The Harridan

It is Friday, there has been GBK burgers eaten, the couch is very welcoming, and I am drinking a little bit of Charlotte’s sauvignon blanc from Wednesday night when she came for a very dull dinner of sausages. Mark is watching an unidentifiable movie from about 1987 with Gene Hackman and maybe that guy from Pulp Fiction and the women have outrageously enormous hair like Anita Roddick’s from The Body Shop and long, shapeless pastel-coloured blazers. I, needless to say, am not.

Meanwhile, I am getting over the shock of my first real tantrum experience from the usually quite sensible Barnaby. I will spare you the details – but it was ugly, it was public, and it went on for about 35 minutes. There was biting, drool, swearing, pushchair direction sabotage and finally  offers of help by alarmed strangers. I was totally cool and just ignored it, and sometimes did a bit of laughing. Kind of how you laugh a little bit at a funeral. Inappropriate and entirely wrong, but unavoidable. There was a plan to take the kids for a (bad) haircut at the Greek Cypriot salon, and then to the Spanish cafe for dinner to have some paella and then churros and hot chocolate, but Crazy Biting Feral Insane Children are not allowed such luxuries. So it was chopped up oranges, bagels and salami for dinner.  And some Very Serious Discussion about acceptable behaviour. This is what they mean when they say parenting is hard, I suppose. That, and the fact that sleep-ins are a distant memory and that kids bend your glasses the wrong way so that they never sit on your nose properly again and they open your face creams and smear them onto the mirror and they pull out drawers-full of pyjama bottoms all over the floor every night because of wee-drips. Etc, etc.

And this comes at the end of a long week.I have been managing the school run on my own.  These are the recurring things that I think about as I fight my way through the wall of grey car exhaust fumes and general city filth with a double buggy, baby in a sling (head lolling about relatively unsupported and receiving concerned looks from taxidrivers) and a boy on a scooter:

1. I am tired of walking through vomit on the Harrow Road. At 8am, the pavement is full of hoick, splats of vomit and dog shit. I have to weave in and around it all. It gets very tiresome.

2. I d not like that bit just where the bridge meets the road and there is a fire escape doorway which reeks of drunken man wee. The ammonia stink stings your nostrils every time you walk past, in winter, summer, rainy days, mornings and late afternoons. Even spacing your breathing doesn’t really avoid it. Sometimes there is someone sleeping there in the early morning. It must be unspeakably horrendous to spend the night there with the stink, the cold, the fumes and the noise.

3. The walk is hopefully making me thin; but it probably isn’t. Thinness may be too much to hope for, especially when I am in the habit of eating cake/ferrero rocher chocolates by the trayful; I really just want to wear fabulous things, which may be another desire entirely. Next on the list: a leather t-shirt. Which may be tricky from the breastfeeding perspective, but it will be sooooo stylish (and sweaty).

4. While on the subject of breastfeeding/myself, I have become rather preoccupied with Sarah Jessica Parker’s hair. Reruns of SATC play when I feed Ned his late-night snack – they are out of order so I get to see her and her disjointed and illogical hair journey. I am liking the short crop the most, and think I could artfully recreate that with the help of Stephen,the gay ballet dancing Irish Aveda stylist whom I so recently shunned. Stephen, all is forgiven.

Anyhoo, it is bedtime. Here is a picture of Ned at 5 weeks old. He is 7 weeks old now, and is perhaps the most lovely spotty baby is the world. He doesn’t bite me, in any case.

It has been a long time since I posted anything, and I think that is largely down to the fact that having four children is tiring. Come the evening, my stuffing has been yanked out and I am limp, grey, collapsed onto the couch with some form of evil cakey/biscuity/Green & Blacks-related foodstuff and perhaps a sneaky glass of wine in my shaking hand. But Mr Ned is now the ripe old age of six and a half weeks and he has been sleeping in longish stretches and so things are returning to normal. I am hoicking myself into my old clothes, cooking proper dinner, doing the odd bit of work. Because One Must Get On With It. And here I am with a round-up of sorts. You can judge for yourself whether the sleep-deprivation is having an effect on me or not.

