After all of that annoyance with Rhubarb the other day, he seems to have settled back into his usual muttering, grumbling but generally cooperative self. That episode seems to have been but a brief spike in TAAM activity. I am a little bit annoyed, however because it turns out that meeting that he missed would have been beneficial to attend. It was to select three Year Eights who would be allowed to row in the “very big regatta”, which is being held in a couple of weeks. The manager of the team told Rhubarb that he may have been selected if he had attended the meeting. They chose him to be cox for the Year Nine boys in the end, which was actually quite an honour but suggests that they thought he possessed the skill to participate. Anyway, there’s always next time and it will be fun just to see him out there on the water joining in with his team.

Not content to leave me harassment free (because they are the minions of Beelzebub) Rhubarb has passed the torch to Pudding. The difference is that Pudding can be as annoying as you please and he still has the cuteness to temper it. You can never be truly annoyed by Pudding because he is three. While he is still three (in fact I believe the official cut-off age for overarching cuteness is seven), most of the things that he does are funny or  endearing in some way. You may have to cover your face when you laugh so that he doesn’t know he was being funny and takes your stern rebuke seriously but he is still amusing. Pudding has reached some sort of developmental turning point and has enter the “questions phase”. Consider the following examples of Pudding’s questioning prowess:

• “Mummy, how does my body move?” – he is insistent that, as your brain has no mouth, your brain can not be telling your legs and arms what to do. His answer : “Your bones have magic”, um, yes, far more plausible.
• “Mummy, what’s inside my tummy?” – after explaining basic anatomy and physiology of digestive tract I was thoroughly overruled. It is preposterous to suggest that your food makes it’s way through your digestive tract and ends up as poo, it somehow becomes invisible and makes it’s escape via the mouth, perhaps while you are sleeping.
• “Mummy where do boogers come from?” – I tried to be vague but he would not be fobbed off with anything less than a full description of  glandular epithelial cells. He nodded sagely and seemed well satisfied with this.
• “Daddy, why do my pants fall down?” – Beefcake* tried explaining the concept of objects being attracted to one another – gravity. I argued that it may not be appropriate for a three-year-old.

There are more but I won’t bore you.

As a side note, the handbag arrived this morning. I am overjoyed. I haven’t taken it on an outing yet but I will tomorrow and I will post pictures of handbag’s first trip out. I know, you’re excited!

* I nearly hit publish with Beefcake’s REAL name typed into this post. I have never done that before. I am not on the ball.

I had a little stomach clenching moment today when Rhubarb said this to me. I actually felt quite wounded.

“Can you just come and chat to me while Daddy and Poss are at her parent teacher interview, my pelvis is bad, it will help to have you out here with me and the small children?” I asked him.

“I don’t want to talk to you and I don’t care.”

Well, that sums it all up really doesn’t it. In the end he agreed to stay in the room as long as I didn’t try to speak to him. The Teenage Angst and Apathy Monster has definitely  taken up residence in my son’s brain. The TAAM feels the need to make a smart-arsed comment each time I speak to him or tell him something he needs to do. The TAAM is messy and a touch smelly. The TAAM has absolutely no empathy or compassion. The TAAM cares not what happens to others.

He is not yet a TAAM host all the time but he is like it more and more. We had friends over for an impromptu meal on Sunday night. Ordinarily he would hang around and play with the small children, chat to the adults, socialise. He was there and his usual pleasant, funny self during dinner but spent the rest of the time in his room or basically wherever the rest of us were not.

The TAAM is really taking over now and I don’t want it to. I have been smugly applauding my own fabulous parenting ability up to this point. Our friends and family have always commented on what great kids we have. Nice polite, funny, clever children. Even non-child friends have enjoyed spending time with our children. I have been aware that the TAAM would take over at some point but I think there was a part of me that hoped that Rhubarb would be somewhat immune to it.

I feel to my core that Poss, having traditionally been the placid, sweet-natured young girl, will be an absolute horror of a teenager. We see shades of it now and I can just feel it in my bones. I thought maybe Rhubarb would stay in this good place that we’ve finally found. He was a moody and sensitive kid early on. He took the divorce (and his subsequent neglect by FW) hard but he was five and it was only natural. The last few years he has been wonderful. We have been close. I have really liked him.

I don’t like the TAAM. He is a bastard.

Rhubarb does team rowing with the school. He trains twice a week. It is an expensive and demanding sport but I am so pleased that he is doing something. I spent my teenage years telling my PE teacher I had period cramps at every lesson, I loathed physical activity in any form (*ahem* well, not any form I guess or the whole pregnant at 17 thing might not have happened).

I am thrilled that he is sporty  but I expect him to take his responsibilities to his sport seriously. He missed a team meeting at school today. He came home, told Beefcake this and then asked if he could skip training tomorrow because he wants to visit a fast-food chain with some of his mates. My automatic response was ‘no’ because I want him to honour his commitments and I don’t think he’s old enough to go hanging around who knows where in the afternoon. He’s a baby, maybe when he’s 17 or so. Beefcake says he is old enough and it doesn’t matter if he misses one training session as the year 8’s are barely getting a look-in at the moment (they don’t compete in regattas until next year).

What do you think, dear internets? It is a bit of a moot point really because I told him he couldn’t go after the TAAM was particularly rude to me this afternoon but still, I’d like to know. 13’s too little to be out on your own. right?

