Well, it was back to school for the big kids today.

Beefcake woke them both at the usual time and soon Poss was out in the kitchen,  feeling very chuffed in all new school uniform, which we purchased for her on Friday.  I felt very organised and superior in my housewifely skills as I had remembered to do the children’s washing and they both had clean socks and undies. Poss quickly made her breakfast and we expected Rhubarb to follow soon after.

It took us a few minutes to realise that he must have gone back to sleep. I marched in and clapped my hands and put the light on, telling him to hurry and wake up. It was a sterling mothering moment for me as he leapt out of bed, stood swaying unsteadily and burst into tears. Poor baby. He’s not  a morning person. I felt guilty enough to insist that he sit down and wake up a bit while I laid out his clothes. I was particularly pleased to find that there were two splodges of green paint on his almost new (clean) school jumper. Apparently none of the cool kids wear a smock. He could barely contain his scorn for our suggestion that he should buck the trend. He kept repeating “It’s fine Mum” with a sigh and the tone of someone who is explaining a very simple concept to a very stupid person. I assured him that green paint staining his new school jumper was most definitely NOT FINE.

I am a bit sad that the holidays are over, I will miss the kids being around the house, I have enjoyed their company and they have bee a great help with the small children lately as my pelvis has been a bit crud. I said as much to Rhubarb as he inhaled a microwave defrosted hot cross bun. He snorted and muttered something under his breath so I assume that he feels I haven’t been appreciative enough of his presence over the holidays.He arrived home from school this afternoon in an absolutely foul mood and did not speak to me at all for nearly two hours.

Based on the above behaviour I think it is safe to assume that the TAAM is a direct reaction to contact with his school uniform (perhaps the trigger is somehow absorbed through the skin when he puts it on) and is most active during term time.

Bah.

He is fine now, cavorting about the house with the others and has even managed to have a laugh about this morning’s episode although there was some significant whingeing about homework. Ah the trials and tribulations of being a teenager.

I am attempting to rest up big as I have an outing to the hairdresser’s tomorrow. Whoopee! Well, strictly speaking it is my friends house, where we will luncheon and a mutual friend will do both of our new do’s. I’m just having a trim really but if I am to be functional and able to sit in a chair, stand up AND walk then I must rest like a good girl now.  The house is falling down around my ears, there is crapulence at every turn but I must lie here and wallow in it.

Double bah.

It is so hectic around here all the time these days.

On the one hand I have Rhubarb. He is the very essence of thirteen. He is moody and sensitive and temperamental. He is sweet and loving in moments but the TAAM never seems to be far below the surface. I teased him this evening that every single utterance he makes seems to be a cliché of teengageness, his response was “Whatever, Mum”. I couldn’t stop laughing. We all know all of the stereotypical teenage moody and sullen behaviours. I knew what to expect except yet I am shocked daily by the sudden, awful reality of it.

I have a distinct feeling of helplessness. I want to knock on his skull and ask if he is actually in there. There is just no logic to it, I could say something teasingly to him in the morning and incite a stream of moans and muttering and yet find the same thing would be a fun joke to share in the afternoon. I don’t know whether I am coming or going. It requires supreme patience and I can see so clearly how we could lose our grip, how he could become a complete stranger to us if we are not careful to keep some lines of communication open.  I think in this I have to have some faith that he is the boy I know, that he will remain so at his core as long as we can keep things in his life reasonably even.

I am decidedly paranoid that I will do something horrifically wrong at some crucial age and send him spiraling off into an abyss of delinquency. We will just try and do the right thing and hope that we make it out the other end of this teenage thing intact.

At the other end of the spectrum, I have a nine-month-old baby who has decided that she is ready to walk. She is most definitely not ready to walk, in my opinion. She is not psychologically ready for the reality of being that far from the ground and the physical aspect should be beyond her as well. Her balance is horrific. This does not deter her. She cruises the furniture at lightening speed now, she has taken up to two steps independently. Today she is nine months and two weeks old. This is far from reasonable. She is too short for one thing.

I have had two other children walk prior to ten months of age. It is not funny. I may have to fashion a baby helmet and padding for her because as it stands she is a danger to herself and others. The kind of danger she can get into while standing doesn’t bear thinking about. She tried to climb a large bookshelf the other day. She has also developed a passion for trying the various taste sensations that are to be found around the floor of our immaculately kept home. She seems to like things ’seasoned’ with dust and lint. She tried to take a large bite of the dog this evening, repeatedly. The dog likes to roll around in all manner of crap in the back yard. She is not a culinary delight.

Poss has been claiming illness all week. We believed her on Monday, thinking that she was coming down with our cold. This failed to happen. We sent her to school on Tuesday. Today she managed to pull out a temperature at breakfast time and Beefcake was forced to send her back to bed with her ‘tummy ache’. She has seemed fine all day. I suspect that she is fine but I have been wrong before and I do not wish to again retrieve a vomiting child from school under the accusing glare of the receptionist, who already knows we are bad parents.

Pudding is being his usual boisterous and vibrant self. This evening, whilst he demonstrated some new ‘moves’ atop Grub’s cot, we shared this:

P: “Mummy, you and Daddy are my parents”

Me: “Yes darling we are”

P: “I am very clever”

Me: “Yes you are”

P: “I am also funny”

Me: “You are funny”

P: “A poo comes out of a bum, ha!”

Me: Laughing more at his uproarious laughter than the actual ‘joke’ because really, poo has been done – “Oh you are hilarious”

Beefcake: “And you are very strong”

Pudding: “Yes, I know, and I have power.”

Things tick along with all of us. I wonder sometimes how I can do them all justice, they all pull me in such different directions. The volume and variety of children in our house leaves me a  bit torn sometimes.

In what directions are you being pulled?

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?