Children

A letter to my toddler son

14/04/2014 by MrsSavageAngel Leave a Comment

Apologies for the “mummy” silence over the past week or so. It wasn’t intentional, I’ve just been busy and stressed and, well, none of those things are excuses I know, but something had to take the hit so it was these posts. I don’t know why it was. I love writing them, they’re important to me. Hmmm. Anyway, sorry. And sorry for the random timing of this post. Although the way things are going at the moment it might be that random is the only way I can do these. Ahh well.

To the boy,

Sometimes I look at you, often when you’re asleep, or in your Winnie the Pooh inspired evening trance. I look at your soft skin and your, blonder than I could ever hope for, hair. I see your tiny Willson nose and your daddy’s bottom lip, the way you cross your ankles when you sit and the enormous feet on the ends of your lean little legs. I think I love you most in these times. In these times when you are still. Does that make me a bad parent? A bad person? Because there are other times. Other days.

Some days I find you too draining to bare. You scream, you squawk, you cry, you kick me, you hit me, you destroy every thing you can, including my heart and I am left in a state of shock. Battered and bruised both inside and out. If you were my partner, my friends would plead with me to leave you. This abuse would not be tolerated. But you are my son, and this is not abuse. You are 2. A toddler. A tiny person trying to find your way, your place, your pitch. And I do everything I can to help you, but, my darling, I’m new to this too. And some days it feels like, whatever I do, it will never be enough.

I know you are my son. In every cry of frustration, every time you throw something down in anger. Yup there I am. But you are so confident in your own ability, I don’t think you realise you’re only 2. Maybe it’s because no one has told you? Before I had you, I did not want a shy child. But now some days I wish I could eat my words. Just while we go round the Farm or the market. Walk beside me my darling baby son. Don’t run off into the crowd. Don’t make me have to restrain you, while you kick and scream and hate me. I’m doing it to save you, to keep you safe and to prevent a maternal heart attack. Please?

I’ve taken to checking on you while you sleep more than I ever did when you were tiny. I need to know that my darling baby is still in there. Somewhere. Not that it makes the hard times easier to bare.

It just helps me to get up to you the next day.

Mama

The Hen House

01/04/2014 by MrsSavageAngel Leave a Comment

Bit of backstory. Haslemere is a small town, which has expanded over the years to accommodate the growing number of families moving here. Its about an hour from London so still commutable, but far enough away to offer a more rural way of life (or faux rural as my husband likes to call it).

I’ve not lived in Haslemere that long. 3 years actually. But most of that time I have been pregnant or the mother of a small child. Either way I’ve found myself becoming immersed in the parent scene of this small town. I’ve not really had a choice. And I love it. I think I’ve mentioned before how amazing children can be as ice breakers, and how becoming part of this mummy community has been good for me. We share in a way I’ve never experienced before; clothes, advice, experience and information.

So when something new or newsworthy happens to affect our community, well as you can imagine, the jungle drums start to beat. And when I received a shared link on FB a few weeks ago telling me about a new soft play cafe opening in the town I was beside myself and was quick to share the information.

What I saw was this.

And this is what I said about it.

Soft play. Even the name can conjur up images of dirty, bleak industrial units decked out with ball pits and foam slides, all marinated in the smell of frying chips. I can’t prove it (of course) but I swear Oscar got the sickest he’s ever been after a session at one such soft play venue and after conversations with other parents I’m not alone in this concern. So OK I get that kids, particularly older children, don’t care what a place smells like or how dirty the equipment may be or how crap the coffee is. Sometimes they just want to hurl themselves around for a hour. And that’s grand. But I know my friends and I have all said at one time or another, wouldn’t it be nice to have somewhere, we could take the children, they could have a rare old time of it and we could have a relax, without coming away with the gifts of Rotavirus and Eau de Chipfat.

So when I received the link, telling me a new kind of soft play was coming to my local high street. Well. I’m hoping you can imagine just how excited, but cautious I was. Was this really something I was right to get my hopes up about? I shared it myself and started the discussion. Suddenly the buzz was off the computer screen and in the toddler groups and the parks and literally on the streets. The name was whispered in hushed tones, or shouted from the roof tops, eitherway, the local community seems as excited by the Hen House as I am. I had to know more than the sweet but basic holding page would tell me, so I contacted them.

Enter Henri.

