Bringing up Boys: Failure to launch…

Contemplating anything other than homework

We’re in Year Two, the time where the learning through play years metamorphoses into serious learning.

Problem is how to get your independent free spirited boys to toe the line especially when it comes to homework. -the mere mention of which has me twitching and looking round desperately for an alcoholic prop.

We start of slowly enough with spellings. Things such as PLAY, DAY STAY, FRAY at the seams…no problem easy peasy that is until we have to write a sentence using the words.

Bog Boy says nah he doesn’t need to.

I leave it like that to see if he will change his mind once he gets his homework back from his teacher.

So I trundle into school for pick up expecting a very downcast little boy but he blithely tells me when I ask how his spelling test went that he didn’t get a sticker.

“Oh!” says I. “Why not?”

“Because I didn’t do them sentences.”

“Will you do the sentences this week then?”

“No.” He says, “I won’t!”

“Why not?”

“I don’t like stickers…”

We’re going to have an interesting year ahead…

Snake!

Wildlife in my Garden - Grass Snake (Natrix Natrix)

"Snake!"
"Mum, I've found a Snake! Come quickly and see it!"
Not necessarily the words a mother wants to hear shouted excitedly by their youngest child. Come on, I've lived in far too many places around the world to greet that announcement with anything but extreme concern, nay fright. That's why I love England so - no snakes.
Well, that's what I thought.
Of course I know that there are snakes in England, just that I've never seen one. The only ones I have ever heard of, of course, are Adders. Those, I know, are extremely shy and retiring preferring not to be disturbed and thus keeping as far a way from humankind as possible. It's a snake I can live with, one that doesn't want to be near me. Problem is, I do know that when disturbed an Adder is likely to act a bit like me.
Attack first think about it later.
So with my youngest yelling snake you can imagine that I was like Usain Bolt off the starting blocks, in fact I truly believe he would have been hard pressed to beat me as I shot outside to snatch my boy to safety.
I felt a complete nit.
For the snake was the tiniest I have ever seen - it was exquisite.
It could not have been more than 15 centimetres long, it's head a tiny arrow broad across the eyes and snub nosed. I was fascinated by its tiny black tongue and the fact that as we watched it I could actually hear it hiss. This tiny toy of a creature was just one of the most beautiful things I have seen in a very long time.
I luckily had my camera at the ready and I am afraid for a few minutes I made it extremely cross, but because it was so small, and the fact that I identified it as a grass snake and thus harmless, I felt quite safe to intrude upon its dignity.
It moved surprisingly quickly and coiled and sprung just like its really rather venomous, and quite considerably larger, cousins. The boys got tired of watching it far quicker than myself, and had long gone before the snake too made its last bow disappearing through the grass muttering to itself about intrusion and invasion of privacy.
I now know I have snakes in my garden but I am far more sanguine about their presence as long as they all remain as small. Luckily I don't think I'll see one again as this is the first one spotted in 11 years of living here and although I will still be wary of snakes I am glad it was brought to my notice...

Bringing up Boys: ARRRGGGGHHHHHHH

Sometimes that is the only way to deal with the boys.
SHOUT
SCREAM
And Holler a bit.
It is quite exhausting but effective....eventually.
I have a loud voice, thank heavens, otherwise I would have been totally rolled over (metaphorically speaking) and completely out of control.
As it is I am only mildly out of control but those looking on may beg to differ.
If I had had a quiet and unassuming way about me then I fear things could have been a lot worse. I would be one of those mothers who ineffectually asks her son to stop being so rough with Little Johnny as he may not like being  put head first down in the toilet and to not pull the pretty picture off the wall in the Sainsbury wing of the National Portrait Gallery as other people may want to look at it too.
No, with my boys I have found there is only one way to get through to them...
Say NO to any request and shout when they fail to obey an order immediately; in fact shout the order first just so they know that what you are saying is important.
I would love to just be able to request they do something but I have found that they just ignore me especially when they think they have something better to do.
So I gird my loins in the morning to get them up, we start off pleasantly enough. Good mornings are said and curtains are drawn and I'll add a chirpy little comment about the day ahead.
But by the time I have tripped over the plethora of toys and dirty clothes strewn across the floor and trodden on the ubiquitous bit of Lego in my bare feet to reach the effing curtains I am in top notch scream mode - it gets them out of bed quick enough.
Getting them brushing teeth and going to the loo, washing their faces etc is like wading through treacle it takes so long. I goad and plead and threaten and hassle before stomping off downstairs threatening them with dire consequences if they don't get down here in five minutes.
About twenty minutes later they are just about ready to have breakfast and I am boiling like a kettle. Food is thrust at them and any pretence of requesting and asking nicely has been banished for the duration.
I do try, honest I do! I keep saying to myself I need to be nice adn calm and motherly, but whenever I am, I just feel I am being taken advantage of.
I love them to bits but there is only one way to deal with them - shout like Sergeant Major and order not ask.
It hasn't done them any harm as far as I can see. And as I type this out they are waiting for me in their bedrooms to say goodnight, they are trying very hard not to giggle but failing...dismally..
PS. When I want them to feel real fear I, of course, just whisper...

