I Never Thought I’d Say That To My Son…

Tags

children, cycling, Humor, kids, melt down, outdoors, Parenting, park

 

Little legs push the pink bike up the garden path, there’s merriment twinkling in those young eyes. But then the pedalling stops. Hands dart through pockets, frantically searching. Big eyes scour the grass, eyelashes blink and there are the first hints of tears welling up. ‘Where’s my lip-gloss?’ the plaintive cry echoes around the garden.

 

My son has lost his lip-gloss. He is sat on a pink bike crying about it. I am OK with this. I am OK with this.

 

This is all my fault.

 

We are visiting friends for the afternoon, friends who have kids that have grown up with ours via a shared nursery. We head to the local park to let them have a bit of fun. It’s here that I spy the lip-gloss on the floor. I wouldn’t ordinarily give something like this to my son (for fairly obvious reasons), but it comes with a ‘Moshi Monster’ tag attached to it, which I know he loves, so I do. It looks like this:

 

 

He’s pleased as punch with it, and even more so when we find a second one, which he actually prefers, so he gives the first one to his sister. This leads to cries of ‘But I don’t have one!’ from his friend Alex. Alex’s sister is also with us, but she could care less about the lip-gloss. Not the boys though. In a park filled with rides and swings, they seem more interested in the tube of bright pink lip decoration than anything else.

 

We head back to our friend’s house and continue to play in the garden. Alex has a bike, but he’s a big lad, and so it’s far too large for my son to ride. Alex’s sister’s bike however, is just right for my son. In size if not in colour, anyway.

 

We while away the next hour or so in a delightful mix of the kids leaving the garden on their various two-wheeled modes of transport, and me chasing them back in the garden. It’s stressful, but fun. Until my son realises that he’s lost his lip-gloss.

 

We go hunting for it in the garden, no result. We head back out towards the park, eyes glued to the ground, me leading a search party of four kids, but no luck there either. We look in the house, in the toilet, even places where we haven’t been. It’s gone.

 

I look at my my little boy, sat on his pink bike, his eyes filled with tears, and I utter a sentence I never thought I would, to my nearly-six-year-old son: ‘It’s OK’ I say to him, ‘We’ll find your lip-gloss’*.

 

 

 

 

*We didn’t.

The Top 10 French Words and Phrases Most Frequently Used In Our House

Tags

children, France, Humor, kids, languages, melt down, Parenting, stay-at-home Dad

 

 

 

For the uninitiated – and if you don’t know by now, why don’t you know? – my partner is French. She tries her best to incorporate her language into our day-to-day life, as a way to keep it fresh in her mind, as well as teaching our children, in the hopes of making them – at least partially – bilingual.

 

Bearing in mind that my children are 2-and-a-half and 5-and-a-half years old, have a look at our current top ten French words and phrases.

 

1 Un

‘Non’ – meaning: No. Generally accompanied by one or many exclamation marks. This word is uttered several hundred times a day, is top of the charts, and will remain there for sometime.

 

2 Deux

‘J’ai dit non’ – meaning: I said no. This phrase will usually follow on the heels of ‘non’, pitch may be higher and louder. If child does not respond well to this then situation may escalate and use of ‘naughty step’ may be required.

 

3 Trois

‘Ca suffit!’ – meaning: That’s enough! Generally employed after the kids have been fighting beyond their allotted daily fighting time of 2 and-a-half hours.

 

4 Quatre

‘Ce’st pas vrai!’ – meaning: No way! I don’t believe it! You’re kidding! Mainly heard after one (or both) of the children have spilt their drink for the 30th time/dropped their food on the floor for the 16th time/completely uninstalled all programs of the computer and flipped the screen upside down for the 12th time (this has actually happened).

 

5 Cinque

‘Enfant penible’ – meaning: Annoying child. Applicable in a wide variety of circumstances e.g. eldest child wants to go on computer, and has now been whining the words ‘want to go on computer’ – with no pauses for breath – for 37 minutes.

