family

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#36: Build a den

When this went on the list I was envisaging a day out in the forest en famille, good wholesome family fun, fashioning windbreaks with rows of sticks, a grassy reed roof, a carpet of moss… that kind of thing. A day spent creating a thing of magnificence, all from the rich resources that nature has to offer.

But then opportunity knocked, and with less than 2 months to go, I opened the door with alacrity. It was a bright sunny day, we were playing in the garden, the kids had a friend round, I was desperate to knock off a few of the 100 but couldn’t leave the premises. Then suddenly, ‘Can we build a den mummy? In the garden?’ Indeed we could! Me and the youngest spent a happy half hour, fashioning an ingenious den. Two benches, a load of old bedding, some stones to hold it all in place; a carpet of hessian sacks, and then filled to bursting point with all the dolls and soft toys in the house. Perfect. Add a jug of juice and a few chocolate biscuits and that is a happy playdate, and can just about (if readers are minded to be generous) count as one of the 100.
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#29: Volunteer at school

This was a big one for me, because I have long suspected that I am not good with children other than my own.  (In fact perhaps not even with my own!  But they are rather stuck with it.)

My morning routine is still sufficiently insane that by the time I get to school I am heartily relieved to offload my own 3 children – so acquiring 27 more at that point is really about the last thing on my mind.

But for the sake of the 100 things, I made an offer to school a couple of weeks ago, and thus was booked to assist in Class R on a Thursday morning.  ‘Sit in a quiet room and help the children change their books’ she had said.  It sounded like a manageable brief.

But argh!!  I had not factored in World Book Day.  I arrived with my troops (late, chaotically, and in somewhat tenuous costumes – one bear, one Tinkerbell, and one black cat); to find the playground swarming with excitable pirates, Rapunzels, Snow Whites, witches, dinosaurs, crocodiles, tigers and the occasional uniformed child whose parent had clearly forgotten.  It would, the class teacher admitted apologetically, be something of an unusual day.  She offered me the option of starting my help sessions next week instead, but a little face crumpled beneath the bear head, and I realised I would have to see it through.  If only I’d come in costume myself!  Dammit.

The classes were all mixed up; the register was conducted by book character names, so I hadn’t the least idea who most of the children were. But they were all quite charming, and well behaved, and most excited to have me there, which was gratifying.  Before many minutes had passed I was supervising the creation of oil pastel-crayon self-portraits, drawn in a mirror frame, (inspired by the tale of Snow White).  The children were to study every detail of their own visage and copy it exactly as they saw it, not as they imagined it to be.  They were to reproduce their actual skin colour, actual eye shape, and any odd features that might be going on, on account of their costumes. 

And so they began faithfully replicating.  Nostrils were writ large and pig-like.  Eye lashes were lustrous.  Spiderman was cursing his complicatedly webbed face.  One girl was carefully selecting the right shade of red for a big zit on her chin.  Kids with glasses, or scars, or different pigmentation were all happily studying themselves and copying from life without self-consciousness. It was a delight!  Nobody cried, nobody wet themselves, nobody hit me.  Things have moved on immeasurably since I last helped out at preschool!

I was promoted to the glitter table, where the mirror frames were embellished.  2 glue sticks, 8 children, and no fighting!  School must be operating in some sort of magical parallel dimension; this would be an unimaginable scene in my house. 

Glittering concluded; my characters trooped off to study The Enormous Turnip.  A fresh assortment came in, and I settled to hear Snow White again.  More mirrors, more pastels, more glitter.  When break time came I slunk off.  But it was a very worthwhile morning, and I shall have no qualms about going back next week.  Changing their books should be easy now!

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#22: Do something unique and special with each of my children (part one)

First up, no. 3. A bonus 2 hours of alone-with-mummy time meant either watching the Lion King for the third time this week, or, some sort of project.

The conversation this morning ran thus:
No. 3: what is happening after school today?
Me: It’s just me and you, coming home together.
No. 3: Can I do something? Wiv you?
Me: Of course we can. What would you like to do?
No. 3. Um. (thinks about it). Make a zebra cake?
Crikey. I am not sure what that even is.

6 hours later, I collect her from school, and realise too late I have not given our project a moment’s further thought.

Which is why it is particularly satisfying to now report THE most triumphant zebra cake I have frankly ever seen! (though admittedly I am not sure I have ever seen another one)

Cobbled together from general household ingredients, we fashioned this:
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It would be tempting to go into business and sell them, except I fear the food hygiene folk would have something to say about this:
food hygiene
But all in all it was a thoroughly satisfying afternoon’s work. She was absurdly chuffed with it! We have been high fiving and talking of nothing else since. Now in the name of ‘fairness’ I will probably have to spend all weekend fashioning a menagerie of baked goods with one child after another. But for now, this will do.

