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Archives for March 2006

Is it possible to make your child that little bit too precocious for her own good?

31 March, 2006
Posted in: Princess

Me: Sweetheart, please eat or you will fade away to nothing.

Her: Like Echo.

Me: Eh?

Her (patiently): Echo who fell in love with Narcissus and faded away to nothing but her voice.

Me: Oh right.

In the end I was glad that she didn’t eat anything because there was less to throw up. Oh dear, home again with three children, one of whom is pathetically sick, thereby precluding a trip out of the house. In view of this, I have chosen to wear tracksuit bottoms, ancient hoody type thing and scholl sandals with no socks. Oh yes, I am a tremendously appealing sight today. You will be relieved to hear that I did shower; it was easy, really, I put the boys sitting in bouncy chairs in the bathroom while the Princess retched over the bath.

On the plus side, this is an excellent way to spend my last day of maternity leave because it means that on Monday I will leap into the fray with added gusto. Last night I calculated that taking into account our prohibitive childcare costs and my four day week, there will be relatively little left in my monthly salary for fun (yes, I appreciate that I might have done this calculation a little earlier but where’s the spontaneity in that?). Mr. Waffle said encouragingly “well, lots of women in your position have no money over when they pay for childcare so think positive”. Hmm. I feel like some kind of government statistic. And I know that it is a false calculation because, even, if I didn’t go back to work, we would still have to have some kind of childcare to preserve my sanity and I understand that the cost of valium is prohibitive.

I hate to upset Canadians

29 March, 2006
Posted in: Belgium

Our upstairs neighbour who is a respectable German lady of a certain age (of course I’m going on a certain age myself but she’s definitely been there for a while) appears to have a new man. He is in his 50s with distinguished greying hair and a solid, portly but not entirely unattractive person. We see his large Luxembourg registered BMW in the garage regularly. We run into him on the stairs. Mr. Waffle got chatting to him and he said that he was Canadian. I pointed out that he doesn’t sound as though English is his first language. Mr. Waffle pointed out that this doesn’t preclude him being Canadian. This is mere quibbling as he doesn’t sound as though French is his first language either. I think he is pretending to be Canadian to besmirch the honour of a hardworking and virtuous nation.*

Saturday two weeks ago, Mr. Waffle had gone out with herself and I was home alone with the boys. The doorbell rang. It was the alledgedly Canadian man. He said “I left my wallet in the office early this morning and I have no money, could you lend me 20 euros?” “Of course” I said and handed it over. Then he said “Actually could you make that 40?” “Of course” I said, slightly less readily, wondering why the hell he couldn’t drive in to his office and pick up his wallet. Then he said “How much have you got?” And even though I had in fact 200 euros in my purse, I paused, even though I suddenly realised his office was probably in Luxembourg and that was why he wasn’t so keen to drive back, I paused. Didn’t he have any other friends in Brussels, why was our upstairs neighbour not giving him money? Had he scammed his way to the BMW in the garage? “Um, no that’s it, I’m afraid” I said untruthfully. And boy am I glad, because two and a bit weeks on, despite regular polite meetings on the stairs and in the garage, have I got my 40 euros back? Gentle reader, I have not and I am bitter; clearly I have supplied the start of a deposit on a rolls.

*Mr. Waffle, who, you will recall, holds a Canadian passport himself so is an expert on these things, tells me that they are clubbing cute baby seals at the moment, so maybe the tag virtuous is not appropriate, though I am sure it is very hard work.

Irregular plurals

28 March, 2006
Posted in: Princess

Irregular plurals
The Princess is fond of a piece of poetry from this book that goes as follows:

Daddy is a doofus, a doofus, a doofus
Daddy is a doofus, a doofus because…

It goes on to ennumerate reasons why Daddy is a doofus including “belly like a burger” and “combs his hair with fingers”. I think that it would be fair to say that it’s probably not Mr. Waffle’s favourite poem.

Her: Daddy doesn’t like “Daddy is a doofus”.
Me: No, I don’t think so.
Her: It makes him go like this (sticks out lower lip).
Me: I see.
Her: But I say to him “Daddy, you’re not a doofus, all the other daddies are doofi.”

