British Standard

I returned from church Sunday morning humming various spiritual songs. While Younger Son had his nap, Elder Son and Daughter decided that they would play musical bumps in the dining room. My humming wasn’t sufficiently musical so the proposed game involved carrying their toy keyboard into the dining room from the lounge in order to create some music. Elder Son refused my help in the move and enlisted his sister. She was instructed to hold one end and walk backwards while he held the other and walked forward directing operations. Halfway along the hallway he says to her, “shall we sing while we work?” Daughter agrees and without discussion of what song to sing they both start in perfect unison:

Twinkle, twinkle, chocolate bar,
My dad drives a rusty car,
Push the starter, pull the choke,
Off we go in a cloud of smoke,
Twinkle, twinkle, chocolate bar,
My dad drives a rusty car.

I’m not sure whether I was more delighted by the fact that they both had learnt a silly song at nursery that week and even Daughter knew every word (although pronounced in her 2-year-old not-quite-fully-developed-speech-way: “tinkle, tinkle… my dad dives a russ-e car..”), or the fact that they were clearly on the same wavelength that afternoon and interacting so well in their little world without need for any adult input/ interference. But whatever the cause of my delight, its expression was clearly a little over the top.

I endured 6 non-stop renditions of “twinkle, twinkle, chocolate bar” accompanied by less than tuneful banging on the keyboard and any previous idea of musical bumps was abandoned in order to “entertain” mummy. I was only saved by a friend and her son ringing the doorbell and suggesting a trip to the park. Although my salvation was not wholly successful… I spent the rest of Sunday humming the silly song.

Mr Standard went to pick the kids up from day nursery yesterday. It’s usually him that does drop-off and pick-up nowadays. On his walk there he bumped into a member of the staff. They’re friendly women, and always say hello on the street.
Staff: Hiya, hey Daugther has been telling everyone that there’s a baby in her mummy’s tummy.
Mr Standard: (Smiles) No, that’d be news to me.

Mr Standard arrives at nursery and door is opened by another member of staff…
Staff no2: Your daughter’s been telling everyone that there’s a baby in her mummy’s tummy!

A third member of staff appears:
Staff no.3: Hey, guess what Daughter’s been telling everyone?
Mr Standard: Yeah, I’ve been told. It’s so not true.

It may be true that in the 4+ years Elder son has been attending that nursery I have spent a large portion of it pregnant. But when Younger Son started there a year ago I willingly told the staff that this was the last I’d be having. Three is the magic number. My family is complete. But it seems Daughter disagrees and unless she stops telling tales I’m going to have to take some drastic measures…

I’ll have to put on my most figure-hugging clothes to collect her from nursery so that the staff can all see that, other than a bit of a flabby mummy tummy, there’s nothing to show!

While some parts of our home and being fixed many other things appear to be breaking.

First to die was our bread maker – it’s baked us bread at least twice a week for the past 3 or 4 years and is relied upon to make pizza dough (elder son declares that shop bought stuff is “yucky” and tells me “pizza is my favourite… but I only like mummy’s”). So I’m making pizza dough by hand and buying bread for the time being.
Next to go was my watch (posh solar powered thing bought by my husband). This means that not only am I struggling to know what the time is, but I’ve also totally lost track of the date. My watch has been sent off to be mended. Lovely lady at the jewellers says it could take 5 or 6 weeks.
Add to that the fact that my digital camera has finally lost focus (pretty good going since it remained just about working for a full year after being dropped on a rock from a great height by someone who wasn’t me… and a lovely friend has now lent me their spare one so I can take in-focus pictures again!)… and the fact our dishwasher started leaking which required purchase of a very expensive spare part and assistance of my dad to fix it… and you’ll understand why I was a little concerned when the washing machine started flooding the floor last week.

The first time it happened I wondered if new-lodger (we had a friendly law student move in last month) had just caught one of his items in the door seal and allowed the leak. As I have done on occasion before. I mopped the floor and carried on as normal. I did a couple of loads of washing myself, no problems.
Then one evening I walk into the utility room and discover bubbles everywhere. The floor was awash and I couldn’t see the clothes in the machine there was so much foam. I called to the new-lodger and asked if it was his washing in the machine. Yes, it was his. What powder or liquid had he used? He replied the stuff in the cupboard. I asked him to show me. I pointed at the 5 litre refill bottle that was sitting next to the empty washing liquid bottle (I buy ecological stuff in bulk and re-fill). Unfortunately the refill he pointed to was not the washing liquid one. It was the washing-up liquid. Subtle difference. Hard to spot if you’re Chinese and struggling with this weird English language. And even harder to spot when the washing-up liquid refill is usually stashed under the kitchen sink and has only just moved there on a temporary basis while the kitchen is refitted. But the results were not hard to spot. Particularly as he’d decide to use a double quantity to try and remove the grease that had been spilt on his work shirt the evening before.
Lodger returned to his studies hoping the wash would be ok when it was done. I spent almost a hour rinsing the washing (by hand following several failed attempts in the machine) and putting it on to wash with clothes washing liquid. Why waste an hour of my precious evening fixing someone else’s mistake? I guess I was just so relieved to find out that our machine is not broken.
And don’t think that particular lodger will make the same mistake again.

