A reminder

Happy New Year! I seem to remember grabbing on to 2011 as if it were a life raft in rough sea. 2010 had seen me so laden with anxieties - in so many forms - that by the end of the year I was ready to jump ship.  This New Year, Dom and I sat for a while in the dark, on our doorstep, to say goodbye to 2011. We listened to the whisper of Abba coming from a party in a fifth floor apartment down the street, and tried to work out what stars we were looking at. It wasn't a raucous welcome to 2012, but it was perfect.

***

Jack hadn't settled well. He didn't have a fever, didn't have cold. I sat in his room, in the dark, holding him, on the oversized rocking chair that we bought for just this kind of thing a few years ago. His head was on my shoulder, his hair still rabbit soft and fine as silk threads, his face turned slightly towards me. In the grainy grey of a late December night his face looked almost hyper-real, like a Pixar character - a grey blush on his full cheeks, long eyelashes like dark feathers, he closed his eyes ever so slowly only to reopen them abruptly to the sound of his own breath.  Wrapped in his fleecy sleeping bag, I took time to notice the weight of his body on me, his legs tucked up to his tummy. I stroked his cheek and he smiled with effort.  Knowing my hand was near, he reached out for it and we rocked together in a cozy cocoon of exchanged warmth and breath.  In his waking hours Jack does not have this snuggling ease. Getting him dressed is like putting clothes on a cat; he crawls off, scampering away, with one wry glance back, to find his brothers or simply be out of my reach. Although it's never ideal to have a child refusing sleep it gave me a moment to think about the changes in him this year.  I wonder now if this little boy was just reminding me that he won't be this small for long.

When I grow up...

Several times now Max has asked me, 'What do you want to be when you are grown up?' I like the idea that I'm still young enough to keep growing. Without missing a beat, I tell him I want to be a writer.  As for those in this family who really are still growing... When Max was four he decided he wanted to be an airport baggage handler.  He was pretty adamant that this was about as exciting a career as he wanted.  A few months before, when we checked our bags in at the airport ready to fly, we hadn't factored in Max's emotional attachment to our luggage. He became a bundle of noisy wet tears amid the check-in kiosks as the bags were being taken off our hands for the journey.  As the queue backed up, under the glare of the strip lighting, kneeling on the cold polished floor, I found myself consoling a screaming child about the wonders of air travel and explaining that we would be reunited with our bags at our destination. Once this proved true, after much disbelief, he saw things in a different light. He fell in love with the 'escalator' mechanism that took bags out of sight, no doubt he loved the stickers slapped on our oversized luggage and of course the magic of a perforated air ticket. At arrivals, while his parents looked on wearily, he ran circles of excitement round the carousel that would finally dispense our bags.  However, 2011 sees a different dream; this time it's a musical one. The boy has always been very particular about what kind of music he listens to - now he wants to make his own. His band, he tells us will be called 'Rocks of Hundreds of Light'.  He even has the name of one of his songs. Last night he gave me the 3 beat rhythm - I actually recorded it, but I'll give you the gist here: Bew-nyew [3 beats of silence] Bew-nyew  [3 beats of silence] Bew-nyew  [3 beats of silence] Bew-Nyew  [3 beats of silence] Bew-nyew-nyew-nyew-nyew-nyew-nyew. 

One of us obviously needs to learn how to write music and I'm pretty sure it won't be me. Anyway, I'm looking forward to hearing the finished version.

Oli on the other hand definitely wants to be a teenager, the reason being that the Lego catalogue contains all sorts of fun things for teenagers to make but nothing for 3 year olds, who must still make do with Duplo.  He is almost astonished when I tell him that he will be a teenager one day. 'Will I? Really?' With regard to being a fully-fledged grown-up, he tells us he wants to be a dinosaur. 