And woman invented wine...

There is no doubt about it a woman invented wine.

A man may refine it and take over it and play god only knows what with it, but a woman definitely invented it.

While Man was out hunting and doing it large on the I AM MAN front in the Stone Age, Woman was left at home with the kids bored out of her tiny mind with all that gathering, skinning, curing, preserving, hand painting lark waiting for him to make an appearance so she could get out of the cave and let her hair down for a bit like she used to before like when she had a career...

So, there she is looking at a bunch of withered grapes and going how in the heck am I going to make this lot stretch all winter when she says what the heck and throws them at the wall in frustration. A few days later she comes across the mess she hurriedly hid when HE came home and says smells nice and takes a sip. It tastes good and before she knows it she’s rolling and the fact that she’s left for days on end on her tod makes no difference at all.

He comes home and finds she’s way more amenable than ever before and the rest they say is history…

Tonight I have certainly indulged - it has taken the edge off a clearly stressful day of toing and froing and not getting very much done other than dropping off and collecting boys from school, sorting out compulsory after school activities, seeing the community paediatrician, doing the laundry, feeding the chickens, working out how to save a feral whippet from a fate worse than death (here’s hoping Cesar Milan will come up trumps) picking up and dropping off the painter, squeezing in two hours of work and still only getting one story to the editor all rounded off by spending three hours on homework which should have only taken 20 minutes...

I am only two days into the school year but the end of it I will be a certified dipsomaniac!

Bringing up Boys – when they don’t want to kiss you at the school gate

The First Day At School

It has finally come to pass the day when my eldest squirms out of my embrace hastily muttering: “Mummm! Not here.”

And then scampers off to class on his own.

I should have seen it coming; I’ve spent all Summer banging on at him to grow up and get with the programme. It shouldn’t have come as a big surprise.

But it did.

And off he went to his new class, a school new year and I wasn’t with him. As I look after him walking away on his own, school bag slung across his back, hands in pockets, feet already scuffing the ground, I remember so vividly that first day at school.

Everything was so stiff and shiny, new and invariably way too large. I recall my enforced jolliness as I tried not to cry lest I start him off, not that he seemed that bothered then if I remember rightly. He was just too excited. I took photos of all of his class that day. And looking now at the photograph they seem so small and young and yet at the time I thought the exact opposite. I thought gone is my toddler and in front of me a fresh faced schoolboy already years older than I remembered him from only the day before.

And now six years later a big part of me wants to hurtle after him and grab his hand so we can march in together but it’s not a very cool (sorry he hates me using that word as it’s SO last year) good thing to do is it?

The whole point of my mithering him all over the holidays was just so he could be like this – independent, confident, grown-up.

A separate entity.

Someone who can stand up for himself without needing an adult by him in order to get on with his life.

I have succeeded in my goal. All that hard work over the Summer has paid off.

So why do I feel so bereft?

The Joys of Camping

Toasting Marshmallows on an open fire

There is something revoltingly glorious about camping in the UK. You’ll either be living like a drowned rat or else quietly baking under canvas. It is something you just have to take on the chin with bulldog spirit and all that clap trap.

But oh how virtuous you feel after the ordeal is over – not that you’d ever admit that you had fun.

I certainly didn’t want to admit it after I was dragged into it last weekend. I had the offer of a girly night all laid on, champagne, lasagna, Pavlova and a whole lot of gossip. BUT my Darling husband decided to invite all and sundry and typically there was one Mum who thought it would be a right laugh.

I had no choice I couldn’t possibly let her camp alone with a bunch of blokes (the other halves of those who had organised the girly night) so I forced a smile and say yes it would be a right laugh and gave up my girly night.

And it was brilliant.

It was a right laugh, really it was, even though I hardly got any sleep at all what with wild ponies snorting and snuffling through the camp stealing bananas and apple juice, fidgety children, snoring for Britain husbands and deflating mattresses.