Coming up soon: the drastic haircut. Eeek!

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#21: Get rid of half my possessions

This has been the work of several weeks now. Whenever I trip over something, or am irritated by it, I bin it. Anything the children fail to tidy away, disappears. That rule was intended to enforce discipline – it hasn’t worked, but there is much less stuff!

I have been through every room, grouping items to sell, to give to charity shop, textile collections, recycling and the bin. It is extraordinary how much stuff we possess that adds nothing to our lives.

Sofas and tables and dressers and drawers and slides and climbing frames have all been sold. 6 bin liners filled with textiles, old clothes, curtains, and duvet covers that we never use. At least 3 boot loads of toys to the Salvation Army. Anything that doesn’t fulfil an actual current purpose in the home has to go. (Apart from a couple of boxes of photo albums and childhood letters. I figure I have hung onto them this long for a reason.)

A couple of points are interesting – one is how little any of it is actually missed. The children have lost at least half their toys: all the plastic paraphernalia that we have surrounded ourselves with for the last 3 years. They have barely even noticed. A lip wobbled when an ebayer made off with the doll’s house, but it was forgotten in minutes and hasn’t been mentioned since. In any case they spend most of their time pretending to be cats, or princesses, or magical unicorns, without any need for props. I could have cleared out years ago! I am not missing half my wardrobe, nor the various items (vases, jugs, candle holders, wicker baskets…) left over from an earlier stage of life when I bought things just because I liked them, rather than to use them as a matter of urgency.

The second is just how much actual refuse we have been sharing our living space with. There is a fine line between kids’ art and household waste, and we have definitely been on the wrong side of it. Models made of some sort of dough found rotting in cupboards. Rockets made out of empty cardboard boxes and other recyclables. A vast stash of chocolate coin wrappers discovered in a jewellery box. Disgusting!

Memo to self: declutter often, and ruthlessly. (And check more regularly behind radiators for hidden soiled pants. Nuff said.)

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#19: Spend the day dressed as Bananaman

This is a bit of a cop out, as I decided to do it very, very far from home.  So none of the social embarrassment of having to explain myself on the school run, but instead a host of other issues, trying to retain the integrity of Bananaman, without sacrificing warmth or safety on the slopes. 

We told the children last night that for the next day of skiing, Mummy would be Bananaman.  I love how children accept such things as if they were entirely normal. Why not, after all?  They were actually disappointed that I hadn’t brought superhero costumes for them aswell.  (Why didn’t I think of that?  It would have been a whole lot less embarrassing for me, and they would have loved it!)

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Still, off we went to the most populous resort of the Giant Mountains, me in full Bananaman garb, for absolutely no reason at all.  (Thank you, Ferg, for suggesting it).  But the odd thing was, it drew almost no reaction from anyone.  Which made it possibly more embarrassing!  In the general way, fancy dress is a conversation starter – people want to know why, or what you are supposed to be, or what the occasion is, or something.  The Czechs did not raise an eyebrow.  A ski school of kids may have tittered.  One man shouted ‘Superman’ as he shot past me.  But in the main, studied nonchalance.  So little comment did I draw that I frequently forgot I was wearing it.

I had a brief bout of euphoria, snaking my way down a red run, cape billowing in the wind, with 3 well behaved and beautifully coordinated children descending the mountain in my wake, some of them almost smiling… But that brief snapshot was notable for being the only 10 minutes of the morning when no one was whining.

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For much of the day though, my garb was entirely forgettable. Barring the odd glance from my other half which clearly indicated that I am a massive tool, most people couldn’t care less. It was a day on the slopes like any other, pulling small people out of the snow, bile rising at the endless bickering about who would sit with whom on the chairlift.

I drew a few more looks in the restaurant at lunchtime.   Children couldn’t help but stare, but still, zero banter.  The serving staff were plainly unimpressed by superheros, particularly those who couldn’t order drinks in the right language. 

An amusing moment post lunch.  The plate of goulash and half-litre of apple juice each prompted a family visit to the facilities.   Each child piled into a cubicle, wrestling with their many layers of clothing.  A Czech teenage girl was not far behind us, and she opened the door to the first cubicle (none of them had locks), to find a small child having a dump.  She withdrew hastily and opened the second cubicle – in which another small child was having a dump.  She opened the third, only to be faced with – you guessed it, a THIRD small child having a dump.  Shaking her head in disbelief she opened the fourth door – and there was Bananaman!  She withdrew in considerable confusion.    