Henrietta Paterson is a local mother of five (yup five children, three under the age of five). As she explained to me she has no background in this sort of thing (in her previous life she was a Venture Capitalist, living in the Far East). When she and her family moved back to the UK and unexpectedly had two more children, she decided not to go back to working in the city. However, as she explained, she wanted to do something. How it came about is as random as all good inspiration should be. On chatting to the staff at Applegarth she discovered that their previous plans to build a soft play had been shelved. “I offered to help them, but it just wasn’t something they were interested anymore” Henri told me “Once I started thinking about it though, I couldn’t get the idea out of my head. I was sick of having to go all the way to Farnham for soft play. I mean what was there was OK, but I felt it could be so much better”.

And with that particular bee in her bonnet, The Hen House was born. Henri’s real bug bear with traditional soft play is that whilst it might be fun for the children, they really aren’t that much fun for the adults and on this point I have to agree. The vision for The Hen House is to provide somewhere the kids can have a wonderful time, and the parents can relax, knowing the children are in a safe and clean environment.

The idea of safety is really being addressed here. There are two levels of security gate, including an electronic one. All staff are DBS (CRB) checked and those who work with the children are all qualified in childcare in some way or another. The Hen House will also have a rule of washing and sanitizing hands on entry, something you don’t always see at these places.

It’s clear on talking with her that Henri is enthusiastic about the new place and it’s lovely to see someone so fired up about something that will benefit the local community. As she explained to me, when she encountered resistance from the council when applying to change the usage of the building, the local retail community rallied round her. They know that having a facility that encourages people into the town will be good for their businesses too! Add to that the plan to provide a bookable creche facility, leaving parents free to shop in peace for up to TWO hours? Well. How could the council ever refuse?!

Henri very kindly showed me round the building when we met. It’s bigger than it looks from the outside, and although it is still currently full of builders and building equipment, she was able to paint me a really clear picture of what is going to go where. There will be a toddler area for running around and a baby zone as well as the soft play equipment. There is also a separate room to be used for classes such as Toddler Cookery, Little French and the ubiquitous Molly Moo Cow. Henri sees the room as a real resource, as it will also be bookable, along with it’s disco floor for children’s parties.

The bit I liked the sound of best is the cafe. The food provided will all be locally sourced where possible, made fresh on site and be healthy and as tasty as possible. As Henri was at pains to tell me, none of it will be fried! Not only is this music to my ears from a gastronomic point of view, it also means you wont leave stinking of old chip fat. The plan is to provide something for everyone from Paninis to baby purees. And decent coffee! The craziest thing (or the best thing you might argue!), she that is currently in the process of being granted a liquor licence! She plans to sell wine, beer & fizz (no hard stuff), because as she said to me “sometimes you just need a little something” Quite!

So, yes I was as impressed with Henri as I was with the idea of the The Hen House. It was wonderful to meet someone with such drive to make something work. She was also incredibly open to discussion and suggestion, leaving me feeling confident about the ability of the Hen House to become a real community facility, one we can all enjoy and use to it’s full potential. She has asked that anyone with ideas or suggestions email her hen@thehen-house.com. Although please don’t ask about the parking. Yes you will have to pay to use the “Waitrose” carpark and no she wont be refunding parking.

Something else she was at pains to explain is that there isn’t a set opening day yet. They are currently waiting for variable things to happen (such as a the floor to dry and the equipment to arrive). But it’s likely to be May time and announcements will be made on Facebook or you can sign up for notifications on their website.

This isnt a review, it can’t be. I haven’t let my son loose on the equipment and been able to sit back and enjoy or had to run after him. Haven’t seen whether he likes it or finds it claustrophobic (like he does at the Herons). Haven’t left him with the creche and been able to enjoy a quiet lunch with my husband (Ben’s first reaction when he saw the webpage). Haven’t tasted the food and decided whether this is value for my hard earnt buck. I can’t tell you if it’s ever so ever so good yet.

But I can’t wait to find out.

[Read more…] about The Hen House

Play nicely children!

25/03/2014 by MrsSavageAngel Leave a Comment

My deep desire to get out of the house when Oscar was tiny, resulted in a child that has socialised a lot since he was tiny. Not as much as a child in a massive family maybe, but he’s never been isolated. We’ve been going to groups regularly since he was 7 weeks old and having people over for the longest time. “Sharing” anything (toys, space, me) has never been an issue. In fact until very recently, Oscar seemed quite content to basically ignore the other children and play quite happily on his own (he can be a very focussed “player” when he wants to be). There have been exceptions to this rule. For example,watching him and Isabelle tickling and laughing at each other, is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen but on the whole that just the way it’s been. But as any parent of a toddler will understand, this is all changing. He is much more aware (as it should be) of other children and the things they’re doing. And he made me wholly aware of the effect of these changes all of last week.