Our house is 100 years old this year. Much like a person of that age, it has some beautiful original features and amazing stories to tell (I met one of my mum’s friends who remembers visiting her great-aunt in this house over 60 years ago), but it has suffered from too much partying (particularly since it was rented to uni students for many years) and has damp problems.

So, rather than throw a big birthday party, we’re spending all our savings on sorting out the damp. Two weeks ago a man (Mike) came in, ripped out our kitchen and hacked off all the plaster from the back wall. Our dining room is doubling up as a kitchen. The microwave and toaster are our only means of cooking, and we’re washing up in the bath. The cats have gone down the garden to eat worms (literally).

Within 2 days Mike had determined the main sources of damp, and I had determined that we needed works to our upstairs bathroom as well as the garden boundary wall if the damp was to be properly fixed. Mike agreed to add the wall work to his schedule. I debated adding the bathroom to mine but then thought better of it. We can borrow money. Time is a little harder to create. I called on another trusted builder, Mal. He came, quoted, and said he could start immediately. Husband didn’t like the idea of total chaos of 2 builders in house at same time. I didn’t like the idea of prolonged chaos. So we consulted our lodgers.

Long-term lodger likened the situation to the when the Israelites disobeyed God and he gave them the choice of punishment or 7 more years wandering in the desert (not sure of exact reference). He voted not to keep wandering. We’re certainly enduring punishment now.

Last Monday Mal arrived and started sorting out the pumbing. In doing so he allowed a water leak to wash off some of the render Mike’s guys had just applied to the wall below. Tuesday Mal dropped ‘a tile’ through the bathroom floor/ newly plastered kitchen ceiling. By Wednesday it wasn’t just the cats that were hiding down the garden. Oh, and Thursday I got home from work to find that the new stud wall they’d put up wasn’t vertical. So friday Mal spent the day swearing at his carpenter and straightening the wall.

But I remain positive. The building work will all be over by middle of this week and we’ll have 2 lovely new rooms. Maybe we will think about throwing a party to celebrate after all.

My kids are clever. As their mum I’m probably bound to say that. But sometimes they do display skills more advanced than expected at their age. Elder Son is 3 and a half. He can do addition and subtraction sums. And he doesn’t always need to use his fingers. He can play with words, altering song lyrics to hilarious effect. And taking what Daddy says literally whilst all the while knowing exactly what Daddy meant… Daddy was reading a list of what 3 year olds are meant to be able to do. He knelt down to speak to Elder Son, “Son, can you stand on one leg?” Son replied “Yes”, and stood with both his feet on just one of Daddy’s legs!

Daughter was 2 last week. She too is displaying amazing skills. She can reduce her big brother to tears in seconds. She can remove her clothes faster than we can dress her… while we are trying to dress her. But most impressive was the skill witnessed by Daddy yesterday afternoon. Playing in the living room with Baby Son and Daughter, Daddy was focused on Baby Son. Daughter was playing quietly by the sofa. She laid her head on the seat and put arm along the edge of the seat cushion, and just stood there. After a while Daddy became aware that she hadn’t moved so asked, “Daughter, what are you doing?” No reply. No movement. He got up to look. She had fallen deep asleep standing up!

Like Birdie, we pray with our children every night. Elder Son’s contribution is generally to tell us what he’d like to thank God for – typically either a specific member of the family (siblings are currently quite popular) or something nice but wholly random in the recent past (not always on the day it happened). Daughter’s contribution is generally to say ‘Amen’ loudly several times throughout the prayer (possibly in the hopes that we’ll conclude it faster). Baby Son’s contribution is either happy gurgles or vomit!

Tonight Daughter made a step further in her journey to faith by contributing to the focus of the evening’s prayers…

Mummy: “What would you like to thank God for tonight?”
Elder Son: “Having chocolate at Sarah’s house” (Sarah being a friend we’d just visited who’d shared her Easter Egg with him)
Daughter: “Cake!”
Mummy (to Elder Son): “Shall we pray she gets better too?” (Sarah has chicken pox)
Elder Son: “Yes”
Daughter (louder): “Cake!”
Mummy (to Daughter): “You want to pray for cake?”
Daughter: “My cake”
Mummy (trying to figure out if this has anything to do we the fact that Daughter missed out on cake for pudding because she hadn’t eaten her first course at dinner time): “You want to eat cake?”
Daughter (shaking head): “No, my cake”
Mummy (next guess): “You made cake at nursery today?”
Daughter (smiling): “Yes. My cake”

So we did.
(And later I found a squashed fairy cake with pink icing at the bottom of the bag Daughter takes to her day nursery.)
Tomorrow she can have “Cake!”

