Sunday 30 October 2011

Would you like to play global thermonuclear war?

"No! NAUGHTY trees!"

This is the sound of the preamble before my daughter goes Fukushima. In this particular example she was throwing a tantrum because the wind was blowing the trees. Its fortunate that she's a reasonable child..

Nothing makes you feel more impotent as a parent that a proper, full on, industrial grade paddy. And the Girl has set a particularly high standard. Remember that advert where the child throws a tantrum in the supermarket and his mum lays down and throws a tantrum too? Seems like a good idea, and it is, if you like to be dragged out of the freezer section by a humourless security guard. Naturally, I speak from experience. So, I'm here to give you some advice;

Nothing works.

I've already mentioned in the first blog the "Southwold Incident." Neither the wife of myself have any clue what started the tantrum, other than the Girl sitting down in the high street and refusing to move. Then screaming. Then biting the Wife's ankles (still not funny, apparently). I was on the other side of Southwold, with the Boy and his ice cream which he insisted on displaying to passers-by. They smiled sweetly at him. It was all going so well until the Wife phoned and called me back. The next time those same passers-by saw me, I was carrying a weighty ball of auburn fury, wild eyed, kicking and scratching and screaming like a cat being strimmed. And the street stopped to watch us. Four pensioners on a bench, leaning on their walking sticks, scrutinised our faces. I suspect it was so that when we appeared in the local newspaper ("Couple arrested for child murder") they could gloat at the bridge club "I bloody knew it. They looked the type."

Of course we looked the type, I was on the verge of murder. But short of picking her up, wedging her into the car seat and playing the stereo very loud, there was nothing else to do.

In Lyme Regis I ran half a mile up a very steep hill to get her dummy from the car. On returning I found the Wife, surrounded by staring eyes, with a face like Freddy Kruger's wet dream. Around her were parents clutching their crying children, or wives clutching their crying husbands -such was the horror they had seen. The Girl was asleep and (having rolled on the sand shortly after being covered in factor 50) looked a bit like a doughnut.  When we got her back to the camp site she woke up, and because she loves us, she threw another tantrum. We left her to it, and she rolled a hundred yards across the camp site before she came out the other side and asked for a banana. Which we didn't have.

She did a similar thing in the Lake District. I had thought it was impossible to ruin a trip to the pencil museum. I saw the world's biggest pencil. It was a good day in my life. Then she head butted me in the genitals. In fact, the only time she went quiet was when we drove over the mountains and the Boy insisted on pointing out "if we go off the road we'll fall off the mountain and die." Sadly we couldn't enjoy the peace because we were screaming.

The good news is that she's not as bad as she used to be. I mean, she's only thrown one tantrum in her sleep. That's pretty much impossible to deal with. And now she can talk, and more importantly understand, she tends to argue with us. And that's a vast improvement.

Saturday 29 October 2011

Sans Children

Earlier in the week the Wife and I took the decision not to talk to each other. This was based on the fact that we were due to spend six hours in a car together with no children. Since our lives now revolve primarily around the kids, or work, we needed to maximise our things to talk about.
A short while ago I took the decision to sing "Heaven must be missing an angel" to the Wife. This went down like a cup of cold sick. So we switched on the radio and found something we could both complain about.
Not having the kids around for a while is always a bit like when you have a power failure at home. Initially its a bit of a novelty, but after a short while you get bored with it, and end up waiting for things to get back to normal. Where this comparison falls down is that within half an hour of the power coming back you don't start praying for another power failure.
Just did a quick experiment and it seems that dancing is off the menu too. However, the Wife did just say; "Look! A tractor! A BLUE one! " So it seems being patronised is on the cards.
Being able to have undisturbed sleep is the main perk of being Sans Children. At no point last night did I have to return a dummy, change a nappy, respond to the Boy yelling "I'm bored! ". Nor was I awoken by the words; "Daddy, can you wipe my bum? " And if the Wife and I had chosen to do something other than sleep, we wouldn't have had to resort to ninja-sex.
Despite all of this, I miss my kids. Mainly because right now they're probably doing something unutterably bonkers, and I'm missing it.

Friday 28 October 2011

I Like to Ride My Bicycle

I don't want to get into the habit of blogging twice in a day, it seems a bit self absorbed. But today was the momentous day that the Boy rode his bike for the first time without stabilisers. And very proud of himself he is too. It was all down his hard work, apparently. It turns out I was just a spectator.

What's Brown and Sticky?


"This is my stick. He's called Martin."

My kids do love a good stick, especially the Boy. Whenever we have a trip to the park it always follows the same pattern; feeding the ducks (in the style of a Luftwaffe bombing raid - I swear they're trying to sink the ducks more than feed them), unintentionally insulting people ("Look at that man on that bike" - it was a woman in a wheelchair) and collecting thousands of sticks. I've never really seem them do anything with the sticks. Well, except for;

"Boy. I poke you in eye!"
(Cheerily) "OK!"
"AAAAAHHHH!!!! The Girl poked me in the eye!"

The Boy has even composed poems for sticks before; "Goodbye stick, you've been my friend. When I come back I'll see you again." It was very sweet. We didn't tell him we accidentally reversed over the stick as we left. But he's never named a stick before.

"This is my stick. He's called Martin."
"Really? Who's Martin?"

He held the stick aloft.

"This. Pay attention."

We have a wood burning stove in the living room. Sad to say that Martin accidentally found his way into it that evening. It was an accident. Honest. The Boy was less than impressed.

"Maybe we could change his name to Ash?" I suggested.

"You," he replied, "are not funny."

So, Martin is no longer brown and sticky.

Must dash, the Girl can't get up because she's "too flat."

Thursday 27 October 2011

I'm Pretty.

At least that's what the Girl would have you believe. She's telling me this as she takes my sock off and put's the Wife's sequinned flip flop on my foot.

My first blog entry, so some introductions. I am the bewildered father of the Girl (3) and the Boy (5). Husband of The Wife ( er... Maybe not...). A nuclear family - unstable and prone to meltdown when wet. We used to have lives of our own. Now we belong to our kids

I'm now a doggie. And apparently I have knickers on. Or so I'm told.

The Boy came first, hence the title, followed by two years of learning to speak and then a non stop torrent of language best demonstrated by the following quote;

"Ha ha! I'm hiding under the table and you can't find me!"

Then came the Girl, all ginger curls and eyes that look a bit like she's got red eye from a camera flash. The Girls specialist subjects are; being cute and; being angry. This is no exaggeration, she once threw a tantrum so big the whole of Southwold ground to a halt. She bit the Wife's ankle that day. I'm informed I shouldn't find that funny.
Alternatively there was the time I was foolish enough to leave the kids in the back garden for five minutes whilst I allowed myself the luxury of a shit. I walked back out into the garden to find the Boy standing on our trampoline, trousers at half mast, peeing into next door's herbaceous border, whilst the Girl had the cat (Boris) in a head lock, feeding him with a spoon. Sadly for Boris, she was feeding the wrong end of him. Very hard to remove a spoon a cat's arse when all it wants to do is run in circles.

So this is about my family.

Me? The one thing you need to know about me is that I hate flip flops.