So, yes, today, my other baby, the Big Baby, the Son of Shenanigans, the Boy of Badness, the Child of Unnecessary Breakages and High-Pitched-Ill-Timed-Screaming, had a birthday. I branched out and made a cake from Nigella’s Feast and it was a cake disaster – dry, brick-like, and simply not worthy of being a product of the shining, hefty, glorious KitchenAid. I blame Nigella (not my somewhat unconventional weighing techniques which involve googling of gram measurements conversions, quickly abandoned in favour of some very slap-dash unscientific estimation) and her seductive way with the text, which fools me into thinking that I too can have sexy cakes atop my kitchen counter adorned with accoutrements bought from Dean & DeLuca’s New York. Anyway, this is how her Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake carcasses emerged from the oven:

Burnt, sunken, sad and shameful. Luckily the chocolate ganache and sugar flowers did transform it into something more seductive to gaze at, if not to eat, and the children were entirely clueless and shrieked with excitement when the Cake of Shame #2 was presented to them. Maybe that was the point, after all.

Anyway, Custard did have a lovely day with lots of presents and pizza for dinner. He has been feeling a little bit sad lately, what with being usurped by the baby and all, as you can see in this photo. Simply put, we all love the baby, and Custard does not.

And today I refrained from being cranky with him, and telling him off poking the baby’s eyeballs/brushing the baby’s scalp with the Mason Pearson bristle brush/pulling his own nappy off and weeing into any available corner like a common dog and was instead unusually kind and spoke in a gentle voice and attempted to be patient all day long. Tomorrow, however, it will be business as usual. Custard, you have been warned.

Other things of note

1. My new £2 polyester dress. It is a bit scratchy, and has that spicy smell of other people’s body odour, but look at that line!  And it fits, and I can get my boobs out quick-smart. Win.

8. I discovered I am a gifted shield-co-maker. Mark and I made this for Barnaby for Literacy Week at school – he was King Arthur. Mark cut the shield out, and painted it, and I made the dragon. Yes, I am a free-hand-dragon-drawing GENIUS.

3. The NZ model who lives a few doors down is a bit sniffy and I no longer have a crush on her. I am Above That now. She walked past today in a leopard-print coat and Chanel bag and did not give me any eye contact. I was momentarily crushed, but am putting it down to some weird anti-NZ thing. I thought my charming NZ-accented witty comments made to the children and  yelled out at a loud enough volume to reach her lovely ears across the road would have beguiled her, but apparently not. So I will offically leave her alone.

3. My hair has begun to fall out (again). I forgot about that part of post-partum-ness.  Soon I shall have an accidental fringe from the wispy bits that grow back in order to cover my newly naked forehead. Really looking forward to that one.

6. Notting Hill is better than Acton. Case in point – on Saturday, on a routine trip to Portobello Rd markets via Carluccio’s for coffee we came across a big Harvey Nicks advertising thing. They were taking photo booth pics in black and white with a glamour-inducing wind machine – and here is the evidence of my one-off photogenic glory. You wouldn’t get that in w12, I’d wager.

Ok, so the Alexa hair didn’t work out – I have a fluffy mullet – but I ALWAYS end up with a fluffy mullet, so I am fine about it, really. What was most irritating about the whole hair salon charade was that I went to a  new place, eschewing the usual exorbitant but lux Aveda to try out a new stylish salon run by a local couple whom I kind of know in order to Cheat The Man and support local business. Or something similarly worthy. So I took Ned, who is small enough to just lie there on the floor, alternating between animated slumber and small little mewling sounds which culminate in needing a breastfeed, looking cute and only slightly crusty around the eyes. And it was all very nice, and cool, with giant fading portrait photos of ancient Eastern European aristocracy in crumbling gold-leaf frames and art deco desks and a huge vintage cash register and new, unthumbed copies of Love magazine (surely Katie Grand’s white elephant?) and Italian titles. (I could spot no Grazia or Heat, dear Reader. I should have fled right then).