Our afternoon was altogether jollier.  Fuelled with goulash and mars bars we attacked the red run several more times in higher spirits, and only abandoned play when all the lifts had shut.   A satisfying day after all.  And happily Bananaman is now done, the only worry being that I have promised 3 more Bananaman outfits in smaller sizes, and another family Superhero outing, sometime soon…

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#18: Teach somebody something

Well here is a heart-warming little thing. There I was, minding my own business, trying for the umpteenth time to get on with knitting my socks, when all three girls pounced on me, and begged me to teach them knitting. So we had a go, and I let them do a stitch each, after which two of our number ran out of patience, but No.2 was really quite taken with it. She sat with me watching intently, so I cast 10 stitches onto fat needles for her to have a go herself, and we sat there companionably knitting for a good hour. She is making a scarf for a dolly. Or possibly a baby, depending how long it ends up. Not that babies have a lot of use for scarves, but no matter.

She has really taken to it, and she loved seeing her scarf get longer and longer. We did more after tea. We snuggle up on the sofa and knit, she does most of it, but I keep a hand on the needle to stop the whole row being dropped at the point of transferring the stitch. The other two were briefly angry at not being part of it, but they quickly became absorbed in a game of ‘Big rum poo bum’ (the exact premise of which eluded me, but it involved saying both ‘poo’ and ‘bum’ ad infinitum thus giving rise to uproarious mirth). Meanwhile, No. 2 knitted. And it was quite lovely to be snuggled up doing something calm and creative with her, and she is SO chuffed at the amount of knitting she has produced. The scarf is a foot long already. It is going considerably better than my socks. We are going to continue tomorrow. Hurrah!

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#15: Drive across Europe at night

I put this on the list myself, as it addresses quite a number of my limitations. For me, driving at all is far from comfortable; and driving in the dark is mildly alarming. Driving on the wrong side of the road is very alarming, while driving an unknown route somewhere I have never been before brings us into the realm of naked terror. So, time to put it all together, and get on with it!

And so we did. We entered the Eurotunnel about 7pm, with the poorly formed ‘plan’ to drive all night by turns. Since it should take 10.5 hours to reach our destination, we ought to be in the mountains of the Czech Republic for an early breakfast. That was without reckoning on the vagaries of the sat nav, (which took us a circuitous route adding 2 hours to the journey). And then there was the unscheduled stop at a Belgian A and E department, in desperate search of any medication that could stop our youngest from screaming that her ear hurt. It is hard to convey the level of desperation that had overtaken our vehicle after 2 hours of this. The first packing oversight was revealed. I can see the Calpol sitting in the medicine cupboard at home. Why didn’t I put it in the bag? Why? Why?

We had to wait an hour and a half, but eventually left the Clinique Notre Dame in triumphant possession of some children’s Nurofen. It was by then 11.30 pm. We’d been going 5+ hours and were still in Belguim. Not good. I drove for another hour, handed over, Dave lasted til 2.30am. Then I bolted a coffee, resumed my shift, and managed to drive another 3 hours, crossing much of Germany, with the rest of the family slumbering all around, and ‘Pimsleur’s Guide to speaking Czech’ on the cd player. Congratulating myself on my quite brilliant efficiency. (A shame not to be knitting the socks as well, but probably wiser not to).

I did feel quite a weighty responsibility, alone at the wheel, everyone else sleeping peacefully, with no idea where I was taking them or quite how many fast-moving lorries I was negotiating. The whole experience was strangely very calm, in stark contrast to the family life of our waking hours.

By 6am I handed back, very happy to be able to tick that one off. Though I suppose we still have to get home somehow next week.

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#14: Pack to go on holiday entirely by myself

Well, the job is done, although the whole project has been riddled with errors from beginning to end.  If we reach our destination at all it will be a minor miracle, never mind with any of the correct equipment.

We are readying ourselves for the most low budget ski holiday on record.  The plan is to drive to the Czech Republic, with a boot full of food and borrowed equipment, stay in an insalubrious bunkhouse, and hope to find somewhere with enough snow to throw ourselves down a few hills.   So the packing is critical: success or failure can be sealed by seemingly small details like forgetting the children’s warm gloves. 

A significant complication is the uncertainty of what we might find when we get there.  Most of the information about the area that I have found is in Czech, and despite my best efforts at learning a random language (#16), I have not deciphered much of value.  And although we are billing it as a ski holiday, the presence of snow is far from guaranteed, so we also need to be equipped for a week’s worth of other activities just in case.   And it all needs to be loaded in such a fashion that we can reach the essentials during a 15 hour drive as needed.

