s all about. This makes the unendurable nights, the torturous tantrums, the frustrating suction of any sort of ‘me-time’ from my life worth it. This is the pay-off. The bells are jingling, and I can almost hear the sleigh bells above our house. Ho ho ho, and a merry Christmas to everyone. And for once, I won’t be grumbling when I hear jingle bells beside me at 6.30 am.

Posted in Christmas, parenting | 1 Comment

Born Again

Posted on December 17, 2008 by Grin & Tonic by Alana Kirk

So my husband has finally persuaded me to have another baby. That sounds like I don’t want one – I do. I really do – when I look into the future and see a tea table full of chatter and stories, I desperately do. When I look at newborn babies, I desperately do. It’s just the thought of taking 20 steps back down the ladder of independence. It’s just the thought of being pregnant exhausted and sick and looking after two children under three. It’s just the thought that all my hard fought writing time will evaporate in a puff of epidural.

But, my ‘I desperately do’ outweighs my ‘it’s just the thought that…’. And so I’ve made a decision. Whatever happens over the coming months, if I am blessed with a successful pregnancy, then I am determined to not fight, not resent, and not pout, but to enjoy the last time I do this. I will write for the rest of my life. I will have ‘me time’ again at some point. But I won’t nurture a baby again and I don’t think I did justice to my first two pregnancies. The first was raw and terrifying, all shock and awe that left me reeling with post-traumatic stress. The second was hurried and harried, a penance to pay as quickly as possible, my first smile in nine months the morning my daughter was born.

I remember a few weeks into my first pregnancy, blue lines zigzagged across my bludgeoning breasts. A chaotic map of mammary ducts and I realised – a little terrified – that my body was getting ready without me. My body was rearranging itself and leaving my head behind. Even after Daisy was born, my brain never quite caught up with my body’s transformation from single focus to multi faceted machine. I would stare at her, mesmerised and wonder where she came from. I was quite a creative person I thought. I’d even knitted a few choice jumpers (albeit the sort one would only wear on a remote west of Ireland island). But this perfect piece of engineering? This angelic arrival? How could I possibly have made her? And so I never fully accepted – believed – I was actually going to have a real baby. That actually breathed and cried. An actual person. The fact that stored neatly (or not so neatly as it transpired) behind my puzzled belly button was another human being – that I was making – seemed way beyond my imaginative capability.

“Why are you so tired?” my husband would stupidly ask.
“I’m making eyelashes today” I would announce majestically from my horizontal position on the sofa. “Tricky work those eyelashes.”
Or toenails. Or fingers. But despite my giggles at such maternal magic, I never quite believed that was what I was actually doing, despite the trillions of books and websites I was devouring along with my folic acid and banana fruit smoothies. Every new hour, every new symptom was analysed. I poured over the sections that listed the possible side effects of each trimester, gleefully ticking the horror list of swelling ankles, heart burn, bleeding gums like some test I had to pass. I didn’t have varicose veins. What was wrong with me? Was I not doing it right? Where were the damn piles? Ah great, indigestion. Damn, it hurts.

I was too busy being worried about the bad bits to be happy about the good bits. And of course my colour coded neatly typed birth plan merely made a mockery of my final tenuous grasp at control. The moment the heart monitor jabbed it’s distress call, I was no longer in any sort of control as my baby was ripped from my body before I could even say “I’m pushing!”.

Still doey eyed and lovesick, I got pregnant again before my baby’s first birthday. Quite a bit before. And then my husband got a job overseas. There was no ‘let’s put this baby back in the jar until a more suitable time’. He went, I stayed and struggled with a wilful toddler, pregnant and pouting at the unfairness of it all, my second confinement like a prison sentence. I love my daughter dearly but let’s face it. Guantanimo Bay would be a lot more successful if they swapped water boarding for toddler torture – locking inmates up with a toddler 24 hours a day – they’d confess to anything to get free! There was no escape, no reprieve and certainly no time to nurture my pregnancy. I had backache, piles (oh good, got them this time), heartburn and chronic tiredness. More purgatory than pregnancy. My husband came home two weeks before Poppy was born and I had no time to blink before we clutched our hearts in the rollercoaster ride of two under two.

And so now I approach my third. I say my third, but it is really my fourth. Sadly my third didn’t make it, forever a butterfly in my garden of daisies and poppies. Another reason why this one has to count.

