The Detail be Damned

At the grand old age of 20 months, when she still pronounces “please” as peees and “thank you” as tak-coo and “fork” as…  Well anyway, at the grand old age of 20 months, my darling E2 can recite her ABCs from beginning to end.  It goes like this:

A… (pauses to think hard) A… C… won chu come… sing wi… MEEEE!!!!

And then she breaks into a huge grin and claps wildly for herself.

You see? She’s got it — from the beginning right to the end.  And it delights me so much — tugs so earnestly on my maternial heartstrings every time I hear it — that I honestly don’t think I care whether she ever learns that pesky middle bit.

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It may be Mercinary but It Works for Me

I posted awhile ago about a mothers’ group I planned to join…  I never got around to it.  I told myself it’s because I’ve been busy, but it’s really because the whole thing made me feel a bit odd — the fact that it was a group that you paid to join, and the way they were all so organised in their friendship…  It struck me as very sorority-like, and I was never a sorority kind of girl.  I prefered my friendships to build more organically — sororities always seemed too instant and…  somehow mercinary for it.  So, I have hung back from joining this group, wanting friends but not sure if I wanted them this way, while time ticked slowly on.

Last week I realised that we have been here for eight months and the thing that I have found most difficult — well, there have been so many difficult things…  Ok, one of the things I have found most difficult is the total isolation, the complete lack of friends.  In all this time, I have made a few friendly aquaintences and one possible friend-in-the-making, but nothing more.  My main companions are M and my mother, and that is too heavy a strain to put on those two relationships.

So, tonight I was thinking about it and realised that if I were a high-flying corporate type and got transferred to a new city, I wouldn’t hesitate for a moment to join a professional organisation.  I’d happily pay my dues, attend meetings, eat the nibbles, make contacts, network my way into my new workplace, and perhaps even discover an actual friend along the way.  Mercinary, yes, but all part and parcel of moving and establishing a career in a new place.

Well, this is a mothers’ group and my current job is Mother.  So paying to become a member of this group is no different from joining any professional organisation.  When I look at it this way, I suddenly feel totally comfortable with it.  And, what’s more, this group’s focus is as much about helping mothers transition out of and then back into work as it is on nappies and playdates, so joining it might actually be more of a ‘professional’ move than I had first anticipated.

So, tonight, I emailed the membership secretary and told her I wanted to pay up and become a member.  And I am feeling fine about it, because I do need to start thinking about what I want to do when it’s time to go back to work.  And I do need to make contacts and network into our new area.

And most of all — mercinary or not — I just really need some friends.

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We Three

The girls are both streaming with cold at the moment — miserable, weepy, and clingy — so today we went nowhere and did nothing.  It’s impossible to even get basic chores done with one child balanced on one hip, head tucked into my chest as she breaths raspily, and the other child clinging to my leg and crying for no particular reason at all.  We did a lot of cuddling today, some reading , drank tea, and took it very very easy.  And though I hate it when the girls are sick like this, I also reveled in our gentle day, because I know how lucky I am to be able to stay home with them and just do nothing when they need it.  As much as we’ve struggled to come to terms with this move to the US, I know I wouldn’t have been in this position if we’d stayed in the UK, and I am very grateful for it.

I have been a stay-at-home mum for nearly three and a half years now, and it feels as right and as natural to me as anything I have known in my life.  Work, by contrast, was always such a struggle — I felt incompetent and a fraud in every position I ever held, bumbling along and waiting to be “found out”.  Being a mother is the first job I’ve had that truly feels like it fits.  I do honestly believe I am good at it, and I am doing as good a job I would hope to be.

And so, enjoying my job for the first time in my life, I have really settled into the role.  I love the unit that we three create all day.  I love that we do everything together — from the moment we wake up, until we go to bed, and beyond into the night.  Every meal is us together, every trip out, every time I need to pop to the shop — we do it all as a unit.  In my daughters’ world, they are always with each other, and always with me, and I am always with them.

I thought I might hate that, but I don’t.  I worried, before I stopped working, that I might find it claustrophobic, I might miss my “me time”, but I don’t.  What I found is that, in many respects, this is my “me time”.  This is me, and who I was meant to be.  Find a job you love and you will never work a day in your life… I have, and I do truly love it, even more than I hoped.

