Blog Transfer Post 1

I've got another blog at nicolaproctor.blogspot.com which I created (and hardly ever updated!) prior to this one. I'd like to amalgamate them both and I'm sure there's a internet trick to do it, but I figured I'd just copy and paste the posts over the next few days. Here's the first one:

Wednesday 25th April 2007: Washa Sheen
My son, Ben, is fascinated by my washing machine. If he's not trying to put things in it (mobile phone, car keys, the cat) he's pulling clothes out of it, pressing buttons, etc. Sometimes I find him sitting in front of it when it is spinning. Just watching, almost in a hypnotic state. He looks up and to me for confirmation: "Clothes in washa, round and round?"

"Yes, baby. Round and round."

The day he tried to put soap powder in it (powder drawer just out of reach of child + box of soap considerably heavier than child = sanity of child's mother lost) I decided enough was Quite Enough and found myself at the Early Learning Centre looking on the shelves of the shop for a toy washing machine.

It's plastic, yellow and blue, and makes a noise like it's filling up with water. It's got several buttons on the front that also make other washing-machine-type noises. A steal at £12.99. I show it to him: it's an immediate hit. His little eyes light up with wonder and amazement you'd think he'd just been handed the FA Cup.

So I prise it out of his vice-like fingers and endure what could have turned into a Full Scale Berzerk while the cashier scans it in. She eyes the quivering lip of my two year old in his pushchair and says to me, "You don't want it in a bag, then?" No, siree, no ma'am, no bags here.

All the way round the mall he plays with the washing machine. On. Off. On. Off. Water. Spinny noises. On. Off. He wouldn't eat his lunch because it was in a spin cycle, or similar. He didn't say hello to some colleagues of Jason's (father of child and husband of me) we ran into. He was smitten.

A near miss of Full Scale Berzerk territory once again when we took it off him for .35 of a millisecond while we got in the car to come home. Honestly; the smoothness of transition and military-like precision of our pushchair exit / carseat entrance / momentary washing machine withdrawl was a joy to behold. The excitement of the day must have been far too much for the poor Baba; he fell asleep before I spiralled the whole way out of the mulit-storey car park.

When we got home, something weird happened. Whether the lighting in the MetroCentre gave the Wonder Toy a false illusion or the noises (spinning, washing, happy toy clothes cleaning) seemed somehow different I don't know, but when we took it out of the box, Ben was absolutely petrified.

Oh.

My.

God.

When we switched it on he let out a yodelley shriek and ran, arms flailing, out of the room. Confused, I followed him with the washing machine and only succeeded in making him even more freaked out. "Witchit off, Mammy! Witchit off!"

He could only be consoled when we buried the washing machine way down in the bottom of the toy cupboard, cleverly concealed underneath a stuffed Scooby Doo and segregated from toys in regular use by a cheap, wooden xylophone.

Poor kid. The kicker is, I could have had a new lipstick for £12.99. A good one as well, proper classy.

Every once in a while, Jase and I try to encourage him to remember his intial fondness and excitement about the washing machine. We put on our excited, convincing faces and say, "Hey Benny -- let's play wiiiiiiiiiiiiiith...... YOUR WASHING MACHINE!! YAY! YEAH!"

He just stops what he's doing, looks at me completely deadpan (with a slight glint of mortal terror behind his big blue eyes) and says, quite categorically, "No, Mammy. Not like-a that washa sheen."