With two babies under the age of two, time has become an increasingly precious commodity. By time I guess I’m referring both to quality time DH and I spend together with the children and to time spent just the two of us. Time to hold a conversation without having to gesticulate or shout into each other’s ear above the loud, yet persistent wail of an overtired toddler.
By the time the babies are in bed we are often too tired to converse. I will start a sentence and take an inordinately long time to remember which words I need to finish the sentence. By which time DH will lose patience and try to start a new sentence of his own. Or, more frustratingly, add to the pressure by getting up to leave the room to look for whatever it is he’s asked me the whereabouts of, without knowing where to go!
Yet DH does pretty much the same. He starts talking and then drifts off when he gets to the point of his sentence, ending by saying “you know.” No I don’t know. That’s why you’re telling it to me. He prefers to keep me in irritated suspense: “Oh I don’t think she’s crying because she’s teething, she’s crying because …because… you know.”
On weekdays we just about manage a half an hour ‘playtime’ all four of us when DH gets home from work. He takes over the role of Entertainer-in-Chief and I make myself a cup of tea and slowly start to unwind, while Tinytoes makes me more plastic cups of imaginary tea that I pretend to drink. Then at 7pm he’ll bath and put Tinytoes to bed, while I cook supper and feed Microtoes. We’ll eat at around 8pm, watch a bit of TV as we’re too exhausted to do anything else, then tidy up the supper, toys and flop into bed.
The days of client champagne receptions in the city, dinners out with best friends, pub quizzes with good mates or romantic dinners with DH feel like a bygone era. Don’t get me wrong; I obviously wouldn’t trade it for anything else in the world. I’ve had plenty of years to have reckless, self-indulgent fun; this is just to set the context for my annoyance with the village vicar.
So, Microtoes is being christened next month in the local church and the vicar told us we would need to undergo ‘baptism preparation’ and to pick a suitable time for her to come over for a cup of tea. I had genuinely been looking forward to this event for two main reasons. Firstly, the vicar is a lovely, jovial lady and I thought Tinytoes would be excited to have her come to our house. Secondly, I was intrigued to find out what baptism preparation would entail; no such thing had happened before Tinytoes’ christening.
My eagerness began to fade rapidly when the vicar had still not appeared by 6.15pm. She had been due at 6pm and DaddyO had left work early to be there on time. At 6.20pm there was a knock at the door. Although she apologised for being late, I didn’t pick up on any particular urgency to catch-up on lost time. By the time I had made her a tea and we had sat down at the kitchen table it was pushing 6.30pm.
Tinytoes was sitting in a grown-up chair at the table – after an early supper to be ready in time -and Microtoes was sleeping angelically in a Moses basket. We had 30 minutes until Tinytoes’ bath time. We looked at the vicar expectantly. She barely shot Microtoes a sidelong glance. For the next 20 minutes she discussed the buddleia and various other shrubs in our garden, her relatives visiting their house and the cotton wool buds that her niece –or someone else, my mind had begun to wander – had knocked onto the floor.
I began to wonder if chitchat was part of the preparation for baptism. Maybe she was performing some sort of psych test and if we demonstrated sufficient knowledge of God’s plants and flowers we would be deemed suitable parents for baptised children.
Bath time came and went, by which time the vicar embarked on a potted history of Christendom, taking us from ancient times to the 1600s, the Great War, right through to the current day. DH did a good job of looking her in the eye and nodding. I meanwhile, was trying to keep poor Tinytoes entertained. She had opened a book and to my amusement was pointing at a spider, rather aptly saying ’bible bible! ‘(her word for spider). The vicar looked less amused.
Thus far Tinytoes had behaved impeccably and I began to feel waves of annoyance – firstly that her good behaviour was being wasted – I would have loved to have been playing with her while she was this cheerful – or cooking the dinner while Microtoes was sleeping, or more importantly, if I wasn’t cooking the dinner or feeding Microtoes I would have loved to have had a rare chance to bath Tintoes and put her to bed myself.
I wouldn’t have minded any of this so much if I felt we were actually being prepared for the baptism!
After what seemed like an eternity, we were handed an example ‘order of service sheet’ for baptisms. Tinytoes excitedly tried to grasp hold of mine, while the vicar painstakingly started to read through every word on the sheet, taking time to explain what the word ‘renounce’ meant, just in case we hadn’t known what ‘renounce all evil,’ meant. By this point, I have to say, I wasn’t feeling very virtuous.
As I tried to gently prise my order of service sheet from Tinytoes’ hand she let out a wail, which woke Microtoes, who began mewling for a feed. I realised the time was fast approaching 7.30pm – Tinytoes’ bedtime.
“I’m so sorry, but we need to put our daughter to bed now,” I found myself finally saying. Why hadn’t I said this earlier?
Her response left me reeling. “I did wonder, I was surprised to see her up so late.”
Up so late? She would have been fast asleep by now if it wasn’t for you, I felt like saying.
She had already stood up so did not see my jaw quite literally drop after her next remark: “Drop me an email to let me know when you’d like me to come over for Part 2.”
Part 2?! So we’ve got to go through it all again. An entire evening totally wasted for nothing. Tinytoes was overtired and grumpy, Microtoes was hungry and I was hungry and grumpy. And DH was irritatingly cheerful as he has different coping tactics to stressful situations. We didn’t end up eating until nearly 10pm that night, mainly because I was too wound up to cook the dinner properly, so it had to go back in the oven.
Our time is precious. Don’t mess with the parents of small children! All the same, I’m hoping our vicar does not read this blog…
Calamitous Mummy 