So, it hit me with a shock when someone said to me the other day, very casually, that it’s less than 2 years before E1 will start Kindergarten.  I felt myself take in a sharp breath.  She said it as if it were a good thing, an exciting thing!  And then pressed on — was I putting her into preschool next year?  My heart recoiled.  Kindergarten in only two years?  Preschool next year?  No! No to both of them!  My mind raced ahead another year to a vision of E1, so little and innocent and vulnerable, climbing into a big yellow school bus… that big bus…  on her own…  to spend all day in school and away from me and from E2!  I could see the two of us, sitting at the window, pining for her to come home and back to our little unit of three.

Maybe, as this year and next move on, I will get used to the idea of being apart from her.  Maybe mothers somehow reach a point — a level of toddler chaos or exhaustion or… something — where they become glad of the idea of their children disappearing off to school all day.  Maybe…  but I can’t imagine it.  I don’t want this to end.  I love being home with my girls.  I love my job.  I love…  we three.  And I can’t imagine anything else.

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Much Like a Tea Room… But Not Quite

Ok…  ok…  Look, I just have to say this.  I just have to say it — I hope you understand.  Ok?  I just…  I have to.

If you are going to open a tea room…  If you’re going to open a tea room and make it as English as you can, and serve scones and clotted cream, and decorate it with as many things lacy and delicate and fine-china and polished-silver as you know how, then please, please, please learn how to make and serve tea.

That nifty letter-rack thing is actually a toast rack.  And while it is a handy place to store and display all those little sachets of herbal teas, a tea room should never actually be a self-serve sort of place.  And, as such, you should never bring out a beautiful teapot full of really-quite-hot-but-not-boiling water (plain water!) so that your customers have to then go ahead and make their own tea in their cups.  That’s just not how it is done.  A teapot… well, the clue is in the name: it should contain the tea.

And the cream should be brought to the table alongside the tea — no one should have to jump up from the table and run to catch you to ask if they could have some.  And though I appreciate you asking, no, Splenda won’t do.  Even though it’s good enough for a mug of tea at home, tea from a tea room deserves sugar.  And, I have to say, the cinnomen scones were delicious but, just while I’m pointing things out, scones and clotted cream do deserve jam as well.

Still, the ambiance couldn’t be beat — it was sweet and delicate and very very earnest.  The girls and my mum and I really had a lovely time.  The lemonade for E1 served in her own pink teapot was a spot of brilliance — and she felt so grown up and talked about it for the rest of the day.  We walked out feeling much more relaxed and refreshed than when we walked in and that, at the end of the day, is what a tea room is for.

So, ok, you got some of the fundamentals wrong…  ok, you got the fundamental of a tea room wrong.  But we did enjoy ourselves and…  well, it’s easy to fix — you just need to get that water at a good hard boil and put the tea into the pot before you pour the water in.  And don’t forget that cream.  And jam.

At least you did better than the last tea room my mother tried.  They, um, forgot to boil the water.  At all.  Oops!

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I’m Broody, Yes, But I Still Appreciate a Little Help

With every passing day, as E2 gets older, the changes in her are coming rapidly.  Though I still think she is my baby, she is really nothing of the sort.  And the more I realise that, the more I find myself longing for another baby.  My third…  my last…  just one more…  The feeling is so strong, so urgent!  But M is adamant — there will be no more babies.  So instead of clinging ever more desperately to her baby-ness, even as it slips away day by day, I try instead to rejoice in the competent little person she is becoming.

When she woke me at 4am last night — for the third time, mind — and I stumbled groggily into her room, she stood up in her cot and, pointing to her bum, said, “Oh noooo!  Poooooo!”  And then, for emphasis, trumpeted loudly.

And though it meant I had to carry her into the other room and turn on the rude lights, and stand there in the middle of the night wearing only the top half of my PJs and change a very stinky nappy, I had to smile.  Because newborn babies, for all their rosebud-lipped lovliness, don’t point to their bums and tell you they’ve done a poo.  And at 4am, when I can barely open my eyes enough to walk in a straight line, I do appreciate that she can now give me really big clues like that.