The stylist is a mother I know well enough to moan about the children and briefly discuss the merits of camel winter coats and vintage handbags from the Portobello Road stall – not really well enough to remember her name or meet up for anything other than an appointment to give me a fluffy mullet. Anyway the point of this painfully long preamble is that I believe she is Jealous Of My Youth (JOMY for short. Do keep up.) Because I still have a little bit of it left, at 32, and she is 39, and she doesn’t, so much – at least, not comparatively. And I am convinced she is JOMY because she said the following things:

1. My hair that I entered the salon with looked “just like that lampshade” – pointing to a big, gaudy, pleated fabric 1950’s lampshade which was so wide it may have been difficult to get into the salon doors;

2. My roots. She did the first once-over, she took a loud and sharp intake of breath and made a comment along the lines of “OHHHHHH these roots are BAAAAAD – they are going to have to be a work in progress – we are going to have to tackle them slowly and carefully…” worried frown, slow exhale, me reddening from the shame;

3. She looked for a grey hair, which I was sure she would not find, then found not just one, but a whole patch! A whole filthy patch! Which was conveniently located at the back of my head where I could not see – and of course now she has highlighted the phantom patch so no one else can confirm or deny it was ever there. Clearly, I do not actually have any grey patches, and she was just trying to make me feel OLD. In a mean hair-stylist kind of way.

And then, she gave me the fluffy mullet which was another attempt to age me prematurely. And I think she won. Cow.

And in other equally important news, the KitchenAid is shining smugly on our new shelves in the HALLWAY (ah yes, London flats are snug at best) and I have made two cakes already. Last night’s cake was so brown and chocolately and only a little bit squashed and this morning I was still feeling the proudness of new-cake-production and so I told the children they could have some when they woke up. Unfortunately, they did not eat anything else, turning down Shreddies and banana and peanut butter toast and so, shamefully, I am officially The Kind Of Mother Who Feeds Her Children CAKE FOR BREAKFAST. That is a new parental low (followed closely by the steady stream of morning TV and the worryingly infrequent teeth cleaning, etc, etc).

Let this be a cautionary tale. Below is the first school photo of Barnaby. Cute, yes, but NOTICE THE TOOTH. Cake for breakfast does no one any favours in the long run.

A Mothery Conundrum

There are many,many domestic issues that one has to face when one is sole carer of small children. All of them deathly boring. Like why do 3 year olds put an entire tin of Vaseline lip balm through their hair just before bed? Why does Custard insist on picking off the letter keys on the keyboard and flinging them into the fruit bowl? And which kid puts my earplugs deep into my bedside container of aqueous cream EVERY NIGHT?  Etc, etc. But tonight, I am thinking about starchy foodstuffs. Ergo:

Rice, couscous, and quinoa are quick things to cook,and the children like them. But they do get all over the floor, stuck to jeans, mashed into the sisal rug, become ingrained into the fabric chairs and fall deep into the crevices of the leather couch. I am oft to be found under the dining room table on my hands and knees in true ungainly matronly fashion wiping the pesky little grains up and my hands get all dermatisis-y from the rinsing of the wiping-up cloth. Possible solutions run to:

1. refusing all but pasta every night;

2. putting the kids on a no carbs diet;

3. feeding them outside on the metal stairs/the pavement;

4. giving them sandwiches in a lunch/dinner reversal. Like a picnic,except indoors, every night, without the sense of occasion or the wicker basket;

5.feeding them in the nude, in the bathtub;

6.not feeding them at all. 

Something for me to mull over at 3am when I am feeding the baby and settling him back to sleep again, and again. Any further thoughts on this irritating domestic issue gratefully received. Have I missed any other major ones? It is always nice to share your pain.

Triumphs of the Day

My Marc Jacobs ensemble – grey wool strapless dress, only slightly ruined by white nursing bra straps announcing themselves every time my carefully placed cardigan swung the wrong way. I am fitting my clothes quite nicely,all things considered (read: 11 pound baby)  and discovering some gems in amongst the maternity detritus. Today was a good sartorial day. 

The KitchenAid red mixer arrived. It is a thing of beauty, and  incidentally, worth the price of a small car in New Zealand.I shall attempt a cake for Friday’s school bake sale. I am quite excited.

