What Goes Around...

Few things bring greater joy in life than a new born baby. Specifically a new born baby that you can give back when it smells. And for the already experienced parent of two kids this joy is only surpassed by the opportunity to pass on your hard earned knowledge. So imagine bliss when the Wife and I took the Boy and Girl to see their day old cousin yesterday. It started so well, with lots of cooing and ahhing and pinching of cheeks before we gleefully told the proud parents how they would NEVER SLEEP AGAIN and had fundamentally RUINED THEIR LIVES.

The Boy was industrial grade underwhelmed, giving his cousin a cursory glance and a brief smile before stating, with some authority

"I think fish are better than babies."

and deciding to engage of his favourite pastime of alternately punching me in the crotch and clutching his winkle. The Girl was more interested, cooing and stroking the baby's face. Every now and then she would point at her and say "baby" to ensure we hadn't missed the reason we were all gathered there. Then she ruined everything by insisting on showing off her gymnastics (or, in everyone else's language; jumping) and narrowly avoided kicking the baby out of her basket.

Eventually we decided to go, as the Boy was due to go for his swimming lesson. It was at this point that the Kids started frothing at the mouth, went feral and disgraced themselves. The Boy immediately announced

"I NEED A POO!"

and locked himself in the toilet. Much pounding on the door and yelling "Hurry up for fu- er... crying out loud" ensued. The Girl tried to open the door by smashing her face against it and finally the Boy threw the door open in disgust. He stood frowning crossly with his hands on his hips, trousers round his ankles and proceeded to publicly and graphically wipe his bum in front of all of us, saying

"I need a clean bum. I'm going swimming. I don't want poo in the pool."

As the Girl attempted to climb up my trousers like the north face of the Eiger the Wife and I attempted to shout the Boy into his shoes. This woke up the baby who, for the first time since we were there, started crying. The Girl, who we had almost ushered out of the door insisted this was a spectator sport, and did an about-face. The Boy threw his shoes in the air in disgust and told us it wasn't fair the Girl got to watch a crying baby and that putting on shoes was "just stupid." He went on to say

"I want to watch almost naked animals."

Which alarmed everyone until he explained it was a cartoon on telly, and not some weird new peccadillo of his. Finally we managed to get the Kids out of the door and as I turned to congratulate my brother-in-law I noted his expression. It was the sort of expression you see in history books. Generally on the faces of new recruits arriving on the Western Front.

An hour of panicked rushing about later I found myself sitting with the Girl on my lap next to the swimming pool where the Boy was having his lesson. I say having a lesson, what he was essentially doing was water-boarding himself. The Girl sat on my lap trying to convince me to steal the towel of a small girl sitting nearby. A friend sitting next to me commented that the Girl was being well behaved and had turned a corner. I was in a bit of a bad mood, and I think I greeted this statement by giving our her the sort of look I'd give if she'd said; "Didn't Hitler have nice eyes?" I was particularly in a bad mood because I don't like being rushed, and the Boy had made me shout him back out of his shoes on arrival. And then shout him out of his clothes. And then into his swim suit. Plus, as ever the pool - which is the size of a postage stamp - was rammed with screaming, dripping wet children and their dim-witted, equally-wet-in-a-different-way parents. All of them bumbling about like lobotomised sheep, oblivious to people trying to get past as they either stared at their phones or shouted at their kids. All this in a room kept inexplicably at the temperature of Fukushima in the Spring. As I sat there, giving serious consideration to an AXE RAMPAGE and ever-so-slightly rocking back and forth like an obsessive compulsive, a memory came to me of a day five years before.

It had been three days after the Boy had been born and the Wife and I, exhausted having not slept since he'd been born, were paid a visit by the Wife's step sister and her ten month old son. For about an hour we sat, rapt in horrified attention as the little boy attempted to total our flat whilst his mum flailed about after him, trying to stop him from eating the soil from the pot plants or head-butting the doors. When she left we both looked at each other and said "What have we done??" before having brief but unpleasant emotional breakdowns. And that, essentially, was what we had inflicted on my brother-in-law and his wife.

So in future I shall think more carefully about handing out parenting advice. My new niece slept peacefully almost the whole time we were there, and was impeccably behaved. Ok, she was bombed out of her mind on pethidine, but we're not allowed to do that to the Kids any more. The doctor told us off last time. My Kids descended into madness the moment we asked them to put their shoes on. I haven't raised my Kids, I've warped them. As adequately proved when the Boy asked;

"When auntie had the baby, did she crack open like an egg? And did uncle have to glue her back together?"

Whilst, in the background, with a lack of irony that only a child or civil servant could muster yelled at the top of her voice

"DAD!! I LOVE WHISPERING!"

And today, when I asked her what she'd done at school she said

"Bogie throwing!"

Which isn't even on their curriculum!

For Eleanor