So.  Ski kit for 5; normal clobber; plus kit for all the activities that might come into play if the snow doesn’t materialise.  Plus all the additional kit for the various challenges that I hope to achieve while away – knitting needles and wool, Bananaman outfit…   Then 2 crates of Lidl’s finest tinned produce, to ensure that 3 fussy eaters will be sufficiently nourished to ski for a week, if the snow does indeed present (Czech goulash and dumplings are unlikely to play out well for us). Then there are all the child related sundries that transform the whole thing from an ordeal into a slightly more manageable ordeal –games, books, a sackful of pens and paper, soft toys…  Though all the planning is somewhat misplaced in this regard.   The greatest sources of entertainment for our children are highly portable, and always available, namely: getting naked, and farting loudly.  Armed with those two options, they can never be bored.   (Over the last 6 years, we have taken them swimming, biking, climbing, and skating; shown them cinemas, theatres, pantomime; travelled on trains, planes, buses, and escalators; shared stories, films, puzzles, games, and toys of every description.  We have still found nothing that diverts them quite so royally as their own flatulence.) 

But I digress.  I had most of the bags packed a day early, so come the morning of departure all felt reasonably under control.  Until 8am, when Eva presented with a urine infection, at about the same time as the esteemed Turisticka Ubytovna SJ Slavoj emailed to alert me to an ‘administrative error’, meaning our hostel was expecting us 2 days later than we intended.

AAARGH!

2 hours of panic, phone calls, doctor’s appointment and internet research ensued…. But we ultimately left as planned, with substitute hotel booked, and antibiotics secured. 

It hasn’t been the toughest of packing challenges – without tent or camping equipment there is no problem fitting everything in.  The alarming bit is shouldering the sole responsibility for whatever we may have forgotten.  But at least I have put in the coffee pot; that improves the chance of forgiveness for whatever errors will shortly be uncovered.

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#13: Tidy the house and keep it that way for a week

Oh God, oh God. I have been working on the tidying for days. All the bins and recycling boxes have been filled and emptied many times. Scrubbing, sweeping, hoovering, sorting, binning. Not helped by the tendency of 3 small people to trash the entire residence every time they enter it. Today I thought I was all but there. I heaved a mighty sigh of relief. Put the kettle on. Popped to the loo. And then I saw it.

There was only a DRIED UP NUGGET OF TURD lying in the corner of the bathroom floor!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Noooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Feral children!! How could that even happen? It was at least 1.5m from the toilet! Perhaps it was just a lump of mud, I hear you cry. But I’m afraid there can be no mistake. I picked it up and sniffed it. And I am not big on forensics, but I suspect it had not been very recently produced.

Oh help. Anyway. Rest assured that that has now been dealt with, and all is clean and tidy on the home front. I have cunningly timed this one to coincide with a week’s holiday, so staying neat for a week should be achievable.

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#11: Introduce myself to the neighbours

I am extremely pleased with myself today. On my mind for the last 2 weeks has been the terrifying prospect of ‘Introduce Myself to the Neighbours’. I know, I know, it isn’t exactly facing the Taliban unarmed, but I had been intending to do this as my very first one, and every day I have found an excuse not to. The flurry of random exercise classes betrays my avoidance of anything that puts me in an unpredictable social situation.

So. I told 3 people today was the day, as that made the prospect a bit more real, and meant I’d have to explain myself if I bottled out, again. Even after that, I jumped in my car and was about to head to town, promising myself I’d do it later, when I thought, ‘oh for God’s sake. Just go and do it’.

So I parked the car 10 yards from my house, and got out. I went to a house at random and knocked, (hoping no one would be in), but oh help, a man answered and looked me up and down curiously. I explained my neighbourly intentions, and all was well. In fact I was invited inside, met the dogs, and was there for a good 20 minutes, comparing tales of how we come to be living where we do; and chuckling companionably at how unpleasant my house is. Which was nice.

Flushed with success I went to another door, to find a retired couple whose children had left home; and then a third house, within which lurked a teenage girl off sick from school. I had to apologise profusely for dragging her out of bed. Lucky I didn’t go there first.

The best thing about it all, was that later in the day the wife and daughter of neighbour no. 1, came to pay me a visit in return. I was woefully underprepared for guests (we were half way through a play date and literally no corner of the accommodation was unsoiled. The children had already snacked, spread toys through every room, painted pictures, and were now happily ‘cleaning up’ in the bathroom, which they had flooded). Nonetheless I invited the company in for a cup of tea. The carnage was impossible to ignore, and I think her exact comment was ‘Well it‘s nice to see a house where children can play’. That is about the most generous interpretation that anyone could put on the level of abject squalor. I warmed to her immensely.

So now we are all the best of friends; it turns out they are not yet hugely established here themselves, and were therefore glad of the acquaintance. And as a happy by-product the daughter is of prime babysitting age, AND in need of money to fund an upcoming foreign expedition. So I think we will all get on famously!

But most importantly, the deed is done. I can move on from that one, knowing I have conquered one more mini-demon. Though I suspect I will still be delaying on the stand-up comedy attempt for as long as possible!