Quite suddenly everything was stressful. I’m not even sure it’s a “it’s mine” thing, but I’m guessing it is. I was expecting it at some point and in my experience I was expecting him to start snatching things back or pushing and pulling. And maybe he’ll start doing that, but at the moment he seem to get infinitely more angry with himself than others. It’s horrible to see. Other children only have to touch things that are near him and he starts throwing himself to the ground crying in a dramatic fashion (who could he have got that from 😉 ) But he does other stuff too like head-butting the floor or the fence! It’s like he’s a shaken up bottle of coke that doesn’t know how to let the pressure out. I know it’s frustration through a lack of understanding, but god it breaks my heart 🙁 . I’ve tried being patient and keeping calm and explaining that it’s OK to feel cross, that the toys aren’t going anywhere/aren’t his/etc. I have no idea if he understands me. It doesn’t seem to make things a whole lot better at the time and I can only keep it up for so long! I’ve also tried the firm, “that’s enough”, approach, but that doesn’t work either. It was pretty bad on Thursday. He threw himself on the ground so many times at toddler group, people started thinking he was falling over or off things. He spent nearly the entire time upset, so in the end we left early. And as soon as we were out of the door he was fine.

One thing I am loathe to say is “you must share” because a) he has no idea what that means b) I’m not convinced it would the help the situation at the time and c) if I was him I would want to know why? and I don’t really have a better answer than “because it’s polite”. So how do I best explain the concept of sharing? As a friend asked the other day – how old are they before they understand? I’m guessing it’s not yet? In conversation with a Montessori nursery manager recently we discussed how all preschoolers, dislike “sharing” even if they understand the language surrounding the concept. She told me that if the children really want to play with the same thing they encourage them to play with the item together. And I like that idea. It doesn’t feel like you’re asking the child to give anything up, but does encourage the idea of collaboration.

But that doesn’t stop my not yet two year old banging his head on the furniture and scaring the other mothers and breaking my heart.

I know it’s his age. I do know that. And I know he’s going through a proper developmental change at the moment. He’s sending me very clear signals that things are a changing for real. None of this worrying about seeing toddlerhood coming on the horizon. It’s smack bang here! He’s waking up much earlier again and over the past week he’s learnt how to get out of his grobags – sort of! This week he has broken the zip on one and learnt how to get his arm through the neck hole of another! This morning he woke me at 6am to find him with both arms stuck through one arm hole. He’s like a not very good Houdini! So we’re going to have to ditch the grobags, in favour of a duvet. It’s not that big a deal. Really, it’s not. It’s just he’s been in a grobag since he was 8 weeks old and looking at toddler bedding on Sunday made me cry.

If I wanted a true signal that things have changed then I guess this is was it.

Round and round….

18/03/2014 by MrsSavageAngel Leave a Comment

Our garden is huge. I’m not bragging here, I’m just stating a fact. Our house is tiny (I think I may have mentioned this before 😉 ), but our garden? Well it’s at least three times the foot print of the house. It’s wider than the property, unusual in a terrace cottage like ours, and around 100ft in length. It has a shed and what was called, rather grandly in the property details, a “summer house” (we still call it that but really its a glorified 15ft wide shed, with a porch and a deck at the bottom of the garden). It’s flat all the way down (unusual in an area called the Surrey Hills!) and it’s what truly sold us the house.

We moved in just as I found out I was pregnant (typical!) but I remember thinking how exciting it would be to have all this space to play in. The first year I had Oscar the summer weather was awful. The beautiful summer maternity leave I’d been promised never truly materialised and hanging out in the garden every day we were not. Oscar went through a phase of experiencing the “witching hour”. Did your children ever do that? Inexplicably and inconsolably start wailing for around an hour, usually in the late afternoon? Mine did. Usually between 5 and 6. You could set your watch by it. And the only thing and I’m serious when I say the only thing that ever helped calm him down during these periods, was taking him, in my arms, out in to the garden. I would walk him around and he would look up at the trees and the sky and stop crying. Just like that. I willed the rain to cease every day!

But we never actually played in the garden much.

