Let it go

I'm spending the journey home from work today googling advice for tonight. "How to be patient when your child throws food at you". "How to keep smiling when your child throws the thermometer in the toilet." "Do the no smacking laws really apply if you've been "accidentally" pinched? Again."

I run to pick up the little man at the end of the day. He shrieks "Mummy!" and dives into my arms, holding up a car and singing at the top of his lungs. For a few, brief, moments, our 2 hours together are too short, and overflowing with promise. But the boy I pick up at 5 is not the same boy I take out of the cot on a Friday morning. He is tired. I am tired. He arches as I put him in the pram, crying out to walk home. But he walks into the street, or closing shops, or sits in puddles, so I force him into the pram in tears. He might be so gracious as to let me gather him up on my knee at home to watch Thomas; he won't eat anything I cook. His only giggle is when he throws yoghurt in my hair, or bath water on the floor. It's not all bad; those giggles make him sound like an evil mastermind disguised as a toddler, and when I laugh, he laughs. But it definitely isn't all good.

What's the answer from the googling? A lot of sites run Wednesday whines or winges. A lot of these come from 5pm to 7pm. It's called the witching hour. Be calm. Be patient. Pour a glass of wine and wait it out.

It always comes back to the most important lesson I've learnt about parenting so far: let it at all go. All expectations are of f-all importance. Just because I haven't seen him all day, doesn't mean the boy isn't going to be a monster. They are all monsters at that time. Most adults are a little bit monstrous before bed. The TV is fine, if it means I get cuddles and can make dinner. Abandon all guilt, all those who do bedtime. Shortening stories is fine, if it means I get through them without wanting to chew off my own arm in boredom (I know everybody loves The Gruffalo, but really, what is the fucking point of that story? Implausible lies stop you getting eaten? FFS). 

Parental sanity balances on picking battles, celebrating those beautiful moments of glory, and letting everything else slide. The train is pulling into the station now, and I'm working on changing my expectations. That moment when he first sees me, and his entire being is just a smile on legs, might be the only highlight of this evening. And, today at least, I will linger on that first cuddle, and remember that just one moment of glory in an evening has to be just fine. 

Dark mornings are still with us

I had forgotten how the world changes for the sleep deprived. Another chest infection for the little man, another run of unsettled nights for us. I sit on the tube in my own little bubble, hyper aware of my loud thoughts and the smallest movements of those around me. There's a middle aged lady opposite me with her eyes closed; a few minutes ago she was frowning at her coffee cup. It clearly let her down. The young and well presented man next to me pulled a tub out of a scruffy plastic bag and moisturised specific areas of his forehead. The big headphones everywhere are starting to freak me out, like the ear version of enormous bug eyes. 

Today will be fuelled by caffeine, worry and sneaked peaks at photos of the boy. 

Happy New Year

My husband and I normally enjoy setting our New Year's resolutions. It's part of the smug self narrative that we excel at when we're happy - resolutions to just add to the awesomeness of our lives. So when we're both doing regular exercise, we resolve to take it up a step and get 6-packs. When the finances are good, we resolve to save more and buy a house (never happened. Not ever). 

This year, the man is frustratingly chipper and full of energy. He's doing an easy job in a company he loves, so has plenty of mental capacity for dreams and hobbies and plans. He's been pushing me for resolutions for weeks, and I tried, I really did. But creating resolutions today feels like just adding extra tasks in block capitals to an already impossible list.

I

The blogs I love are doing much better than me at this. Brummymummyof2 has a lovely, practical list of things to make a mum's life easier, not a list of things you'll feel guilty about ignoring: http://www.brummymummyof2.co.uk/2015/12/new-years-resolutions-for-mum-aged-38.html?m=1. The unmumsy mum has gone for just one, which I definitely approve of. http://theunmumsymum.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/resolution-schmesolution.html?m=1 And I've seen this lovely reminder to reflect and be grateful: http://momastery.com/blog/2016/01/01/best-new-years-ever/

So what am I going to do? I like the idea of just a single, simple resolution. And for me, unfortunately, I keep coming back to the pretentious sounding finding myself. I don't need to resolve to be a better mother, because striving to be the best for my little man is now written into my DNA. But in re-writing my DNA, becoming a mother has meant that I don't really understand myself any more. I don't know what makes me happy, or whole, or where my place in the world outside the nursery is. I don't know how to be a good wife, colleague, human being, friend, at the same time as trying to be the best mother. 

I don't know what finding myself means. I have a feeling I might dig out some self-help books. And then pull myself together and just go out and get drunk with friends more. Write more. Find a job I love (or just like. Like would do). Reflect a bit and accept that this life is mine; and embrace what really is amazing about it. 