I decided that  tomorrow’s trip to the hair salon will be all about me emerging as Alexa Chung. I will channel her hair colour and choppy bob,oh yes I will.

Further on the Alexa theme, I decided today that I will get myself a Mulberry Alexa for having a baby. Self-gifting is truly a lovely idea and one that I endorse wholeheartedly.My husband does not so much, but it is my pelvic floor that is needing repair and my stomach with the angry red scars.I need a little tan satchel love, for goodness’ sake. And crucially  it will leave my hands free for holding the baby/general mothery multi-tasking. It could  be seen as a necessity, rather than a luxury, if you squint your eyes and bend the truth a little. 

Every day, that little new baby is a bit of a triumph. He is terribly good-looking, with darting little round dark eyes and the most lovely milky breath. He swaddles up very nicely in his pink merino wool blanket and really likes dancing to the Glee soundtrack.

Painting the boy’s toenails in Chanel Paparazzi pink, and getting away with it.

Snoozing on the couch at 7:47pm. That is precisely what I am going to do, just as soon as I deal with the rice underfoot.

It may be the case that I am Going Mental. I have behaved rather badly this week, and think that I may be slipping into some kind of deranged post-partum psychotic state whereby I forget all of the Good Ways to be a mama, and instead practice Bad Parenting in every aspect conceivable. For this, kids, I am sorry. I am not proud of:

1. Running Noah over with the pushchair on purpose because he wouldn’t get out of the way (mitigating circumstances plea: we were half an hour late for nursery, he was doing his dropped legs thing where he won’t walk, then he lay down halfway up the stairs so I couldn’t drag the pushchair up to the pavement level. So instead I just dragged the pushchair up over his prone little passive aggressive body, hoping the glamorous redheaded NZ model wouldn’t saunter past at just that moment – in fact, hoping NO ONE would walk past to witness my patience failure and my lapse of good parental judgement. And:

2. Flinging Barnaby out of the darkened, quiet bedroom while trying to put the baby to sleep after he ran in, naked, grinning, laughing like a jackal (or hyena?) with a wailing Noah in the front room who had been rammed between an IKEA pillow, Barnaby’s body and the sharp edge of the couch. I had just explained how tonight, fighting was not going to happen – Daddy was out, having a drink (cue slightly angry face) and that Mummy was trying to do all the breastfeeding/bathing/burping/swaddling/dressing and putting to bed of four excited loud squeally children all at once, and so, therefore, everyone must be on their best behaviour. The flinging of Barnaby, which was fuelled by an upswelling immediate sweary rage, unfortunately resulted in his head thwacking the edge of the door. There was blood. And a tearful phonecall to said drinking husband to come home, NOW. It was entirely unstylish and regrettable.

What is more, the week has presented me with More Troubles That I Am Equipped To Deal With. See below:

3. I wasn’t watching the boys at breakfast, and newly tantrummy and devious Custard spilt his milky bowl of Cheerios all over the newish MacBook Pro. It now won’t really work. I blame myself, because that’s the kind of mood I am in.

4. I cannot stop hoovering up the foodie treats people have been bringing around. In fact, today I have eaten seven bits of citrus slice, two portuguese tarts, coffee and belly’o’pork. Hardly commendable (but v noice).

5. I have decided I cannot do the school run on Wednesday for at least another  two weeks which means Mark has to do it. It seems to me that taking small babies out in the snow and rain by 8am alongside three disinclined small children is Too Hard. My milk supply might dry up, or something. This puts Mark in an awkward situation whereby we have to hire a short-term part-time nanny. No one is happy about this.

6. Custard has twisted the arms of my glasses so that they sit wonkily on my face. The effect is akin to being jetlagged, or a little bit wasted on cheap gin and cold and flu tablets. I am dizzy and irritable, and clearly need new Miu Miu frames. They slip off whenever I bend my head even slightly toward the floor. I cannot begin to explain how annoying it is.

Here is a photo of us, as a new family of six. Witness the chaos. How do we do it, you wonder. Badly, Dear Readers, badly.