Childcare

27 March, 2006
Posted in: Boys

The boys are 6 months old today. I go back to work next Monday. I have put in place what are quite possibly the most elaborate childcare arrangements ever. I’m exhausted from planning and I haven’t even started work yet. Mind you, the “adaptation” at the creche has been just fine. They seem to love it. Whereas herself was miserable and clingy (as was I, I suppose) the boys and I are very relaxed about the whole thing. While they spend a couple of hours in the creche adapting, I go off and have a cup of tea and read the paper. I seem to remember that when the Princess was adapting I used to sit teary eyed and hunched over a cooling cup of tea counting the minutes until I could rescue her. It’s funny I go to the same café and I remember it as glum and cheerless and this time it seems fine really and the croissants are excellent. When I go to rescue the boys, they are invariably sunny, unlike herself who was almost always weeping. Do you think that children take their cue from their parents, then? Mind you, Breda O’Brien in the Irish Times, always anxious to make working parents feel happy, has an article this weekend wherein she states that her friend who worked “with children dying of Aids that they had contracted through Caeuscescu’s mad policy of blood tranfusions to ‘strengthen orphans [..] was reduced to tears by one Irish creche.” Thank you, Breda, that makes me feel a lot better.

The boys, however, are not faultless. They are very good little boys almost all the time and smile merrily and are generally most endearing etc. etc. but they will not sleep at night and I don’t know what to do. When I was feeding Michael the other morning, I noticed salt trails in his ears from where his tears had dried without being wiped away while he howled himself to sleep in the kitchen (oh don’t ask, but we do appear to have created a situation where, if he wakes in the middle of the night, he feels that he can only go back to sleep in a cot in the kitchen). I feel terrible, how miserable is that? I suppose, I wouldn’t feel quite so terrible, if it were working, but it’s not. We are at our wits’ end. Hours and hours of crying have given us the result that maybe, maybe, both of them will sleep from 7.30 to midnight but after that, it’s up more or less every hour until the Princess rises at about 6.30/7.00. We’re both exhausted. We have received conflicting advice from books and people: never wake a sleeping baby/don’t let them sleep during the day, if you want them to sleep at night/they must have naps during the day, if you want them to sleep at night/feed them when they wake/don’t feed them when they wake (my mother adding her mite to the general misery tells me that she asked my father and he says they might be hungry, humph), oh I could go on but I’ll spare you. What I am intimating here, is that having read two books on the topic and been the target of much advice, I’d be pretty surprised if there were anything we haven’t tried and nothing is working. Oh well, this too will pass, I suppose.

And they are rather fabulous. And also starting on solids. Before. After.

I would like you to know that the end of this post would give some credence to The Onion headline “Internet collapses from weight of baby pictures”, if I could follow Emily’s instructions. Doubtless, it will come.


From India

27 March, 2006
Posted in: Siblings

My sister called on the mobile to say that her furniture delivery was late. As she was phoning from her American mobile to Belgium while in Delhi, this seemed like a lot of technology to use to complain about punctuality. But she was pretty cross “They keep saying ‘oh yes, madam, we will be there very soon, please wait’ but they’re not here.” “Gosh, they sound a lot more polite than the Belgians who would just tell you ‘allez madame, on arrive’”.

I spoke to her the next day

Me: Did your furniture arrive?
Her: Yes, finally.
Me: Did you complain?
Her: No, I couldn’t.
Me: Why not?
Her: It would have made me feel like an evil imperialist – where I live is lorry free so they had to cycle 15 miles to deliver my bed by rickshaw.
Me: They delivered your bed on bicycles??
Her: Yup.

My sister has decided to give her own account of events here, should you be interested in more information on her Indian odyssey.

Names

24 March, 2006
Posted in: Princess

Her: No, Mummy, I’m a baby tiger, roar, you must call me Princess Baby Tiger.
Me: OK, Princess Baby Tiger, are you going to eat any dinner?
Her: I’m Cinderella.
Me: OK Cinderella…
Her: No, Princess Cinderella Baby Tiger.
Me: Now Madam..
Her: Madam Princess Cinderella Baby Tiger.
Him: I see where Bob Geldof gets his children’s names from.

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