Smother Mother

I write this for the future me. Are you out there, future-me? Have your children left home? Do you remember when Oli was just three? Max was five and Jack was one.  Every day you told them how much you loved them.   You kissed Jack's eyes, like you kissed Oli's and Max's.  With the older two it had become a joke; the kiss in the socket that stole an eyeball which was then chewed up and popped back in with another kiss. "I just love you," you'd say.  Sometimes Max denied it. "No you don't love me!" he said that afternoon in November when he was home with an ear infection. His voice came from inside a cupboard. He'd just tried to bring the garage door down on his brother and that hadn't made you too happy.  And do you remember how Oli was at three? By then you knew how the time flew, how the days were long but the years were short.
"I love you, Oli" you'd tell him.
"You say that the whole time, the whole time!" he said.
"Is that a problem?" you asked.
"It's frustrating."
And what of Jack? Do you remember kissing the rolls on his neck out in the garden, tipping him back to make him giggle, and Dom saying, "Let him breathe Em!"
Remember all that? Did they break your heart?!

Voices

It is quiet around here. With Max in school, real school, school that lasts more than three hours, things have got a lot quieter.  In fact last night, when I went to bed, it was a surprise to find that it was Oli's voice rattling around in my head.  I remember when Max began speaking and his chit chat invaded my head. All I could hear was his phantom banter as I drifted off to sleep, only to wake up to the real thing in the morning. And it is Max's daily absence that has suddenly made me hear more clearly the lilt of Oli's phrases, the subtle lisp ('theat' not 'seat'), the rise and fall of his short, incomplete sentences and if I'm honest, his whine to be carried up the stairs. But it is lovely to have Oli's voice filling that little bit of empty audio space in our home.

It was this time last year that I was feeling totally overwhelmed by the new preschool we had chosen for Max. Admittedly I had other preoccupations, like a newborn on the way, the awful kindergarten admission process and a move to a new home but the school involved mandatory parent enrichment nights - like a parenting night school - participation in the classroom, and all kinds of attendance at book teas, round tables and workshops.  But as the year progressed I realised that the preschool was in fact something very unique and, with it's emphasis on imagination and discovery, it was exactly the way I wanted to parent my children. So this year we have arrived at the start of Oli's preschool adventure. I've had to write him a family book - all about our family, about Oli's place within it and our traditions and values - things I, frankly, hardly think about in the daily chaos of having small children. But actually it seems the perfect time to sit down and think about who Oli is, to separate him from Max, and hear his voice a little louder.

This scene...