We taught the boys how to make a proper camp fire, how to track deer and ponies, how to cook sweet corn properly and make popcorn too.

They learnt how to go to the loo in the woods and not wet your trousers. How to survive for more than four hours without a single electronic gadget

And to finish it all off marshmallows stuck on the end of proper sticks that you just find lying around.

It was magic and guess what?

I’m signed up for the next big camping adventure!

*To cook sweetcorn properly on an open fire first leave it standing in clean water for 30 minutes with the husk still on. Then place the corn, husks and all, on the fire they will poach beautifully in their skins so to speak and not dry out so you get perfect corn on the cob after only 10 minutes!

Wedding Anniversaries: I am a bit of a bitch...

Happy Anniversary to Me!

I am a bit of a bitch…

It’s my thirteenth wedding anniversary and all day I have been waiting for my husband to acknowledge the fact.

He failed.

But I feel a bit of a bitch about it.

I knew he’d forget. He has form.

But in my defence I did remind him on Sunday that today was our anniversary and that I expected him to remember.

However, things don’t work out as you’d wish. I wanted a phone call from him saying “Happy Anniversary Darling. I love you more now than I did then.”

Oh and a bunch of flowers.

I did such a ‘girl thing’. You know the one where you play the hurt party, the victim. Look how hard done by I am he forgot our anniversary the most important day in our combined lives. (She falls dramatically onto the couch her arm hiding her face as she weeps).

I should have just called him this morning and wished him Happy Anniversary adding that I loved him more now than I did 13 years ago. But I didn’t and in so doing allowed our special day to become a cliche: The One Where He Forgot...

I’m still pissed off that he didn’t remember and the only thing that is making me feel a bit better about it is that I of course now hold the moral high ground – but it is pathetic to go to these lengths. Playing games with people is childish in the extreme.

But (she says stamping her foot) I feel bloody childish.

He hasn’t made it any better by calling me from his digs in London, where he spends the week from Sunday through Friday, to apologise saying he didn’t do it deliberately.

“No, that’s not going to make me feel better,” I snap. “If you did it deliberately at least it would mean that you had at least thought about it!”

“I’m not going to able to get out of this am I?”

“Too bloody right you are not.”

We talked some more about mundane things such as the fact that our bank balance was about to suffer a rather seismic shift downwards as I pay out fuel bills, car insurance and school fees, and that I am about to embark upon a systematic affront on the aforementioned school regarding the education, or lack thereof, of our eldest son. Sending your child to private school is a bit like confronting the NHS the louder you shout the better service you get.

Then the call had to end abruptly as his landlady had supper and a glass of wine waiting for him and he felt it would be rude to keep her waiting…

Just as well I’d already had a half bottle of champagne really – off to finish the other half – Happy Anniversary!

When you desperatley need a loo of your own...

I love my children but I don't always like them.
I don't like them when I have to share a bathroom with them, it's bad enough sharing with their father. You know the problem: loo seats always left up, an inability to use the flushing mechanism, leaks on the floor and my worst favourite leaving the loo seat down and then you sitting on it thinking it's OK only to find yourself sitting on something distinctly wet.
Boys just don't get it at all! I bet if they had to sit down to go to the loo then it would be a completely different kettle of fish.
But the one thing that drives me to distraction is when I need to go to the loo and they insist on interrupting me. Going to the loo is a sacred ritual it takes time it is a place where one should be able to contemplate the world in safety, in privacy and NOT have to respond with undignified haste to screams and blood curdling shouts from ones off spring.
When they were smaller they would frequently accompany me to the loo and would bang pitifully on the door if I shut it until I responded by telling them what was going on.
"Go away. I'm on the loo!"
"Yes, but what are you doing?"
"None of your business!"
"Why...?"
Now that they are older I expect nay silently demand with a raised eyebrow that brooks no crossing that I'm left in peace with my ablutions.
But they still haven't got the picture.
I have managed to contain the boys they are playing happily together, the dogs are fed and sleeping it off no one is expected  to arrive at the house and I am in need of a quiet sit down in peace and quiet. I am positively looking forward to a contemplation with The Week magazine. Sheer bliss.
Then suddenly the door bursts open and I am caught in the middle of a poo.
"Mummy guess what!"
I cannot guess I am in the middle of a huge movement I don't want to guess I just want top get on  - on my own and in privacy.
"No," I say weakly, "what?"
"I've just got a legend in Pokemon White..."
There are times I think it would be a very good idea to get my boys telephones so they could just tweet me the news.