Mostly you can rely on me to complain about LittleBear's eating or sleeping habits, interspersed occasionally by intemperate ranting about politics or work. But when I know that you really deserve a treat, it's time to wheel out the big guns. It's time to talk about the weird stuff that goes on inside my head.
We'll start, as I so often do, with LittleBear's ability, or lack thereof, to go to sleep in what I feel is a timely fashion, with what I feel is a reasonable level of parental attention. Basically, my view of reasonable is that I shut his bedroom door and that's the last I hear from him until the following morning. Why I think this is reasonable is probably worthy of a doctoral thesis in its own right, as it has no basis in the reality of any six-year old children of my acquaintance, particularly not my own. In fact, LittleBear's current levels of post-bedtime-needs is trundling along at what I have to acknowledge is an utterly normal level compared to his little friends.
Because I'm me, I raise the subject of sleep with almost everyone I speak to, whether they know me or not. And this over-eagerness to discuss the sleeping habits of small children means that I'm fully aware that LittleBear is no harder than, and largely considerably easier than, many, many children when it comes to bedtime.
Why am I making such a meal of this preamble?
I'm just laying the groundwork. Making sure that you know, that I know, that LittleBear is basically a pretty amenable small boy. Clarifying the fact that my rational mind is completely relaxed and reasonable and cognizant of all the facts. All so that I can reveal the disproportionate, visceral manner in which my unconscious mind and body betray me every evening.
From the moment that I tuck LittleBear into bed, for a minimum of forty-five minutes, I sit on the sofa, nominally reading, watching television, surfing the interwebs, or some other mild and undemanding occupation. And throughout that time, I almost entirely fail to concentrate on what I'm doing. I look at my watch at least once every five minutes to check how long it's been since LittleBear went to bed. If there is so much as a rustle or a murmur over the monitor, my stomach muscles clench into a knot such that I curl up, with my knees tucked in close to try and ease the stomach ache. If LittleBear goes as far as to actually want something, then the period of time for which I sit, anxiously checking the time, extends for another forty-five minutes beyond Last Contact.
After an hour of silence has passed, I begin to uncurl. My stomach starts to un-knot, my jaw unclenches, the nausea begins to pass. I start to relax enough to concentrate on, and enjoy, whatever I'm doing. I start to believe that my boy is asleep.
Why?
Why do I care so much?
What is it that I fear so much that I feel physically sick when my son doesn't fall instantly asleep?
I cannot even tell you what it is that I'm afraid of. If you were to ask me what's the worst that could happen (or the worst that has ever happened) it would simply be that LittleBear doesn't fall asleep till "a bit late", and then life continues as normal. There is no terrible, life-changing catastrophe that arises from a slightly late night, but you'd never know that from the way I react. I know all this. I know my physical and emotional reaction is utterly absurd. And yet, still it happens. Every evening.
LittleBear's been in bed for an hour and a quarter now. Do you suppose he's asleep yet?
Thursday, 21 June 2018
Tuesday, 12 June 2018
That's me
Last week I went to a public meeting held at LittleBear's school about the plans to expand the provision of primary schooling here where we live. I've mentioned the process once or twice before, but it's rather slipped under the radar lately. But I went to the meeting, which was filled with a variety of suits from the council who wanted to assure the local population that everything would be fine.
The headmaster and LittleBear's teacher were also present, but only to guard the door and ensure nobody who shouldn't be in the school got into the school, and make sure everyone left again afterwards. The consultation itself was the council's bailiwick.
It would be fair to say that the meeting was not an oasis of calm and joy. There were strong opinions, stridently expressed (and not, for the most part, by me). One person, appallingly, resorted to shouting at LittleBear's lovely teacher, despite her only involvement being to open and close the front door.
As is the way with such events, there was a form to fill in to express one's opinions at the end. I left still clutching mine, requiring a bit more time and quiet to marshal my thoughts on subjects such as cycle access, drainage and road-crossings adequately. The Headmaster observed me leaving with said form and told me that if I wanted to email my comments in, the email address given wouldn't be accepting comments until the following morning. "So you can go home and write your angry letter and wait till morning to send it."
