Growing up

A lot of my posts tend to mention how the children are on the cusp of starting school, and how this is affecting me me me me me. Well today, I thought it was time for a change, and time for me to mention a little about them and how they are doing.

On Tuesday last week, they came home from nursery, armed with a red folder each, which they held under an arm, trying to appear all grown up and scholarly. They presented us curious parents with these folders, not knowing how they would make me cry with pure pride.

The folders were like a review of their progress whilst they have been at the nursery, outlining their strengths, their weaknesses, their behaviour, their development, well basically, they are like giant school reports, cram-packed full with stuff on them.

Here are some excerpts;

Evie’s:
“This is what I like doing best: Drawing and painting”
“These are things that worry me: Monsters and lions” Awww
“I still need help to do these things: Nothing” That’s my girl!
“Evie is a charming little girl with a great personality. It has been lovely watching her confidence grow, I thought she would be shy forever! I can see a happy little girl with good confidence now. Evie will love school. Good luck, you will be missed.”

Marley’s:
“This is what I like doing best: Playing with the Lego”
“These are things that worry me: Monsters”
“I still need help to do these things: Nothing” Yay!
“Marley is a lovely little girl whose character is shining through every day. Her creative side shines through in all her activities. She will settle into school really well. You will be missed Marley.”

I just have to say how very proud I am of them, and I just hope that the way they have behaved throughout their time at nursery (which has been impeccably by the way), continues throughout their school years. (I also wish it would carry through at home, I am sick of splitting up fights between the pair of them!)

I had to add my comments (I wrote an ESSAY on each! Ha!) and tomorrow they hand it back in.
Their first step into the world of school is just about to be taken.

Late night shopping may be retail therapy for you, but it certainly isn’t for kids!

Many of my posts tend to begin with the sentence; “Last night on my way home from work”, or at least they seem to, to me anyway. But, this time, it needs to begin with this, because I do not know where else to begin!

So, I was sat on the bus, waiting for it to set off, glancing at my watch, and rubbing the big lump that had appeared on my hand from bashing it (accidentally) on the corner of the till drawer, and patiently waiting for my digital watch to change from 29 to 30 so the driver would put his foot down and get the hell away from the hell that is the Trafford Centre.

Just before he closed the doors, on walked two girls, sporting two large earrings each, and pushing two prams. One had a tiny new-born baby who was sleeping soundly in his cosy little den, and the other was a girl, about 2 years old who was wide awake and smiley. Now, bear in mind, this was at 10:30 at night, and from a shopping centre, not from like a hospital or an emergency doctors or something, where it would kind of be acceptable at that time of night. Their buggies were laden down with shopping bags, mostly sports shop ones, so they had selfishly dragged these poor kids out late at night so that they could do a spot of shopping.

Now, I am all for taking babies out for night time walks during the early days, when no matter what you try, the child will not sleep, but this is before you’ve had a chance to establish a decent kind of routine. And, my children, to be honest, never really had a proper routine until very recently, when Alex knuckled down and instilled a strict 8pm bedtime into them, in preparation for when they start school in September. But, we would never have had them out at The Trafford Centre at night, just because of a bit of retail therapy! It’s so wrong!

As the bus set off, the little girl was wriggling and trying to get out of her pushchair, and her young mother got her out and sat her on her knee, talking to her friend using foul language in front of the child, and saying how “f*cking naughty” she was. Then the next minute, she was kissing the soft hair of the two year old and telling her she was a good girl! Talk about mixed messages! The poor child did not know whether she was coming or going!
So, the remainder of my journey was filled with the sounds of high pitched squeals, the sound of “NO! Shut up you little sh*t”, and in complete contradiction “Mummy’s little angel, good girl”!

As I got closer to home, the mum went to put the girl back in her pram, and as she fought against the child’s struggle, the child made a noise that sounded like this: “Kur”. The mother recoiled in shock, and exclaimed in horror; “she just called me a cow! I can’t believe she just called me a cow! Little sh*t! It’s because I call her a little cow sometimes, she’s got it from me! I am shocked, I can’t believe it! She called me a cow!”.

And as I got off the bus, all I could think to myself was, well really, what else did you expect? And, I felt like such a good parent.
I realised that it doesn’t matter how much money you have. It doesn’t matter how many Easter eggs you can afford to get them. It doesn’t matter that you’re not there every night, reading their stories at bed-time.
What does matter is that you are consistent, that you give them love, but discipline them when they are being naughty, but that you do not contradict yourself all the time. It also matters that children have a good night’s sleep, and you can’t afford to be selfish when you have kids. How this girl expected her child to be on her best behaviour when she’s getting her to bed at midnight each night, is beyond me. It matters that you do not call your children “cows”, because that is simply disgusting.

