Here is a small fragment of Friday morning to allow you a glimpse into the crazy world of being mummy to two, larger than life, two- and three-year-olds….
The waking up phase
As with most mornings I’m jolted awake with a knee in my groin, then an elbow in my neck, followed by a head rammed into my mouth. I pull my head to one side and gasp to breathe, my mouth full of strands of hair. A heel plunges into my tummy…
Next ensues the 10-minute ferocious battle as to who gets to lie on top of mummy and hug her. Lying next to me doesn’t count. Until I eventually summon the strength to heave my weary body into a seated position, and – before the bed-jumping phase gets underway (when someone invariably falls off backwards and screams or jumps hard onto ‘mummy’ and I scream – or yelp) – I herd my little darlings downstairs for breakfast (will spare you the ins and outs of breakfast…)
I glance at my phone and an important PR client has confirmed a 15 min call at 9.15am (rescheduled from the previous days because the girls have been off nursery sick). At 9.14am both girls are in position in front of ‘Ben and Holly’, which, including adverts lasts about 15 mins. Call client, but no reply. Email secretary and the guy calls me back instantly: “I’m very busy at the moment, give me 2 minutes please,” and promptly hangs up. I use the Ben and Holly time to take a 2-minute shower, with my phone on the sink, hoping I’m not going to have to respond dripping wet. I quickly get dressed and check the time. I eventually switch to Paw Patrol at 9.29am and seamlessly the client calls me as I’m sprinting upstairs away from sound of the opening theme tune. One of the day’s few successes.
Losing it in the library
Rhyme Time at the library is a failure, because we begin singing a song with the word ‘baby’ in it, which reminds MiniM#2 that I’d (purposefully) left her (larger than life) baby doll in the car. She wails ‘Baby! Baby!’ in steady crescendo until the strains of Baa Baa Black Sheep can no longer drown her out… I resort to abandoning MiniM#1 (who is luckily sitting next to a friend – also with her own two little ones) while I exit the room with her sister, trying (unsuccessfully) to calm her down as she bawls her lungs out in the library.
After Rhyme Time we borrow some books – another failure. We are meant to be returning books (so that we only have nine books and fewer to lose around the house). But MiniM#1 starts begging me to take a new one out. One quickly becomes three, and then MiniM#2 begins grabbing handfuls of books, half of which we already have at home, and tearing around the library, with me in close pursuit carrying a nappy bag, three winter coats over my arm, and MiniM#1’s library books which keep slipping out of my hands.
After successfully reducing the books to three books each, which each girl insists on clutching (to my initial delight) we step out onto the drizzly pavement to go to the shoe shop. Initial delight evaporates as books begin to slip out of the girls’ hands, landing in puddles. Cue consternation from all three of us.
Next the dismayed realisation that MinM#1 had left her beloved Winnie the Pooh in the library. Since we are already halfway to Clarks we decide to stop off on the way back to hunt him down. The Clarks experience, however, marks a whole new level of calamity.
Clarks-gate
It transpires that MiniM#2 has not changed shoe size and is still a toddler size 7. MiniM#1, meanwhile, who has also been a toddler size 7 for the past 12 months, has progressed to a size 8. I beam at her, joyfully telling her she’s finally entitled to a pair of new shoes. I’m not prepared for her response.
“I don’t want new shoes!” she wails.
“What do you mean? Look at all these pretty shoes….”
“No! I don’t want any new shoes!”.
I glance up nervously at the sales assistant, and MiniM#2 begins shouting “New shoes! New shoes! I want new shoes!”
It would have been tempting to quit while we were ahead, but I couldn’t leave my 3-year-old with shoes that were too small for her.
“Why don’t I bring a selection out for you, so you can see what we have?” ventures the sales assistant.
MiniM#2, by now bored and fed up at the prospect of no shoes, begins pulling the display footwear down from the shelves one by one.
I manage to coax her into ‘tidying up’ until the sales assistant returns and her attention turns to the new shoe selection being offered to an unimpressed MiniM#1. “No, don’t like them” she says flatly to every shoe offered, which MiniM#2 then pulls out of the box and run around the shop with them.
Finally, the last box is opened to reveal the exact same shoes MiniM#1 has already, but in pink (her favourite colour…) and she is instantly sold. They are massively discounted too since they’d been sitting in the shop for over a year.
This is all too much for poor MiniM#2 who, fed up with not having any shoes, when I make a move towards the till to pay, decides to make a break for it, sprinting across the shop towards the open doors onto the busy street.
I fling down my purse, bag and coat, abandon MiniM#1 for the second time that morning and shoot off after her pickle of a sister.
I catch her on the pavement in the drizzle, with a cardboard shoe advert in her hand.
What really stumps me is the pure delight and laughter in her face when I tell her off. When I shout ‘NO!’, everyone in the shop looks terrified, bar MiniM#2 who chortles with glee.
Mortified I pull her back in the shop, unhook the shop doors and wedge them shut. I need to pay and there is no other way I can keep MiniM#2 contained. A fellow shopper kindly volunteers to keep an eye that my tearaway daughter doesn’t push the doors back open again.
At the till, I apologise profusely for putting Clarks into lockdown mode and preventing new customers from entering, and the sales assistant smiles graciously and calls my daughter a little toe rag (!)
Prising another cardboard advert and shoe out of her grips I restore them to their rightful places in the shop, and MiniM#1 sagely helps me to hook the shop doors back open again (“back a bit mummy, no, forward a bit..”) while I hold my wriggling ‘toe rag’ with a firm grip.
Next stop the library to try to find Winnie the Pooh (which we eventually do after employing an army of librarians to the cause..)
Epilogue
Later that night when I turn off my bedside light – exhausted – I start to tell DH of my strenuous day (the afternoon was equally eventful …) and he is unusually quiet. Ah how lovely, he’s really listening to me, I inwardly muse. I finish talking, yet there is still complete silence…
I’m incensed that he dared to doze off (!) but a full week with both girls off nursery has clearly taken its toll on both of us.
Despite my moany post, needless to say my heart explodes with love every time I see my girls. Take me away from them for more than a few hours and I’m yearning to be running after them again or having their tiny arms tugging at my neck, even if it feels like they’re strangling me at times…
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Calamitous Mummy 