I wasn't quite sure how to take that parting shot.
Was it a general, impersonal "you"?
Had the overall tenor of the meeting caused him to believe that all submissions would be angry?
Was he making the same quip to everyone who left?
Or, as only the most paranoid part of me thought, was this a direct assessment of the likelihood that I personally would be writing an angry letter?
Fast-forward to today...
I have just finished my letter to the council with my responses to their plans. It is seven pages, complete with graphs, diagrams, maps and photographs. And quotes from George Bernard Shaw, JK Galbraith, and the film Shakespeare in Love. It's probably wasted on the council.
It may, or may not, be angry.
It turns out I wasn't paranoid, and that LittleBear's Headmaster has me pegged.
The headmaster and LittleBear's teacher were also present, but only to guard the door and ensure nobody who shouldn't be in the school got into the school, and make sure everyone left again afterwards. The consultation itself was the council's bailiwick.
It would be fair to say that the meeting was not an oasis of calm and joy. There were strong opinions, stridently expressed (and not, for the most part, by me). One person, appallingly, resorted to shouting at LittleBear's lovely teacher, despite her only involvement being to open and close the front door.
As is the way with such events, there was a form to fill in to express one's opinions at the end. I left still clutching mine, requiring a bit more time and quiet to marshal my thoughts on subjects such as cycle access, drainage and road-crossings adequately. The Headmaster observed me leaving with said form and told me that if I wanted to email my comments in, the email address given wouldn't be accepting comments until the following morning. "So you can go home and write your angry letter and wait till morning to send it."
I wasn't quite sure how to take that parting shot.
Was it a general, impersonal "you"?
Had the overall tenor of the meeting caused him to believe that all submissions would be angry?
Was he making the same quip to everyone who left?
Or, as only the most paranoid part of me thought, was this a direct assessment of the likelihood that I personally would be writing an angry letter?
Fast-forward to today...
I have just finished my letter to the council with my responses to their plans. It is seven pages, complete with graphs, diagrams, maps and photographs. And quotes from George Bernard Shaw, JK Galbraith, and the film Shakespeare in Love. It's probably wasted on the council.
It may, or may not, be angry.
It turns out I wasn't paranoid, and that LittleBear's Headmaster has me pegged.
Wednesday, 6 June 2018
Starting with a bang
Today did not start well.
Aside from the normal frustrations of a small boy who refuses to get dressed; and a cat who wants to stand three centimetres in front of where I want to put my feet, miaowing; and a kitchen covered in unexplained sticky patches; and breadcrumbs scattered the length and breadth of every surface and unpleasantly glued down on aforementioned sticky patches; and a heap of massive cardboard boxes obstructing the hallway; and yet another load of laundry to get in before heading to work; and not enough butter in the butter-dish soft enough to spread for my toast; aside from all of that, my day started on an even worse footing than normal.
I was unable to get at the toaster because of the box of beer in front of it. So I picked up said box of beer to move it. Unfortunately I hadn't had any coffee yet, and was therefore perhaps not quite at my brightest and best. I therefore failed to notice that the cardboard was not 100% intact at one end of the box. And thus it was that one of the bottles of beer made a bid for freedom, plunging straight down onto the tiled kitchen floor.
Fortunately it didn't break. Instead, the shock of landing bottom-first on the floor blew the lid off the bottle, fountaining beer spectacularly upwards. I stood in a spreading puddle of beer and didn't swear. That was perhaps the highlight of the event.
Beer sprayed onto the walls.
Beer sprayed onto the cupboards.
Beer sprayed onto the cooker, the extractor hood, the window, the sink, the dishwasher and the washing machine.
Beer sprayed into the toaster.
Beer dripped from the ceiling.
Beer also showered all over me. It permeated my shirt, skirt and cardigan. It oozed between my toes. It spattered across my head, dampening my hair down in an appealing fashion. And since it was already eight o'clock, once BigBear and I had mopped up the worst of the beer, there was no time to shower or change before heading to work.
