belgianwaffle

Twins

Vomit – a game of action and adventure for all the family


Posted in: Twins

A game for two or more players. N.B. This game is not suitable for those with carpetted bedroom floors.

Step 1 – Take vomitting child from its bed. Clean child and put in parental bed. Strip child’s bed. Clean floor and any fixtures and fittings sprayed with vomit. One extra point, if you wake sibling while doing so.

Step 2 – Get into bed with sick child. Lie awake tensely listening for sounds that might indicate child is about to be sick. Points will be awarded if you grab sleeping sick child and hold him anxiously over the side of the bed when all he was doing was clearing his throat.

Step 3 – Drift off to sleep to be awoken by the miserable screech of a child who has vomitted all over himself and the bedclothes. Hold him over the edge of the bed and let him vomit copiously on the floor. Extra point if you accede, against your better judgement, to his request for a glass of water which he then vomits up.

Step 4 – Repeat step 3 until you have stripped your bed three times. Then shout jackpot and, if you’re really lucky, sleep uninterrupted for the two hours remaining until dawn breaks.

Step 5 – Repeat with other children over the following nights.

A post reflecting my own recent experience (mercifully past) and inspired by geepeemama‘s woes.

Chi Chi Chorizo


Posted in: Middle Child, Princess, Twins, Youngest Child

This is what the children shout when they travel alone in the lift in our building. Why is that?

The boys also say “big stop” while chasing each other round the house with a magic wand (Daniel) and a piece of the supporting architecture of the Fisher Price garage (Michael). They appear to be holding these items as though they were guns. Obviously, they haven’t got toy guns. Are we or are we not fully paid up members of the middle classes? Though I have fond memories of my own toy gun with caps for extra loud bangs. I digress.

In the creche they told me that Michael made a little girl cry by trying to knife her in the back (with a plastic knife) saying “je vais te tuer”. Wouldn’t you cry? “Je vais te tuer” is a very popular expression with the boys at the moment. Where did they get it? I know that the knifing in the back comes from Gaston in Beauty and the Beast, they are very taken with that and constantly re-enact it with one of them chasing the other round the house with whatever implement comes to hand. I keep telling them that Gaston is a baddy but they don’t seem to care. Sigh.

They are, however, all talk and no action as can be seen from their interaction with a dangerous cat earlier today (well, given that it was dark in there you might not be able to see the cat’s utter indifference but you can certainly hear the boys’ terror when it turns its head to see what the noise is).

Low cut or, gosh, the personal really is political


Posted in: Middle Child, Reading etc.

The other day, I was wearing what I thought was a perfectly respectable top to go to work. Daniel stuck his hand down the front of it and, poking at a breast, said, “what’s that?” “It’s my breast,” I said. “This is Daniel breast” he said hoisting up his pyjama top.

I suppose Angela Merkel must have felt the same way after her recent trip to Norway where she stunned the world by wearing this. I am indebted to the Irish Times for the information that Ms. Merkel was “surprised but not unflattered that, considering important themes like energy, security aand the Afghanistan mission, the world had nothin better to report on than the ‘new arrangement of the Chancellor’s inventory'”.

Boys


Posted in: Middle Child, Twins, Youngest Child

Language

The boys are talking a lot. Daniel will say “Mama say ‘mountain’, Daddy say ‘montagne’. Michael is not as able at distinguishing languages. They both, however, mix up English and French and, as yet, show no real ability to unmix them. Although, funnily enough, in the creche which is entirely francophone, I am told that they only speak French. Over the past couple of weeks I have been collecting some linguistic infelicities:

Bicycle like Michael aussi;

Petit boy;

Moi, je comb the hair;

Moi, je geddit;

Belle, reading son book;

Mange avec spoon et fork;

C’est my!

Help you me;

Where un autre spoon?

[Describing those chasing the little gingerbread man] mechant fox, vache, horsey;

Moi, je puttai it;

un, deux, trois, jump;

moi, je go a la creche;

Moi, j’ai not stuck;

La baguette est broken;

Can I have ça ?

Moi, je goé à la supermarket;

Turnez OFF the light!

C’est MY de l’eau!

Poor Daniel is not enjoying the creche at the moment and, every time we sit into the car he says “pas creche” or, in English “creche, no thank you” (see, my efforts on please and thank you are not wasted). He also likes to point out everyone who is wearing glasses: “glasses, like me” he says.

Eating
Michael appears to be ambidextrous. He can take a spoon in each hand and eat perfectly competently from each in turn. He doesn’t often choose to do this as, in his quest to drive his father over the edge, he has, largely, abandoned eating solid food. We are told that, at the creche they go to eat separately and, when they return, each looks for the other to give a quick kiss before going about his business.