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Her View of Her World, Revealed

The Cranberries’ Zombie has been stuck in my head ever since we heard someone sing it at a karaoke night a few weeks ago.  I’ve been belting out the refrain (In your head, In your head, Zombie, Zombie, Zombie-eh-eh) with annoying regularity ever since (and driving both M and myself a bit crazy in the process).  So, I shouldn’t have been surprised when E1started singing it too, even though it’s probably not really appropriate for a three-year-old’s repertoire.  I shouldn’t even been surprised when her little sister chimed in with her own mangled take on the word ‘zombie’ and then even got the ‘eh-eh’ down perfectly.

What really surprised me was the way E1 then adapted the song to suit nearly every situation in her day.  It started when she was on the toilet: as I was adjusting her trousers, she suddenly opened her mouth and sang, “In your bu-um, In your bu-um, Poo-oo, Poo-oo, Poo-oo-oo!”  I was in fits of laughter, and that did it for her — from that point on, every moment of her day was narrated through that one line..

Eating dinner: “In your bo-owl, In your bo-owl, Din-ner, Din-ner, Din-er-er-er!”

In the car: “In the ca-ar, In the ca-ar, E-en-gine! E-en-gine! E-en-gine-gin-gin!”

In the bath: “In your bo-dy, In your bo-dy, Mu-u-scles, a-and bones, a-and blood-ud-ud!”

Out with us at the weekend: “In the pu-ub, In the pu-ub, Pee-eo-ple! Pee-eo-ple! Pee-eo-ple-ul-ul!”

Picking her nose: “In my no-ose, In my no-ose, Bo-o-gies, Bo-o-gies, Bo-o-gies-gies-gies!”

Believe me, it goes on forever…

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Sudden Reminder

It’s a bit chilly today, so I grabbed my light autumn jacket.  Putting my hand in the pocket, I pulled out a crumpled £5 note and a bunch of British coins.

For that moment, as I stared at them in my hand, I went straight home.  And then, just as suddenly, the illusion burst and I was back here in the kitchen again.  And before I could stop it happening, the heartache rose up into my chest and I burst into tears.

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Like the Tip of an Iceberg, and Still… Unrecognised

I was looking through some old pictures the other day and it suddenly hit me just how bad E2′s eczema used to be and how dramatically it has improved.  It’s one of those things that’s so gradual that you hardly notice it happening, but the change has been quite incredible.  This time six months ago, the skin on her cheeks was so delicate and raw that the slightest touch would tear it open.  Every morning, when I lifted her out of bed, there’s be great bloodstains all over the sheets where she’d torn her face just by turning in the night.  And her skin used to hurt and itch her terribly — I had to keep her nails clipped down so short in order to keep her from scratching her face to shreds.

But these days, her eczema is almost completely gone (touch wood).  Her skin is strong and healthy, and she’s a much happier girl.  When I look back through the pictures, it is quite obvious that the transformation began to occur during the time right after her allergies were diagnosed and I began to eliminate them from my diet.  It just kills me to realise what a huge impact they were having on her little body — how much her system was having to cope with at such a tender age — and that I, in my ignorance, was actually causing it all to happen to her through what I was eating and then passing onto her in my milk.  For a mother, it is a very difficult thing to know that you caused your baby harm and pain like that, no matter how unintended.

Especially when I consider that the reaction and pain she was experiencing on her face was probably nothing compared to what her insides were going through.  Oh, my poor, poor baby!  It is no wonder that her first year was so very difficult.

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And… Breathe Out

You may be thinking I’d fallen off the face of the earth.  I didn’t — but we did find a house and life has been a bit of a whirlwind ever since.

While M was in Britain, I noticed a new property on the market that looked interesting — good room sizes, good neighbourhood, excellent school district, and it also looked to have the elements that have been deal breakers for so many houses before: the kind of garage, driveway, and basement that M would love.  I had the estate agent take me round it last Thursday and, it turned out, it was interesting — really very interesting.   I immediately arranged to go back with M on Saturday morning.

On Friday night, I got a phone call from the estate agent: the buyer already had an offer.  Apparently, he had had been about to accept it, but had agreed to wait until we’d seen it as well.  He had to reply to the first offer by Sunday, so the pressure was now firmly on.  If we were going to have to make this decision quickly, I decided to ask my dad to join us, and to bring his best friend (who happens to be a builder) so they could cast their expert eyes over it as well.