So here I am at work, smelling ever so slightly like a brewery. And there I will be outside the school gates later this afternoon, smelling ever so slightly like a brewery. If you meet me there, no, I have not been drinking, though I have most definitely been Having A Bad Day and probably deserve to have been drinking.
I'm now looking forward to this week's newsletter from the headmaster featuring an imprecation to parents that they avoid arriving at school reeking of alcohol...
Aside from the normal frustrations of a small boy who refuses to get dressed; and a cat who wants to stand three centimetres in front of where I want to put my feet, miaowing; and a kitchen covered in unexplained sticky patches; and breadcrumbs scattered the length and breadth of every surface and unpleasantly glued down on aforementioned sticky patches; and a heap of massive cardboard boxes obstructing the hallway; and yet another load of laundry to get in before heading to work; and not enough butter in the butter-dish soft enough to spread for my toast; aside from all of that, my day started on an even worse footing than normal.
I was unable to get at the toaster because of the box of beer in front of it. So I picked up said box of beer to move it. Unfortunately I hadn't had any coffee yet, and was therefore perhaps not quite at my brightest and best. I therefore failed to notice that the cardboard was not 100% intact at one end of the box. And thus it was that one of the bottles of beer made a bid for freedom, plunging straight down onto the tiled kitchen floor.
Fortunately it didn't break. Instead, the shock of landing bottom-first on the floor blew the lid off the bottle, fountaining beer spectacularly upwards. I stood in a spreading puddle of beer and didn't swear. That was perhaps the highlight of the event.
Beer sprayed onto the walls.
Beer sprayed onto the cupboards.
Beer sprayed onto the cooker, the extractor hood, the window, the sink, the dishwasher and the washing machine.
Beer sprayed into the toaster.
Beer dripped from the ceiling.
Beer also showered all over me. It permeated my shirt, skirt and cardigan. It oozed between my toes. It spattered across my head, dampening my hair down in an appealing fashion. And since it was already eight o'clock, once BigBear and I had mopped up the worst of the beer, there was no time to shower or change before heading to work.
So here I am at work, smelling ever so slightly like a brewery. And there I will be outside the school gates later this afternoon, smelling ever so slightly like a brewery. If you meet me there, no, I have not been drinking, though I have most definitely been Having A Bad Day and probably deserve to have been drinking.
I'm now looking forward to this week's newsletter from the headmaster featuring an imprecation to parents that they avoid arriving at school reeking of alcohol...
Sunday, 3 June 2018
Round and round the hamster wheel
Here we are, still not going out. Still battling the vagaries of LittleBear's increasingly slender set of reasons he can't fall asleep. Let me give you an example from last week...
LittleBear goes to bed with the following cuddly toys:
On the occasion in question, some half hour after being put to bed, LittleBear required assistance in bed because, "I don't have enough things to snuggle".
Seriously.
A few days ago, we started a new regime of LittleBear being allowed to read to himself at bedtime and have his light switched out later than previously, in the hope that he'd be a little bit more tired and thus fall asleep more easily. This worked a treat for the first two days when we were at GrannyBear's house. Then we came home, and went straight back to the bad old ways, of finding something to start complaining about between fifteen and thirty minutes after being put to bed. Last night, "my knee feels funny", to which he received short shrift, over the monitor, and was told there was nothing we could do and he should just snuggle down and sleep.
Then came tonight, where I truly feel I excelled myself at this parenting lark.
"I feel funny"
"What sort of funny?"
"I don't know, I can't explain. There's something not right."
With an eye-roll and a sigh, off I went upstairs.
"Do you feel sick?"
"No. I just feel funny. I think it's because I didn't get my back stroke*."
This was the straw that broke the Mother Camel's back and I proceeded to be so tetchy, and so unsympathetic, and so annoyed at having my evening interrupted again that I reduced my little lamb to a whimpering, tearful little lamb. I told him I was sick of him making up stupid reasons to have me come upstairs again. I told him I was sick of not being able to sit down and relax and do what I wanted for once. I told him that I'd had enough and this had to stop. I was cross and horrible, and he was sad. Because that's a guaranteed way of making sure he's calm and happy and ready for sleep.