 

6 Six

‘Arret!’ – meaning: Stop. Again, applicable in a wide variety of circumstances e.g. youngest child is stood in the kitchen, urinating on the floor immediately adjacent to her potty.

 

7 Sept

‘Mon dieu’ – meaning: my God. Picture the scene; you have just tidied the house top to bottom, both kids are sat happily having their tea, all is calm. You happen to leave their vicinity, stepping perhaps into the hall to adjust your hair, taking no more than two minutes. In that time both kids have emptied their food on the floor, knocked the table over, turned off the TV, taken all their clothes off and your daughter has urinated on the kitchen floor. Again. That’s when this phrase is uttered.

 

8 Huite

‘Vous Fatigeuz’ – meaning: you are tiring. Children are full of energy and can keep going all day long. This is because they are slowly draining the life force out of their parents.

 

9 Neuf

‘qu’est-ce que c’est’ – meaning: what’s going on? You are upstairs. You only came up here for a minute. Everything was peaceful when you came up here. The kids weren’t even in the same room. And one of them was asleep. But now both kids are crying. And they’re pointing the finger at each other. And the kid from next-door is now in the house as well. Who let him in? How did they unlock the door? Where are his parents? This is when you say….

 

10 Dix

‘Aller!’  meaning: go/hurry up. My children have two speeds: faster than the human eye can follow or – when you are in a rush and have to drop them both off at nursery/school before going to work – glacially slow. This entry will no doubt climb the charts, particularly when they hit puberty.

WELCOME TO HELL

Tags

children, education, Humor, kids, melt down, Parenting, school

You trudge slowly towards your destination, in a throng of people all going the same way.

It’s like a grim, almost funereal procession, as though you are all heading to the worst festival on the planet.

Glum faces are everywhere.

Then you reach your goal, and force you way inside, wishing your pram had spikes on the wheels, like in the good old days of Boadicea.

You fight through the crowd of people, desperately searching for that familiar name tag, that particular hook, so you can divest your child of his clothes, hang them up and get the hell out of here.

Random people are everywhere, who knows what they are doing. There’s a lady with crutches, but no kids.

A bald man in a nice suit says hello, and then hurries past. Who is he?

You find the peg you are after.

You hang up the clothes.

Where are his pumps? WHERE ARE HIS PUMPS??????

He can’t wear his shoes inside. He has to switch them over to plain black pumps.

Logic tells you that they should be under his coat, like everybody else’s.

Logic’s not in today though, he’s gone on holiday and taken Patience and Calm with him. It’s ok though, Stress is minding the shop.

You see his pumps. They are on the opposite side of the room. Of course they are, why wouldn’t they be?

You hurry over, shoving your pram out in front of you, defensively, cutting a swathe through the crowd, as the first tell-tale trickle of panic-sweat slowly dribbles down your back.

You sit your son down, put on his pumps and make to leave.

He starts crying.

You collar a teacher and gently nudge your son towards her, she takes him in her arms and makes cooing noises. ‘The sooner I’m gone, the sooner he’ll be OK’ you say to the teacher, as though in justification for this desertion.

You get out of there, heart-rate subsiding, and breathe in the cool, fresh air.

This is the school run in the morning – welcome to hell.

The worst part?

In just seven short hours, you have to go back…

I’m Going To Marry My Vacuum Cleaner

Tags

children, chores, cleaning, fun, Humor, kids, love, melt down, musings, Parenting, technology

Why do I bother vacuuming?

I get on this hamster wheel every day.

I follow the trails my children leave around the house like Hansel, or Gretel. But there’s no sanctuary at the end of my trail of breadcrumbs. There’s no witch waiting to fatten me up, and then put me in an oven either.

No, there’s only more breadcrumbs. And the occasional piece of shrivelled up ham.

I treasure those brief moments where everything looks nice and clean. Admiring the vacuum cleaner’s marks on the carpet, like contrails in the sky.

It lasts overnight sometimes.

Then the kids wake up.

And the lovely sucker goes back to work, eating all the food that doesn’t quite hit the target.

