Today’s post is silent, because there are no words
Silent Sunday: In Memoriam
Category Archives: Family
Heads that go bump
A nice quiet evening after a busy week of work sounded just the ticket. A movie for the kids, a shawarma sandwich to eat, and rattling through my favourite blogs.
But when is an evening ever ‘nice and quiet’ when small children are involved? There was a nanosecond in there, a split second of tranquility in which the boys looked serene, tucked up in the spare bed watching a DVD about pirates together, with the lights off.
It was such a cosy scene – their sweet faces lit up by the glow from the TV – that I decided to hop in (secretly hoping they’d let me lie quietly with my eyes shut, or at least not notice that I was looking at the iPad and not the movie).
But three in the bed is asking for trouble, isn’t it? They picked a pointless fight with each other. They both wanted to lie next to me. There were cross words exchanged. Someone got thirsty and needed a drink. They got in each other’s way. One rolled out.
“Mummy, I can’t see past your big fat boooobs,” grinned LB, poking me with his little fingers.
Ouch!
Then, a little later, while I was downstairs making some tea, there was the most enormous clunk, on our marble floor. Followed by silence, which I just knew was the calm before the storm.
I turned on my heel and shot up the staircase in a flash as the howling was unleashed.
“Get some ice,” DH called.
“What happened?” I almost yelled back, pulling a sobbing LB into my arms and peering at the egg-shaped bulge bursting out of his forehead.
Like a deer caught in the headlights, I forgot about the ice altogether, so it was a good job BB had the wherewithal to run to the freezer to get the Mr Bump coldpress. Bless him.
But being the mother of boys, with seven years of head bumps, bruises, finger crunches, knocks and kicks under my belt, I’ve learnt that a brother’s sympathy is rather short-lived – their empathy (unless it’s the two of them pitted against the world) about the same as a sabre-tooth tiger looking for his supper.
“He was running and slipped Mummy. Right there,” BB told me, pointing at the spot.
Before turning his attention squarely back to the TV: “Look, Mummy…look at that pirate boat! And those pirates with swords…quick, look!”
Boys, eh – talk about having the uncanny ability to ensure a ‘quiet evening’ ends in injury.
Silent Sunday: Love notes
The relationship between my oldest son, 7, and his adorable Girl Next Door, 6, is a source of fascination to me, because from the moment our lovebirds met (aged 2!), their friendship has shown that boy/girl differences really are hardwired into the brain.
I was reminded of this the other day, when they drew these pictures for each other:
Girl Next Door thinks she’s going to marry BB and doesn’t mind that he only talks about trains and ships. This is the birthday card she made for him – how cute are the kisses on the track, the hearts coming out the coal and the word ‘Love’ in the smoke?
Here’s the drawing BB did for her. It had a functional purpose – the hole was so he could hang it on her front door handle like a pizza-delivery menu. The words, in case you can’t read them, say: ‘The Titanic sank 100 years ago’. Talk about girls being from Venus, and boys from Pluto!
To work or not to work?
I’ve been working a lot recently, in an office, with adults who listen and don’t break everything. They don’t shout, fight, or fall off chairs and injure themselves.
Nor do they need help in the toilet.
At the end of the day, my colleagues are still alive, without any assistance from me whatsoever.
I like it. I really like it.
Except I wish I didn’t enjoy it quite so much, because our lives would be so much easier if I didn’t work. If I hadn’t struggled so much with being a stay-at-home mum whose days felt like one long, open-ended project that I was as likely to finish as I was to climb Everest, backwards.
Perhaps if I’d been able to pat myself on the back occasionally for singing the baby to sleep, or dangling a rattle for him to swat, things would have been different.
But the truth is, whilst I love my children more than I ever thought possible, I found it difficult having them barnacled to my ankle/breast/hip 24/7 – and I really missed work.
Anyway, they started growing up, not needing me quite so much. And since it costs money just to stand still in Dubai, going back to work not only stopped me from going round the bend, it also made sense.
What goes up…must come down
I bark orders as I grab the keys to leave. “Don’t forget, you need to go to school 15 minutes early as it’s ‘Look at your child’s learning journal’ day. And then drop LB and C [our nanny] at the park for the class playdate. Oh and there’s French homework.”
DH looks at me, wanting to throttle me.