A scene like this must have been played out between a thousand mothers and their sons.  There is nothing new about dropping a child off for his first day at school. It is not extraordinary, just a simple rite of passage. Four of us climb the school steps and enter through glass double doors. I have Jack on my back, Oli at my heels and Max by the hand. We look up and down the corridor and see the locker room to our right.  There's a mild smell of disinfectant. Inside the room, we begin to look for Max's cubby hole. His name is not there. We keep looking. Perhaps there's been an oversight and he has been forgotten. All the names are empty, unknown; Rosie Tring, Victor Yung, they don't carry with them the heavy weight of Kindergarten revelations; that Rosie wins all the running races or Victor was bitten by a dog.  We do know one other boy and we are excited to find his locker.  And then, at last, we find Max's name. His cubby hole is against the wall on the furthest side.  He stashes his backpack and wordlessly we walk back down the corridor to the gym. That's where the noise is coming from, that's where the teacher stands with her clipboard.  We walk in and stand a moment a few feet inside, not yet part of this scene, but on the edge.  Max hangs on to my hand, pulling me down towards him.  I make enthusiastic exclamations about how great everything looks; the balls and hoops and hoppers and rackets.  I'm not really duping him, everything does look cool, but I wonder if he can tell that I'm not being totally authentic either, I'm willing him to fit in here, to find his feet.  The night before we had read the book, 'Follow the Line to School' where a solid black line on each page leads you through those double doors and into classrooms and playgrounds before leading you, at the end of the book, back home.  With slow, small footsteps Max begins to trace the blue lines on the floor that mark out the basketball court.  Oli copies him and I follow on behind.  I pretend to balance on a high wire.  Jack's weight makes it more than just pretense.  Someone rolls a hoop past us, sending it on it's wobbly course right across the gym.  We watch to see how far it will get before it coruscates to a sudden stop.  Max's movements are slow but his eyes dart around to take in the scene around him; the 'eek' of rubber soles on the polished floor, the raised stage at the far end, the stash of chairs in the corner, the older kids that already seem to know each other, the head teacher hovering in casual dress. We have crossed to the other side of the gym. Max's footsteps speed up, still a shuffle, but excited, faster movements that get him closer to that stack of hoops. He wants to try his luck and get his further than the other boy.
Oli wants a hoop now and I suddenly see that my problem might not be leaving Max, but extracting Oli. I act quickly and tell Max it's time for us to go.
'Let me give you an extra hug' he says.
And it is done. The first drop-off.
When I collect him at noon (a sweetener, this shorter day) he is more interested in getting his ball from under that stack of chairs than coming to greet me. I know it's a good sign. The teacher tells me there were a few tears and that she sat with him for a while to talk about things. He asked lots of questions about his class and how this new school worked. She said that helped. She said he was a good listener. In the car I don't press him for details but, in snatches by the end of the day, I find out that he was on the blue team, that Carl was on the white team and that Carl doesn't like white. I find out that he knocked down all the orange skittles and the man in the white shirt shouted 'Strike!' and asked him how he'd done that. That they played in the gym the whole time and that he might have played 'Simon Says' or might not.
We fill the afternoon with playing at home and in the garden.  It is one of our last summer holiday afternoons. I'd like you to believe that the boys played happily while I cooked them a wholesome supper.  But that's not entirely true. Yes they played, and yes, I bunged baked potatoes in the oven, but they picked on Jack a little, putting toys on his head and I got cross.  We'd all got up early, practicing the new routine for school, so everyone was tired by suppertime.
'If I live with a cross mummy, I'll be homeless.' Max said, insinuating, I suppose, that he'll be packing his bags if I'm annoyed when he tests me.
Bedtime arrives and not a moment too soon. Before I kiss Max good night, I want to acknowledge the day somehow, but I should know better.
'I love you.' I say.
He is in bed, looking intently at a sequence of Tintin's adventures in Destination Moon.
'What is he doing?' His finger is pressed on a picture of Snowy flying down the stairs in hot pursuit.
'He's chasing a cat.' I say. 'Dogs do that.' His finger traces across the page. 'Max, I want you to know I love you. You were brave today at school. I know that sometimes I'm cross because I need to get things done and because I want to protect you and I want to make sure you - and Oli and Jack - are safe.'
'Why is he falling?' Snowy has landed in a blizzard of stars at the bottom of the stairs.
'Its an accident. We don't see accidents coming.'
'But why did he fall? What is he doing?'
This time Max is pointing at Captain Haddock who has an illegal stash of whisky bottles and a stern looking customs official looking at him.
'We will have to read the book and find out.' I say, thinking, that soon school will soon give him that gift of reading and a new world will open up to him. And hoping, as we both head into something new, that the choices we have made are the right ones, that this is a school that will support him and that his curiosity will not be dented.

THREE!

For what feels like years, I've been having to remind myself that Oli is 'only two'. He follows his five year old brother around daring to believe he can do everything Max can do, and possibly better. 'And I are? And I are?' he'll say - as both question and declaration - hoping to put a dent in Max's claims to be the best at biking or running or digging in the dirt.  'And I are?'  And now he's 3 and about to get some mornings to himself at school.  Despite my earlier post about the three month eternity of the school holidays, this time of year feels packed with emotion.  The children are getting older, which means I'm getting older, and while I want one, I don't necessarily want the other.  And even as I want what is passing I need to say goodbye to it before it goes. A new daily landscape emerges as we settle in to new routes to new schools, and the inevitable need to get up even earlier in order to get places on time.  New interests seek to be accommodated while I suddenly mourn the loss of all those unstructured days of pajama breakfasts, mega constructions and impromptu walks in search of sticks and puddles. My parenting has to shift around a bit to feel comfortable with the new age groups in the family and the different interactions.  Taking on (even small) responsibilities at the children's schools feels like a weighty commitment.  Was there really a time, five years ago, in the days when I had just one infant to care for, when I would take a lunchtime nap? The very concept feels extraordinary.

So in celebration of things moving on a little, Oli turned three and he had some friends round to acknowledge the fact. We slung bunting up around the garden and he ate large quantities of a cake designed to look like an airport runway.  And once the party was over and three of the four beds upstairs contained slow-breathing boys, I snuck a look at some bad quality recordings of me, taken in the middle of last year, where I am trying to get Oli to say 'dotta bridge'. And I said goodbye to that little boy so that we can welcome what comes with the three year old version.

