Our Holiday: The Burning Questions

Here’s what I can see from where I’m sitting: an ironing board piled high with enough creased clothing for four people (two big, two small) for a week; a carrier bag full of a variety baby and toddler-friendly snacks to satisfy every diva demand; a drying rack strewn with last-minute laundry, and a sofa covered with new picture books for the baby, a straw hat for the boy, towels, adaptors and pyjamas. In the corner of the room there’s a large empty suitcase. Wish you were here?

It’s not normally quite like this (but not far off, if I’m honest). We’re going on holiday on Saturday and I’m putting off the packing. It has to be done, but – along with grating carrots, emptying the dishwasher, phoning in meter readings, shopping for jeans and giving birth – it’s something I really don’t enjoy.

I do, however, enjoy holidays. Or at least I did until I had children, when suddenly a holiday wasn’t quite a holiday anymore. We haven’t travelled abroad much with the children so far (not least because of the major hassle of getting their passports sorted out), and in fact this is the first time we’ve travelled abroad as a family of four. I’m sure it’ll be fine – fun, even – but I keep asking myself why we didn’t just decide on a week in Norfolk instead. These are the other questions that are vexing me as I contemplate the week ahead.

Will we fit everything in our suitcase? Is one 20kg bag really enough for a family of four for a week? Mr B assured me that it was, even though the online airline booking system was full of doubt (‘You are going away for seven nights. Are you SURE you don’t want to add an extra bag? Book an extra bag NOW at a lower price). Looking at the clothes mountain towering above our suitcase, the ticketing system was right and Mr B was wrong. The children’s swimming paraphernalia alone requires its own baggage allowance (and I shall take a very dim view if they decide that they don’t want to go in the pool after all).

How much will we have to shell out at the airport check-in? We’re flying with a so-called budget airline, but what with the hidden charges lurking at every stage of the process, it’s far from a budget option. I predict that we’ll be another £50 lighter before we’ve gone through security, probably thanks to being massively over the miserly baggage limit.

Will we make it to the airport in time? As someone who prides herself on being punctual and finds lateness the height of rudeness, it troubles me that as a family we’re never on time for anything. We’re awake by 6am every day, more’s the pity, yet we’ll often struggle to get out the door by ten. Mr B is easily distracted and prone to dawdle, the boy will spend an hour happily arguing about which socks he wants to wear, and the baby naps at the most inconvenient of moments. We need to be on the road by 4am on Saturday morning. This cannot go well.

Will I read a book? The house is piled high with books that await the children’s teenage years when I might have time to read them. It’s depressing, so in a fit of optimism I’ve bought another new book and I’m taking it with me. Whether I get the chance to read it is another matter. There’s no doubt that I will, however, be very familiar with the contents of the latest CBeebies magazine by the time we fly back.

How will the flight go? Will the baby do the decent thing and fall asleep for the duration, or will I have to spend three hours dispensing rice cakes, trying to distract her with songs that annoy the other passengers and preventing her from poking her brother in the eye (and vice versa)?

Will we avoid an emergency dash to the pharmacist? In almost a decade of holidaying together, I don’t think Mr B and I have done a single trip abroad – city break, beach holiday or otherwise – without an emergency trip to a pharmacist to buy plasters or painkillers or something else. This time I’ve cobbled together a first-aid kit – heavy on the Calpol – so maybe we’ll be spared this holiday. Maybe.

How good is Mr B’s Spanish? I’m pretty good at French, but when it comes to Spanish I’m clueless.  Mr B, on the other hand, has professed over the years to have a good grasp of Spanish but I’ve never heard him in action. He’s had lessons at work, which I always thought were just an excuse for a bit of a doss away from his desk. I’ll be interested to see whether he was just staring out of the window all those hours. My standards are pretty low though; as long as he can keep us in apple juice and alcohol, I’m happy.

Will the boy eat anything? Despite my best efforts, the boy is not the best of eaters. He can be pretty reluctant to try anything new, so how he’ll react to a prawn-laden paella is anyone’s guess. They do have Pom Bears in Spain, don’t they?