Sunshine - a rare occurrence in 2012 — Sunshine – a rare occurrence in 2012

Last summer was, and I’m not exaggerating when I say this, glorious! It was a polar opposite to the previous year and there were times we had to stay in as it was just too sunny! We got good at applying suncream quickly and thoroughly and finding hats that had been dropped en-route. The garden became more of a place to hang out, but it suddenly started to show it’s dangers too. We’d baby proofed the house to within an inch of it’s life, but never considered the garden. The thought of Oscar diving off the two stone steps onto the patio face first still makes me wince. He was upset, I mean who wouldn’t have been be having just taken of half the skin on their face, but he was more upset that I would let him straight back out into the garden once I’d cleaned him up. Seriously! I liked that he wanted to be outside, but I spent the whole of last summer shouting STOP! and WAIT FOR MAMA, every time he ran down the garden. In the end my heart couldn’t take it any more and I got quotes to have fences put up all over the garden. I wanted a pen (albeit a large pen) to keep him safe in. But in the end it was so expensive, I just made a barrier out of chairs across half of the garden. Their physical presence, seemed to deter him most of the time. I mean he did climb through the legs a couple of times, but all in all my stress levels went down and I could enjoy being out there with him. And I had to be out there with him constantly. He had no interest in playing with me, but as the summer wore on he got good at stopping at the top of the steps and putting one hand in the air to indicate he wanted to descend them. He wasn’t really interested in playing with many of his toys in the garden, except his ball and his little toddler slide. And those he adored.

We went out as much as I could take sitting on the grass and watching his every move.

2013 an althogether more sunny and stressful summer — 2013 an altogether more sunny and stressful summer

And now he’s nearly 2. This past week the sun has miraculously appeared. In March! Well that was that. He refused to stay in the house a moment longer. It’s not yet summer but that doesn’t matter to the boy. He has discovered the best way to tell me he wants out is to bring me his wellies (he’s an actions speak louder than words kinda guy) sometimes before he’s even dressed. He adores being allowed to run around the entire garden, now the barrier has been removed. Next door have put up the most amazingly sturdy fence where there was only bushes before so it’s much tidier and safer up at the end. He’s new domain is the deck outside the summer house. He has all his push around/ride on toys around him and he’ll push them around or lie next to them, watch their wheels in motion. He rarely rides them – too slow Mama! Gotta keep moving. And I have discovered that I don’t have to be sat next to him every second. Maybe this is a confidence thing. I am confident in his confidence? But it’s fab! I can go and hang the washing out or tend to my herbs or take some photos, occasionally looking up to the deck to make sure he’s not pulling up Daddy’s onions or trashing the strawberries. And when I’m done I can go and sit on the deck and have a ‘chat’ with my little guy. I think the garden is good for him. He’s never unhappy in the garden. He’s only unhappy when I have to bring him in (it’s rare for him to come in of his own accord – most times I have to carry him and it worries me how I’ll cope when he gets too big to carry – maybe by then he’ll respond to bribes 😉 ).

I can see that he’s going to be out there all the time – the garden we fell in love with, is really going to come into it’s own this year.

I can see his development changes so clearly in the garden. I wonder why that is? And I truly believe he’s learning stuff too? Not academically maybe, but he’s so curious and pushing boundaries of what I thought him capable of yet. He ‘helped’ Ben plant some strawberries last weekend and he and I have looked at some ‘wiggly worms’ today. He has no concept or understanding of what these things are or mean yet, but we’ll come to that. He’s just so happy to be out there. And maybe that’s going to translate throughout his life. Maybe he’s just going to be an outdoorsy kinda kid. Ben was. Me? Well not so much. I didn’t go in for camping and tree climbing and running and all that.

Hang on, yes I did! I climbed trees in a sort of park over the road from my house, so regularly that we each had our own tree, like old men in a pub. We made dens out of fallen branches and went tadpole spotting in the stream and digging for buried treasure. I used to make Acorn ‘butter’ and rose petal ‘perfume’ with ingredients I found and blackberry crumble from wild fruit we gathered. I rode my bike everywhere, even to school, from the age of about 7 to 11. We were never indoors in the summer holidays! But I was rarely in the garden, I was all over the village where we lived. I was young, but I was courageous, adventurous and often in A&E 😉 Thank you mum for letting me be that way. I was so an outdoorsy kinda kid. Why did I think I wasn’t? What happened to make me forget? Isn’t it crazy that it’s taken such a little person to make me remember?

Come on Oscar – lets go play!

He & Me. More similar than you'd think — He & Me. More similar than you’d think

You are invited…..