I know now to appreciate my miracle. I know now that worrying won’t change the outcome. I know now to love every minute, every change, every blue zigzag, and every careless kick. This will be my last, and in a way, my first. There will be no shock, just awe. I will languish in the lavishness of my belly, resting my hands on top, knowing that afterwards for a while, maybe forever, I will go to rest my hands on my mound and feel disappointed there is none. The private pride of knowing the secret within me, the ridiculous bond I will have with them, unknown but loved entirely already, so that when they emerge it’s like they’ve always been there. To clutch my cleavage and sashay my voluptuous glory down the street, goddess, magical, majestic.

It may not be a perfect pregnancy. There may be pain, and scares and exhaustion. But it will be a perfect pregnancy because it is a miracle. A magical maternity miracle, and one I intend to enjoy.

Posted in motherhood, pregnancy, writing | 3 Comments

Is writing compatible with motherhood?

Posted on November 16, 2008 by Grin & Tonic by Alana Kirk

Virginia Wolf didn’t think so. She sacrificed being a mother for being a writer. And didn’t one of those early women writers actually give up her children so she could write? And can we even put down the proliferation of our best loved Irish writer, Maeve Binchy down to the fact she has no children?

Ok, I hear you saying, what about JK Rowling? Millions of words and millions of pounds later, she’s a shining example of successfully combining motherhood and writing. Aha, I suggest. She writes children’s books. That means she probably gets all her ideas from them, and can count reading over her work as quality child time. She can even arrange playdates with Daniel Radcliffe.

A room of our own? That’s a laugh. I don’t even have a pen of my own. My office? My desk? My room? A large Orla Liely bag which contains all my current musings and laptop that I clutch to my breast looking for a quiet corner of the house. Sometimes the bag retreats to Starbucks and sets up office there. I’m a writer in waiting: waiting for the kids to sleep, waiting for the Dora half hour on TV, waiting for my time to come after everyone else in the house has been taken care of.

I met John Boyne recently. I discovered he wrote the first draft of his best selling, multi-award winning, Hollywood-film-showing novel, Boy in the Striped Pyjamas in two and a half days. TWO AND A HALF DAYS! That’s how long it takes me to scrape the Weetabix off my laptop so I can find the delete button to rid myself of the appalling drivel I wrote the previous week in between cooking, cleaning, washing, ironing, shopping, arse-wiping, knee-kissing, jigsaw constructing, rocket making (cosmic pink with tinfoil windows), and remembering to breathe. Like all good writers, it seems I need a wife. But my kids need a mother so what’s a woman (writer) to do??

I’ve just had to stop writing this in order to construct a rather fetching ‘tent’ in the playroom by draping some blankets over some chairs. I’m pretty sure Stephen King doesn’t have this problem. (Not that anyone is likely to want to get in a tent, no matter how pink, with Stephen King.) Still, the point is, it’s hard. I know enough wonderful women writers who are mums struggling with the same issues as me (and actually, I’m sure it’s not restricted to writers.) How do we find time to do what we love amid doing what else we love? To clarify, I mean being with our children is the other thing we love. I did not mean, and never will mean, thinking about what food to give us all, shopping for the food I’ve still not thought about, cooking the food I’m still not sure what it’s going to be – just something that starts with the left over onion in the fridge and see where my (lack of) inspiration takes me, washing up the dishes the food was not eaten off, hoovering the food off the floor, and washing the clothes that are covered with the food I’ve been thinking about all day.

How do I correlate wanting to be a full-time mum with being a full-time writer? How do I even correlate being a part-time mum with a part-time writer? I can’t, because I can never be a part-time mum or a part-time writer. Both are in my blood. Both are what I am. I cannot successfully be one without the other. If I was no longer a mum, I would have no inspiration to write. If I was no longer a writer I would be a terrible, disgruntled unhappy mum.

I don’t know if that makes me bad at both, or just in one of those places that no matter how often I ask the question, there really just is no answer.

So I’ll carry on being both, doing both, shunting one in front of the other occasionally, trying to find the balanced line. I’ve just danced with them to Abba, and read the Princess book. Again. Now they’re having tea with dad, and I’m clutching my Orla Kieley bag to my chest. My time.

Posted in motherhood, writing | 3 Comments

From the mouths of babes

Posted on November 5, 2008 by Grin & Tonic by Alana Kirk

Will my children ever know what today meant? They will grow up never knowing it wasn’t possible for a black man to be President of the world’s superpower. Another thing they’ll take for granted – along with their mother being able to vote, our Irish nation in peace with itself, apartheid something from a fantasy novel.