How many heart-stopping hire-car related incidents will there be? There was the time in France that the hire car started spewing out smoke at the toll (he’d burnt out the clutch) and the time in Portugal when we reversed the hire car into a bollard (which sounded worse than it was, it transpired). If you saw the state of the car we own, you’d understand why hiring a car to us is not a great idea. We’ll try to take care of it, of course we will. But we’ll also make sure we pay extra for the excess insurance. You know, just in case.

What will we forget? We will forget something we’d intended to take. It’s inevitable. Top of my list of predictions are: the SatNav, the camera, the children’s hats, our phone chargers, the snacks I’ve bought for the journey and the changing bag. Provided that we remember our sense of humour and our passports, we’ll be okay.

Will we actually relax? All being well, we’ll get there and back without incident, most of our possessions and limbs intact. But will we return refreshed and reenergised, or will we need another holiday to recover? Watch this space.

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Motherhood in 100 Objects: #10 The Coin-Operated Ride

20130514-205115.jpgOh Pat, I thought we were friends. As a girl I used to love watching you deliver parcels of farming goods to Ted and engage in smalltalk with Mrs Goggins. I loved your sunny nature and can-do attitude, and the way you’d casually save the day or solve a mystery as you went about your rounds. I loved you so much that I introduced my little boy to you at an earlyish age so he could enjoy your stories too (and I could enjoy a shower while he did so).

I didn’t mind that you’d defected from the Royal Mail to the shadier Special Delivery Service. I’d been worried about your fate, what with people not bothering to write letters anymore, but the rise of internet shopping and your new helicopter licence appear to have secured your future. And I was glad, I really was. My son seemed to enjoy your adventures as much as I had, and all was well with the world.

Until, that is, you (or a very good replica of you) arrived outside my local supermarket. And now every time we visit, my son harasses me on the way in and on the way out: ‘Mummmmmyyyyyyyy, mummmmmmyyyyyyyy, have you got any monnnnnnneeeeeyyyyy?’. He nags and nags, determined to get me to part with 50p, all so that he can sit next to you in your van for thirty seconds, lights flashing, going nowhere fast. I try to deter him, of course, and feel only the tiniest pang of guilt as I tell him I have no change.

But it’s not just you, of course. All of your friends – I’m looking at you, Bob the Builder, and you, Thomas the Tank Engine – are up to the same trick. You’re everywhere: outside shops, on street corners, in museums and gyms and cinemas. Never mind if I’ve just paid the best part of £50 for an educational and informative trip to London Zoo; if he spots one of you, all my son will want to do is clamber onto your ride and sit there until I can prise him off. Everywhere a parent and child may be, there you are; you or one of your greedy chums.

What’s 50p for a child’s happiness, you might argue. All I’d say to that is this: have you ever watched a child on one of your rides? The glazed expression and occasional ‘Mummy can I get off now?’ suggest that perhaps they aren’t having the time of their life. But will that stop them from asking to go on the next one that they see? Will it heck. So thanks, Pat and chums. Thanks a bunch.

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Motherhood in 100 Objects: #9 The Baby Passport Photo

Who's that girl?Come on baby, say cheese! No? Oh okay, but you’ll open your eyes won’t you? No? Alright, but how about holding your head up a little bit, just so we can see your face? No? Oh dear.

In their infinite wisdom, the British Passport and Identity Service dictates that as soon as your baby is out of the womb, she needs a passport of her very own to travel abroad. While I appreciate the need for caution in these turbulent times (beware the tiny terrorist and all that), I can only assume that the person who dreamed up this law had never been involved in trying to take a passport photo of a three-week old baby.

First off, you need to find somewhere that will actually take the photo for you. As camera and photography shops are shutting down at the same rate as bookshops and pubs, that’s not as easy as it might seem. And of those shops that are trading through the storm, not all are brave enough to offer this particular service. And who can blame them? Take one fraught parent – desperate to get the pictures and finally send off the passport application that’s been on the to-do list for too long – add one tetchy, camera-shy baby, and it’s not a job for the faint-hearted.