She’s got the best diet of anyone in our household, despite just being an appliance. There’s not a day goes by when she doesn’t gorge herself on cereal, bread, cheese, meat and the occasional sock (good for roughage are socks).

She’s better than a dog when it comes to finishing meals. She’s not fussy. And she’ll never leave you a present in your slippers.

She’s my first, and last, line of defence against the enemies of cleanliness in my household – my children.

Sometimes, they even create work while I’m vacuuming. Following me round while I hoover up.

They eat biscuits while they watch me.

Their eyes glint with mirth, while they chow down on Mr Crumblie’s Extra Mega Crumbly Biscuit (NOW WITH 50% MORE CRUMBS KIDS!). They leave a trail that is all but guaranteed to lure ET into the house, if he ever comes back to see Elliot again.

I’m going to marry my hoover, I might as well, we spend so much time together. One can’t work without the other.

I spend more time touching it than I do my partner. That’s not sick, or warped.

Or is it?

No. That’s just one more part of being a stay-at-home dad.

Tune in next week for:

‘WHAT I DID WITH THE DISHWASHER, AND HOW I JUSTIFIED IT TO MY PARTNER’

Can’t get you out of my head…

Tags

children, kids, melt down, park, public, stay-at-home Dad

‘La,la,la,la,la’ says my son as he walks through the leafy park, ‘La,la,la,la’. This would be nice, if he was singing a tuneful ditty, or maybe humming along to himself.

But he’s not. He’s holding his left arm out to the side in a bid to stop it hurting him. He’s just had a tumble in a new park, or should I say new to us. Our first visit to this green and pleasant area (with pond!) and it’s already shaping up to be memorable for all the wrong reasons.

‘La, la, la,’ he says again, in what is surely the world’s worst Kylie Minogue impression. Maybe we should go back to the car, I suggest. Oh no, no we can’t do that. Go back to the car and get some aid? Maybe use it to go home to put a plaster on the offending arm (it’s bleeding, and even to my eyes looks bad). ‘I want to stay here for five more minutes daddy’ he says, between la, la las, and with tears streaming down his face.

So we stay. Me pushing his 18-month-old sister in the wonderfully maneuverable trike, and him walking along like a mini-member of The Walking Dead.

‘Hurts me daddy, it hurts me’. I know, I tell him, but it will get better. ‘Will it?’ He asks with his big four-year-old eyes full of hope. Yes, it will, but it will just take a while I say.

‘la, la, la’ he continues heading through the park. And of course because these kind of things can never happen in a nice quiet area, we have company. The man with the dog, and in fact his dog, are wondering what’s going on with the wailing kid.

The lady from playgroup, and her daughter, who will now remember me as ‘that bloke who wouldn’t take his kid home after he hurt his arm’ she’s also there. We bumped into her when we first got here.

That all seems like a long time ago.

‘La,la,la’ He’s heading out of the park now, towards a well-to-do looking housing estate. There’s a little path leading to it. At the head of the path are two snogging teenagers. I remember being a teenager. The world disappeared when I was kissing a girl, nothing else mattered. That being said, I never enjoyed a tryst with a girl while a four-year-old shakily approached me, crying and holding his arm. They look around. They stare. I stare back. “He’s had a little tumble” I explain. ‘aww’ goes the girl. “But he won’t go back in the car” I continue. The girl nods as if in sympathy. “So here I am”, I finish, looking like father-of-the-year. The boy doesn’t say anything, he just wants us to go so he can reattach himself to the girl.

We continue forward into the (blessedly) quiet estate. Maybe we should go home now, I suggest. My son looks at me, big eyes turned up to 11. ‘It hurts Daddy, why does it hurt?’. I draw on all my 11-months experience of being a stay-at-home dad. “Well”, I begin, “if we go home we can put a plaster on it, and then If you let me clean it and you’re a brave boy I can give you a Moshi Monster sticker as a reward”. ‘Will that make it better daddy?’ he asks me. “Yes” I lie, to his face.” Yes it will”.