Morning Dialogue

We leave the house to walk to the school at 8.55am every day.  To my daily horror, there is a spider which lives in the gap between the shrubs in the front of our house.  It's about the size of a Fiat Panda (I'm not joking) and even though I know that the unusually harsh winter this year has killed it off, I still RUN (thankfully, I'm steering the pushchair or it would be an arms-flailing girly-squealing extravaganza) past said shrubs lest one morning it finds itself come back to life and decides to jump out into my face, or worse, crawl stealthily onto my shoulder and nest in my hair or ear or something.

What unearthly creature from the depths of Hades wove this web of terror, I ask you?  A FIAT PANDA SIZED ONE, dude.

SHUDDER.

Anyway -- the other morning we were on our way to school and, presumably for comedic effect (he knows about how the spider gives me the willies) Ben wove zig zag style through the shrubbery, as I navigated the pushchair out of the front door and locked the house up behind us.

"That spider'll get you," I said, trying to sound matter-of-fact when really I was trying not to puke in my mouth a little bit at the thought of it really happening.  He just laughed, brazen.

Two minutes later, I thought I'd freak-out-fake-out him, and pointed at his back screaming, "IT'S ON YOU! IT'S ON YOU!" and he began to gesticulate wildly, trying to see behind himself like a dog chasing its tail.  Of course (loving mother that I am) I burst out in a fit of giggles and he soon knew that I was pulling his leg.

He walloped me with his packed lunch bag.  "Mammy!  That was NOT funny!"

"Oh, Benny... it was just a little joke.  I thought it was HILARIOUS," I chuckled.

"What does that mean?" he asked.

"It means when something is really, really, extra super funny." I told him.

He gave a bit of a shiver, shaking off the last remnants of the memory of the phantom spider that so nearly crawled up his neck and down his collar.  "Well, DON'T DO IT AGAIN!" he said, telling me off with a lilt to his voice that was spookily similar to my own when he is three seconds away from a session on the 'naughty step'.

"THOSE kinds of jokes," he chastised, his little brow furrowed crossly, "are not funny.  They are not FALARIOUS at all."

Surprising Myself

Now, before I crow too loudly I need to remember that it’s only Monday. I was so dreading this week; it’s Half Term, you see.

For my Canadian pals, half term is sort of like March Break... British kids only get 6 weeks off in the summer, and instead they have a week off every six weeks. To describe my feelings about having both of my kids home all week on my own? At best, apprehensive. At worst, hyperventilation-inducing.

But today I had one of those days full of ‘step back and enjoy the moment’ moments, despite a bit of near-death-related drama. Okay, maybe not ACTUAL DEATH, like the dead kind of death... I’ll rephrase: near-maiming-related drama. Here are the headlines:

BAD BUS DRIVER
Noteworthy; Ben was really well behaved and very cute on the bus and I was even having a good hair day and it was all going swimmingly... until, that is, the driver almost killed us. He must have been daydreaming that the double decker he was driving was really a Mini Cooper and thought he’d chance his luck zipping through a roundabout in front of an oncoming vehicle when he didn’t have the right of way. When he snapped out of his reverie at the last possible millisecond to slam on the brakes, the violent continuing inertia of the bus threw me out of my seat and down the gangway while Ben smashed his cheek off a pole. All within a time span of about three and a half seconds. Total nightmare. Luckily, Jude had been unsettled so I had him on my knee; I shudder to think where he would have wound up if he’d been asleep in his pram. Anyway – all’s well that ends well, dear readers. We’re all okay – Ben screamed and burst into tears at first, but I think it was the shock of it more than anything. He is okay bar the purple bruise he’s now (somewhat proudly!) sporting on his left cheekbone. When I got off the bus, I managed to have a proper look at him and calm him down within a minute or two. What a brave little soldier! A few minutes later, crossing the road he rubbed his cheek and said, “Ow, Mammy. That KNACKED.”

BEN ROCKS OUT
We were walking down Northumberland Street when we came upon a busker that was singing a pretty decent rendition of Oasis’ “Half a World Away”.  Ben stopped and had a little dance. He asked me for some money; I gave him some loose change and he went and put it in the guy’s guitar case. Oh, my heart!

SPOOKY MILKSHAKES
Went into Fenwick’s to check out the toy department. Ben buzzed from shelf to shelf bumblebee/flower style, pointing out the toys which Santa’s elves might start building him, if he’s a good boy. Santa made notes. ;-) Then we went to the Northside Diner for a milkshake. It’s this 50’s style retroey dinery type place in Fenwick’s on the Toys floor... didn’t know it was there, it was fab! While we were waiting for our shakes Ben went over to this big old Wurlitzer juke box they had in the corner. He’s pressing loads of buttons, and the next thing I know? The Beatles’ “Hey Jude” comes on.

Ben and Jude, waiting on a shake.

I was frightened of today, and it turned out to be one of those spontaneous great days that no amount of careful planning could initiate. Priceless. Happy half term, everyone.

HA HA HADORABLE

OMG.

In a conversation with Ben just now, I said, "No honey, Daddy was just pretending, "

"No, Mammy, " he replies, "He wasn't pretending, he was REALing."

Blog Transfer Post 2

Saturday 15th September 2007: No Son of Mine!

So this morning we tried to contribute to Ben's learning, by trying to divert his attention away from these new-stylee cartoons all the kids are watching.

Picture the scene: Ben sitting on the potty watching TV (so what?), Jason eating muesli and me, cup of tea in hand and the Saturday morning newspaper covering the better part of my person and the sofa, the sunshine streaming through the living room window.

We tried: we failed.

For Jason and me, every nostalgic bone in our respective bodies gave an almighty shudder when we heard the unmistakable opening bars of one of the best kids TV shows of our formative years:

Dance your cares away / worries for another day / let the music play / down at FRAGGLE ROCK!

Too cool! Jason says just like we grew up instinctively loving and knowing all the Beatles lyrics, so should our offspring have inherent appreciation of all things Henson. And then it all came crashing down -- having switched the telly over from 'Roary the Racing Car' or 'Engie Benjy' or similar to catch a glimpse of this old classic, our nostalgic idyll was irrevocably shattered by the bloodcurdling screech that came out of our toddler: DADDY! SWITCH IT OFF! SWITCH! IT! OOOOOOOOOOOOFFF!

I NOT LIKE THE FLAGGLES!

A shame on the Proctor household!

A coincidence that at that very moment, a huge grey cloud moved in front of the sun?

I think not.

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."