I sent Mr Standard off shopping with the kids this morning with strict instructions to buy himself a couple of pairs of jeans because I’m fed up of him wearing the holey ones.

At the counter paying for his trendy-but-cheap jeans Mr Standard notices a display of manly bead necklaces and asks Elder Son, “Do you think Daddy should get one of those?”
Elder Son: “No. You’d look silly”
Cashier: “You’ve got yourself a personal shopper there!”

It appears that I should send Elder Son shopping with his dad again; no beads were purchased. Although there is a four foot long helium filled shark floating in our dining room now that I’m sure wasn’t there before the shopping trip!

Mummy got cross last night. Elder Son and Daughter decided that after lights out they’d play again. This time bouncing on Mummy and Daddy’s bed. On top of the pile of clean washing that had been placed there. Mummy lost her cool and shouted. Elder son ran back to bed and stayed there. Daughter was carried back to bed.

Mummy went downstairs and returned to chores (cleaning the downstairs bathroom). Daddy started emptying the dishwasher. And then he was aware of a little being standing in the doorway watching him.
“Daughter, what are you doing here?”

Mummy hears Daddy (and realises that she must have left the stair gate open). So thunder-faced enters the kitchen and silently picks up Daughter to carry her back to bed once more.
“Hallo Mammy!”
Daughter leans cute little button nose against mummy’s nose, looks into eyes, and says again,
“Hallo Mammy!”
Mummy dissolves into laughter.

So much for discipline.

Learning to speak has a number of distinct stages (according to a speech development book I read recently)… and it’s interesting listening to my kids go through the developmental stages. But what I’ve noticed recently is that learning to tell the time also has its stages:

The first stage has just been mastered by Baby Son – he can tell when he’s day-time and when it’s night-time and sleeps during the correct one!

Daughter is at the next stage, when speech is beginning to be involved. After breakfast she’ll announce, “teef-time”. So we go and clean her teeth. When she sees the changing mat on the floor and she’s aware that she needs a nappy change she’ll say “nappy-time” and lie on the mat. And of-course she’s fully aware of what happens when we get to “bed-time”… or what to do when her brother announces “It’s mornin’-time!”

Elder Son is onto the next stage. He knows about numbers and will ask, “Is it 3 o’clock?” And he’ll often try and connect the time with an activity, for example, “Is 6 o’clock mornin’-time?” But his grasp of the time is poor and getting him to recognise that 6 o’clock is not morning even if the sun is up can be hard.

Actually mornings aren’t too bad. It’s bed-time, 7 o’clock, which occasionally can be a problem. Close the curtains and Baby goes to sleep, but the other two in the room (the 3 share one large room) are less easy. The other evening Elder Son told me that he and his sister were going to play at night-time. I suggested sleeping would be better and continued with the usual routine: stories, prayers and good-night kisses, then I told them it was bed-time and switched out the light. I closed the door and listened:
    Elder Son: “Shall we play?”
    Daughter: “Yes!”
    *sound of two pairs of feet jumping out of bed*
Baby Son remained asleep, Elder Son didn’t switch the light on (he can only reach by standing on a step stool and no stool-moving was heard!), and they remained in their room so I took the relaxed-parenting approach.
I ignored the heavy footsteps and laughter for almost an hour. Then at about 8 o’clock I went back into their room, and found them playing with an inflatable beach-ball by the light of Elder Son’s torch. I suggested that perhaps it was finally bed-time, and they both got into bed without argument and went straight to sleep!

We have three lodgers. Male lodgers. Occasionally they attempt to clean their rooms. Slightly ineptly. Sometimes I want to stand in the hall and shout, ‘Vacuuming up dust is not that difficult’. And yet for some it is.

The problem is not that they can’t vacuum, it’s that they expect the vacuum cleaner to handle a lot more than dust. We have a bagless cleaner. I am the one who always empties the cylinder into the bin. Dust is often accompanied by pennies, and occasionally a pound coin. I pocket the lot. To buy chocolate to calm my nerves. Sometimes I find rubber bands or pen lids. One day I found a whole biro in the cleaner. How the entire pen made it up the hose I don’t know, but it did. However, today went beyond even that.

Our vacuum cleaner has seen a lot of action today. Lodger #3 cleaned his room and then Mr Standard tackled the filo pastry explosion that was our tea. (Note to self: never give kids anything made with filo pastry again.) Mr Standard had some difficulty as the vacuum seemed to be reluctant to suck. Then it started to smell of burning. He investigated the situation. A formal black bow tie was stuck in the cleaner. How does anyone vacuum up an item of evening wear and not notice they’re doing it? I am speechless.