11/03/2014 by MrsSavageAngel Leave a Comment

So as of tomorrow it will be only three weeks til my beautiful baby boy turns 2 and officially becomes a toddler. I don’t want to think I’m wishing his life away, but I can’t wait! He’s so much more fun the older he gets. I’m not saying his babyhood was boring, and god knows it was great when he couldn’t run away at the drop of the hat, but it just wasn’t this much fun. He never looked sideways at me, shrugged, smiled and started doing the hokey cokey when he was baby now did he?

Anyway this isn’t a post about that. About whether the baby phase is better than the toddler phase or vice versa. As I said my son is about to turn 2. And children’s birthdays bring with them that potentially stress inducing ritual – the children’s party!

I’m sure parents of older children, who have been through this and come out the other side are either laughing wryly or shuddering. And despite being new to this game, I think I can see why. But I”ll come back to that.

So OK, my experience of throwing parties, before I had Oscar, involved providing large amounts of booze, a couple of pizzas, some chips and dips and always a big bowl of M&Ms. OK we sometimes threw in rude word scrabble (any word could be used as long as you could justify why it was rude – ‘THOSE’ anyone?) and the chocolate mini roll challenge (how many can you fit in your mouth at once?), but basically if you provided enough booze and combined it with the right people that was enough.

I know this isn’t going to cut the mustard with children (although I think my son may already be in training for the mini roll challenge). And that’s fine. But what is?

So last year when all Oscar and all his little friends turned one, we bucked the trend of a quiet family only affair and had a party for him. But it wasn’t a local party with his little friends. Nope this was totally a party for us as a family. We went to Plymouth (our home town), hired a church hall for £30 and invited everyone we knew. Family, friends, children, the lot. We invited more people to that party than we did to our wedding. And just like our wedding, we had pasties and cake. A gorgeous cake made by my friend Michelle.

We filled the hall with children’s toys (leant to us by the church hall for free) and basically turned it into a Toddler Group for the afternoon. Rather than party bags we gave each child a helium balloon (that had also had served the purpose of decorating the hall) to take away with them, and a piece of cake. And everyone seemed to have an awesome time. I got to see and talk to my friends I don’t see very often and Oscar got to run around like a loon. What more could we ask for?

Yup it was grand. But it was big! And organising something like that from 300 miles away wasn’t the easiest deal, so a while ago we decided not to have a party this year. We are instead going to have a family day out on his actual birthday and then take Oscar and his bessie mate Isabelle and her parents out for tea the weekend after. It still celebrates him turning 2 and the passing of another year, just in a slightly less public way. And I was fine with that. Its just all his little friends (who didn’t have parties last year) are now having parties. And we’re getting invited here there and everywhere. And that’s lovely. But I started to question whether I wasn’t a bit mean not to reciprocate. But then that begs the question, who would I be throwing the party for? Would crowds of 2 year olds start gathering in toddler groups around the area, dissing my name? Would they buggery. They couldn’t care less. As long as someone, somewhere is making with the cheddars and occasional chocolate pirate biscuit, every day’s a party day to them. So I realised I was worrying more about what the adults thought than the children.

And that made me think – is that how it is? Do we invest in hiring ‘exciting’ venues, themeing, various entertainment and spending a fortune on party bags for our children? Or is it, and this may be a controversial question, but is it for other parents? God I hope not. Maybe Pintrest has just too much to answer for, but I hate the idea that a child’s birthday could be used for point scoring among the local parent community. And that’s before you’ve even started to talk about presents! So far this year we have bought Oscar four presents. Three of them are second hand. It wont bother him whether it comes out of a box or not. I’m sure there will come a time when he will dictate that this is no longer acceptable, but until then, I’m buggered if I’m going to be dictated to by some sort of internal mummy bitch!

So after giving myself something of a talking to I decided my initial plan was and still is a blinder and one I’m really happy with. Maybe next year I’ll throw him and his mates a party. And if I do it’ll be one he’ll enjoy (whatever that is when he turns three!) Maybe I’ll do a proper retro one. With pass the parcel. And I wont be putting a prize in every layer that I can tell you. Where did that even come from? Are our children so delicate they can’t learn that not every one wins all the time? Or maybe I’m missing the point and it’s to keep them sitting long enough to finish the game? I don’t know. One thing I plan (and I’ll probably eat my words here) but I plan to forgo party bags completely. The balloon/cake combo went down so well I might give that another go. Maybe his balloon/cake combo will become like my big bowl of M&Ms, not his party without them!

Come back in a year and I’ll let you know how it goes.