Odd little habits

They both totter when they first wake up. I love to see them walking jerkily but determinedly along the corridor to see what excitement is available at the breakfast table.

Daniel yells as loudly as his mother; that’s pretty loud.

They are both extremely keen that we should all sit in the same chairs when we sit at the table and woe betide any parent or child who sits in the wrong chair.

It’s harder than you might think to string this information together coherently. Did you notice?

Woe is me


Posted in: Princess, Twins

Every time I am left on my own with the children for an evening, it turns into a disaster. Witness tonight.

6.30 Arrive home. All is well.

6.35 Telephone rings, it is the children’s father ringing to say goodnight. Daniel wants to answer the telephone, the Princess gets it. He bites her hard. I remonstrate. He cries, she cries and Michael says placidly into the phone “Papa”.

7.00 Michael decides he wants to go to bed and starts wandering around the house with his doudou, nounours and a bottle clutched between his lips. Daniel gets into the bath which due to his insistence that the taps remain on is sufficiently deep for him to swim in and therefore requires my anxious presence.

7.05 The childminder and her two children come back looking for something she has forgotten. The children are perplexed but excited. Daniel gets out of the bath and drips around the house after them. The Princess gets into her pyjamas unbidden, I am delighted. All is under control.

7.30 The boys are in bed. The Princess and I go to make our dinner (the boys have eaten earlier with the childminder, I am not a bad mother).

7.45 The boys begin to howl. The Princess goes and gives them a bottle. They are clearly all enjoying this.

7.50 I sing to the boys in their darkened room while the Princess makes the noise of a cackling witch outside. Our mood is interrupted and I go outside and yell at her highness. All is silence except for a hysterical giggle.

8.00 The Princess brings the boys their third bottles of the night.

8.15 We eat. Well, I eat, the Princess refuses my offering and has salami from the fridge instead. Shortly after she brings a record fourth bottle to Daniel.

8.20 The Princess goes to wash her teeth and I hear an anguished roar from the boys’ room. Apparently a litre of milk is Daniel’s upper limit and he has got sick. I carry him to the parental bedroom while he liberally bespatters the corridor, me, the clean clothes in the basket and himself with vomit.

8.30 The Princess is a bit of a star and brings water and sponges as I mop up and change Daniel and put him in our bed. She then goes to wash her face while I change Daniel’s bed clothes and clean up the vomit with the aid of several floor cloths and some wipes to try to get out the bits between the floorboards. For the duration, Daniel burbles happily from our bed, where he is feeling much better and Michael screams bitterly from his bed that he wants to get up. He feels that there is fun elsewhere. Sensing that I am implacable, his screams turn to “Méchante Maman!”.

8.45 The Princess’s face washing has been over-enthusiastic. She is soaked to the skin. We put on new pyjamas but while doing so doggy falls into the toilet. He will have to be washed. This news is greeted with displeasure.

8.50 The Princess is finally in bed. Michael appears to have fallen asleep in exhaustion but Daniel is still wide awake. I offer to read the Princess’s story. She wants an Angelina book with a stage. She starts moving the cut out Angelina and friends around the stage and insists that I stay to watch. After ten minutes of this, I abandon her to it. As I leave her room I hear Daniel chatting hopefully to the by now comatose Michael “Where hibou, Michael, MICHAEL?”

9.00 I put on the washing machine. I clean up after dinner, I tidy up a bit. I go to turn off the Princess’s light. She is dutifully snuggled up to bed with the Angelina characters put away but she refuses to let me turn off the light. I decide to leave it as she will be asleep in a minute anyway.

9.15 I go and try to get Daniel to sleep. He is delighted to see me and very chatty. I sing to him, he talks to me: “Mama singing”. The phone rings: “what’s that”. “It’s the phone never mind.” We both hear the Princess getting up to answer it: “what’s that”. We hear the sound of the Princess padding round the flat. I put Daniel back to bed. He howls, Michael stirs. The Princess is starting to cry.

9.30 I go out to the Princess: “I thought I was all alone”. I comfort her, put her back to bed and assure her that we would never leave her all alone. She looks at me balefully – and you haven’t washed my doggy yet either. I go and wash doggy.

9.40 She’s asleep, the boys are asleep. I start typing.

10.00 My husband returns from his labours. I think he might like a cup of tea but he’ll have to read this first.

Bloodbath


Posted in: Middle Child, Twins, Youngest Child

The other morning, Michael had a nosebleed. I’m not sure why though I can imagine several explanations. He wiped blood all over his face and clothes. While I had my back turned Daniel fell or was pushed and cut his lip and bled freely over his chin and onto his t-shirt. Then the child minder arrived; it’s hard not to be defensive in these circumstances.