British Parent Blogger of the Week

Sunday night, we're back in Moscow, and I'm trying to avoid facing up to the fact that I have a one-on-one 90 minute long Russian lesson first thing tomorrow morning for which I have revised precisely nothing.

I was so full of good intentions when I started this. Hell, I was so full of good intentions when I was packing for our trip to England that not only did I take all my notes with me but whilst there I also purchased two packs of index cards so that I could transpose all the new words I was planning on learning onto them, all the better to be able to test myself with.

Ha.

In fact, HA!

I wouldn't mind but Ludmilla, my teacher, clearly KNEW this was going to happen because a) she teaches mums a lot, and b) she said to me at my last lesson the day before I left that I shouldn't worry if I didn't have the chance to do anything because we could go over it all again when I got back. To which I spiritedly replied that of course I would be working on it - I would have loads of time.

Again, ha. HA!

So, rather than dwell on the prospect of my forthcoming humiliation tomorrow, let's talk about something much more interesting. The British Parent Blogger of the Week. You may have noticed my use of the world 'Parent' there, rather than 'Mummy' and yes, there's a clue; this week's pick is a bloke.

Dan at All That Comes With It writes of himself:

'I live near Huddersfield in the North of England. I’m a 33 years old part time stay at home dad. For three days a week I'm also a community mental health nurse but you won’t find me blogging about that much. I’m married to Kerry and we have two children - Amy (5) and Evan (2). I keep chickens, grow veg, enjoy the odd walk, and am a complete and utter geek.'

He's been blogging longer than God (allegedly) and in his 'spare' time is co-ordinating the forthcoming Hadrian's Wall walk in aid of The Joseph Salmon Trust - you can find out more about that and how to sponsor the walkers by clicking here. And the video on his post 'This One's for the Xbox Family' last week brought tears to my eyes and reminded me what a blxxdy amazing thing blogging can be.

Have tissues handy.

For the British Mummy Bloggers Ning, click here. (Note: It's called 'Mummy', but Dads can be members too).

There's a new word in town...

Still on half term, still at my parents.

My Dad, probably like most fathers (in fact probably like most of us, if I'm honest), has a tendancy to 'pronounce' upon things when he's had one or two glasses of wine. If you were unkind and didn't know him very well you might even call these pronouncements just a little bit... pompous. (It is of course mine and my siblings job to puncture such bubbles, which I have to say he takes in very good part).

This morning at breakfast, there was a somewhat heated exchange which involved, in no particular order;

• the Boys being told that they had to finish their breakfast before they got down from the table
• the unfairness of such a despotly suggestion from their wicked mother
• the fact that Boy #1's Power Ranger had fallen apart - FOR EVER
• the fact that Boy #2's dirty diesel train was missing presumed STOLEN
• the disaster of Boy #2 finding he had WEETABIX ON HIS HAND
• the importance of putting the Power Ranger back together AT ONCE, BEFORE getting dressed and couldn't I see what a crazy suggestion it was to do things the other way round?
• the loss of Boy #2's napkin, vital to rectify the weetabix situation (it was of course on the table in front of him)
• the intervention of a grandfather trying to eat his breakfast in relative peace
• and the slight outrage on the part of said grandfather when no-one took any notice of him and he realised that such a normally tranquil part of his day had disintegrated into whining and moaning

The fracas was brought to a swift halt however when Boy #1, outraged that no-one was taking the Power Ranger horror seriously enough, said loudly;

"Please! Can we just stop this POMPERSATION!"

and my father and I dissolved into fits of laughter after I muttered in reply "Well, of all the people to use that word with, I think you picked the right one..."

But on reflection, I think he may have hit paydirt. I mean, can't you just see the myriad uses for the word 'pompersation'? As in, 'let's sit down for dinner with some fine wine and some pompersation'? Or, 'They gathered for a drink in the local pub and after a couple of beers had a very fulfilling pompersation about the state of the world today...' Or, 'Daily Mail readers rallied round today to support the newspaper's latest pompersation about the parlous state of the country's immigration policy' ?

Personally I think the uses for this word could be extremely far reaching, and fully expect to find it in the next edition of the Oxford Dictionary. What uses could you find for it?


