Sartorial elegance

The boys and I went with a girlfriend and her two sons to the Natural History Museum today to see the dinosaur and mammal exhibitions. Both were a run--away success, despite the fact that the mammal display mainly consists of rather sinister and dilapidated-looking hundred year old stuffed animals. Appreciate the reason the museum use them (they don't want to replace them with updated, newer dead animals), but they do have a rather spooky look to them – hope the Boys don’t get nightmares. Can just imagine them on the psychiatrists’ couch in 30 years time trying to work out why they can’t bear to be anywhere near an otter, or small flightless birds for example… and of course it would all be mummy’s fault. (‘They fxxk you up, your mum and dad….’).

Husband is away again this week; then on Friday we’re off to a wedding, leaving our beloved children with my parents (this is becoming a habit). Have been frantically making lists so that they are not left without vital items like water-wings (in the West country in September?), or vegetable stock. Vegetable stock? Good grief. I remember when my main concern before a trip away was whether or not my suede trousers would be too hot… Nowadays, suede trousers? Are you kidding? Even if I could fit into them (and I’m just not going to find out. Not unless all sharp implements and harmful drugs have been removed from the house first, anyway), I can tell you that in the first five minutes I was wearing them, they would be covered with puke, biscuits, milk, paint and possibly poo or wee. Not necessarily in that order. Which leaves me with a rather scary conundrum; what the hell am I going to wear?

Nowadays, if you blindfolded me I would have no idea what I was wearing. When I went to meet my girlfriend and her kids from the tube this morning I had to ask her when I got there if I looked OK – since I had completely forgotten to check before I left. And to cap it all, think I may have walked all the way back from the museum with my flies undone – since they were unzipped when I nipped into the loo when we got home. Which leaves me with two equally unattractive possibilities.

1. Am so porky at the moment that they came undone of their own accord (possible but really too scary to contemplate).
or 2. I left them undone in my haste to get Boy #1 out of the disabled loo in the Mammals section of the museum after he refused to deliver and I started to worry we would find a queue of irate/desperate looking wheelchair occupants waiting to get in after we left (needless to say, the corridor was deserted when we came out).

And in addition, did my friend spot that I was flying low, and if so did she not tell me out of pity, because she expects that sort of thing from me nowadays? Worry worry worry.

More chocolate, anyone?


Wednesday August 23rd 2006

Potty training today was reasonably successful until, having denied that he would ever (EVER) need to go to the loo again, Boy #1 had a rather spectacular accident this afternoon. Think he was putting it off from the excitement of having spent the morning with a slightly older boy (who could wee standing up, the show-off). Anyway, once our visitors (and the peer pressure) had gone, he waited until I was putting the buggy away before delivering. I came back in to be met with the results of what must have been a deluge – it was everywhere. In classic ‘who dunnit’ styley I could see where it had started and how he had tried to make his way his way to the potty before giving up just inside the bathroom door and simply going with it (really by that time, it was probably the only thing he could have done, poor thing…) Thank heavens Boy #2 was in his raised play pen – otherwise he might have drowned – he would certainly have been rolling around in it given his propensity for finding pools of unpleasant liquid (up until now, his puke) and spreading it about a bit. Of course today was the day the cleaners had come, so it was all over a sparkling clean flat, perfect.

Repeat after me; I AM a yummy mummy… I AM a yummy mymmy…