My two girls will grow up thinking – knowing – they can achieve any position, any career, any desire they have, not only because that is what my husband and I will tell them every day, but because all kinds of people before them have fought to give them that future.

What battles will my children fight? What barriers will they batter down? What ceilings will they shatter? I don’t know, but I do know that today is another step towards ensuring they will be able to fight, will have the courage to battle, and can reach high enough to shatter.

And really, in such a historic moment like this, it takes a child to put it all in perspective.
Recently we made a big deal of Daisy throwing all her dummies in the bin. When she went searching for them a short time later, I had to tell her the bin man had taken them away. She contemplated this information, pondering I suppose, just what a bin man was having never seen one.

This morning my husband told her it was a special day. A black man had just become the most important person in the world. She looked a little put out. “Yes,” she said, none too pleased, “and he took my dummies away!”

Posted in dummies, motherhood, President Barak Obama | Leave a comment

changing goalposts

Posted on October 29, 2008 by Grin & Tonic by Alana Kirk

The books and the magazines and the mid-wives tell you how to prepare for motherhood in lots of different and useful ways – what cots to buy, how to structure feeds, how to keep your precious babies safe, and the holy grail of course – how to get them to sleep. But nothing and no-one can prepare you for the emotional rollercoaster those little bundles of neuroses will take you on. There is no manual, no DVD, and certainly no preparation to equip you for the mental, psychological, and emotional journey you are about to embark on.
The life-rattling rollercoaster of parenting is full of highs and lows, turns and dips. Rarely is the path smooth, and rarely is it straight – and perhaps that’s why it is so fulfilling and challenging. One week you are flavour of the month, (which is always a blessing and a curse), and the next week its dad’s turn and it cuts you like a knife. How annoying the constant phrase “mummy do it” can become, and how much you miss it when you suddenly hear “daddy do it.” One minute (the exact one in which you are trying to cook their tea) they are clingy and needy, their arms outstretched pleading for your undivided attention, and the next (the one you finally sit down and want a cuddle) they are striding out for independence and push you away – you are currently surplus to requirement. You need the patience of a church full of saints… and not just because you have to read The Tiger Who Came to Tea 26,290 times with exactly the same enthusiasm. But because it is the hardest job in the world.
But the most difficult part of parenting I have found is the constantly changing goalposts. Just when you think you have it all figured out – they toddle off in their inimitable way and change the rules. Just when you pat yourself on the back for a job well done, a new challenge looms large and ominous, casting a grey cloud on your glistening rainbow. There is no time to catch your breath – or they’ll be catching you out.
And it starts early. Just when you think you’ve got the adorable new docile baby thing sussed, they start getting frisky and demanding more stimulation. You finally manage the whole breastfeeding lark and after five months of frustrated fumbling you eventually feel like earth mother, when the books start telling you to wean them off and give them proper food. You just get the hang of a rainbow of pureed fruit and vegetables spooning nano-milliletres into their gaping mouths, when they start demanding finger food and you worry about chocking, even in your sleep. You think you’ve just come to terms with crawling and have the house well and truly finger-proofed when Wham! You wake up one day to find them walking and a whole new set of challenges await you. You’ve just mastered the terrible twos when potty training looms and you are left a quivering wreck on insecurity and frustration.
With every new success, comes a crushing realization that there is a fresh ‘next-step’ loitering around the corner waiting to trip you up. You barely have time to stand back and congratulate yourself on the mastery of a new skill (your, not theirs!) and you tumble back to the bottom rung of knowledge as you try to figure our how to potty train, or discipline, or teach them how to cross a road. I think in nearly three years of parenting I’ve had about two weeks of status quo. Two weeks when my toddler wasn’t embarking on some new psychotic personality phase at the exact moment I had just about learnt to cope with the existing one, and my baby wasn’t morphing before my eyes into a teething, tetchy, crawling, walking toddler.
I’m not sure I could realistically expect much more, having had two babies in two years. With childhood being one long journey of discovery (yours) and phases (theirs), two different journeys in parallel were unlikely to merge into a golden path of calm. Our yellow brick road is bumpy and adventurous. It’s breathless and chaotic, but I guess the best journeys are. So my advice for surviving motherhood? Eat well, because you have to have the strength to be the adult all the time, even when you want to throw a tantrum of your own. Sleep well whenever you can, because they won’t always. And hold on tight. I liken it to sitting in the passenger seat (because you will rarely feel like you are in the driving seat…) of a rally car – you just have to buckle your seatbelt and hold on until your knuckles are white – because surviving motherhood is a hairy ride that will leave you exhilarated and terrified, deliriously happy and dementedly shocked, often at the same time. Only the brave need apply – you are going to need a heart of cotton wool, wrapped in nerves of steel. Oh, don’t think for a second there’ll be time for patting yourself on the back. There’s always a new challenge waiting for you.

