Crawkward

Bless me Blogger, for I have sinned. It's been two months since my last post.

Sorry about that. Bit of writer's block, or something. In fact, I think it's more to do with my altruistic desire to be relentlessly entertaining; to always provide new and original excitement. And the truth is, our parenting lives have been relatively stable recently. Not entirely without incident, but not sufficiently dramatic to awaken my sharing impulse.

Also, I read an article in the Guardian a while ago - one of those provocative opinion pieces designed to get people all riled up and generate furious debate in the comments section - bemoaning the phenomenon of 'sharenting': the practise of enriching the lives of others by flooding social media with evidence of your offspring's shenanigans. "Stop imposing your joy upon others," it commanded. I was ever so satisfied with my smug rebuttal of this theory. "I've got thirteen followers who disagree with your complaint, Johnny Guardian Journalist," I bravely proclaimed (to myself), "Thirteen!" Seriously, though: I'm firmly of the belief that any subject under the sun is of potential interest to somebody and therefore merits writing about. If you don't like it, don't read it. I refuse to read things I'm not interested in all the time. It's easy. Having said all that, I'm a sensitive soul, so perhaps it's no coincidence that I've had a bit of a 'sharenting' hiatus ever since.*

Also, we got Netflix recently, so I've been really busy.

Whatever the reason/excuse for this hiatus, I feel that the time has come to draw it to a close. Here, then, is an exciting summary of What We're Currently Concerned About in Our House:

Poo

Our eldest has long-standing issues with her evacuations. Since being potty trained, she has been through alternating phases of being an accomplished toileteer on the one hand, and suffering from an abject fear of any form of faecal expulsion on the other. There have been weeks when her powers of retention caused her serious physical trouble. There was an anal suppository involved on one occasion. There was some screaming that night.

This is the stuff the 'sharenting' haters object to, isn't it? Oh well. Stop reading then.

Hello?

Good. I'll continue.

Even now, with the suppository days hopefully consigned to the past, we do occasionally have to break out the Lactilose to keep things moving. Only this afternoon I endured half an hour of hysterical anguish from my beloved daughter, because she successfully pooed in the toilet. It was a textbook excretion, yet this left her devastated. Personally, I'll always be a boy who thinks poo is a little bit funny, but our daughter is in danger of having a serious psychological issue with it. I sincerely hope it's a phase which will end naturally, and soon.

Rejection

When our first daughter was a bit younger, she used to have a strange reaction to my having time off work. Or, rather, to my going back to work at the end of it. I would be punished by her for my rude insistence upon returning to spending all day out of the house. I would arrive home each evening, only to be shunned by her; forbidden from demonstrating any assistance or affection. All this would mean sadness for me and hard work for my wife. Mercifully, our eldest is now three, going on sixteen, and her subsequent maturity means that she has no such unreasonable reaction to the ends of Daddy's holidays anymore.

Unfortunately, our youngest has filled this particular niche effortlessly. I recently had a week off work which inevitably ended. Thus, no longer will she treat me to a kiss goodbye in the morning. When I come home in the evening she imposes a restraining order upon me, punishable by screaming if I encroach upon her three metre safe zone. I can't pick her up, fetch her anything, even look at her without high-pitched admonishment. It breaks my heart but I stay strong: I know it's really a form of indirect affection. It's just very, very subtle.

School

I may previously have discussed the problems our eldest had with separation anxiety when she started nursery school. She loved the environment, the staff, the other children, the activities; everything. But she could not abide spending five hours apart from Mummy three times a week. It was extremely traumatic. After a few weeks, there were signs that this terror was beginning to subside. Then she broke her leg. By the time she had recovered it was nearly the end of the term, so we opted to wait until the new term to restart the arduous process of settling in.

The new term starts next week.

I'll level with you: we're a bit scared. But we understand that this development of independence is precisely the reason we must persevere with nursery school. For it is but one year until she'll start at Actual Proper Compulsory School.

This, of course, means that Mummy and I have our own hurdles to overcome. We must do research. I've spoken to a couple of teacher friends about how to choose a school for your child and they were very helpful, suggesting that we use websites and Ofsted reports as a starting point, before taking them with a pinch of salt and arranging to have a look around some likely establishments. The feel we get for them then, I'm told, will be the most reliable factor in finding a place whose educational ethos most closely resembles our own.

But do we even know what our own ethos is? Without wishing to get all political, I'm very much of the opinion that primary school should be about engaging children in the ideas of curiosity and exploration; equipping them with the tools to learn happily and meaningfully when the serious stuff starts at secondary school. It should not be about test-oriented memory training. Recent developments at the Department for Education, however, seem to suggest that schools which share my way of thinking are not at all de rigueur. They should be more de rigour, according to Michael Gove, the despicable idealogue who has somehow been given responsibility for this sort of thing. All of which fills me with more trepidation at the thought of embarking upon this necessary research than my daughter is filled with at the thought of going back to nursery next week.

Sorry. I get a bit carried away sometimes. That must have read like one of those provocative opinion pieces designed to get people all riled up and generate furious debate in the comments section.

*Perhaps I'm being some sort of snob, but the word 'sharenting' itself riles me up. I'm instinctively wary of the 'Brangelina' style conflation of two words. It's just a bit crass and awkward. Or 'crawkward'.