Oh dear I am a bit tired today. I am hovering between the oxytocin high and the inevitable crash which will result in tears and not being able to get self off couch/turn off Scooby Do. Am holding it together, just, with No Help AT ALL from those dreadful children of mine. There have been numerous peeing in pants episodes, concluding with Master Noah sitting on my knee, sans knickers, playing with Lego, and then saying in a small but fairly nonchalant voice “Oh! Sorry Mum” – whereupon I look down at the small wet patch spreading across my knees. Mmmm nothing like a bit MORE wees to cheer me up. And then there is the climbing up the curtains malarky, the Custard Screams – a little vice Custard has always had where he just looks you straight in the eye and opens his lungs and screeches until you pay some sort of attention to him. And the fighting between Barnaby and Noah which ALWAYS ends in someone getting whacked in the head with a metal toy car. So boring, it hurts to witness it again and again.

My solution has been the emptying of an entire 250gram box of Valentines Day Lindt chocolates. I know that this will not help me in the long run, but short-term, it has improved the feeling of being mercilessly bullied by a tribe of short, snotty, underwearless boys who permanently carry a whiff of ammonia about their persons. That, and a sneaky glass of some leftover Christmas wine and an episode of Glee, with the volume on high.

Mark, dear husband, has been terribly stressed at work,  and so has been reminding me that he has been Feeling Very Tired. I have held my tongue. As anyone who has ever squeezed out a baby knows, Labour Trumps ALL, and everyone else must keep schtum about their own issues until the Pain of Labour/Breastfeeding/Getting Up at 1am,3am and 6am is a distant memory.  A sore throat is not interesting to hear about when you have icepacks down your knickers and hot dinnerplate-sized nipples which sting at the very idea of being in the shower. This is not a new observation, but I am reminded of its truth. Honestly, SHUT UP AND PAY ATTENTION TO ME. This cold sore and sticky eye are proof, if proof really is needed, that I win the tired/rundown/need rest competition bigtime.

But on a better, kinder, more generous note, I have been very pleased to be back home, and have been practising the gadding about with the double-buggy and the baby in a sling. We are officially The Weirdest Family in W2. We barely fit through doors, and I look like one of those women who have not quite got a handle on natural family planning yet. Especially when all wee-stained with chocolate smeared around the corners of my mouth. It is going to take awhile before my former composed self is brought back from wherever she is. In the meantime, I am the one pushing the orange buggy in a slightly white-knuckled, panicky way.  There may be more sweat about the brow than is necessary for a snowy day, and I may be gripping onto a 3 year old’s arm a little too tightly, maybe muttering what sounds like a threat under my breath. I do feel some sort of generous post birth present is in order, and could kickstart the Becoming Myself Again process well and truly. It has been suggested that a Chanel bag would suffice, and I have always fancied a Tiffany Celebration Ring or a vintage Rolex, but fear I am delusional. And a £1400 bag is not something you can just buy for yourself and hope it will slip under the radar, right? Right? (Hmmm…)

Anyhoo, afterall, I did get a jolly nice baby out of the ordeal. Check him out:

Yep, Ned Huckleberry came out quite fast after pretending to be on his way – I see now I was a little bit remiss to tweet/email/text and facebook the world telling them a baby was imminent when he actually wasn’t (must remember for, ah, next time)….Ahem. Anyway, on Wednesday night, 8 days overdue and after a day of the requisite labour-starterers (pineapples, nipple tweaking, etc), things began to look quite promising – so much so that I insisted Mark call Charlotte – former Houseguest with Extras – because, clearly, the baby was going to fall out any minute. So Charlotte gets out of her warm bed and comes to ours where I am wild eyed with excitement. Mark, ever practical, is in bed. And so I tell Charlotte to have a sleep on the couch but be READY.