No, this is definitely a specialist job. Granted, you’d save yourself a few quid if you tried to do it yourself at home (after all, you’ve taken loads of gorgeous pictures of your little one looking really cute with your iPhone) but I’d strongly advise against it. There’s as much chance of it passing the Passport Service’s endless, nit-picky rules as there is of your first holiday as a parent actually feeling like a holiday (no-one warned you about that pre-children, did they?).

If your baby’s still tiny, you’ll probably be asked to lie them down on a cushion or piece of fabric that hasn’t seen washing detergent since the shop opened at some time during the 1980s. If you don’t fancy that, the alternative is to hold them up yourself against a plain background. Sounds easy, but unfortunately no part of your body is allowed to be seen in the photo, not even your hand. Look upon it as early practice for the endless hours of hide-and-seek you’ll have to endure when your baby’s older.

So while you bend yourself into inhuman positions to hold your baby’s wobbly head up securely yet invisibly (that pregnancy yoga was good for something, after all), the sales assistant photographer will snap away furiously, acutely aware of the 10-second window they have before your baby howls the place down in outraged objection. If you’re lucky, you’ll burst onto the street a few minutes later, flustered and sweaty but with a page of passport-ready pictures of your little one tucked into your bag. And if you’re even luckier, it might even look a little bit like them. The picture above is of my daughter, and even I wouldn’t recognize it as her if I hadn’t been there when the picture was taken. Oh well, it’s not as though she’s burdened with it for the next five years, is it?

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Acting My Age

If he makes one more joke about the chips on the doorstep, there’ll be trouble.

My husband opened our front door early on Saturday morning to be greeted by the sight of a smattering of chips on the path leading up to the house, scattered like breadcrumbs in a downmarket fairytale. He worked out fairly quickly that it wasn’t the work of students who’d diverted down our street on their way home the night before. Laughing, he pointed them out to Little Boy and then they headed off to the shop to buy provisions. Provisions for me. Hangover cures, if you like. I, the phantom chip-dropper, was still in bed nursing a sore head of epic proportions. I felt sick. I felt silly. And I felt fifteen years younger.

Friday night was brilliant. I met up with a friend I’ve known for years. She only lives a ten-minute drive away, but somehow it’s taken us until now to arrange to go out since I moved back here in August. With two children apiece, we always seem to be busy. On any given weekend, one or other of us will be preoccupied with birthday parties, visits from the in-laws, visits to the in-laws, trips away and sundry other family-related stuff. Several times we’ve agreed on a date and several times we’ve had to postpone. It got to the point where I started to think it would never happen, and that we were destined to only ever meet during the day with our children (and therefore never have a meaningful conversation). Until Friday, that is, when the Gods of Going Out were smiling.

And so it was that I found myself heading into town to start the long weekend in style. We used to go out together all the time, my friend and me, long before either of us had met the men we were to marry and have children with. We’d dress in clothes that stuck two fingers up at the weather forecast, bounced from pub to pub to wine bar, and would set the world to rights until long after the last bus had left. I loved those nights, and all the other nights like them with all my other friends. So much fun, so much silliness, so few cares. Our biggest concerns were our A level results, whether we stood a chance with the latest object of our affections and what we should pack to take to the Reading Festival.

Nowadays, nights out like that are few and far between. It’s no surprise; there comes a time when going out just doesn’t have the same appeal as relaxing at home with a glass of wine and a box set. It all just seems to take so much effort; it’s so much easier not to bother. The logistics of actually finding a date and making sure someone will be around to look after the children require a qualification in project management. If I’m trying to meet up with two friends at the same time, I might as well just forget it (or unwrap my diary for next year and start comparing dates for 2014).

It’s no surprise that it’s got harder; we’ve all got children, we’re knackered and going out for a drink with our friends isn’t top priority. We’re too busy spending our evenings ticking tasks off our never-ending to-do lists or collapsing on the sofa after another day’s slog at home or at the office. But after this weekend, I’m definitely going to be making more time to go out with my friends. It’s the best anti-ageing tip I’ve got. Just one night of talking too much, drinking too much and plain-and-simple not being a mum has done me the world of good. No buggy to manoeuvre, no endless questions to answer, no baby tugging at my necklace. I felt like me again. Me BC (Before Children).

