R in the creche tells me that yesterday she heard a faint cry and turned around to see Daniel whacking another child on the head while, simultaneously, Michael slapped the misfortunate mite merrily on the bottom. It’s a jungle out there.
Boys
Negligence
Michael can now clap hands and puts his arms up in the air when he wants to be carried.  He twists his hair around his fingers. He doubtless does this because he wants to endear himself still further although he knows he is my favourite child. How does he know this? Because yesterday he saw me at different times let both of the others fall off the bed.  Alas. Poor bruised little mites.
9 months yesterday – review
Daniel is big and heavy but surprisingly mobile and on the verge of crawling. He’s still bald, but he does have four teeth. Despite looking a bit like one of the Mitchell brothers, he is a big softy and cries sadly if you speak harshly to him or indeed anyone else in the room. He is also inclined to cry, if he wants a toy and does not get it. This is not generally a problem as he is big enough and mobile enough to grab everything within range and Michael doesn’t usually put up much of a fight. He is immensely strong, when things are not going his way, he bucks in your arms and it is quite difficult to hold him.
He was delighted with the effect clapping hands has on those around him initially. Alas, he’s been doing it for a while now and it doesn’t have the effect it once had. He claps his hands and says “bwaw, bwaw” looking around anxiously to check whether people have noticed his cleverness. When we come home from work, he bawls until he has reached the safety of a parental embrace. While this can be tiresome, the affectionate drooly kisses he then doles out are very gratifying.
Michael is a fascinating child to me. He has hair. Not a feature of my other children. He is almost uniformly sunny. Physically Daniel is very like the Princess and, I suspect, in personality also although, as you will appreciate, personalities are at a fledgling stage. I think that, if we treated Daniel as we treated the Princess, he would be every bit as clingy as she was at that age but we just don’t have the time or the energy for that, so he’s not. Michael, on the other hand, is hugely independent. Although he prefers to be held, he is usually quite happy sitting on the ground or in his highchair watching what’s happening around him. He is fond of his parents, but will go to pretty much anyone and bond happily. He loves to be tossed up in the air. He adores when his sister pushes and pulls him and tickles him. Daniel loves that too but he is more inclined to be wary (smart boy) whereas Michael is indifferent to the danger. He is also indifferent to tone of voice. “No Michael” said in a stern voice elicits gales of laughter while his brother collapses in sobs at the brutality and ghastliness of it all.
When instructed to do so Michael will open and close his hand. This is his party piece but, unlike Daniel with his hand clapping, he doesn’t seem to care very much about its effect on other people, there is just so much fun and entertainment out there, who cares about hand opening?
On the whole, they are extraordinarily easy babies and very easy to love, lucky us. I am amazed that in such a short space of time they have become such very different little people and I feel that perhaps they may need to have their own separate categories in this blog shortly. The excitement out there is palpable.
In other news, we had our first ever parent-teacher meeting today and we sat on tiny chairs and heard Madame Marie say that our child is a genius, we know, we know. A very chatty and bossy genius, we know that also. Apparently when Madame Marie leaves the class for a moment, the assistant says it is as though she hadn’t left because the Princess takes over instructing, reprimanding, organising. What I find entirely astonishing is that, it appears, her class mates are generally willing to bow to her will. The fools, the fools – no wonder she is so imperious though.
I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls…
…because marble doesn’t creak like wooden floorboards.   Every time I go past the boys’ room to get to ours, the floor creaks alarmingly and, nine times out of ten it wakes them up. Just like everything else. Alas.
We held the day, in the palm of our hands…
Forgive me for quoting Billy Joel songs, but what can I do, I am a product of the 1980s.
Â
This sleeping thing, it must change (for one thing it’s making me talk like yer man, Yoda). I read Minks’s thoughts on this the other day and I see what she means. It won’t be forever but, God, sometimes, it feels like forever. A typical evening proceeds as follows:
Â
8.30 – 3 children in bed, howling has subsided maybe even stopped.
Between 10.00 and 11.00 – We retire to bed.
Around midnight – Daniel starts flopping around in his cot like a landed fish. For about 5 minutes our dreams are filled with knocks on doors, stamping feet etc.
Five minutes later – Daniel starts to bellow, unimpressed by the slow response to the landed fish act. He is soothed back to sleep by whichever tired parent is on duty.
As Daniel is being put back in his cot – Michael wakes.
15-30Â minutes later – all is well and exhausted parent retires to own bed
About 4.00 am – Some baby wakes up. Parent far too exhausted to remember which one by morning. Parent falls asleep with contented baby in arms.
About 5.00 am – The other baby wakes up. Parent places first baby in cot and takes up howling baby begging it not to wake first baby. Parent falls asleep with different contented baby in arms.
About 6.00-6.30 am – Parent wakes up with a jerk and replaces sleeping baby in cot.  Other baby wakes. Parent crawls back to bed and prods other parent out to tend howling infant and face the day.
Â
And this is a good night because, you’ll notice, her highness didn’t wake up at all.
Â
To summarise “they ruled the night and the night seemed to last as long as six weeksâ€
Insights gained on public transport
I was on the metro recently (standing) and an elderly woman and her son were travelling together.  He was about my age and she was possibly in her 70s and looked very unwell.  She was leaning heavily against the wall for support.  Nobody got up to give her a seat. I looked very disapprovingly at the eight sitting commuters in my line of sight.  I didn’t say anything because her son was with her and I thought that, if he didn’t say anything, then it was hardly my place to step in.*  My deepest disapproval was reserved for a young man in his 20s with no visible handicap who was sitting comfortably while talking loudly on his mobile phone and casually surveying the rest of us.  I gave him my look of utter disdain. I have had some practice with the look of utter disdain. I once had to employ it against a range of men in their 50s and 60s who felt it was perfectly acceptable to warmly squeeze the shoulders of young women who came within their ample range.  I have to say that in that context it was not particularly effective and perhaps my friend D’s approach would have got better results, she suggested that I say to the next squeezer “touch me again and you pull back a bloody stumpâ€.  She told me that she had had good results with that in the past.  I opted to go for her sister’s approach of refining my look of utter disdain.  I spent some time curling my lip while she (the sister) sighed despairingly and said “no, no, that’s a come hither lookâ€.  I had always felt that she was entirely wrong about that.  However, the other day when eventually, the metro emptied out, I ended up sitting beside the loud young man.  I gave him my concentrated look of utter disdain and he winked at me. Well, that does explain a lot about the squeezers.
*Being helpful is sometimes not very helpful.  Witness the man who very helpfully rushed to help me put the boys’ buggy on the tram this morning.  He refused to let any passengers get out wrested the buggy from me and started pushing it forcefully on to the tram. In his enthusiasm, he managed to wake both boys (who had been sleeping peacefully) by somehow collapsing Daniel’s side of the buggy and poking Michael in the eye with the parasol. Both woke up and began to howl in understandable indignation. Struggling to make myself heard over the bawling, I thanked my helper through gritted teeth. There’s no pleasing some people.