Of course, nothing happens all night, and nothing happens all the next day. Poised, ready, Mark has the day off work, as does Charlotte, and we are all kind of bored and wondering whether we should stop the charade and go back to doing what we are supposed to do. The midwife, full of pity by this stage, offers to give me a sweep and get things started. It works, we get to the hospital quickly, I get antibiotics because I have GBS (some normal germy thing which is harmful to babies, apparently). In we go, I have a TENS machine hanging from my neck, I assume The Position (squats) with the Requisite Tools (swiss ball, lavender oil, damp face cloth, yadda yadda) and off I go for four hours.

At some point, a team of about six groomed doctors come in and line up, beaming, while I squat and sweat and groan and try to pay some polite attention to them. (This was a little tricky, and I may have been unconvincing.) Anyway, the message they were so keen to get across was that they have decided that the baby is going to be too big for me and I should really have an epidural. The shoulders, they said, may not come out, and if so, they will have to yank the shoulders out manually and This Will Really Hurt You. No pressure, mind (as they all stare and smile and murmur amongst themselves). So I say “OK!” because the idea of things hurting EVEN MORE is kind of revolting at this stage. Leaping to save me from an epidural though is Mark and Midwife – they know in my lucid moments I don’t want one, and once the drs scuttle out, they remind me that I can do this perfectly fine and naturally. So onwards I push, kind of fancying that epidural to take me away from the hideousness that is a baby exiting out of your bits, but fairly oblivious to anything other than Keep Going and Give Me That Gas and Air.

So the waters break, Mark asks me what THAT was all over his shoes – then the head comes out and for a minute, everything pauses – we all think the drs were RIGHT – the shoulders are stuck – this is going to hurt more than anything else I have ever felt – and then the shoulders slide out and a huge blue/black baby of nearly 11 pounds is born. A boy, again. Naturally, called Ned Huckleberry.

Onto the ward we go, at midnight, where 5 other women and their babies are crying/sleeping/getting stuck with needles/talking on their mobiles, etc. I try to sleep, and fail. Owing to the GBS I have to stay in for 24 hours. Right before we are released into the real world, the paediatrician discovers Ned cannot breathe very well, and is jaundiced and has something on his lung. So begins five days of antibiotics, light therapy, constant heel prick tests, three insertions of cannulas (ouchy iv needles), blood pressure tests, etc, etc. All the while, little Ned gets more and more bruised and squeezed and I go more and more mental. An overview, if you will.

Highlights Of My Hospital Stay

1. I did not have to cook, or wash dishes, or move around much. I just sat.

2. People brought me nice stuff (magazines, chocolates, delicious picnic food, books);

3. I managed to Finish “The Crimson Petal and the White” by Michel Faber;

4. No kids (just a wee cute baby).

Lowlights Of My Hospital Stay

1. The light therapy treatment for jaundice – Ned was in a fishtank with blue and yellow lights going for two days and two nights, with a tight mask to keep his retinas from burning out. That was pleasant to witness. I then had to wrap my head in a black tshirt to try and sleep. Then got put into another room when I cried a lot about my lack of sleep – they took me out of the ward full of six women, into a room with just one other woman – whose baby had to have the same bloody light treatment. The tshirt went back onto my head.

2. The ward of six women. It was loud, and the woman next to me harboured desires of becoming a recording artist. I know this, because she called her friends throughout the night and discussed these ambitions at length. And the merits of Beyonce vs Aretha. That kind of vital, 3am stuff.

3. The midwives would come in throughout the night and turn all the lights on. Not a torch, not a dim light, but big fluorescent overhead lights. Usually to poke the baby with a needle just as he had been coaxed into sleep. That was awesome too.

4. I missed the kids, and I missed Mark. It was so lovely to get home.

Anyway, onwards and upwards. Now comes the tricky part. Making that baby a good Gina Forder. Eeeek.

I am not in labour yet, and I am three days overdue. I am well, except for the elephantitis legs, the pelvic pressure which is like there is a huge big fat baby pressing on my bits (oh, wait, there IS) and I am a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde. You just never know if I am going to hug you and offer you lovely chicken sandwiches and coffee and newish magazines to take home with perhaps a freebie mascara chucked in for feelgood factor, or if I will start crying at you and maybe throw something at the wall. Sometimes the kids, but mostly not. The bladder has been struggling, and it seems has given up the fight, which works so well with this persistent and nasty cough that takes me by surprise every few minutes. Between a houseful of small wees-dribbling boys and now me, it is surprising anyone can actually step in through the front door. Oh! The ammonia! The shame!