Pudding did not care that this was our last morning to have a sleep-in. After coming in to our bed at 7am he tossed and turned for 20 minutes before climbing out, standing next to my side of the bed and whispering loudly in his best toddler style that he wanted “bekky”. I told him he’d be fine and could leave Mummy and Daddy to sleep and tide himself over with a cracker from the pantry (yes, I know, I’m an excellent mother). He left the room and stood in the hallway wimpering and moaning about his bekky and how huuuuuungry he was. I decided it would be far nicer to get up and make it for him unencumbered than to wait for him to wake Grub with his wailing and have to do it with her on my hip. So, here I am, it’s now 7.40am.

Pudding was actually very cute in the kitchen.

“Toast is not for bekky” he said to me with the sweet rising intonation that means, “I am asking for toast but don’t want to ask explicitly in case there is some reason I can’t have toast because I get put out easily if things don’t go my way and it is best this way”.

Me: “Toast is perfect for brekky, would you like toast?”

P: “Yes, but you can have it at night”

Me: “Toast is lovely at any time”

P: “Yes”

He sat munching his toast on the kitchen sofa while I tidied up and I mentioned to him that his knees were lovely.

Me: “Did you buy the from the shop?”

P: “No”

Me: “You did, you bought them from the supermarket, in the knee aisle”

P: “No, they’re from Ikea”

We giggled.

Rhubarb just emerged from his cave to tell me that he vomited during the night. Now all six of us have been afflicted, the circle is complete. I sent him to bed with a bucket just in case. He wanted to know what he should do with it as it had been “fermenting in his room all night”. Why oh why would he choose now abandon his monosyllabic ways. I was eating a bowl of yoghurt with lumps of peach and mango in it. I can’t finish it now. Did I mention how thrilled I am that school goes back tomorrow?

I have reached that point.

You know, where you feel as though you may spontaneously combust, or at the very least lay in a tantying, weeping heap on the floor, if you are forced to be civil in a parental sort of way again in the near future.

It doesn’t help that I have been typing this with one hand whilst Grub is asleep on my chest. I have been trying to get her to stay asleep since 7pm, it is now 10.18pm and she JUST went. This has not been relaxing.

Because I am terribly clever, I decided to rearrange our room so that we can fit a cot in it in temperatures of over 40 degrees. Also, pelvis. Clever. Beefcake did all of the lifting and shifting but it nevertheless appears that I have done something to sabotage the fragile truce between my muscles and my skeleton.

The real reason for my mood is the older two children who, despite being fully aware of my pelvis difficulties, whinged and moaned at every request for assistance today. Rhubarb in particular was being very trying. It seems   he really is 13 now and is determined to flaunt his teenage moods at every opportunity. Everything  I said today was met with either a sigh or an infuriating circular argument of the kind that teenagers carry out best. At one point I asked him if he could recommend a topic, which we could agree on, so that we could talk about that. I think he said something sarcastic and dismissive. I have blocked it out.

The thing is, he is ordinarily great company. I enjoy spending time with him. When he has days like this it makes me want to tear my hair out.

Poss had a similarly disagreeable day. Instead of the rude remarks, she prefers to moan and moan and moan and, well you get it. I have never been more relieved to have them all in bed.

The annoying thing about it is that, as children, they have an expectation  that you will remain civil and loving to them. Forgiving them all their little behavioural episodes and carrying on without holding a grudge. I don’t usually have a problem with this, after all, that’s kind of my job,  but just then, when Rhubarb brought his guitar out to show me some riff he just mastered. I had to fight the urge to ram it down his throat.

On this day 13 years ago you came into the world, my baby boy.

I laboured long and hard to bring you into the world.

I was eighteen years old.

I looked into your face when you were placed onto my body, after your not so gentle entrance into the world, and I wasn’t afraid. You were beautiful.

We have grown up together, in a way. I would not be who I am, if you had not come in to my life, just at that time and made me a mother, turning me aside from other paths.

You are awesome and you’re actually turning out to be a lot like me, which is both scary and cool.

I look at you today, heading so quickly towards being a real, live, adult man and I am proud…..

….and very glad that you can still muck around and have a laugh  with your Mum.

Happy Birthday darling boy, you are beautiful.

Mum

xx

I realised that I haven’t posted any photos of my Grub for a good while. She is getting so big. Sitting on her own now for several minutes at a time. She can roll clear across the room. In fact, I’m thinking she may not crawl for a while because she can get herself around so easily by rolling.

This is my fourth child, I should be used to this overwhelming love by now and I hate to gush, but the whole family is just in awe of how she seems to grow more beautiful every day.

Rhubarb will often say to me “I don’t know how we ever managed without her!”

And it’s true, as I sit here typing this with her asleep in my arms……

I don’t know how we ever managed without her.

As I hulaed (Wii fit) my great big arse off this afternoon, I was reminded of how cruel and tactless children can be.

Rhubarb: “Hah! Wow mum, you have a really funny looking bum!”

Me: “Ah, really?”

Rhubarb: “Yeah, it’s like you’ve got four bum cheeks or something. It’s like a bum four-pack.”

Poss: “Hahaha. Yeah, you do Mum, it’s really funny.”

Me: “Yeah, thanks guys, that’s great.”

Beefcake: (obviously hadn’t been listening properly) “Surely you want a four pack?”

Me: “Not on my arse!”

Beefcake (trying to defend my arse’s honour): “Oh, look kids, (adjusts my clothing so they can see better) that’s top bit is just swelling from Mum’s dodgy pelvis*.”

Rhubarb: “Oh, right, well, it still looks funny**.”

Yeah, charming. I wonder does anyone else have such charming children??

* I am well aware that Wii hulaing is perhaps ill advised when my pelvis is misbehaving and swollen, to the point of causing my children to fall about on the floor in fits of hysterics. I am not terribly good at accepting my limitations in this area.

**When Rhubarb realised I had been a touch offended, this evening, I got an apology. I suppose he may not be completely evil and heartless.