Summer holidays!

I have found myself reaching for a book I bought a while ago, Buddhism for Mothers of Young Children.  Oh the unbridled joy of a three month summer holiday! Yes, we are somewhere in the middle of that savage territory...and everyone's sanity must be restored.  I can't believe I once entertained the idea of homeschooling.  Stay present, stay present. That seems to be the mantra. I blame my frontal lobe - isn't that the place in my head that refuses to 'stay present' and is always casting back and forth in time - 'Must quickly check in on the future or back on the past, see if I match up.' Well, no hope of that.  I wasn't planning on being called Mrs Poo Poo Diaper by a five year old, especially not one I was related to. So much for the pleasures of several weeks of unstructured play and spectacle parenting - where your best efforts are under close observation by those who, you naturally assume, are busy packing and unpacking their own cerebral suitcases - remembering how it was to parent three decades ago or wondering whether a child who calls his mother Poo Poo Diaper will, in a few short years, be looting in the streets of London.
Not to say we haven't had a lovely summer in parts. Who can argue with a family vacation Stateside? Days at the beach, searching for sea glass and collecting periwinkles. Camp fires on the gravelly shore and suppers of steamed shellfish.  We also headed back to the UK which felt good.  The children and I had our fill of rope swings and tree houses, dog-walking, egg-collecting, lifeboat love, splashing through streams, boat trips and beaches, bellies in the surf and feet in the rock pools.
Damn it, though, if it's not unsettling when you do come home, to your real home, the one you actually live in. I was a dark cloud for weeks.  I thought I had on some pretty tough armour - an exciting house project here in the States, a preschool we love for Oli, a new school full of possibilities for Max. It did feel different, this year, being back in the UK. I didn't have the wistfulness I've had before, the 'what if's or 'maybe's. I wasn't looking in the local paper for derelict stone cottages on windswept clifftops.
But being homesick is such a waste of energy. And being in the midst of young children, for me, tinges my homesickness with a cloying nostalgia.  The word 'nostalgia' was coined back in the fifteenth century when Swiss mercenaries fighting on the lowland French plains would pine for their native mountains. They were so afflicted that doctors considered 'nostalgia' a disease.  I don't need medication but it does feel like a condition I can't shake. Even as I consciously idealise the place of my birth, I long for it.  I know it is an ideal - but I remember my childhood in happy glimpses - making dens in the tall grass before the farmers cut it for hay, cupping newly-hatched chicks in my hand before school, scouring the hedges for wild strawberries, transported to the Swiss alps reading Heidi in the bow of my father's fishing boat.  I realize now I cannot offer my children the same thing. Did I ever think I could replicate a childhood? Somehow I thought that giving them the same geographical backdrop would be the least I could do.  Not so. I offer something else. A different family, a different country. Who is to say it is not equally as valid. We are discovering new things together rather than replicating what has gone before. The arrow of time is the first principle of physics. So I discovered, on our return flight from London when I watched - or snatched, as you do, when flying with children - a documentary about entrophy and the eventual chaos of the solar system. Happy stuff.  Especially at 35,000 ft.  But one thing that becomes hard to deny is that this planet of ours, with it's constant movement forward and the unique way it can support life, is just perfect. Stay present, stay present.
As for the summer holidays? Is entrophy the natural conclusion for this three month break? With yet more weeks to go before kindergarten starts, a friend tells me her five year old is getting up in his school uniform - a sure sign that it is not just parents who are searching for sense in the chaos.

Time goes by...

