The Harridan

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!

Oh the poor poor baby. He/She is going to arrive at the end of January and we have no idea what to call it. Mark is positively bored by the naming process fourth time around – he barely looks up from “American Chopper” when I suggest something. And just bangs on about how he wants to call the baby by the name of our old dog. Again and again. So I go thinking and searching and come up with slightly bonkers names and have to test them on facebook/twitter/supermarket ladies and the best I get is “Well, I don’t HATE it…”. So, ah, I am completely at a dead clueless end.

I like Ned, then Gus. Mark likes Flynn and Mark Junior (and Trevor, Blue and Terminator, but I think he is joking – at least about Trevor). For a girl, it has been a done deal since we were first holding hands. Eliza. Which bores me silly now, but it has stuck. I have just been told that if it is a girl, Mark will let me have Clementine IF he can have Flynn for a boy. And I said NO BECAUSE THAT IS A DOG’S NAME.

Anyway, let this be a warning to you not to keep having children. Aside from the fact that you get looked at funny everywhere you go, and old ladies tell you how ageing motherhood is, while gazing pityingly at your non-botoxed crow’s feet and bits of crusty weetbix on your sleeve, and that you need a 7-seater and you just get fatter and fatter and your stomach more mauled-looking each time you pop one out, it all plays havoc with your imagination and your sense of humour. You turn Harridan-like, even. At least, I do. And you run out of names.

Barnaby and Noah have helpfully suggested Fingers, Batman, St Paul’s Cathedral and Hamster. They have warned me the new baby must not be a girl. Custard has not proffered much other than the dogged practicing of his biting and I fear I know for whom his little teeth wait. He can really only say “apple” and “Allawah” which is clearly an attempt at “Spiderman” – actually, this is probably his suggestion for the new baby.

They are all hopeless and therefore it falls to me to save this kid from mediocrity/bonkersness. If anyone has any suggestions, please do let me know. I am going MENTAL.

These fellas were easy to name. And they like pizza.

Tis the day after Christmas, and we have settled down to watch The Sound of Music, which is exactly the right thing to watch on Boxing Day, as everyone in the entire world knows. But I have just poured hydrogen peroxide into my eyeball, so I am less watching, more squinting and wincing with watery-eyed pain. We have been out at the park, frolicking amongst the mud and hungry squirrels, but that surprisingly sunny excursion was unfortunately topped off with a desperately wrong lunch at Pizza Hutt. I am culinarily defiled. You see, today has been a day of extremes. In fact, the whole Christmas break has been a mix of good and bad. A list, if you will:

Presents

The good: The kids liked their Playmobil Mega Farm set, their Lego fire engine/castle, their Transformers, scooter, jumping dog, pirate paraphernalia, etc.

The bad: I was given the Least Number of Presents On Record Since 1977. Now, I fully appreciate that I am supposed to be above this terribly childish pouting. But I am not. So I wept a little on the inside as I was handed an unwrapped Dirty Dancing cd (what – ten years too late?) and counted about three presents in total under the tree for me to open – mostly from my lovely sister-in-law who knows the value of a slab of Rocky Road – but cheered when Mark agreed to letting me buy a new Mulberry Mabel. For the record, I solemnly vow not to burn this one on the top of the stove.

The ethically questionable: I was given some pot pourri on a gold tray. I would like to give this one straight to the Trinity Hospice charity shop. But the giver is someone who frequents the flat weekly – and who will do so for the foreseeable future. Do I HAVE to keep it? Do I HAVE to use up rare and valuable shelf space for pot pourri? Can’t I just Never Mention It Again and hope the giver doesn’t notice? I am ethically confused with no love for dried foliage.

Party

The good: We had a party on Christmas Eve. We had 10 adults quaffing champagne and scoffing brie en croute and 12 kids screaming around the flat dressed variously as Batman, the police, and Mrs Claus-in-a-scanty-nightie. The ham was good, the egg nogg apparently excellent, the clean-up very quick. There were only two fights between the children resulting in tears – and they were my kids so I didn’t mind.

The bad: Noah did a poo on the floor of his room mid-festivities, but luckily it was artfully placed on a shiny Maisie book and so slid off terribly easily. The kids didn’t seem too bothered, although did keep a wide berth from the bookshelves. The bread rolls were left in the oven and so lacerated the gums of all who dared to eat them, and we had only two champagne glasses. The mackerel pate, while wildly successful thanks to Stylish Liz, left a fish-smell-residue on everything in the dishwasher, and I spilled the ripe juice from a huge wodge of gorgonzola down my dress before everyone arrived. I smelled like sick for hours.

Christmas Day

The good: The children slept in until 8:45am. Weird, but like a Christmas present to us in itself. We did not feel very hungry owing to the party the night before, and so had hammy-leftovers and low-key Christmassy things instead of eating like piglets. The kids were happy all day playing with their stuff. There was no pressure, and it was very quiet.

The bad: It was a little too quiet. And we missed our mums and dads. And it didn’t snow.

Right. So, here is a photo of Noah dressed as a Villager in the nursery play (the one in which he had a kip midway). He is minus the headscarf, and showing the camera a wooden ball he later nicked:

This is the children getting driven around Seymour Street in Cinderella’s pumpkin coach a few weeks ago. They all subsequently fell to the floor in a slump as soon as the horses took off:

Here is us at the work Christmas party at the Tiroler Hut about to be fed mountains of pork knuckle and assaulted aurally by cowbells and bad versions of Edelweiss. mark looks suspiciously Eastern European but I swear he is not. And I am in my gorgonzola frock:

That is all. Now back to watch the Germans hunt Maria and Georg down.