That night, E2 couldn’t breath for a blocked up nose, and she kept me up all night.  At 5.30am, I’d had 90 minutes of sleep.  M got up with her and so I managed to catch two more hours before I had to get up as well.  My head was pounding — three and a half hours sleep is not enough to get up on, and certainly not enough to make house-buying decisions on.  This did not bode well.

Then, as I was getting dressed, I suddenly realised I was about to view a house in the company of four men, all of whom would be looking at it strictly in terms of pipes and bricks and money, and none of whom would be thinking of whether this house would really work for a mother with two little kids.  So at the last minute, I asked my mother to come too (which, of course, meant the girls would have to tag along as well).  Mum’s face lit up — she had been secretly hating the fact that she wasn’t going to get a look-in on a house that might be such a serious contender.  So, an hour later, we pitch up outside the house  …all eight of us.  The owner was still there but, fortunately, didn’t seem much fazed by the sea of faces on his doorstep.  He opened the door wide for us before descretely slipping out for a spot of early-Saturday gardening.

Then, just as the door closed behind us, disaster struck: M’s work phone went off.  He was on call that weekend and they needed him for an emergency now.  Everyone else was looking around the room and talking excitedly, but my eyes were focused on him as he tried to beg off enough time to at least give the place a quick walk-through.  Finally, he hung up and flashed me a tense smile: he’d got them to agree, but we’d have to be quick and there’d be little time for discussion. This was not how we wanted to view a house, let alone make a decision.

I marched everyone through in double-quick time, but that didn’t dampen the effect.  They all liked the house.  Most importantly, M did, and I liked it more on second viewing than I had on first.  It’s a surprising house — a Cape Cod with an odd split-level addition on one side — that is spread over five different levels and just seems to go on and on as you discover each one.  The living room, dining room, and kitchen are on the small side, but they have scope for easy expansion.  The family room will work perfectly for both the girls toys and my fibre stash, and M was really chuffed to discover a big, dry, inviting basement for his drums and his weights.  Upstairs, it has three bedrooms — one of them of them set apart by a half-set of stairs, which would be perfect for E2, officially the World’s Lightest Sleeper.  My dad and his friend approved the overall condition of the house and were particularly pleased to discover it has a brand-new roof.

“I have to go,”  M said suddenly, looking at his watch.

“Ok, ok…”  I stammered.  “Let’s talk about the house for a minute…”

“No, I have to go now.”  M is very conscious not to push his chances with this second job.  He glanced up at the house.  “I like it,” he announced.  “Let’s buy it.”

The realtor spotted that M was trying to leave and rushed over.  We had to make an offer today, he said, before the owner had to make his decision on the other offer — and probably before M got back from his call-out.  But he’s a clever clogs, our realtor, and he pulled out a blank contract he’d brought with him — M could sign it now, and then the realtor and I could go back to the office and write all the details into it afterward.  It seemed like a plan, and there was no time to discuss it further.  M and I hastily agreed on our offer price, he signed on the dotted line, and jumped in the car.  Two seconds later, he was gone, and I stood on the driveway looking at this house — this house that we were going to buy.  The decision was made, just like that.

Back in the realtor’s office, we did everything we could to make the offer more attractive than what we reckoned the other buyers had offered.  We made the closing date match the owner’s preference, we were flexible about survey options, and…  we offered ever-so-slightly more than we’d originally hoped to.  The estate agent turned to me with a confident look, “It’s a good offer.  It’s very attractive.  I think we have a good chance of getting it.”

I nodded.  “It’s an honest offer.  We’ve made it as attractive as we can.”  I was surprised by how calm I was feeling.  “I think we have a good chance too.  But, the thing is, if we don’t get it, I am not going to beat myself up about it, because I know we did the best, most honest offer we could.  It’s out of our hands now — it will be what it will be.”  He pushed the last page over to me, and I scribbled my name under M’s.  It was done.

Sunday morning the phone rang while I was feeding the baby. I could hear the muffled sound of M’s voice through the wall, but it gave nothing away.  After a few minutes, he opened the door, his face blank and unreadable.

“He put our offer in yesterday afternoon.  The other buyers made a counter offer but…  the seller has chosen ours.”  He took a deep breath.  “We’ve bought a house.”  And, for just a moment, my heart forgot to beat.

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