Posted in challenges, change, motherhood | 1 Comment

News Flash! Mums are superheroes!

Posted on October 15, 2008 by Grin & Tonic by Alana Kirk

At last, scientific research has proved that baby-bearing makes us brainy. Tell us something we don’t know! So as we wash up endless dishes at the sink and wipe up after another messy meal, we know we can do complex equations in our head, and reel off the most amazing facts known to man. Ok, so we don’t necessarily want to, but at least we know we can because it’s official.

New research has revealed that once we get over the mind-numbing stupidity of baby-brain during pregnancy – this is in fact caused by our brains re-calculating to prepare us for the vast mental capacity needed for motherhood (see, I’m sounding brainier already!) – we come out the other side cleverer and better able to cope with multiple tasks (who needed research to tell us that?).

Apparently studies carried out on animals including primates (our closest cousins… see how much I know??), show mothers become braver, are up to five times faster at finding food and have better spatial awareness. Who needed a study to work that one out?? Have you ever seen a mum confront anyone who so much as looks at her child the wrong way? I felt murderous intent the first time another child at playschool was rude to my Daisy! And as for finding food five times faster?? Ever watched a mum with toddlers in tow do a food shop? Speedy supermarket shopping should become an Olympic sport. My last trip round every aisle in Superquinn took a breathtaking 16 minutes! Ok, so Poppy needed treatment for whiplash from me pushing the trolley round the baked beans too quick, but at least I got out before two temper tantrums exploded around the petit filous section. And as for increased spatial awareness? If speedy shopping is an Olympic sport, then negotiating a double buggy through the inconceivably small aisles of most highstreet shops deserves a Nobel prize in engineering.

Another part of the research found that women’s senses became more acute after childbirth, enabling them to recognise their own child’s odours and sounds. I knew this already. When both my girls where is still in nappies I found I had the strange ability to know which one had done the poo as soon as I walked in the room. Probably not a skill I was going to put on my CV, but still, it kept me entertained.

Finally, the study showed that women who give birth after 40 are four times more likely to live to 100. Four times! So finally I can sleep well knowing I might just be around long enough to keep Poppy out of trouble. Because although she’s only 17 months, I know, just like I know it’s raining today, that that child is going get into trouble all her life. How do I know? Just another one of those super-power skills we mothers have.

Posted in motherhood, research, skills | 1 Comment

Getting by with a little help from my friends

Posted on October 6, 2008 by Grin & Tonic by Alana Kirk

Picture the scene. You had a demented night with your crying, teething baby. Your reluctant toilet-training toddler has thrown the potty across the room and used the carpet instead. There is poo on the walls, Weetabix on your new shirt and wails of despair coming from all three of you. You want to run out of the front door screaming, but instead of reaching for the latch you reach for the phone. It’s time to cash in on one of your life-lines, and call a friend.

Now I know I’m making the following statement fully aware there is no actual scientific evidence to back it up. But I’m going to save somebody lots of money on research because I know I’m right – humanity would have dried up millennia ago if mothers did not have good friends. Having a baby is hard enough. Without friends to guide, steer and carry us through the experience, it is near impossible. Most women just wouldn’t survive motherhood without good strong friends, and civilisation as we know it would be extinct.

Friends in need really are friends indeed, and there is no needier a time than after you’ve had a baby. But of course, like most things in life, friends come in two varieties – the good and the bad.

Everyone has a bad friend, and every mother has a bad mother friend. They’re easy to spot. They’re the ones who automatically launch into a monologue about the prim perfection of their beastly beloveds, who never actually ask how you are, and manage to look immaculate and preened even when they’re “frazzled, darling.” (I’m of the firm opinion these people actually have full-time nannies and therefore do not have to wash pee off the stair carpets, hide their roots under a cap because they have no time to go to the hairdressers, or wear sweatpants because there is pesto pasta on all their other clothes.) My advice is to ditch them quick! Let’s face it, when you’re feeling fat and frumpy, the last thing you need is Posh Spice landing on your doorstep.