Listening to The Archers, muttering at the news, joining the National Trust, the Royal Horticultural Society and the Historic Houses Association, using phrases like ‘it’s for your own good’…there’s no denying that some worrying signs of middle age have crept in. I’ve even been known to watch – and enjoy The Antiques Roadshow. More than once. And I knit. It’s not sounding good, is it? But I’m young. Not young young, but not old. Not since Viking times has thirty-five been considered elderly.

Life has become a little bit too sensible, and I know I’m not the only one that motherhood has had that effect on. I went out in January with a couple of friends – postponed and rearranged from October, of course – and it was the lamest night we’ve ever had together. When we were younger we’d have conducted a grand tour of the city’s pubs and bars, drinking and laughing and not going home until forcibly ejected. Now we’ve got children and it’s changed.

We met in the bar of our local arthouse cinema. One of my friends was driving so she stuck to ginger beer. My other friend and I had a large glass of wine each, and that was it. We chatted about life and a lot about children. We kept an eye on the clock to make sure we weren’t back too late, just in case the babies woke in the night. We stayed in the same bar, cinema-goers drifting in and out, and then parted ways in time to get to bed. Don’t get me wrong; it was lovely to see them, and we certainly don’t need to drink heavily to have fun. But we’re all so preoccupied with ‘being a parent’ that we rarely allow ourselves precious time off. And when we do, we’re not really ourselves.

It’s too easy to sit back and let middle age creep in in its slippered feet. But it’s easy to fight it, too. Even I can’t get out as much as I’d like, I’m going to turn the radio off and listen to more music. Just a few chords of the songs I used to listen to in my teens and twenties is enough to transport me back. It’s a good excuse for a dance with the baby and Little Boy, too, and it makes me happy. And of course I’m going to be making space in my diary for many more nights out with my friends. Having endured a weekend’s worth of chip-related jokes, next time I’ll remember the golden rule: line your stomach. Or the other one: hide the evidence.

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Not Having It All

20130502-215117.jpgSomewhere in north London, an architect sterilises bottles while a baby cries in its basket and a toddler rams a toy car repeatedly into her ankle; in the Kent countryside, a senior accountant is engaged in a lengthy negotiation with her daughter about when she has to turn off the TV and do something more productive; in Manchester, a doctor is under the dining table picking Cheerios off the floor; and in York, a senior lawyer is trying to write a blog post, do the washing, have a shower and tidy up, all before the baby wakes up from her nap. That’s me, and these are my friends. These are our lives.

Sometimes, when I’m losing a fifteen minute argument with the boy about which socks he should wear today, or as I’m putting the baby’s shoes back on for the umpteenth time, I do wonder. I wonder why I bothered doing a four-year degree followed by an ulcer-inducing law conversion. I wonder why I gritted my teeth through several years’ hard graft at a City law firm, enduring unreasonable outbursts from the partners and everyday sexism, and being expected to look grateful for having to work through the night. In hindsight, I guess this experience of working all hours was some sort of preparation for motherhood (at least I was getting paid for the inconvenience, though, and there was usually champagne at the end of it). But that’s the only transferable skill I can think of.

The selection process for motherhood is pretty straightforward really. No fiddly forms to fill in, no assessment centres, no panel interview. Conceived? You’re in! There’s no getting away from the fact that my qualifications are pretty irrelevant when it comes to bringing up my children. I worked bloody hard to get them, though, and I would rather like to use them again sometime. But at the moment I can’t think when, or how, that’s going to happen. And many of my friends are in exactly the same situation.

It’s the usual story – stop me if you’ve heard it before. After my first baby was born, I went back to work. It was a huge wrench to leave my ten-month-old in nursery, unable to walk or shout after me, ‘Mummy, you cow, pick me up right now and take me home’. It never crossed my mind not to go back to my job. We could manage the nursery fees and there was just enough left over to make it worth doing. I negotiated a four-day week which took the edge off my maternal guilt.

