Christmas Then and Now

I used to decorate my tree with coordinated frou-frou
Now it’s full of school-made decs and topped with R2D2

I used to spend days shopping, with lunch and time to wander

Now, if it’s not sold online, it’s on my list no longer

I used to slowly wrap my gifts, whilst sipping on some wine

Now I have two ‘helpers’ and it takes me twice the time

I used to try new recipes like Nigella on the telly
Now I serve spaghetti hoops beside the cranberry jelly

I used to spend my Christmas Eve with good friends down the pub
Now I’m stuffing turkey, stockings and my gob with grub

I used to love the music: Nat King Cole and ‘Let it snow
Now, for the ten thousandth time, it’s Elsa’s ‘Let it Go!’

I used to have a lay-in, then eat breakfast in my bed

Now I’m up at 5am with two kids off their head

I used to love my Christmases, so civilized and merry

And sometimes I think wistfully of a quiet glass of sherry

But their first squeak of excitement is enough to make me sure;

I’d never swap my Christmas now for my Christmases before.

What shall we buy the children this year?

“We buy them expensive toys and they end up playing with the cardboard box. Next year we’ll just give them the boxes.” Says every parent every year.

Number of parents who actually give their child a cardboard box in lieu of presents: 0

A month before Christmas, we attempt to have a clear out of toys to make way for the new arrivals. Both children approach this process as if we were taking food from their mouths. Toys which have been lost down the back of the wardrobe for six months are clutched to their breast like a long lost friend; jigsaw puzzles with missing pieces are professed to be their ‘favourite’; dolls with missing limbs who have been skulking at the bottom of the toy box have allegedly been searched for ‘for ages’. Next year we are planning a midnight smash and grab under cover of darkness.

They refuse to understand that, as we have a regular sized house without elastic sides, we need to make room for the plethora of toys which they seem to want this year. As the boy has started to outgrow Cbeebies and they have begun watching channels with adverts, so their awareness of the multitude of purchasable plastic rubbish has increased. Every ad break is met with a chorus of ‘Can we have that?’ ‘Can we get that?’ and, quite often, ‘Can I have that? What is it?’

My five year old son is actually very difficult to buy for as he becomes completely obsessed with one character to the exclusion of all others, but this lasts for about two weeks before he is onto the next thing (I could make a cheap joke at the expense of past boyfriends here but I will resist.) In the last two months we have been through Spiderman, Star Wars, Ninja Turtles and now the Matt Hatter Chronicles. Buy his Christmas gift too early and we could be heading for a gift disaster of a size not seen in our family since the Totes Toasties Tsunami of 1997.

The girl, on the other hand, is easily pleased by anything and everything that Disney has ever mass produced. I honestly think I could scrape something out of the street and stick it in a Princess costume and she’d want it. This leaves me in a dilemma: I have an ethical and active dislike of Disney Princesses and their need to be 'saved' by a man whilst my daughter seems to gravitate towards them with awe. I try to steer her towards more suitable female heroines: Marie Curie, Amelia Airhart, Emmeline Pankhurst. Although even I have to admit, as she correctly tells me, that their dresses aren't anywhere near as pretty.

Add to this my husband, the armchair eco-warrior, muttering about landfill and the environment and you can see why I want to go to bed with a giant size selection box and a tube of Pringles (I knew it was dangerously early to start buying the Christmas food.)

Nonetheless, this month will see me trawling the aisles of ToyRUs, selling my soul in the Disney Store and cross-checking prices on Amazon with the best of them. Unless I can find myself a nice cardboard box to hide in . . .

 

 

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First Night

The ward is all quiet now
The lights are down low
The visitors and daddies have all had to go

The mothers are resting
Their babies asleep
One nurse at the station, a watch she will keep

We've had quite a journey
Intense and unreal
I've felt things I never expected to feel

Moments of excitement
Moments of panic
An ending not planned and incredibly frantic

But now it's all over
It's just you and I
I knew you the moment you gave that first cry 

I look at you sleeping
So still and so small
I am your mummy and you are my all.

Emma Robinson 2014

www.facebook.com/motherhoodforslackers

Supermarket Sweep

I know last time I took you,
I swore it would be the last.
But we’ve only two fish fingers left
and the bread has breathed its last.

Please stay in the trolley,
it really would be better.
I know you want to be helpful
and be mummy’s little ‘getters.’

But mummy’s rather in a rush
to get this shopping done.
This is called a domestic chore,
it’s not supposed to be fun.

Don’t touch that tottering food display
and put back that DVD.
I know you have some money,
but they’re more than 50p.

That lady does have funny hair
but please don’t point like that.
And, no, we don’t need cat food
as we haven’t got a cat.

If you both behave yourself,
I’ll buy you each a treat.
I was thinking just some stickers,
not a lifesize Happy Feet.

Until we’ve paid, it’s stealing
if you start to eat a biscuit.
Oh sod it, yes just open them -
it’s easier to risk it.

Yes I can see the woman
with the tiny little baby.
She’s staring at you terrified,
of what’s coming to her maybe.

It’s rather hard to keep my calm
as people start to frown.
(Ironic you choose the frozen bit
to have a big meltdown.)

I want to kiss, mums that give me
‘I’ve been there too’ smiles.
And give us friendly knowing looks
as I belt around the aisles.