Good friends on the other hand know exactly what you are going through, and know that most of the time, what you need is to vent your frustrations on a listening ear, a hug and a strong cup of tea (chocolate biscuits essential). A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart, and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words, because they have been exactly where you are now. They know the harrowing harangues of a mother on the edge of reason; they understand that the witching hour (the one before the kid’s tea when hell usually breaks loose) is called so because you turn into one; and most importantly, they know that you are still you, somewhere underneath all the guilt, anger and frustration. Luckily they also know that you just can’t help yourself when you harp on endlessly about how wonderful your beautiful babies are, and smile in agreement.

There is a reason why pregnancy is referred to as ‘being in the club.’ Because mums join together in support and sanity of each other, and you don’t need to be life-long friends to help out. Mums seem to instinctively know when another of our tribe needs help. You see it every day: when someone gives you a reassuring smile across a crowded shop when you are trying to tame a screaming toddler; when someone carries your tray to the table in the café while you push the buggy and get the high chair; when someone lets you ahead of them in the toilet queue because they know every second in that queue is fraught. And when you lift you head above the swirling waters of early motherhood and take deep breaths again, you too become the smiler, the tray carrier, and the queue waverer. Because you where there once and know how it feels.

Every time someone I know has a new baby, I wait a week until the mothers have left, and arrive armed with her dinner for that evening. I make her tea and listen to her talk about her child as if she was the first woman to ever give birth to a beautiful baby. I make her a cup of tea and clean up the dishes before I leave. I even offer to do the laundry. And when they inevitably thank me I smile and tell her that someone did it for me, and she will now do it for someone else in the future. Because that’s what “being in the club” means. Because that’s what friends do.

We roll our eyes in camaraderie at tales of potty-training fiascos, we nod in agreement at the latest discipline techniques and we cheer enthusiastically when baby eats her first pureed pear. We offer advice when it’s asked for, offer our shoulder when needed, and offer a tall glass of chardonnay when essential. Eating buns in sympathy with her distressed lack of weight loss is also fairly standard.

While parental partnership certainly can get you through the dark days and share in your pleasure of the delightful days, there are times, when (sorry men,) friends are just better. We get each other in ways perhaps that men, who no matter how ‘new-age’ or ‘metro’, whistle off to work leaving you at home with a neurotic breakdown and a grizzling monster just don’t – or can’t – understand. One man had it right though and no truer word was spoken. “I get by with a little help from my friends”, sang John Lennon. I certainly do.

(Published in Modern Mum, Autumn 2008)
(c) AKG 2008

Posted in friends, help, motherhood | Leave a comment

Working Girl

Posted on September 25, 2008 by Grin & Tonic by Alana Kirk

Life is all about phases. Once I was the burning-the-candle-at-both-ends-highly-motivated-successful-career-girl, and then I became the sleep-deprived-slobber-covered-breeding-feeding-weary-worn-stay-at-home-mum. And now, lo and behold, I’m a part-time writer… and TV book reviewer (RTE1, Seoige Show).

Ok, actually the real title is Full-time-mum-and-maker-of-my-husband’s-sandwhiches-and-housekeeper-and-part-time-writer-and-TV-book-reviewer, but when I’m asked I might just stick to the last part. A new phase in our lives has begun, and although I mourn the loss of what we had, I run squealing in wild abandon to a new life. For three years my toddler was mine, and we were free, but now she bounds into playschool without a backward glance into a world without me. I have cared for my baby constantly for the precious 16 months of her life, but now she is minded three mornings a week. I’m scared and I’m a little sad. But, I am also writing – and not just in the stolen moments when the kids aren’t looking. I can hardly contain my joy. I burst little sniggers from my mouth. My mind jumps from list to adoringly written list to decide what to do next. Now I no longer have to cram all my work into the silent hours of lunchtime sleeps, or the dark hours of night. I feel new life breathing into my fuzzy brain. It’s only ten hours a week, but they are MY ten hours. Mine all mine. Ten hours! How many words can I write in ten hours? How many emails can I send? How many blogs can I read? How many blogs can I write? How many articles can I devise, and pitch and write and send? How much money can I earn? Ok, the answer to the last question is probably not very much, but who cares? Who cares when I have ten whole glorious, gluttonous, gorgeous hours to write? My ‘business plan’ shines out like gold on my pin-board, and now I also have a gig reviewing books on day-time TV – which of course is just a gorgeous excuse to go buy some new clothes!