Once I got into the swing of it, I quite enjoyed being a working mum. My job was fun; I liked what I did and who I worked with. There were times when it was stressful, of course. In the first few months, it felt as though I was getting a call from nursery every second day to ask me to come and pick the boy up because they thought he was unwell. I hated having to go to my boss and ask her if I could leave early (although she was very sympathetic), and was resentful at having to make an hour-long trip to nursery only to find that he was perfectly well. Fitting in the cooking and general house admin was a struggle, but it worked well. For a few days a week I felt like a fully-fledged, yoghurt-stain-free professional. And then I became pregnant again and, a month before the baby was due, was made redundant.

It’s now coming up to my baby’s first birthday and I’ve started to think about work again. I’ve been pretty relaxed about it up until now, prioritising the children. I realise that I’m lucky to have had the option. These years go fast – I only need to look at my first baby to realise that – and I don’t want to miss them. Nothing is as precious as those smiles, those first steps, the look of astonishment on their faces as they discover something new they can do. And yet I’m not sure I’m cut out to be at home all the time.

Perhaps if it was just looking after the children I’d feel differently. It’s not them I tire of, it’s the relentless cooking, shopping, tidying and cleaning. There’s no sense of progress with any of the domestic stuff. I tidy all the toys away, and five minutes later they’ve been scattered to the four corners of the living room again; I sort out the dining room, only for it to be coated in grated cheese and Weetabix before the day is out; I wash the baby’s hair and within the hour it’s been conditioned with mashed banana. If I was still working, it would be like spending the morning writing a contract, only for someone to come along and delete it during my lunch hour. I’d spend the afternoon re-writing it, only for someone to delete it again while I go to make a cup of tea.

So I’d like to work but, like my friends, I need to do something that will fit with family life. We’re all desperate to do something to prevent a CBeebies-induced fog from settling permanently inside our heads, but what? Most of us can’t really go back to what we were doing before unless we get full-on full-time childcare. At that point, the cost – both financial and emotional – seems too high. We need something flexible, or it just won’t work. The practical stuff – who will drop off and pick the children up from nursery? What if they’re ill? When will we have time to cook or wash or see each other? – conspires against lots of us going back full time. And yet flexible roles are few and far between. So we muddle on, muttering something about ‘when they’re at school I’ll look for something’, forgetting that school hours are even worse than nursery. And then there’s the holidays. No wonder so many women are trying to forge a career for themselves from home, desperately trying to write that novel/monetise that blog/sell that product idea.

Something’s got to give. It makes me really angry that a whole generation of smart women are being forced to make choices that they aren’t necessarily happy with. Most of us are choosing between working full-time or being at home full-time, when I’m sure that many of us would welcome something in between. But until we find that dream role, it’s back under the table to search for Shreddies.

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Motherhood in 100 Objects: #8 Thermometer

thermometerNothing gets new parents into a flap quite like the possibility that the baby may have a temperature. It’s the middle of the night and she’s fussing a bit, crying for no apparent reason (she’s been fed and changed fairly recently). You pick her up and put a hand to her head and – argh! – she’s hot and clammy. At least you think she is, but you need a second opinion. So you prod your sleeping bear of a partner (who is not in the slightest bit medically trained; he’s never even seen an episode of Holby City) awake to see what he thinks.

This marks the start of at least an hour of hushed debate and frenetic pyjama-clad activity. Neither of you can agree about whether she feels hot or not (he thinks she’s fine and you should wait and see how she is in the morning, but you suspect that’s just because he wants to go back to sleep; you think she’s a bit warm but would like to know for sure). There’s only one sensible option: take her temperature. How hard can it be?

First of all you need to find the thermometer. In theory this shouldn’t be a problem for me as we’ve got so many of them. Since becoming parents, we’ve acquired precisely three times as many thermometers as we have children. Initially we invested in an ear one. Unfortunately (a) no child of ours will allow it anywhere near their ear – they take one look at it and shriek the house down; (b) if we can wrestle it in, it always runs out of battery at the crucial moment; and (c) any readings it does ever give are completely ridiculous (ie. normal for an amphibian, not for a warm-blooded human).