Update: I've been thinking. How about using this word as collective noun too? For example, 'a pompersation of Daily Mail readers'? (Feel free to delete DMR and replace with whatever takes your fancy...). And this evening, after (unsurprisingly) a couple of glasses of wine, the Greater Potty Family came up with a classification system for early warning of pompersations. How does 'DefPomp #1 / #2 / #3 / #4 / or #5' sound? The higher the chance of a normal conversation disintegrating into a 'pompersation' the higher the DefPomp rating. Or is that pushing it too far?

Thought so.

Observations #445

#1: Don't try to manipulate a four year old's emotions...

(Not if that 4 year old is Boy #2 and you don't want to be put firmly in your place, at any rate.)

Yesterday morning my mother-in-law was lamenting our forthcoming departure; we were doing the 'grandparent shuffle' and were leaving to spend the rest of half term with my parents. Talking to Boy #2, she said to him "I'm going to miss you when you've gone."

He appeared unperturbed by this information, and turned to her, big brown eyes wide and said, "Well, I don't miss you. Right now, I miss gran and grandad..." Long pause. Then: "But when I am with them, I will miss you instead."

Well, I suppose at least he threw her a bone.


#2: They grow up faster than you think.

This morning Boy #1 and I were listening to his younger brother wreaking havoc elsewhere in the house. Boy #2 was vociferously shrieking for help; the bathroom light needed switching on, and Boy #1 turned to me, sighed heavily and said, "These youngsters do go on, don't they?"


#3: Sometimes life is a cliche.

As when you are being driven down a busy Moscow highway through swirling snow by a chain-smoking taxi-driver, watching the traffic around you take part in it's complicated ballet, and suddenly on the radio you hear this...

A Thorny Issue?

Apparantly my M-i-L is scared of me.

This was the bombshell Husband dropped on me today, casually, as if it were something I should know but no big deal really. He then amended his statement, to something more like; well, not scared of you exactly, but she worries about what you think.

Hmmm.

Scared of me.

Is this a good or a bad thing, I wonder? I mean, I don't go through life with the aim of being the Dragon Lady. I like to imagine that I'm kind, approachable, and have an open face; hell, otherwise why is it always me who gets stopped and asked for directions by every tourist and crazy in town? I'm good with kids; I talk to rather than at them, my son's friends are happy to come over on playdates, and I appreciate children as individuals rather than an as encumbrances (unless, of course, I need the loo and they just won't let go of my leg to let me go to the bathroom, which happens more than I might like).

OK. Perhaps I can be a bit brusque at times. I don't always suffer fools gladly, and I'm self-aware enough to admit that in fact, if we're being completely honest, if you catch me at the wrong moment I occassionally resemble a cactus, but I usually soften up pretty quickly with the liberal application of wine. Or chocolate. Or wine and chocolate.

So, spikey, yes, I'll admit to that. But scary? I hope not.

The shocking thing though? If she chooses to think that about me, I can live with it.

To put this in context; I realised when I first met her that my mother-in-law is a warm, open, loving and wonderful mother to her children. Who wants to know EVERYTHING about them. The first things, great. I can only hope to be able to deliver the same benefits to my boys. That last, though, that is the sticking point. I come from a very private family where words were carefully considered, and where talking too much about your feelings was, for a long time, something that needed to be diluted with humour, just in case you hurt someone else. Or, preferably, something you didn't do at all. 'Just suck it up and get on with it' could have been our family motto.

There were reasons for this, (none of them sinister, all of them private), and the result is that for a long time, neither of my siblings or I took too well to sharing our deepest thoughts. We do it now, of course we do (hellooo! I'm blogging!), but on our terms, not someone elses'. So I have to admit that whilst I like and admire my mother in law, I always held my distance and kept my defences up.

And when the Boys arrived, I did nothing to change the status quo. If anything, I enforced my spikey persona still more when they were first born. I suppose that the reason behind this was that I worried she would try and take over. Her delight in her grandsons (her first) was total and I felt that lines had to be drawn so she knew that what Husband and I (oh, alright, I, if I'm honest) wanted in terms of how they were treated was not just some easily disregardable fancy but very important to us. And I suppose the feminist in me felt that all this adoration of the Boys simply because they were boys was a bit of a slight to the grand-daughters she already had.