I love being a mum. It’s everything I thought and 1000 times more. But I missed me. And for ten whole hours I get me again. We didn’t have an easy start…. Instead of a week of words, we had a week of weeping. Tears at the playschool door (mine were hidden, my daughter’s were streaming down her face as she clutched frantically to my skirt). Back at home, the new childminder patiently tried to persuade my wobbler to stop burying her head in my lap as she screamed at the indignation of meeting someone new. Everyone was in uproar at the new changes to our life. Better change that title to Full-time-mum-and-wiper-of-tears-and-emotional-wreck-and-maker-of-my-husband’s-sandwhiches-maker-of-my-toddler’s-sandwhiches-and-housekeeper-and-part-part-time-writer. Change is as good as rest they say? They obviously didn’t have kids.

BUT, four weeks in and I shout, “I did it!” quoting my nearly-three year old (a phrase only surpassed by her favourite indignant statement “I do it!”)

OK, I was being very optimistic with those ten hours a week – typically, just as I get an inch, Daisy takes away a mile and drops her lunchtime sleep the EXACT week I get childcare for Poppy. But, I’m not going to moan – Daisy is settled in playschool, Poppy is adapting to the indignation of my minor abandonment, and I have written and I have thought and I have pondered. I feel ten feet tall. I even wear real clothes. Without elasticated waists. Life is almost perfect….

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Back to school for us all

Posted on September 10, 2008 by Grin & Tonic by Alana Kirk

My husband and I are scared. Very very scared. There is a dark and dirty cloud hanging over our heads and in moments of anxious insecurity we whisper surreptitiously to each other – “Do you know the laws of physics?” While we wash the dishes we mutter under our breath, “Any idea why the sea is salty?” As we get ready for bed, we eye each other up across the duvet and query, “Why do stars twinkle?” Our daughter has just started Montessori and we know the Age of Questioning is going to start soon. The Spanish Inquisition has nothing on the relentless quizzing of a toddler on the cusp of a world of wonder. Are we up to the job? Haven’t a clue.

I have hot flushes just thinking about what I don’t know – and should. Like how things work for instance. Seriously, just how does a computer actually function? This is going to be the mainstay of my kids’ lives, as fundamental to them as food and drink. Yet I’m 38 and have only now just plucked up the courage to join Facebook. I still don’t get WiFii, and after three years with our current computer, we still don’t have connected speakers. How does it all work? Haven’t a clue.

Ok, maybe I can justify not knowing too much about the technical stuff, but what about a clock for example. Pretty basic you’d imagine. But to actually know how it works? I presume it has something to do with finely tuned cogs… but how exactly? Haven’t a clue.

Or how does an airplane actually fly? I get in them all the time but still can’t figure out how me, 200 other people, and all our over-sized baggage actually lift off the ground. We take our girls on lots of flights so I really should figure out the answer to this one soon, but for love nor money I’m stuck. I know it has something to do with big fans on the sides, but really? Actually? Haven’t a clue. As for helicopters? A complete modern mystery of the world as far as I’m concerned. And where do things come from? I have the basics – I can even show my girls a loving variety of vegetables from the garden. But how about pineapples? Watermelon? And why and how do certain things happen? Early this year my daughter experienced her first real snow. It was fun, and ‘cold and wet’ was about as deep as our conversations got. But next year, can I tell her where it comes from and how it is formed? Do I know why every snowflake is different? And who the hell figured that one out anyway? What’s the difference between snow and hailstones? And for the love of god, will someone please tell me exactly how the globe is warming??

With these questions furiously spinning around my frenzied brain, I realize I have some studious cramming to do. Never mind waiting until they bring back homework and I have to revisit the mental anguish of Pythagoras’s Theorem, and multiplying fractions; it’s back to school for us now.

In moments of anxiety, we make all kinds of promises. We could watch desperate documentaries instead of watching Desperate Housewives. My extravagant subscription to Hello could be replaced with an exemplary subscription to National Geographic. And while we currently curl up on the sofa together and watch TV after putting the girls to bed, we could seriously contemplate reading encyclopedias of an evening. Aloud. To each other. If we feel really fun, we could even crack open a bottle of wine and quiz each other!

But as we eye each other up at the dinner table, worried in case one of us has been doing some secret swotting, we come to our senses and chuckle. This is what makes parenting such fun. It’s an ever evolving journey of never-ending learning, and as we prepare our children for the years of study ahead of them, I guess it means we are all going back to school. How does a vacuum cleaner work? Haven’t a clue. But I’m sure I’ll figure it out along the way. In the meantime, I’m off to watch Desperate Housewives. Desperate ain’t the word.