I've been trying to think about why it is, that it's so easy to forget your own children as they were at six months old. I can barely remember Max or Oli being the age at which Jack is now.  I suppose it's such a tiny fraction of their lives (and mine), that that's why it gets swallowed up in the abyss of forgotten things.  After all, children are toddlers for a year, but only a week old for a day. Blink, and they are 2 weeks, then a month.  Perhaps it is also because you can't remember how you didn't know this child like you do now.
It feels as if, first there is the rainstorm. It is what it is, and you deal the way you do, and then a stream appears. The water's moving quickly and yet you feel like nothing will ever change. You will always be here, watching this kind of water, on this kind of river bank, always able to step across the stream.  And then the water level rises and every day the picture of your child, the character, becomes a little fuller.  You know the eczema on his thumb and the milk spots under his chin. You know the smell of formula on his breath and how his eyelashes have grown. You know how he smiles for his brothers and looks at you to be reassured. He loves his bath, you find out, and you notice how his feet are the length of your thumb. You know how he pulls his socks off and sucks them and looks amused and startled when he rolls himself over, and how he marvels at his hands and smiling, grips your hair when you lean in to his cot. You know how he slips to one side in his high chair, and how he'd be nursing forever if he could.  You know the feeling of his cold fingers and sharp nails on your chest, and how he'll sleep in broad daylight, tolerating the fact that you haven't found the time to put up curtains in his room.
I begin to piece the jigsaw of this boy together, pulling genes from here and there; the dimples, the turn of his mouth and the curve of his nose. And each day the water runs quicker and the river gets wider. Not so easy to step across. And sure enough he's a month older and I swore I'd never imagined I'd be weaning him. But here it is and I look back and can barely remember that first rainstorm, when I couldn't see for the drizzle and the fog.  Jack's head gets heavier and his eyes brighten and he chuckles and smiles and seeks me out and when his brothers maul him, his look asks me, 'has this been authorized?'  I so want to look and look at Jack and live his every moment, to say 'bouncing butterball' to him and watch him giggle, mouth wide, at the breath-pumping consonants. But it isn't just about observation. I am part of the landscape, I'm changing too and in this place there are two more rivers - moving so fast and yet changing ever so gradually - and so much to discover.

Oli's words, part II

I remember how, 2 years ago, I watched Max's language begin to evolve. I went to bed at night hearing his peculiar turns of phrase, it inhabited my head, his repeated demands for 'big milk' or the intriguing way in which bananas were always 'numanas'. I smiled at the sweetness of those ever so slight phonetic inaccuracies. And now it is Oli's language that rattles around in my mind, the repeated lines that he uses to make himself understood.  'You dough-way' he says, pushing me off, his independence threatened by my kisses.  'Me pee!' he cries as we rush to the pot.  Then 'You read it!' as he drags a book to the sofa where I am nursing Jack. 'You read it 'den. You read it right now.'  The other night he cried out in his sleep. 'Me have it. Me have it.' I walked down the corridor to his room. His hot head was on the pillow, his body curled round his sucked thumb. 'No, me have it!' It was a wail of desperation. 'It's yours' I whispered in his ear as he dreamed.  And how I love the phrases he's heard, like a traffic jam which he calls a 'japping jam' or how he proudly sings 'row row row your boat' and abbreviates those final 'merrily's to a succinct no-nonsense, 'melly like deem'.
I'm all too aware that this is a brief window, it's almost impossible to hold onto his changing language and his emerging comprehension of it.  He has now worked out that his name is Oli with an L rather that Oyi with a Y. He said it with a Y for the last time a few days ago. And soon enough he'll realise the small yellow beetle that hides out in Richard Scarry's strange world of bananamobiles and carrot cars is not in fact dollbug. 'Me see dollbug!' he says, stamping his little finger down on the page with an audible inhale of pure excitement, or a whine of 'Oww, me' if Max spots it first.  Funny to think all this will be gone in a month or so.  I'm sure he'll still tell me to 'dough-way' but he'll say it with a 'g'. And I'll be able to take it because I'll have the memory of him asking me, just today, 'hold yous hand, Mummy? Hold yous hand.'

