Death

No, its not going to be morbid. Don't worry.

First some preamble. Nearly ten years ago my father died of cancer. Naturally this had a fairly profound effect on my life. He didn't get to meet the Wife, or the Boy or the Girl all of whom I feel he would have loved. Or at least tolerated. I didn't have the fatherly advice I needed when the Kids were born. I inherited a car. Sadly it was a Nissan Micra. They were bad times.

I've tried to keep the Kids in touch with their departed grandfather by showing them pictures, taken them to his grave side and telling them about him. This means that they regularly talk about him.

"Why did your dad die?"
"Well, he got something called cancer that made him very ill and he died."
"Right... Like when Boris got fleas."

Clearly, a fairly big concept, cancer. The Wife and I decided (whenever I write this, read it as; I was told) to get a fish tank a while back (bear with me) and it turns out that its quite a good way to introduce your kids to the concept of death in a relatively gentle way. I say this because we go through goldfish at the same rate our bins are emptied. Its not without its own issues.

"How big was the toilet they flushed your dad down?"

But on the whole it works, and you don't have to use confusing euphemisms like "they've gone next door." We also have chickens, which can have similar issues to goldfish.

"Where's mummy's friend?"
"I'm afraid she died, darling."
"Did a fox get her?"

So now death is freely spoken about in our household, and not some awful taboo. Only tonight the Kids were pretending to chop each other up on the living room carpet, with the Girl yelling; "Boy! Kill me! Kill me!" I think that's why they both have some sympathy with the loss of my dad.

"Because you haven't got a dad, I'll be your dad."
"Aw, think Bo-"
"GET ON THE NAUGHTY STEP!"

Although I do worry we might have put ideas in their heads.

"I dreamt you flew my kite but you got blown away and I didn't get to see you again."
"Aw, Boy - that was just a bad dream."
"Actually it was quite good.

Can you smell something?

In my previous post I mentioned my daughter's dirty protests in the bath. I thought it might be enlightening, or at least crudely amusing to detail the role children's effluvia has played in my life since the birth of the Kids.

Many a gag has been done by a new dad about the weapons grade plutonium awfulness that is a baby's first crap. Truth is, its unpleasant, but its actually not that bad. Okay, it a occupies an area of chemistry somewhere between Guinness and Velcro and you'd rather tear gas yourself before smelling it again, but if you don't liberally cover yourself in it (and you won't have the urge to) its okay. Far worse is the moment you lift your naked child from your leg after a game of horsey to discover you really shouldn't have been wearing shorts. Or when your son accidentally fills his all-in-one rain suit.

You get used to changing nappies, or being wee-d on because it happens every day. As I've said previously, its the unexpected things that really test your character. A friend once told me that one day he came home from work to find his living room smelt of poo. He spent a good hour searching for it with no success. The next day he came home from work, same thing - only this time in the kitchen. Again he searched, again he failed to find it. This went on for several more days, with the smell moving from room to room and my friend moving steadily closer to an embolism. It turns out that his kids had ride along car, the seat of which acted as a lid for a cubby hole. Yep. You've guessed it. One of the kids had crapped in it, closed it up and they'd spent the best part of a week wheeling the smell around the house. They don't do leaflets on this kind of thing.

My own version of this was slightly different

"I done poo!"
"Well done! On the potty or toilet?"
"Sofa!"

She looked so pleased with herself, if I hadn't been sitting on it I might not have been angry. The Girl became obsessed with the word "poo" for some time.

"Poo!"
"Girl, stop saying poo!"
"Poo!"
"Stop it! Daddy, the Girl keeps saying poo!"
"Poo?"
"NOW YOU'RE DOING IT!"

Whereas the Boy is more concerned with how clean his bum is. A good thing you might say, and I'd be inclined to agree if it wasn't for the number of times I've been approached by him, trousers around his ankles, bent double, holding his bum cheeks and shuffling backwards yelling "IS MY BUM CLEAN?" at stupid o'clock in the morning. Being as ill-adept at social intercourse as his father he even dragged pensioners in supermarkets unwillingly into his confidence.

"Is that a cricket set your mummy has bought you?"
"Yeah, but I had a poo and forgot to wipe my bum."

Toilet training is a minefield and most of the time you have to accept their frustrations.

*Sigh* "I suppose I have to LIFT the toilet seat MYSELF"

Although sometimes that's easier said than done.

"If you've finished, I'll flush the loo."
*Flush*
"You didn't let me do a second poo!"
"Oh, sorry. Go on then."
"I don't NEED a second poo."

And yet somehow they can use something as mundane as excrement to make the most profound statements about their place in the world.

"I couldn't be a chicken. All that comes out of my bum is poo."

And I haven't even started on all the other noxious stuff that comes out of them. I'll save that for another time. Happy trails!

Why?

Aside from the word "dongle" (I mean, why would you call it that?) there's no funnier aspect of the English language than the phrase "Family Planning." You might as well say you're planning for a typhoon to hit your house, keep you awake for months on end, leave "chocolate kisses" on your white sofa and occasionally be sick in the back of the telly.

I say this because whatever you do with children, there will unforeseen results. For instance, when I didn't shave this morning I didn't expect the Girl to try to lick the stubble off my face. Which is what she's currently doing.

The Boy was two years old when the Girl was born. He'd been toilet trained for a month. So we had four blessed poo free weeks before the Girl was born and, frankly, ruined everything. I had just got used to not tripping over stair guards, no longer melting my fingers on the bottle steriliser and, most importantly, not sitting at my desk wondering why I could smell poo (always check the back of your wrist.) Suddenly it was back to square one.

The say that women forget the pain of child birth so they can do it again. The same is true of the early days of child rearing. You forget the sleepless nights, burping, being liberally coated in vomit (or as happened once, getting double teamed by children one evening when both of them up chucked on me within the space of ten minutes. And yes, I'd got changed in between.) Included in this is the appearance of the most frustrating word in your child's new vocabulary.

"Why am I drinking orange juice?"

"Because you asked for orange juice."

"Why did I ask for orange juice?"

Inquisitive minds my arse, the little buggers are on a wind up. Sometimes it's a genuine question;

"You know the baby Jesus? Why did she die?"

Sometimes they're awkward;

"Why did mummy have me in her tummy?"

Or make you regret your answer;

"Why did daddy use his love rocket to put me in your tummy?"

Some define modern society;

"Why is that man only using one finger to wave at you?"

Or show their innocence;

"Why did you say 'ship'?"

And occasionally threaten the whole of the space-time continuum;

"Why do I keep saying 'why'?"

Going through it once was teeth-grindingly wearing enough. However the second time round becomes a form of water torture. I'm not exaggerating this point as proven by the Boy recently complaining; "If the Girl says 'why' again I'm going to poo in her bath water." This is the zenith of retribution as far as the Boy is concerned. The Girl has done this two him three times ("GET ME OUT!!!") the best of which was as I was lifting him into the bath. I hadn't noticed, and he still hasn't forgiven me for dunking him into his sister's best work.

I haven't asked him why.

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.

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.

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."

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.