But you know, looking back on it now, it seems petty, silly. There was never any question in my mind that she had anything but my sons' best interests at heart, it's just that her interpretation of what they were was slightly different to my own. You know; softer. Less Anxious New Mother. More laid-back, and seen it all before. More like that of... well, a Grandmother.

So nowadays, having had that realisation, I am much more laid-back. I don't over-react in the same way, at least I hope not, and we have reached an understanding that seems to work very well; she thinks I'm a bit overly strict but respects that, and I think she spoils them - a little - but generally let her get on with it.

But 'scary'? Well, if 'scary' means that when I'm not around she doesn't let the Boys watch television in the morning or give them that 3rd and 4th chocolate biscuit in a row when they look at her with those big beseeching eyes because she doesn't want to upset me, I guess I will just have to live with that.

How about you? How do you deal with your mother in law?

Today's Definition of...

....Pride coming before a Fall;


Pride

Yesterday evening Husband and I watched the Baftas. When he remarked that he was going to be in Chiswick today and who knows, might bump into local Bafta Best Actor Colin Firth, I flippantly suggested that if he did so he should mention that I personally was unimpressed by the bouffant hair style he had been sporting at the award ceremony. (Although, like everyone else no doubt, I was mightily impressed by his speech - the only really entertaining one of the evening - in which he described how you should never send an important e-mail without getting your fridge fixed first).


The Fall

I got my hair cut today by an unfamiliar stylist. Suffice it to say, I have been 'bouffed' to the max.

Serves me right.



Note: You might think I would have known better than to make the comments above, since a while back I wrote a post on hairdresser disasters for Powder Room Graffiti; check it out here if you're interested...

British Mummy Blogger of the Week

We're back in England for the week - hurrah! I have a long list of things to do and buy, and whilst I won't go into that here I'm sure that you won't be at all surprised to learn that it includes purchasing large quantities of Green & Black's cocoa powder and chocolate bars.

Since arriving yesterday I've found myself noticing the weirdest things. How clean all the cars seem, for example. They're not, obviously - it just seems that way after being surrounded by their excessively mucky Moscow counterparts. And I'm surprisingly happy to see the rain. Now THAT's weird. And it will probably only last as long as the first time I go outside into it and my snow-proof, extremely-low-temperature-proof but in no-way waterproof Northface coat is soaked in two seconds flat...

I'm not sure how much time I'm going to have for blogging during the forthcoming whirlwind of catching up with friends and family, which is why I'm posting this week's British Mummy Blogger of the Week now. Deerbaby writes of herself:

I'm a mum of two - a girl of 2 and a boy of 10. I started this blog because I want to remember it all -"The rotten and the bliss."

And her most recent post where she draws a comparison between the conspiracy of silence regarding the changes that parents experience pre and post the arrival of their first child with the movie 'Fight Club' ('First rule;you do not talk about Fight Club. Second rule; you do not talk about Fight Club') contains one of the few useful hints about baby kit that I was given before Boy #1 arrived...

For the British Mummy Bloggers Ning, click here. (Note: It's called 'Mummy', but Dads can be members too).

He's 4. FOUR!!!

This afternoon the Boys and I were sitting in the school cafeteria. I was bribing them not to moan on the 20 minute walk home through the driving snow by feeding them chocolate croissants whilst piously consuming only hot water myself. (Honestly. Who knew I would turn into my mother so early?).

It was busy, with pupils from right across the age spectrum of the school (4 - 18) stopping by to refuel, and next to us there was a table of five approximately 15 year-old girls, laughing and chatting away.

Boy #2, having finished his croissant, sat there with a chocolate smile on his face, surveying the room. A particularly loud 'Oh my gaaaaaaad!' from the table of girls behind him caught his interest, and he turned around to take a look.

He did a double take.

Then, he leaned over, nudged his brother in the ribs and said "Boy #1! Look!"

Boy #1, in a world of his own, recounting the plot of 'Cloudy with a chance of Meatballs' to me for the nth time, stopped. "What? What is it?"

"Look!" came the answer, a cheeky grin on Boy #2's face as he pointed behind him with a sticky hand. "Look! Gaaaaayells*!"


This is how it's going to be, isn't it?


* That's 'girls' for those who don't speak Four Year Old Boy.