(He’s here quite a bit in the day, due to an erratic flying schedule that often sends him away at weekends instead. I know we’re lucky in that respect as one of us is usually around.)
I rush home from work and stuff money into envelopes for school trips/teachers’ gifts. I attempt to come up with the latest demands from school for things I don’t just happen to have lying around (yesterday it was 31 of something…buttons, beans. I sent Lego).
I worry a lot about missing things.
The Festive Sing-a-long. The Winter Festival. “And, oh god, Decoration Day. It’s next week, in the middle of the day [about as convenient as a hole in the head]. I can’t go!” I think to myself.
But it’s the mummy guilt that really gets me.
“Mum, how many days are you working? Why are you working again?” my children ask.
And the line my youngest son came out with this morning: “What takes you so long at work, Mum?”
Those Cosmopolitan magazines that told every female who’d listen in the 70s that it was her right to have it all/have an orgasm/combine motherhood, homemaking and career changed everything, didn’t they?
Kids, meet Baby Jesus
While I personally think it’s still too early to put the Christmas tree up, my children disagree. I promised we’d do it today, and at 7 on the dot this morning, the pestering started.
“Mummy, c’mon. Get out of bed,” BB ordered, tugging at the duvet. “You said we’d put the tree up.”
My little helpers throwing baubles at the tree
I gave in – and got up. We hauled the decorations from the outside storeroom to the house, dusted them off, and got started (minus the Christmas music – as I said, too blimin’ early).
You would think that living in a Muslim country might mean Christmas would start a little later. Not so. The shops are full of it, their floors adorned with trees and their windows decked out.
But the commercialism aside, it’s definitely harder to convey the true meaning of Christmas here. It’s all a bit of a hush-hush operation at BB’s international school, where they do put on a celebration, but disguised as a ‘winter festival’.
To be honest, my children don’t think beyond the presents – and I was reminded of my shortfall in this department today.
Each year, I bring out a nativity scene that I bought at a Christmas festival. As I was setting it up, LB came over and peered at the figurines: he touched the baby Jesus swaddled in the manger; looked quizzically at the reverent wise men bearing gifts, the proud, tired parents and the guardian angel. Then he reached out and grabbed the cow sitting lowing in the hay.
“Mummy, what is it?” he asked, with a not-so-reverent shine in his eyes. “Is it a farm?”
Mental note to self: make sure that this is the year my children learn the basic story of the nativity.
When visitors come to town
For the past three weeks, we’ve had guests – first my mother-in-law and then my parents – and whilst I’d love to be able to tell you that we gave them a time-share in the grandchildren to remember, I’m not sure that we did.
Images of my mum floating round a lazy river, cocktail in hand at a pool bar or even relaxing on a lounger with a good book at the Polo Club didn’t materialise – because, to put it simply, life got in the way.
Nothing bad – just general busy-ness, scheduling clashes and a pesky flu bug – but enough to make me concerned that my parents’ visit could possibly be classed as unpaid labour, rather than a holiday.
Where would working families be without advanced babysitting from super-grandparents? It’s just too bad they’re thousands of miles away normally
In the line of ‘duty’ this time round:
– The boys got really sick, warranting two days off school for grandson2 and causing untold sleep disruption
– I missed much of the above because of work, leaving The Visitors in charge (as to who had the easier job here, I’m in no doubt – especially the night shifts which, quite frankly, leave me wanting to throw breakfast bowls at the wall)
– After a bad experience in a taxi, and only able to drive as far as Arabian Ranches, my parents are, understandably, loathed to venture out on their own (and I can’t say I blame them), meaning they’re confined to the house if on their own. The pool aside, the only place they can walk to from ours is the mini-mart supermarket and dry cleaners
– The Thanksgiving buffet my DH took them to ended in a monumental and very public puking session courtesy of ‘chunder wonder’ poorly grandson1
– During their stay, they were also bystanders to a flood at grandson1’s birthday party venue and a hospital appointment about his upcoming surgery
– They suffered made it through a children’s birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese, attended by 24 six- and seven-year olds
– DH, our main driver and peace-keeper, succumbed to the bug, mutated it into ‘man-flu’ and developed sciatica too
On the upside, some highlights I hope The Visitors enjoyed:
– Trips to a desert wildlife centre in Sharjah, the pool, a beach resort and Al-Barsha park
– A dhow cruise out into the Gulf and through the heart of Dubai Marina, followed by Arabic food
– For my dad, two glorious days of golf at the DP World Tour Championship, our trump card and just down the road from us
– Business class travel, both ways
What do you think? Do you think they’ll come back? I think they will – for the golf, at least, with their flu jabs topped up.