Shiny happy things

I like stuff. I really, really like stuff. I know it's materialistic and shallow. I know it feeds the capitalist regime. I know that buying objects won't fill a void in the way that, say, meditation, or charity work, or reading a good book should, but fuck it, I like stuff, and I like buying that stuff. My best friend and I used to genuinely lament that shopping was seen as too vacuous to list as a hobby in our Record of Achievements. 

I've never bought into the idea that giving presents was better than receiving them. Sure, it gives you a warm fuzzy feeling to see somebody's face light up when they open the perfect gift. But you know what else gives a warm fuzzy feeling? Somebody giving you that perfect shade of nail varnish you didn't know you needed. And that feeling happens every single time you use it. 

Then I had the little man. And, like everything else, my core belief on selfish buying has slowly but surely faded. I prefer buying him clothes to buying my own shiny things. If I'm being honest, some of that is because I don't feel as shiny. Buying a size 8 shift dress that shows off my legs is not comparable to buying a wrap dress that hides the mum-tum. But on Christmas Day, one of my best friends bought the boy a Thomas the Tank a Engine pillow toy. This thing is gorgeous: soft, fluffy, big-eyed and lovely. I saw it before the boy did (waiting for him to unwrap his own gifts make me want to gnaw off my hand) and I almost had an actual fit. I was close to actual tears. At a fluffy, TTTE (see, I'm so down with the pre-schoolers they I know the acronyms) toy that doubles as a pillow. The boy does love it. But he didn't cry at the thought of how much he was going to love it. 

I haven't even looked at the post-Christmas sales this year for me. I'm watching a bread-maker. I've bought TTTE wellies and an all-in-one puddle suit (bloody Peppa and her muddy puddles). I clicked on a link in an email from Topshop and immediately felt like a frumpy, disapproving grandmother. 

What the hell has happened to me?! 

All these lives

Some mornings my life feels completely alien. I leave the nursery and can't believe that somebody else is looking after my child for the day. He's so little: how has he already got a part of his life that is so separate from mine? I'm already drafting emails for work by the time I get to the gate of the nursery: I worry that it's unnatural to flick from one life to another so quickly and easily. 

The run up to Christmas is tough. I did the first settling in nursery sessions this time last year, and hated it. The children are run down and snotty. The carers are run down and snotty. The sun never comes up: the perfectly bright and airy room that Rhys is in looks dull and oppressive in this half light of December. I should be hibernating with my little boy, making Christmas decorations and biscuits and singing carols. 

 

Back onto what's tough about mornings: it's lovely when I have evening plans. A few hours of not being a mother, an employee, a wife, of just being me, re-sets me. Calms me, stills those itchy feet. But the thought, as I walk through those nursery gates at 8am with my blackberry out, that it's the end of my parenting for the day, is impossible to process. Becoming a wife was straightforward: it sat in the background of my other roles, as friend, sister, daughter, colleague, warm and comforting and wrapped them all up. Being a mum at the moment feels absolute: either I am cuddling the boy, changing nappies, negotiating mealtimes, or I am something else. Motherhood is not background noise: maybe it will become this as the boy grows up, but right now it is either foreground or forgotten. 

These lives really are competing. 

Good days

First day in the office for over a week, and my personal black cloud was nowhere to be seen. No compressed hours, no crushing deadlines, no staff, no disheartening management meetings today. A little bit of praise, a little bit of progress, Indian snacks from a colleague. A view through the fog. I can't remember if my feelings towards work were this volatile before I became a working mum (working dads unite...where are the working dad groups?). But today was mainly work, and today was good. Yesterday was mainly family, and yesterday was good. 

Language matters

My parents praised my husband for changing his working hours. He does the nursery pick ups, takes Wednesday afternoons off so he gets an afternoon just him and the boy. People we've just met tell me how lucky I am to have a man that is so involved.

Nobody congratulates me for taking a year off. For working 4 standard days instead of my preferred long 5. The boy is ours; the choices are ours. The language is decades behind; the language exactly reflects how it feels to be a working mother. Not a working parent: men are expected. 

When we were young and silly, my husband's friends would put an arm around my shoulder, march me away, call to him that he'd done too well for himself. Striver and settler roles were laughingly established. He used to complain, but his pride was visible and smug.

Now women look at him greedily on days he does both halves of the nursery pick up. He sometimes cooks; he half heartedly cleans. 

I am lucky to have my husband because he is amazing. He is a rock, my companion, my best friend. But we are decades behind in our language. 5 years ago he was the lucky one because I was young and pretty; now I am the lucky one because he enables (or allows? My first word was allows...) me to have an almost equal partnership in the work side of the work/life balance.