New Arrival

I can barely believe I am a mother of three. Hardly road-tested, for sure, but a mother of three all the same.
Jack is eleven days old and however hard I try to hold on to his one-day-old features, they are already fading. The little boy who felt so unfamiliar to me when he was born. I suppose that shouldn't be a surprise, we were meeting him for the first time after all, but his was a face I didn't recognise and it threw me.  Max and Oli had just looked so alike, hadn't they? Induced a week early, Jack had lighter hair than either of his siblings at birth and he had little dimples on his cheeks. It was a face I couldn't see beyond. And perhaps that is where I have gone wrong, in even attempting to see beyond the moment. Childbirth can only be experienced in the moment and yet as soon as Jack was in my arms I found myself casting about in the shadows; looking to the past for guidance and reference points, already comparing this little boy to his brothers, comparing his sleeping habits, his temperament, wondering, was he happier or hungrier, thinking how long was it that I swaddled the others, or what soothing techniques I used?
Four years on, the hospital is the same. These peach and grey walls welcomed my first son, these pale green hospital gowns, warm from the heater, still have their delicate detail of purple snowflakes. It all comes back to me; the first tentative walks to the bathroom, the panic button by the loo, the oversized underwear, the constant checking of body temperature and blood pressure, the babies on clear plastic trollies swaddled in blankets decorated with pastel coloured footprints.  I think back to Max's birth and how our lives as parents began, trying to remember the tiny details, trying to remember those first few nights, the specifics of feeds and changing and burping, trying to make comparisons that might enable me to take confidence, looking for signs that say, 'yes, I can do this'.  And all the time, my mind is also casting forward; looking to the future, trying to problem solve imagined scenarios, wondering how things will work out. We are indeed lucky that Jack appears healthy.  So many things could have already gone wrong.
Jack and I have been discharged.  His features have already changed and he looks more and more like his brothers. I hear Max and Oli hurtling down the corridor to find my room.  Max is running. Oli will be racing to catch up, angled for a fall which miraculously doesn't happen. They pile into the room giggling. Max is feeling confident but Oli takes comfort in his thumb, waiting to see what happens now.  I grin from ear to ear seeing them. Their moon faces loom large, their eyes so wide and full of colour. I have spent the last 24 hours cupping Jack's head in my hand, his tiny almond eyes are all pupil, inky black.  I suddenly feel every pound of Oli's weight when I lift him onto the bed, he is no longer the baby I had before the weekend. 
When we get home Oli chuckles at the sight of me nursing 'Baby Dak'. His words come slowly and well punctuated: 'Baby, eating, yous, tummy, right?' Max gets quite cross with the inaccuracy of this statement, 'No, Oli, he's drinking.'
I couldn't have hoped for a more loving reception for Jack by his brothers.  There are kisses and clammy palms on his head. Yesterday Max barricaded him in with chairs around his stroller, 'to keep him safe'.  Oli, too, seems delighted with the new addition, despite being ousted from 'my dot' and put in a grown-up bed in Max's room.  It was something I thought we'd do a few months down the line but in the interests of everyone's sleep, the plan was accelerated.
And among all this, I feel towards the older boys, an aching tenderness, like I've cheated on them somehow.
'Stro Me!' Oli demands at bedtime, head down, bottom in the air, thumb in his mouth.
'Stro Me!' I begin stroking his back, and he pulls at his pajama top, indicating that he wants my palm on his back, skin to skin. My hand tingles a little from the rubbing and I close my eyes trying to seal this in my memory, trying to make this another moment I won't forget but knowing in my post-partum haze that my mind is not a tidy filing cabinet. 'Remember this', I think, because too soon, it will be gone.

Daddy Love

For some time now, Oli, at twenty one months, has been consumed with Daddy Love.  This is a love that cries 'Nooo', like a character in slow motion trying to prevent someone falling off a cliff, as Daddy leaves for work every morning. It is a love that careers full tilt into Daddy's knees when he returns at the end of the day. It is a love that whispers his name at the slightest hint of his presence, a foot on the step, a key in the door; 'Da-dee?' it asks in hushed tones that I have only otherwise seen him reserve for diggers.
Quite remarkably my four year old still loves me and tells me so with urgent spontaneity. He tells me 'You're my best friend' and asks if I'm his best friend too. Sometimes he tells me he loves me and then asks if I can make the lego loader that's too complicated for a four year old's dexterity. Sometimes he tells me he loves me and asks for ice-cream.  But often he just sidles up to me and says 'I love you Mummy' and it seems to come from nowhere. I know it will not last. When I pitched up at his school last month during circle time, the friend next to him nudged him and said, 'Aren't you excited, your mom's here?' It was the time I brought cupcakes for his birthday.  He was grinning as he looked at me and while his friend spoke to him, but then he turned back to his friend, shrugged, and carried on listening to the circle time story.  No, it cannot last and it seems Oli's 'Mummy stage' too may already be over.

