Bedtime routine

The small boy’s bedtime routine is now pretty well laid out.  6.30pm is bathtime, during which he can be found running around the flat, laughing his head off while I vainly attempt to scoop him up and into the bath with bubbles, bath crayons and half a dozen grubby ducks.  How they can be this grubby when they LIVE IN A BATH is beyond me, but they manage it.

Then it is ‘teeth’ time, during which the small boy brushes my teeth with a grizzled old toothbrush, pausing occasionally to suck some of the toothpaste off or mither for more out of the tube.

Following this: further running around the house, this time the small boy completely starkers, laughing his head off even more, with me chasing him around trying to remember what it was I once read in a Gina Ford book once about non-rowdyness at bedtime.

Gina is so ubiquitous now within parenting circles that I think she has actually become a verb.  Mothers talk about ‘doing Gina’ with their kids, with varying degrees of success, failure or abject horror at the idea of preparing their little one for a 15 minute sleep at precisely 16.45.  (Gina would never say quarter to five.)  Needless to say it never caught on in our house, but her words still ring in my ears as I find myself doing the very thing that awful mother she admonishes on page 145 was doing which made little Tabitha such an unmanageable pain.

By 7.30 or so pyjamas are eventually wrestled on, dummies deployed, stories read.  However, at some stage the most exciting possible occurrence will happen, when ‘Daddy!’ gets home.  Daddy knows about the importance of non-rowdy bedtime, but being the boy’s father must thrust him into the air, tickle, pretend-drop him and other hysterical manoeuvres which are fantastically entertaining but not at all conducive to any form of sleep.  All of this invariably leads to the small boy standing in his cot singing loudly for the next three hours.

Between 8 and 9, there are a series of incursions into his room to return dummies which have been dropped on the most difficult-to-reach part of the floor, take away beakers of milk and his trousers which he will have removed at some stage and now be being swinging enthusiastically around his head.  I have a fantasy that one day I will put him into his cot and he will lie down with whichever cuddly toy he likes best tonight, muttering sweet nothings to his darling mother and drifting off to sleep, but it has yet to occur.  Dream on Gina.

World under 2′s champion car spotter

We took the small boy round the London Wetland Centre to see the ducks yesterday.

He was very excited in the car park.

“Car! … Car!”

“You just wait,” I said, as we walked over a wooden bridge, past a statue of Sir Peter Scott, the great ornithologist and founding member of the Worldwide Fund for Nature.

“Bus!” he cried, delighted, as we passed the 283 dropping punters off from as far afield as Acton.

“That’s right,” I said, “and now we’re going to see the ducks!”

Silence round ‘Wildside’ amongst ducks, geese and a pair of discarded antlers from one of the resident red deer.

Then, “Tractor!” the small boy points excitedly at a vehicle a mile and a half away across a distant field.

Silence round the ‘World Wetlands’ where we saw coots, black-necked swans and a plaster of paris model of a crocodile.

Two cups of tea and a piece of cake later, back to the car park.  “Car! … Car!”

Next week-end I’m planning a trip to our local used car dealership.

August update

Pretty poor showing from me on the blogging front recently.  This is partly due to a trip to Canada, which was AWESOME, as they say over there, although the flights were pretty bad.  We learnt a few days into the trip that London was being smashed up by rioters, and feared that we might get home to find out car had been torched.  Luckily Tooting appears to have got away largely unscathed.

The boy had a great time, and is now walking properly.  We’re just about over the jet lag, and now preparing for ‘the exciting project’ I teased you all with so mercilessly in the last update.  It’s just that we’re converting the loft, so abandon any thoughts you had of a 12ft diameter ecodome (whatever that is.)  Should be fun though, although we’re not sure when it’s going to happen yet.

The garden has gone crazy, and I don’t quite have the strength to get out there yet.  It’s sort of a jungle, but the resident foxes seem to like it.

June update

My lovely sister Hannah reminded me that it has been rather a while since I updated the blog.  The weeks have been flying by, and suddenly it’s June already. The small boy keeps us busy.  He is verging on walking but is majoring in shouting, at which he is already highly accomplished.

We made biscuits with him the other day. The wonderful thing about making biscuits with a one year old is that it’s all about the icing.  Every biscuit must be laced and sprinkled. As if we needed any excuse.

In other news I now have ‘ledge veg.’  Three tomato plants in a window box.  They flutter precariously in the wind, I hope they will make it.  We have a veritable orchard in the garden, two apple trees and a plum tree are fruiting.  We have also rescued a couple of potted patio cherry trees from my sisters’ house move.  They seem somewhat traumatised by the trip across Tooting and are clinging on to life itself rather than wasting energy on producing progeny.  I hope all your gardens are flourishing and enjoying some of the recent showers.

Spring

It is funny how much difference a good blast of proper baking sunlight can make.  Yesterday, Tooting was gleaming.  I popped over to Number 8 Neighbour across the road to marvel at her south facing garden.  It was bathed in warm light and lovely.  She says it gets too hot during the afternoons.

We had a long conversation about letter writing.  It’s an under appreciated art form, supposedly superceded by email, facebook, twitter (@rpudd, if you’re interested), but still one of the nicest ways to keep in touch.  Number 8 Neighbour says she will often write a letter over a week, updating day by day.  The letters she writes to her best friends are longer than ones to people she doesn’t get on with so well.

Back over our side of the street the long grass in the garden is taunting me.  It has grown some more overnight, just to exacerbate my guilt at not having mown it for months.  The plant pots are still sitting next to the sink, barren.

Perhaps I will get out there today.  For now though, a nice cup of tea is my next step.  I intend to give it the time and attention it deserves for once.  Loose leaf tea, teapot, fresh milk.  China cup.  Magazine.  Luxury.