Milk teeth are like buses
I’ve finally been able to play tooth fairy! It’s felt quite a long time coming, because BB, who’s nearly seven, appeared to be holding onto his milk teeth for dear life – until one popped out last week.
It started wobbling a while ago. Then BB was able to swing it precariously with his tongue. He was both alarmed by its looseness, and excited by my reaction. “BB’s got a wobbly tooth!” I told anyone in our household who’d listen. “That means the tooth fairy will visit – if you’re good!” [a Santa twist, but Christmas is coming!]
After several weeks of hanging by a hinge, and BB refusing to bite into anything in case there was blood and gore, the tooth finally fell out – at school.
When he got home, he happily told us what had happened.
“Mummy, LOOK! My tooth fell out in the cafeteria. I’ve put it in my lunchbox.”
Childhood magic: The tooth fairy is a clever little pixie who knows which pillows to visit
“Are you sure BB? Maybe you swallowed it?”
“Someone must have stolen it,” he decided, rather forlornly. “Because they want the tooth fairy to come.”
That night, I suggested tentatively that we write a note to the tooth fairy to explain.
“Dear Tooth Fairy,” wrote BB, in his best left-handed scrawl [he tends to write backwards, but not this time]. “I lost my tooth. Please come anyway.”
The note was pinned on his bedroom door and BB drifted off to sleep safe in the knowledge that the tooth fairy wouldn’t give the money to whoever had stolen the tooth because the thief was sure to be a snorer who sleeps with his mouth open. The tooth fairy would see there wasn’t a gap – and anyway she just knows.
I slipped 10dhs under his pillow and crept away, knowing I probably wouldn’t see his reaction as it was my 5k race in the morning and I had to get up before sunrise.
But, my desire to actually see a tiny tooth nestled in tissue came true the next day, because – like buses – another rootless, pearly white dropped out that he managed not to lose. I have to admit I pored over it, turning it over like a precious stone and feeling quite emotional. It feels like yesterday, after all, that those teeth were just poking through, and now, here he is, getting all big and grown up on me.
So the tooth fairy has been twice, BB now loves to pull a gappy grin to show off the hole, and I’ve started a milk tooth collection in a silver keepsakes box.
The only upset person is BB’s little brother who now desperately wants to lose a tooth too. “When will my teeth wobble?” he’s been asking every night.
And, yes, I can’t help but wonder if the first tooth was in fact stolen – from under our noses, by LB.
Halloween in the desert
Halloween is HUGE in our compound. It started on October 1 with spooky decorations on a few doorsteps, gathered pace as more households draped cobwebs over the bushes and strung up witches, and culminated last night with our community’s collective descent into trick-or-treatery.
To say the children were very excited is an understatement, and having lived in the States for five years, I can honestly say ‘we do’ Halloween* [whispers: I love this holiday! The children will gorge on bucketfuls of candy, I’ll help myself to copious amounts too – and that’s okay!]
Ready to scare: My littlest skeleton
The kids were dressed and ready by 4pm for a Halloween party next door, then, as night fell, we joined the droves of children outside and trooped from door-to-door under a full moon.
And, I have to say, as I accompanied my two skeletons on a balmy evening around streets aglow with jack-o-lanterns, I was really impressed by the wickedness some of our neighbours had dreamt up.
Not everyone takes part (and the rule is you don’t knock at villas with no porch light on), but many families who did get into the spirit had turned their doorsteps into mini Halloween dens – complete with scary sound effects and fiery torches in some cases.
A few highlights for us were:
– The household with the distressed maiden upstairs who dropped water bombs from the window – with a deathly scream
– The wobbly eyeballs (made from jelly and icing sugar) that were handed out in paper cups and made me whimper
– The dog dressed in a skull-and-crossbone outfit
– The drive-by trick-or-treaters sitting in a six-foot trailer pulled by a quad bike
– The ghoul standing in the dark who honestly looked like he could be fake, but then jumped out on me with an axe [insert horror movie screech]
– And the flying witch rigged up high above G street
* It took a couple of years in the US before I got it. Whilst still a learner, I sat at work one Halloween until 5, wondering why everyone was leaving early. Missed a trick there!