Sex Education Part I

Max has been asking me recently about how he 'got into mummy's tummy'.
'Good question' I say.  I have read somewhere that this is a perfect stalling tactic when you get the hard ones. And it's true, it gives the mental cogs just enough time to get going and create a diversion.
I pause. 'That really is a good question...but it's quite complicated and I'll need a pen and paper to help with the explanation.'
Each time the subject has been raised I've been relieved that we're in the car or in the garden or out for a walk, no paper or pens in sight. Then yesterday, quite forgetting my promise, I suggested we do some colouring and out came the crayons and pencils.
'Now...' said Max and I immediately saw where he had got me. Drawing equipment was sprawled about the table.
'Lets do how-Max-got-into-mummy's-tummy'.'
We glossed over the nitty gritty, he is only three, and talked about how mummies have eggs inside them which presumably left him thinking we women are some kind of relative to a chicken.  There followed a balloon-like pencil drawing of me; lungs, heart, diaphragm, stomach, intestines; that was about as much biology as I could fit in (and remember) and still leave enough space for a womb with Max inside.
He was delighted with the mini balloon-shaped little boy floating around in there but wondered if it was very dark inside, to which I replied, yes it was.
'Why is it so dark?' 'No windows' I say.
'How long was I in there?' Max's face looks serious. 'Quite a long time' I answer.
'How long?' he asks again, and then, 'why do I have to get so old in there?'  I loved this, 'so old'.
I tried another picture of dividing cells that started sprouting legs and arms. My artwork didn't look very convincing but I was quite enjoying the excercise. A few minutes later Dom came and sat next to us.  Max obviously had a nagging concern that he had been wasting precious time in utero.
'But why so long?'
'You can't drive a new car...' Dom said and paused to look at me. My frown showed some concern that my biology lesson was being consumed by exhaust fumes but Dom's eyes said 'trust me'.
'You can't drive a new car out of the garage until all the parts are inside; the engine, the seats, the radio...'
That was all he said and with that Max trotted happily off to make a garage out of lego.  Car analogies are obviously the way forward.

Turning Four

Every day this year (except, perhaps, the time he was vomiting into a bucket in a hot flat in Havelock North) Max has asked me if it is his birthday.
'Not yet.'
I suppose, as we approached this new decade, Dom or I must have let slip that this was the year in which Max would turn four. And what with being away from home this Christmas and away from family too, Max has been enjoying a drip-drip effect with the presents.  There were gifts on the day and more (those that hadn't made it into our luggage) when we eventually got home. Consequent trips to the post office have yielded yet more treats in snowflake wrapping paper within brown paper packaging.  All these presents; it makes Father Christmas look downright half-hearted.  So despite the drama of the first week of Max's new year (the aforementioned vomiting) he actually thinks 2010 is shaping up beautifully.  And a birthday would do very nicely about now, thank you.
'No, it's not your birthday today.'
'Is it tomorrow then?'
'No, not tomorrow.'
'But it was Lailey's birthday?'
'Yes, but you have a different one, on a different day...several months away.'
January, February, March, April. We count the months. He's not interested in what happens after April.
Hunter is the next preschool friend to have a birthday. Max has obviously been thinking about it, a lot;
'Will Hunter look different?'
'What do you mean?'
'His face...'
I realise Max must have overheard us talk about people getting older, people changing; contrasts made more stark because of the distances we have imposed within our family by moving to America.  It's all about degrees, but how is Max to know.  I reassure him that Hunter will look just the same. After all, Lailey didn't change did she? And he'll see the same face looking back at him in the mirror on his own birthday.  I just can't vouch the same for his mother, but I won't tell him so.

Growing Up

'Oli's not a boy yet' says Max of his nine month old brother.
I explain that Oli is a boy, just not a big boy, yet.
'When I am a baby I can sit in Oli's chair.'
Hmm. There's no going back little one. It's early morning and I'm giving Oli a bottle in bed, in my bed.
'Mummy, when you are small you can get in my bed.'
I thank him for that. Perhaps it's confusing that we only grow in one direction.
'And do you remember Granny was here yesterday.'
In truth she left days ago, but the past seems to be contracted into one big yesterday here.
'And Granny will be a big boy like me.'
Well, people change, they grow in size and understanding, but that might be stretching it.
'And I will play soccer ball when I'm younger.'
You may well do, my little American.