(Incidentally, the big lump on my hand went down, and is now replaced with a shiny bruise.)

Amy Winehouse

Last night, which just happened to be the last night of my 2 and a half weeks off work, I was sat drawing with the kids, and Amy Winehouse was playing on the shuffle setting of my ipod. Evie started to sing along and announced how much she loved Amy Winehouse, whilst dramatically waving her arms around in a love heart shape.
Marley decided she would have a go at drawing Amy Winehouse, and at 4 years old (and a bit), this is what she came up with. Isn’t it brilliant? (And check out her boobies and tattooed arms, now that is attention to detail!)

Rats to rejection

I never told the whole story about the park visit yesterday. Evie (one of my 4 year old twin girls) suffered rejection for the first time in her tiny little life! From a boy! Milan (Antonia’s little 2 [almost 3] year old), was taken under the wings of Evie and Marley (my twins), and they showed him the slide, sat next to him on the swings and played monsters with him. At one point, Milan reached up towards Marley’s hand and held it as they started to walk to the big slide together. Evie noticed this, and ran over, holding out her hand towards Milan. Neither Milan nor Marley noticed her, and they continued on their quest towards the slide eagerly. Evie froze. She slowly turned around towards us adults and her lip quivered, her shoulders shook and her forehead became a little furrow of lines, “Milan won’t hold my hand!” She cried. I gently explained that they didn’t see her there, but you could see she felt rejected and alone. They all went on the slide, and Marley, being sensitive and kind, said they would wait for Evie, but her and Milan accidentally went down the slide without her. Poor Evie was left heartbroken and desperate. I had to tell her to play it cool! “Play hard to get Evie!”

I also haven’t mentioned what happened last night yet have I? Ugh, make sure you are not eating food of any kind!
On my way to work, I noticed a lady rummaging through the bin at the tram stop, and she didn’t even stop when I arrived to buy my ticket. I was quite taken aback with this. At first I thought perhaps this lady had dropped something in the bin, and then I realised I’ve seen this girl doing the same thing before. She’s a known drug addict around these parts, and she was desperately raking through. Goodness knows what she was trying to find. Food? Money? Drugs? A ticket someone has accidentally thrown away?

Then, on the way home from work, I was waiting at the tram stop, alongside a goth who was heavily engrossed in his ipod and his book, and alongside an elderly gentleman, who, to be honest, I was surprised to see out and about at that time of night on his own… I wonder if he thought the same thing about me? Anyway, there I was standing on the platform, when I saw something move quite quickly on the other side of the platform… it was huge, so my first thought was “wow, squirrels are staying up later these days!”, until I realised the tail was far from bushy, and it was indeed no squirrel. It was a RAT! I pointed it out to the elderly gentleman, and we watched it together for a few minutes as it scrambled about hunting for food, and sniffed the shelter for clues. Suddenly it darted off super-fast, and a girl came walking along. We both hoped that the rat didn’t come back and frighten the poor girl! It was a lovely shared moment, and for the first time in ages, despite the rat which had made my hair stand on end, and my skin crawl, I felt safe.

Windy Words

Today has been an unusually windy day. I got the kids all ready for our nightly trip to The Trafford Centre, where they get picked up by Alex on his way home from work, and I toddle off to work. They had their hats on, their big warm coats and their little handbags with a couple of sweets in to try and keep them awake. Parenting has a lot to do with bribery. Stickers don’t cut it on a bus like they do at the dinner table.

So, we got to Stretford and stood waiting for our bus to come along, when suddenly the wind picked up and almost blew us all away, well, I say “us”, I think I meant “them”, because there is no way the wind could blow me anywhere – the New Year diet is…. erm…. well let’s just say it’s not going so well.

Evie whimpered a little and said she wanted to be at home, and Marley was silent, which I thought was unusual, but when asked if she was okay, she nodded and seemed content, despite the gusts.

We played our usual game of eye spy on the bus, and then off I went to work once they were safely bundled into Alex’s car.

I got home tonight and told Alex how I felt bad that I had to drag them out in the wind, but we don’t really have a choice at the moment. He chuckled a little bit and said that Marley told him the following:

“I tried to talk to Mummy, but the wind blew my words away”. I cried!