Since those early days we’ve amassed quite a collection, comprising another ear thermometer (slightly more expensive, still impossible to use), a couple of oral ones (useless until the children are older) and some forehead ones. The forehead ones seem to be the most idiot-proof – plonk it on the child’s forehead and wait for the temperature to show – but we’ve even struggled with those. A grumpy toddler with a fever isn’t necessarily going to cooperate when it comes to keeping still. So we’ve got a ton of thermometers, but can we find one in the middle of the night when we need it? Can we heck. We’ll usually track one down eventually; after much swearing and ‘are you sure you’ve looked properly?’, it’ll probably be found lurking at the bottom of the first aid box or languishing in a wash bag that we took on holiday several months ago.

Next you need to actually take the temperature. As discussed, this might look easy on Casualty but in reality it is a nightmare. A placid baby will probably play along, but as soon as he or she is old enough to know what you’re doing, they’re likely to object loudly. Tell them it’s ‘for their own good’ if it makes you feel better, but it’s unlikely to encourage them to cooperate. Take heart; with enough perseverance, you will get a reading at some point. Whether it bears any relation to their actual temperature or not is debatable. In our household, it’s at this point we realise that we’ve got absolutely no idea what a normal temperature is meant to be anyway. Enter our good friend, Mr Google. Often followed by our even better friend, Mrs Calpol.

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Motherhood in 100 Objects: #7 The Scan Photo

20130426-135617.jpg

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s a baby! Okay, so only the medically trained will be able to work out the finer details, but the fact that you can barely tell the baby’s arse from its elbow takes none of the magic away from your very first photo of your little one. There really is no better reward for surviving those nauseating, anxiety-ridden first twelve weeks of pregnancy than getting the first glimpse of your baby, flickering away on the sonographer’s screen. Your appointment will fly by; no sooner has your tiny bump been slathered in gel than you’re out in the hospital corridor again, flush with excitement and disbelief (hooray! I really am pregnant after all! And everything’s fine!).

By the time you get home and the adrenaline’s worn off, it’s all a bit of a blur and you can’t quite remember everything you saw. At this point you’re grateful for the series of photos that they gave you and that you very carefully put in your bag, placing them gently between the pages of the book you’re reading for safekeeping. At last, there he or she is on paper; the little one you’ve been waiting twelve weeks to see and will wait another twenty-eight to meet.

The quality is likely to be dubious at best; your phone may take pictures that look almost professional, but scan photos are very last century. If you’d taken them along to be developed at the chemists, as we all did a couple of decades ago, you’d expect them to come back covered in ‘quality control’ stickers with patronising suggestions as to how to improve your technique. They are grainy, out of focus and show body parts that are difficult to discern. If you’re lucky, the sonographer will label them for you as they did for us: ‘leg, leg, arm, arm, bottom, head’. (We may have looked particularly stupid).

You might contemplate paying for a 3D scan, but the photos from them are often even more bizarre. If I’d had one, I think I’d have spent the remainder of my pregnancy worrying about whether I was going to give birth to a baby or ET. So we stuck with the routine NHS scan and came home clutching the photographic proof of the reason for my recent obsession with toast.

Grainy or not, from the moment I was handed the scan photo of my baby boy, it became my most treasured possession. Forget the sentimental ornaments, precious jewellery and various computer gubbins; if our flat had gone up in flames, the only thing I’d have cared about saving at that moment in time (my husband aside, of course) would have been that photo. I stared at it endlessly: on the train, in stolen moments at the office and at home.

Close family and long-suffering friends aside, though, I like to think I spared other people from having to coo over it. There’s very little that anyone can sensibly say about a picture of a 12-week old foetus (‘What a beautiful spine! And ten toes – how wonderful!’). But for you, it’s the first snapshot for your family album. And only eight weeks until the next one.

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