We cuddled and made peace, and he got an extra back stroke, and I assured him that I loved him completely and utterly, and would never, ever abandon him, and would always help fix any problem if I could.
No prizes for guessing which small boy was quivering and crying ten minutes later because, "I can't stop thinking about horrible things."
Fortunately, I was feeling sufficiently awful for my previous lack of maternal affection that I galloped upstairs and enveloped him in cuddles and kisses and soothed away the darkness with him.
The simple solution to the current impasse is clearly to relax about the whole thing, because LittleBear requiring one additional bit of reassurance before falling asleep is not exactly the worst problem to have. And if I stop letting it get to me, indubitably LittleBear will calm down too and everything will vanish into a miasma of hazy memories. But I'm finding it so much more effective to become unreasonably and disproportionately irate about the situation every single evening, and then lash out verbally at LittleBear. Because I'm that kind of awesome mother.
* Part of our bedtime ritual is that I gently rub LittleBear's back while talking to him. Just like his mother before him, he finds this immensely soothing. It is vital that the back rubbing occurs under his pyjamas. Given that this is how I used to settle him for a nap when he was little, I cannot be surprised that it's something he associates with calm and sleep.
LittleBear goes to bed with the following cuddly toys:
- 1 giant squid
- 6 penguins
- 2 sharks
- 1 seal
- 1 owl
- 1 wannanosaurus
- 1 stingray
- 1 pteranodon
On the occasion in question, some half hour after being put to bed, LittleBear required assistance in bed because, "I don't have enough things to snuggle".
Seriously.
A few days ago, we started a new regime of LittleBear being allowed to read to himself at bedtime and have his light switched out later than previously, in the hope that he'd be a little bit more tired and thus fall asleep more easily. This worked a treat for the first two days when we were at GrannyBear's house. Then we came home, and went straight back to the bad old ways, of finding something to start complaining about between fifteen and thirty minutes after being put to bed. Last night, "my knee feels funny", to which he received short shrift, over the monitor, and was told there was nothing we could do and he should just snuggle down and sleep.
Then came tonight, where I truly feel I excelled myself at this parenting lark.
"I feel funny"
"What sort of funny?"
"I don't know, I can't explain. There's something not right."
With an eye-roll and a sigh, off I went upstairs.
"Do you feel sick?"
"No. I just feel funny. I think it's because I didn't get my back stroke*."
This was the straw that broke the Mother Camel's back and I proceeded to be so tetchy, and so unsympathetic, and so annoyed at having my evening interrupted again that I reduced my little lamb to a whimpering, tearful little lamb. I told him I was sick of him making up stupid reasons to have me come upstairs again. I told him I was sick of not being able to sit down and relax and do what I wanted for once. I told him that I'd had enough and this had to stop. I was cross and horrible, and he was sad. Because that's a guaranteed way of making sure he's calm and happy and ready for sleep.
We cuddled and made peace, and he got an extra back stroke, and I assured him that I loved him completely and utterly, and would never, ever abandon him, and would always help fix any problem if I could.
No prizes for guessing which small boy was quivering and crying ten minutes later because, "I can't stop thinking about horrible things."
Fortunately, I was feeling sufficiently awful for my previous lack of maternal affection that I galloped upstairs and enveloped him in cuddles and kisses and soothed away the darkness with him.
The simple solution to the current impasse is clearly to relax about the whole thing, because LittleBear requiring one additional bit of reassurance before falling asleep is not exactly the worst problem to have. And if I stop letting it get to me, indubitably LittleBear will calm down too and everything will vanish into a miasma of hazy memories. But I'm finding it so much more effective to become unreasonably and disproportionately irate about the situation every single evening, and then lash out verbally at LittleBear. Because I'm that kind of awesome mother.
* Part of our bedtime ritual is that I gently rub LittleBear's back while talking to him. Just like his mother before him, he finds this immensely soothing. It is vital that the back rubbing occurs under his pyjamas. Given that this is how I used to settle him for a nap when he was little, I cannot be surprised that it's something he associates with calm and sleep.
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