Anyway, of course, once this baby exits, about 6 months after I shall be wistful about the state of pregnancy and all a bit “The Hand That Rocks The Cradle”ish about other pregnant women and I will be lingering in the pregnancy vitamins aisle in Boots. Kind of like a nutter, but there you go. I have gotten away with this kind of behaviour 4 times now so should really Let It Go. Perhaps Think About The Future and figure out what to do with myself, other than the obvious things like:

1) Get properly skinny, with sculpted arms and a narrow waist, which may in turn hoick up my face a bit from joining my neck;

2) Get to NY again;

3) Turn into quite the entrepreneurial business-lady in a few sharp suits with Secret Genius Project (and of course a Chanel 2.55 as I have previously mentioned but also with a Mulberry Alexa for the weekend);

4) Read Salinger. Ahem.

So, tomorrow is Barnaby’s birthday and we are off to Bramley’s for some soft-play fun with 14 kids. I have been baking today which was Very Hard For Me because my baking skills are very babyish. I burnt the top of the cake and ruined some shortbread buttons which melted (melted?) in the oven, but had some success with chocolate cupcakes. What is left tonight is to wrap the Transformer, the Lego truck, the WikiStix and the pirate thing, and to figure out how to make red icing for the spiderman cake face, and to, er, maybe squeeze out a baby. We shall see.

Here is an attempt at a post script from Tuesday night when I went out with the laaaydeeeez to Hereford Rd to have one last pork belly hurrah before I had another baby and had no time to eat (yeah, right…that’s SOOOOO me – prioritising helpless babies before I feed myself and the like…) Pah! Anyway.

Mark got home late, which meant that I was still attempting to fit frocks over my stomach. The boys were in the bath and I was in and out of the bathroom asking them what they thought. They said the Marc Jacobs wool sleeveless number was awful, they liked the Marni one (but I do not any more, something to do with the horrible neck slash), and I had been wearing my trusty polyester trapeze-shaped red dress all day and it had bits of roasted lamb juice on it – so that was no-go. I then revisited the wardrobe with Fresh Eyes and found a raspberry pink Parisian chiffon puffed sleeved number which I have never worn, and which is entirely see through, and which makes Mark sound a bit worried/stressed whenever I try it on – and thought that would be a most genius idea. The only problem being underwear – what to wear to cover my protruding bits and seem streamlined and elegant and not nakedy all at once?

So, in a MacGyver-like flash of inspiration, I improvised and put on my black maternity swimsuit, then black opaque tights (which are not easy to put on – they take a lot of coaxing, sweating, yanking and near-herniating), then a black slip, struggled on with the dress, found some heels, asked the boys, they said “Oh yes, mum, that is BEAUTIFUL like a princess” and then waited for Mark to arrive.

He felt differently about it though. In a nervous sounding voice, kindly and wavering, he said “Erm, you look a little like a pregnant call-girl, darling. I am not sure wearing what looks like a black rubber catsuit under a filmy negligee is quite the right look for you. It may be a bit inappropriate in a posh roast restaurant. But, ah, I don’t know…” (looks away, sweating…).

So, I look again in the mirror and see that the children and my addled pregnantness have put me wrong – he is right, I have crossed the sartorial line. But it is 7:45 and I am supposed to be there at 7:30. And putting up those tights took a long, long time. To get changed, I have to get out of my swimsuit as it was doing very unattractive things to my cleavage. What to do?

I took drastic action. I cut myself out of the swim suit. I grabbed the IKEA kitchen scissors, yanked down the tights, and cut the crotch in two, slid out of the togs, tossed them in the bin, found my purple Prada-esque lace prom frock, covered the side-split with a belt, and ran out into the waiting bench-seats of a taxi. It was all a bit uncomfortable, but no body-parts were harmed in the end. The taxi then took all the wrong turns and I ended up arriving 40 minutes late, almost entirely unsupported from an undergarment-point-of-view, kind of sweating and more eager for a drink than I perhaps should have been. Once again, #eleganceFAIL.