Trying to remember
what I must get from the Deli.
Really isn’t helped much
by you crawling on your belly.

So NOW you want to get back in
and rest your weary legs?
You’ve squashed the lettuce, crushed the crisps
and sat down on the eggs.

Let’s just go, we’ve got the bulk,
the rest of the list can keep.
No-one’s been ‘round here so fast
since Supermarket sweep.

Somehow we make it through the tills
and past the security men.
And I crawl towards the exit
crying, “Never, ever, again!”

Emma Robinson 2014

www.facebook.com/motherhoodforslackers

Dear Dad

You taught me how to ride a bike and how to tell a joke.
To make up before the sun went down and that promises mustn’t be broke.
You taught me to be generous but also how to save.
You taught me books are precious things and showed me what was brave.

Not to sulk or bear a grudge, the importance of forgiving,
To never take a sickie and work hard to make a living.
That good friends and your family are the greatest kind of wealth.
(And that ever being rude to mum was dangerous for my health.)

And now as my own children grow, I wish that you were here.
With every milestone they achieve and more each passing year.
I wish that they could know you; I just wish that you were there.
I wonder what you’d think of them, my precious crazy pair?

But then I open up my mouth and it’s your voice comes out.
When I tell them to ‘breathe through your nose’ or “I’m right here, don’t shout!’
I hear you when I read to them (though my voice is not as deep.)
And I often use your Beatles songs to sing them off to sleep.

I make them laugh when they hurt themselves just as you would do.
The jokes I tell to make them smile were the ones I learned from you.
My arms that hold them, lips that kiss, were the ones you made for me
And sometimes in a smile, a frown, in them it’s you I see.

And then I know that you are here, in everything I do.
In every word and thought and deed, your influence comes through.
And I smile and know that you’re not gone, I still have what I had.
I’m the parent that I am today, because you were my Dad.

Emma Robinson (2014)

www.facebook.com/motherhoodforslackers

"He gets that from you!"

“I love how babies look like old people. I saw a baby the other day that looked exactly like my grandpa, only taller.” (Jarod Kintz: This Book is Not for Sale.)

When you have a baby, one of the things people do is try to work out who he or she looks like. Emphatic comments that they have their mother’s eyes, their father’s nose and their great-grandfather’s eyebrows make you start to wonder if you have produced a baby or a 3D Police Identikit. Nevertheless, you find yourself scanning their face for bits that look like you, your husband or your parents. Any likenesses are particularly poignant when it’s to someone you have lost. When I put a hat on the girl the other day and she smiled up at me and looked exactly like my Nan, it was a precious moment.

As they get older, you realise that it's not just your looks they can inherit. Whether it’s genetics or learned behaviour, the personality traits of you and your partner start to materialise in miniature form. Sometimes this can be cute: my daughter sucking her thumb and twiddling her hair just as I did at her age; my son pacing the floor as he tells you something, just like his dad does; the fact that they both talk incessantly just like . . .

Sometimes, however, your less attractive traits start to manifest themselves. When the boy was about two, I realised that I needed to stop talking aloud to myself when trying to find my keys, phone or handbag when he hid himself in a cardboard box and said, "Where's William? Where's William? Where's that bloody William?"

(In my defence, I wasn't the first to introduce him to that delightful vocabulary. Weeks previously he had been 'helping' daddy in the garden when he appeared before me crying because he'd been sent in. When I asked him why daddy had sent him in he said, "I've been picking the bloody flowers again, mummy.")

Often you don't realise that you say or do something until they start to mimic you. Recently, I reprimanded my son for losing his temper with the iPad and smacking it in anger. Next day at work I found myself doing exactly the same thing to my computer when it wouldn't do what I wanted. The girl was trying her best to fit herself into a dress she had outgrown the other day and ended up pulling it off her head and throwing it across the room saying it was a “stupid dress.” I really must tell her father to stop doing that . . .

Eventually, they try to use your platitudes against you. My admonishments to keep trying and not give up came back to bite me when I told the boy I couldn't fix a broken toy and he replied, "But mummy, you can't say you can't do it until you've really tried.' They also repeat them to each other. Cue my three year old daughter standing, hands on hips, and telling her brother “How many times have I told you to stop doing that?” (His reply, incidentally, was “Four” – he gets his infuriating tendency to state reality from the paternal line.)

Obviously, we both try to claim the good traits ('I was always bright as a child') and point the finger in the opposite direction for the bad (although, whatever my husband tries to tell you, I have NEVER thrown myself to the floor in public because he wouldn't buy me a pair of shoes.)

This continues throughout your life. I think I resemble my own mum more with each passing year. Also my home looks more like hers as I have definitely developed the same taste in furnishings (although sadly the tidy gene seems to have defaulted somewhere along the line.) Since I've become a mother, this metamorphosis has accelerated: her words drop from my lips with alarming regularity: "What’s the magic word?" and “You need to drink more water” and “What you need are a few early nights.”

My own children’s habits and phases come and go and, as they grow and develop their own personalities and character traits, I wonder which of their parental similarities will disappear and which will remain. I live in hope that they keep their daddy’s blue eyes and thirst for knowledge, my clear skin and passion for a good book and our shared love of laughter.

 Once thing I do know, my daughter will resent me forever if she ends up inheriting my bum.