Dear Oli and Max,

I just ate a crisp and got a mouthful of fuzz - apparently my hands now attract wool like velcro. It got me thinking about how my hands are exactly like my mother's now. And I was just about to post something along those lines when I remembered that this blog is really meant to be all about you, Oli and Max, but it has gradually slipped into being all about ME which really wasn't what I intended. So I'm making amends and giving you an update on your antics and hopefully it will set me straight and I won't feel the need to drone on about RVs and beauty salons and how my hands are old.
Oli, I keep thinking your dribbling is going to pay off and we are going to get signs of teeth, but no. Just drool. It's about a month now since you started babbling; da da da, ra ra ra, ya ya ya. Then ten days ago you said 'Ma ma ma' which of course delighted me and coincided beautifully with Mother's Day. No indication yet that you feel like crawling, for which I am thankful. I never believed your grandmother when she said your father didn't walk until he was two years old. But now you're here and have his physique and it makes perfect sense. And what with Max obligingly bringing you toys (not to say he doesn't edit them a little but), he piles them up on you as if you're on Crackerjack (BBC circa 1980), it rather takes away the incentive to get moving. As Dom says 'Once you're up, you're up.'
Max, today I had your 'report' from preschool, where the teachers told me you were reserved yet confident (which I obviously interpreted as brilliant), an observer with a solid base (brilliant again), 'quite the intellect' they called you, saying you were very good at expressing what you want. I'd never have guessed. Apparently they no longer sing the Slippery Fish song because you dislike it so.
Recently you've taken to inventing words and telling me the detailed meanings. The first 2 I'm not sure about but the last one I do like and will be using in conversation:

• nagu (naegu:) n. 1. blue object given to a relative
• rigas (rIgas) n. 1. area by the door
• tuff (t^f) vb. tuffing 1. to run a vehicle's engine without creating motion (is that car tuffing?)

Dear Max and Oli,

Time, I think, for an update on what you two boys are doing. Oli, you have just turned 5 months - and are now pretty regularly sleeping through from 1o at night to 6 or 7 in the morning - obviously there's the odd exception, like last night, when you wailed on and off from 4am until I finally relented and put you in our bed. Immediately you flung out your arms and began purring like a contented cat. Ahh, Oli with your smiles. You rolled over a while ago but don't seem very interested in doing that again. I think you've worked out that you get a better view of things on your back - and hence have more warning of your brother's approach. Max is just filled with love for you; 'Hello Oli oli oli' he sings, trying to get in close - generally that means climbing in under the playgym, feet in your face or leaning on your head as you sit in your chair. It is rarely malicious but that doesn't mean there aren't tears. Oli reciprocates this smothering affection with utter adoration - he tracks your every move, Max. Watching you play and chatter and sqwark and sing and tumble and, yes, tantrum. The other night you woke up just after Oli's last feed and screamed for 'MILK' like you'd crossed the desert and been cheated of a churn of it in some deceptive mirage. Tears were not just rolling down your cheeks but springing from your eyes as you blinked in anger. I've learned not to say much to you in these moments, but just try to wipe your eyes and stroke your hair and repeat quietly that there is water by your bed and it is time to go back to sleep. Finally you calmed down and you wanted to hold my hand. It made my heart ache even as I so desperately wanted to go back to bed. But things can turn on a sixpence, or a dime depending on your choice of currency. 'I don't want Mummy to kiss me.' Those were your exact words just yesterday when I took your head in my hands and kissed your messy hair. So nothing is predictable these days - except perhaps one thing, you no longer take a nap at lunchtime - and you tell me categorically, 'I don't want to play quietly in my bedjoom', just in case I had any ideas. So we battle on til 7pm - bath, pyjamas, wonderpets, bed. That's how it goes. And then you might say, if I'm lucky, and just to delay bedtime a few more minutes, 'Can we be stuck?' And that's when I kiss your forehead and pretend I'm suctioned to you - it is very dramatic - then, phew, with a noisy schlooock I manage to extract myself. Oli, you cannot ask for kisses but you get them all the same.