Best-dressed dad: We’d only got about 50 yards or so up our road when my friend informed me: “Just to warn you, all the kids are coming away from that house crying!” Our curiosity piqued, we nudged the kids in that direction, told them to be brave and watched (because after someone’s told you that, you can’t walk away without finding out why, can you?). Lurking in the shadows by their front door was the dad, dressed as a four-legged, long-haired monster, and as the trick-or-treaters filed up the path to line up at the door (yes, line up, there were that many out last night), he’d lurch forwards with a growl. Gotta love the crazy things people do on Halloween!
Rough nights
I have to admit, I started the Eid half-term in a not-so-bright mood.
“When do I get a holiday?” I harrumphed to DH in a small self-entitled voice, before threatening to check into a hotel to have some ‘me time’ and a lie-in.
These outbursts are nearly always linked to tiredness, I’ve realised. And DH, who’s heard it all before, knows exactly what to do: he takes charge of the children and sits it out.
Then, the cooler Eid weather worked its magic. Suffice to say, Dubai’s blue skies are casting their spell over everyone again, tourists are flocking back in their droves and Eid turned out to be fabulous – almost like being on holiday in Dubai.
DH’s change of scenery – though I’m sure he wished he’d been able to see Noddy at the theatre with us!
But, parenting, it’s never smooth sailing, is it? Just when you think you might actually have cracked it, that it may even be getting a little easier, doesn’t something always happen to keep you on your toes?
Last night, as I settled in on the sofa, I heard the sound of little feet padding down the stairs. BB appeared, with glassy eyes and a vacant stare. Sleepwalking again! We’ve found him draped across various pieces of furniture in the middle of the night a couple of times now.
He’s pretty easy to settle when this happens, but what followed definitely fell into my ‘things I detest about parenting’ category: Projectile Vomit. EVERYWHERE. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, BB then slipped and fell facedown in it. Oh, the shrieks.
Oh, the MISERY.
LB, of course, woke too, and put on an Oscar-worthy performance pretending to be sick (never one to be outdone). And so there I was, wading in vom, trying to coax two boys back to sleep, when my phone pinged.
A text from DH: “Everything OK? I’m in Paris.”
Let’s just say that, after two really rough nights with zero bonhomie, the hotel stay is back on the agenda!
‘WHY?’ and other annoying phrases
There was a little piece on the radio in Dubai last week about the top 10 most annoying sounds (you’ll see where I’m going with this in a minute).
I was pretty sure that nails on a chalkboard would top the list, but there are – according to the neuroscientists who researched this – two other even more unpleasant sounds.
A crying baby doesn’t irritate me at all. I’m just thankful it’s not mine and my children are older!
A knife on a bottle, followed by a fork on a glass are the noises our brains find most intolerable, apparently. Other sounds on the list are more guessable, like an electric drill and a crying baby. Then there were one or two I’m not sure I’ve ever heard, like a disc grinder and a ruler on a bottle.
Long before the presenters reached ‘crying baby’, it occurred to me that mums of small children could put together their own list of annoying sounds, based on the things we hear all.the.time.
You know what I mean – we love our children so much it hurts, but sometimes the words our infuriating, ravenous little darlings utter over.and.over.again can make you want to pierce your eardrum with a screwdriver be a little irritating.
Here’s my top 10:
“Mummeeeee, I’m BORED.” Followed two minutes later by, “Mummy, I SAID, I’m bored.”
“He started it!” [feigns innocence]
“YOU do it”
“I want a NEW mummy”
“I don’t like it” [throws food you’ve shopped for and spent ages preparing back at you]
“Mummy, [insert sibling’s name] hit me!” [don’t get me started about the goading]
“I’ve got nothing to DO” [sighs with weariness despite 10 million toys upstairs]
“It’s morning time!” At 5.45am.
“I’m NOT going to bed!” Every.single.night.
“Why?” repeat ad nauseam
I’m sure there’s more (‘he’s not sharing’, ‘after this programme’, ‘you’re not my friend’).
But I know – the day will come when they won’t want to talk to me at all, and I’ll resort to stalking them on Facebook – then, I’ll miss these gems! (Or not?)