Well, what I thought I was going to write about was a list of the Things That My Children Do That Are Annoying.

The list is long, and morphs from one thing to another on a frequent basis. Currently, the top of the list is

1. Play with the toilet.

This guy here, once so pliable and nice:

is now a Toilet Brush Obsessive. And when I go to the lengths of hiding the toilet brush, as I did tonight, he just hurls himself into the toilet bowl and swishes around.They all go to bed at the same time, and the other two who Know The Rules only muck about for a bit, but Bad Custard is hellbent on getting some (admittedly rare) attention and so he goes swimming in the loo in his pyjamas. It is KILLING me.

2. Swinging off the curtains.

They (especially Bad Noah) swing absent-mindedly on the curtains. The curtain hook things break and the curtains no longer work. I am a sewing imbecile and so the curtains stay limp and forlorn and broken. It has happened in their room, and is now happening in the living room. It is KILLING me.

3. Biting into apples them leaving them strewn.

I know that I have illustrated this annoying trait with a muffin and a pretzel but you have to use your imagination.

I put a big, full, lovely fruit bowl out on the table so that they will help themselves and eat fruit often. But Casper has a banana-peeling fetish and Noah drop-kicks the extra large naval oranges and Barnaby eats a few bits of an apple before declaring them “dirty” and discarding them in unused-corners of the flat. I am TIRED of this.

That is all. I am momentarily purged.

Oh yes there are what seems to be about eight small frog-like aliens living in my torso and they are moving about in an obscene manner, so that people at the supermarket (should they be so inclined) can see the lumps and contortions and I can press the lumps and they go away only to reappear in another part of the girthy gut. I like this part. And today I have donned red frock, red shoes, tamed the fluffy hair and ventured out in a whirlwind of spooky unaccounted-for energy. And baked a spelt loaf, slow-roasted some NZ lamb for the kids, roasted potatoes, given them cornish ice cream and tidied up, and it is only 5.55pm. The only bit of bad news are my enormous feet/ankles/toes/entire length of leg. Which would be ok but I am going out for dinner at Hereford Rd, principally notable for the sometime fabulous clientele, like Jake Gyllenhaal (of course I spelt that wrong). And I am sure Other Equally Exciting Famous people, but I cannot think who. So I have to

a) find something to wear that fits/makes me look like I have not given up yet (ha! snort! sigh…)

b) tame/camoflage the angry, roaring cankles

c) walk there, in mid-heels.

That is my challenge for the evening. As is putting kids to bed without yelling too much. The baby (who, for the record, is Officially No Longer a Baby but a Noisy Tantruming Toddler who can say ‘hello’ in four languages) is fond of getting out of his big boy bed and going into the toilet and playing with the toilet brush. His most wicked effort yet has been to come out into the lounge and surprise his dad with a swift and hearty thrust of said toilet brush into Mark’s forehead. It was funny, after. So Mark is off doing some Man’s Work and I am puffily here, fully embracing the Christmas DVD’s that my mum and dad sent the kids for Christmas (arrived today, thanks Royal Mail for your efficiency).

Here is a Noah Bat running along our street.

Apparently, in September, my Noah Bat is going to be going to school. This news reached me today, and I feel quite good and quite sick about it, all at the same time. There may be some real benefits in having your children one after the other in manner of members of religious sect.

In other news, I have found a lovely mink coat at the second-hand shop. It is excellent, definitely fierce, slightly mental-old-lady with white face powder and odd-urine smell, but it could be the way forward. But it is £125. Not chump change, fellas. And this is all on the back of the Browns sale, which was completely insane – they chucked out a lot of stock for £100 – my new Kinder jacket, for example, was once for sale at the marvellously OTT price of £925 – now hanging in my wardrobe for £100, which is like, 85% less or sommat (maths fails me routinely). The fact that it is dip-dyed fluoro yellow and grey tweed is a blog topic for another day, however.

Right, I have to go get some children clean. Onwards and upwards!