Caffeine is required.

Okay.

So...........I know originally I said I was going to keep this blog light and positive and funny, AND I am happy to do this, when I am feeling these things. But, I also feel it's important to make it a fair reflection of The Motherhood.

Today, I am struggling. DS is a high energy, very bright and exhausting child. This morning he was up at 5:45. DH got up with him initially, I took over at 6:30. He's the kind of child who is 0-60MPH from the second his eyes open, to the second they close at night. (Which is sometimes a two hour plus ordeal, but that's an entry for another day.)

I can deal with it. I love him. It's putting me through my paces, and I am fairly confident he will mellow in the next couple of years and we can all look back at how frantic it all was and laugh, tossing our heads triumphantly into the sun of a bright afternoon while we sip lattes and turn appreciative looks of pity unto the young frantic mothers who pass us by, so much like our former selves it endears stranger to stranger.

But right now, today, when I look around all I see is how DS is nothing like the other children in his football class. He is the only one to display such unbridled enthusiasm and zero attention on the activity. He is simultaneously enraptured and torn away from attentiveness, resulting in a flux of in/out/in/out levels of comprehension. Worse still, he has a mean streak, and when he works himself up into a frenzy, he lashes out. Not often, mind you, but any time at all is enough to make me feel like bursting into tears, putting my hand up and declaring that it is I, the young rubbish mum, who brought forth into the world the feral child who just smacked yours. Please accept my apologies. Pass your judgement. Go on, etc.

Of course, I take a deep breath, I catch myself from falling into the pit of despair and I remind myself that he is at a difficult age, all children have different personalities, he will mature, he is kind hearted, and mainly the people around me offer gentle looks of commiseration and support. They toss their shoulders up and shake their heads, smiles creeping across their faces as they do so, as if to say. "Been there."

It is true. We've most of us Been There. When you are there it is quite easy to listen only to the harsh whispers of an ignorant few; those that have never had a small human, or have simply allowed the years to dull memories of the sheer terror of the Been There days. Far too easy to superimpose angry mob faces onto harmless strangers; fellow parents, nobodies, everybodies.

I am going to keep breathing, keep reassuring myself that I am not Rubbish Mum Ruining The Child, and maybe tomorrow we won't be here.

It's getting easier, even as I write.

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Dinner, Interrupted.

My least favourite times of the day are meal times and sleep times.

So, you can imagine my delight when one went up in flames completely, swiftly followed by the other, careening my entire evening well and truly out of control.

Of course, it was the usual over tired tyrannical toddler thing that happened. Up at 6AM, playing at home, then running around the park with his friends, then swimming on top of it, and zero nap time. I should have seen it coming, really. But he had me fooled. He seems so jovial and put together one second, and then before the plate of food was even fully in front of him it was all, "MOMMY! JUICE! JUIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIICE."

I hand him his juice. 

"NO JUIIIIIIICE!! NO NO NO!!!" 

How could I have been so foolish? The last thing you do is hand them the juice. They don't really want the juice. If anything, the request for the juice is a just a vehicle for their anger. 

I bang my head repeatedly on the dinner table until the warm dark descends upon me. 

Not really that last part.

More screaming and throwing turkey stir fry and kicking and unsuccessful bargaining later - we are hurriedly throwing on pah jay jays and brushing teeth and going to sleep.

At 6:20, I emerged from DS' bedroom triumphant. He was out.

I was safe from his demands, which are as militant as they are nonsensical and contradictory, for now.

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.

Poorly.

A plague seems to have descended upon my house. Seriously, I am about to go all Old Testament up in this piece and paint our door post with the blood of a lamb.

4 weeks ago, DS came down with a very mild case of Chicken Pox. I say mild because he didn't really scratch them or seem to notice they were there, and was happily running around like a coked up hummingbird inside during his mandatory 1 week quarantine. Joy of joys, ya'll. JOY OF JOYS.

3 weeks ago, I caught the Norovirus after an upsetting incident in a town square involving me being too close to a man very casually and very violently vomiting everywhere, in a very helpful zig zag pattern.You know, to cover as much of the surface area as possible. As one does. This resulted in two days in bed feeling like I was actually dying. Oh, and in case you were wondering if the relentless feelings of guilt and inadequacy of The Motherhood go away when you're very seriously ill and physically cannot care for your child - They Do Not. They increase. Exponentially. With every passing delirious minute.

2 weeks ago, DS, DH and myself all began to fight off various colds and seasonal afflictions, and our house is currently a battlefield of congestion, replete with balled up tissues and strepsil packets.

1 week ago, DS contracted some kind of viral throat infection. I was no longer amused.

Basically, I call bull on these shenanigans, and they will stop.

Oh yes, they will.

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Catch the Sun?

The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and we are nearly out of the Embers and the Arys. Or, as I like to refer to them, The Awful Months of Hopeless Dark Which Rend Any Sense Of Happiness and Bunnies/Unicorns From Your Bones And Replace It With Most Unpleasant Tidings Indeed.

November, December, January, February.

Rubbish, aren't they?

It's been dark and rain and snow - break for fun snow days - then the snow gets grubby and it melts but then ices over, so it's even more treacherous and doesn't hold any entertainment value or fun factor, unless you count the fun that DS and DH have watching me fall on my behind and it's like COME ON ENGLAND. You don't need to fulfil absolutely every facet of every terrible weather stereotype that's ever been, do you?

Well, I suppose you do, if you're also going to keep the whinging stereotype going as well.

(I myself have become a champion of said sport, less than two years after my arrival here.)

 But, I digress.

It is the Second of February, so in my head that means it's nearly March, which means it's nearly spring and HO-MUH-GAWD, can I wait for spring? I submit that I cannot.

There is nothing I would like better than to have a leisurely stroll in my beloved Pinner Memorial Park, observing newly hatched water fowl offspring, being cute and fluffy and squeezable-looking, stopping for a cold beverage at Daisy's in the Park, and basking in the glow of the ever elusive English sunshine. That would be a thing to behold. And behold it we shall, once all this absolute-never-ending-grey-please-just-let-me-see-a-patch-of-sky-or-something-i'll-be-your-best-friend-seriously-just-a-patch is over.


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