That won't keep me warm in the middle of the night

In around 300BC, Euclid invented geometry, forever transforming the way people would think about space, measurement and logic.

That don't impressa me much.

In 1859 Charles Darwin shattered his own religious convictions, effectively ruining his marriage and jeopardising his standing in Victorian society, by publishing a book which finally shed light on what remains the most astounding idea in science: evolution.

That don't impressa me much.

On July 21st 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the surface of the moon. This historic moment was the culmination of the considerable intelligence, ambition and bravery of various NASA heroes.

That don't impr- OK. Enough of the contrived Shania Twain referencing. It seemed like an innovative literary device in my head. I always hated that song anyway. 'Shiny Train,' I used to call her. Because I'm funny. My point is that, of all the great achievements that mankind can boast, none comes close to matching the accomplishment our eldest daughter made last week.

After at least a year of ignoring it, screaming at it, sitting pointlessly on it for fruitless hours at a time, and being caused by it to not poo for days on end, she has finally mastered the full and productive use of her potty. I had to interrupt typing the last sentence to dispose of a brown monster that she laid - without the merest hint of fuss or hesitation - within its confines. She didn't even blink. This was a matter-of-fact faecal production. As I type this sentence she is busy training her doll to use its own toilet in the doll's house. The apprentice has already become the master. She has even taught her little sister to run around the house shouting "POOPOO" in exactly the right joyous tone.

The relief shared by my wife and I at this development is palpable. We have endured many long months of well-meaning friends and relatives enquiring pointedly about her progress. The pointedness was probably a figment of our paranoid imaginations, to be fair. But it's a fact that - while we find it easy to proudly imagine her as advanced in most things - our daughter has been a bit late to the table in this, toilet-based respect.

We have on numerous occasions attempted to be ruthless in withdrawing the nappy option from our daughter. But, invariably, she would simply hold it in until (and I hope that, in years to come, she will forgive me for sharing this) her number one bit got smelly and her number two bit got incredibly painful. Ruthlessness is hard to maintain when your tough love extends to endangering the health of your toughly loved one. So our determination would always expire after a few days or so. Eventually we resolved to be less resolute, deciding instead to take a laissez-faire approach, whereby she would somehow make it known to us when she was ready.

But then we received confirmation that our daughter was to start nursery school in a few weeks' time. Mildly panicked at the prospect of the awkward nappy conversation taking place on her first day there, we had no choice but to go zero tolerance. Perhaps our commitment to the cause was subconsciously strengthened by this new time limit, or perhaps it happily coincided with her finally overcoming her emotional attachment to the nappies, but within a day of our fixing the nursery date we were hearing the blissful tinkle of pee on plastic.

And she has taken to it like a toilet duck to toilet water. At regular intervals throughout the day, she'll announce her impending success as she strides purposefully towards the potty, before pulling down the necessary garments and sitting in the right place at the right time. She has even mastered helping herself to a modest but sufficient amount of toilet roll and having a little wipe. It's like clockwork. Urinatory clockwork.

There has, I believe, been only one notable accident thus far. But the sofa cushions are clean again now, so it's water under the bridge, so to speak.

Four hands are better than two.

Tomorrow I return to work after my paternity leave/holiday combo. I am less than jubilant about this, as is my wife. I have tried to convince her that my contribution to keeping our two young ladies in check is really negligible, therefore my impending absence for forty hours a week should pose little threat to her sanity. One could even argue that she will now in fact have one less child to supervise.

My case was undermined last Friday night, however, when I was granted special dispensation to make a foray into Big London City to have a rare night of fun with my friends. Of course, these people are also my wife's friends, so I was extremely appreciative of her brave sacrifice in staying at home with the girls so that I could be the social representative for both of us. This appreciation became tinged with guilt when I heard my wife's anguished description of the nightmare that had been bath time that evening. Imagine the popular redneck refrain Duelling Banjos, but with the twangy instruments replaced by screams which escalate in almost endless competition with each other. So more Dante than Deliverance, I suppose. This was a harrowing experience for my wife to endure unassisted and her sense of trepidation has only increased as a result. At least nobody had to squeal like a pig.

So the relative serenity of having one parent per child on a full-time basis is now at an end. The difficulties we have for the past month overcome together will now be doubled. How, for example, will my wife transfer both children upstairs on her own? Daughter A can make this journey under her own steam, but must be carefully overseen at close proximity. Daughter B is unable to move anywhere under her own steam, and must therefore be carried. Each activity requires two arms. They must occur concurrently. My wife does not have four arms. As such she will be left with a choice between abandoning one child's safety to the hands of fate or not doing a wee all day.

Some mornings I get up at 6:00 for work. I will now be compelled to get everyone else up at the same time (bearing in mind that my wife and younger daughter are people for whom sleep is currently at a premium) so that I can assist with the washing, nappy changing, dressing and feeding of others before I depart. The alternative will be to eat my bowl of Krave and do my morning poo in absolute silence before sneaking away and leaving my wife to deal with the getting up of the girls by herself. Again, there seems to be no desirable option here.

Similar logistical nightmares will apply to preparing meals, leaving the house, appeasing the wounded, entertaining the restless, and pretty much every activity that takes place in the course of an average parental day. All require disagreeable compromise when there are more children than parents on hand. And these are just the examples we can think of now. If only I didn't have to go to work.

We have started buying lottery tickets.