It’s good to be back! Well, kind of. It’s true that there is no place like home but I wouldn’t have too much of a problem making my home in the beautiful and spacious villa drenched in the Portuguese sunshine. I’ve loads to write about after the holiday so I’m going to start at the start.
We were guests at a wedding the first Saturday of our break. I was groomsman and Monkey Boy was a page boy. From the first moment the idea was floated I feared the worst. Initially, I was worried that there was no way that he would walk in a straight line but it took him so long to start walking that there was a period when I wondered if he would have to crawl up the aisle! Giving him the rings to carry was never an option.
After a minor struggle to get him to wear a tie he was all dressed up and raring to go. They couldn’t get a children’s tie so we stuck an adult one on him, two thirds of which ended up being tucked into his trousers. Despite this he looked great in his trousers and waistcoat outfit [in the objective and unbiased opinion of his father!] We dragged Aunty Lemons along to look after Fat Chops [he sat quietly at the back of the church throughout, did us proud!] and Nana agreed to come along and bring Monkey Boy home while myself and Hannah went on to the reception.
We figured that the best chance of getting him to walk up the aisle was to convince the flower girl to hold his hand, him being a bit of a ladies man. It started very well, he was suitably impressed with the pretty flower girl and set off through the doors looking as if he would follow her to the ends of the earth. I was standing at the top of the church looking back at him feeling a swell of pride in my chest. Then I started paying attention to his facial expressions rather than his dapper outfit.
It’s a guess but my interpretation of his train of thought was;
Hey, she’s pretty.
Her hand feels nice and warm.
What’s through these big doors?
What’s with the music?
Whoa, there are a lot of people in here!
Where are my parents?
I don’t know any of these people, why are they all looking at me like that?
[By now the bottom lip was fully extended]
I think I want my Mammy.
Why are they all taking pictures?
Are they laughing at me?
Then he wailed!
At this stage the flower girl had done a sterling job of dragging him up the aisle so he was right by Hannah’s seat when he started crying. He happily received some comfort from his Mammy and then he acquiesced to sitting on my knee for the start of the ceremony. As you can imagine, that lasted all of ten minutes. Unless the happy couple were going to sing the Barney “I Love You” song as their wedding vows it was never going to hold his attention for very long. He started by exploring the pews and trying to climb over them. Nana intervened and distracted him with a book for a couple of minutes. The giggling started when he, loudly, started making the noises of all the animals in the book. He had gotten used to his surroundings by now and was much more comfortable with the people around him. So much so, that he cranked up the volume when he heard the laughing and starting playing up to it. He thoroughly enjoyed himself after that. A little bit of climbing over and around the pews, a little bit of peek-a-boo with the guys in the rows behind him and my personal favourite, a little bit of singing along to the hymns. That boy is destined to be an entertainer.
When we went outside the show continued. He darted his way between the collection of legs in the church car park until he inevitably crashed into someone. He happened to fall beside a group of girls who were very sympathetic, oohing and awing until he regained his feet and went on his merry way. The next time he passed the same group he “fell” again, eagerly accepting the attention and sympathy.
What surprised me most on the day was that when Fat Chops came out of the church and saw Monkey Boy he ran over and hugged him. I have several witnesses who will confirm that it was an affectionate hug and not a misplaced headlock. They had only been separated for less than an hour but apparently they missed each other.
After several thousand photo’s we packed him up in the car and went on to the reception. It was a great day and hopefully the first of many happy days in a long marriage for the happy couple.
Friday, August 27, 2010
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Memory Lane Part 1
One of the biggest motivations for writing this blog was because my mother told me several times that I should write down the funny things that they do because no matter how brilliant they seem now, they will be forgotten. She was right, as mothers tend to be about these things, and unfortunately the boys were 18 months old before I started. So all I can do now is try to recall some of the moments that would have inspired a blog post.
First entry in the series is about one of the first times that I was left alone with the boys and regular readers will know that it was bound to end badly!!
I can’t remember what age they were but I know that they were starting on a spoon feed so they must have been about 4 months old. They certainly were still at the stage where they were very dependant.
It’s important for context to note that I hate lazy stereotypes. By this, I mean things like assuming that men should just drink beer, watch football and leave raising the children to the womenfolk. If they are the things that define a man, I fail on everything except the watching football part of it. I have a couple of friends who regularly pull me up on things like carrying a man bag, wearing lip balm and playing an indoor sport [I don’t know how they can make a case for outdoor sport with Ireland’s climate!] because it doesn’t fit their idea of manliness. I say it takes a real man to wear pink and stand out from the crowd. This is why it was important to me to demonstrate that I was more than capable of looking after my own kids for a few hours.
[Have you guessed how it ends yet? Should I throw in a red herring to keep you interested?]
Anyway, the boys were fairly set in their routine so there was nothing to it but to stick to the schedule and everything would be fine. It was coming up to lunchtime and we used to change the boys before their meal to wake them up a little. Excuse me while I remember the good old days where they slept for 22 hours a day instead of running around tearing your house apart and demanding a biscuit every five minutes.
OK, I’m back.
I had put them in little bouncers that hung from the frame of the door to amuse them while I got ready for lunch. They are great little things, it’s like a cloth seat that is supported by a large spring so that they can jump up and down without fear of concussion. The downside is that should a child have a bowel movement while in the bouncer, the poop will likely be pushed up and out of the nappy with each little hop. Which is exactly what happened to Monkey Boy. By the time I noticed the smell it was half way up his back.
No problem, I thought – I’m a capable guy and I have tidied the likes of this up half a dozen times. It took a few minutes but I stripped him down, cleaned him up and went to prepare their lunch. By now, I was running a bit behind and they were starting to voice their displeasure at my tardiness. I brought in their lunch, picked up Fat Chops and started to feed him. As the nickname suggests he was the better eater of the two. Normally, Monkey Boy wouldn’t be too bothered about it but on this day he was either very hungry or ticked off at being left to wait. I decided to switch up and feed MB leaving FC to wait. That’s when the tennis match began.
It’s a truism that the more people you try to keep happy the more you fail. I picked one up, fed them a spoon of lunch and then swapped for the other. Lather, rinse, repeat. The screaming just got louder and louder and each yell scraped away another layer of calm until I was on the verge of panic. Determined not to fail, I decided to skip the spoon feed and just give the boys their bottle on the basis that it always was accepted gratefully and would keep them quiet. Of course, this day was the exception to that rule. They had worked themselves up to a crescendo and wouldn’t be calmed by the bottle. If I put one down to calm the other he would screech until I started worrying about out next door neighbours calling the police and a murder.
I needed help.
Imagine being a college student sitting at home, lazing a Sunday morning away watching TV and texting your friends about what happened the previous night. Imagine the doorbell ringing and when you answered being confronted with a tall man with a shaved head. He has bags under his eyes and is clearly under pressure. He is holding a baby in each arm, one trying to outdo the other in a shouting match. He asks, no pleads, for you to help him feed the screaming boys. Could you say no to him? Thankfully, neither could the girl next door.
Real men ask for help too!
First entry in the series is about one of the first times that I was left alone with the boys and regular readers will know that it was bound to end badly!!
I can’t remember what age they were but I know that they were starting on a spoon feed so they must have been about 4 months old. They certainly were still at the stage where they were very dependant.
It’s important for context to note that I hate lazy stereotypes. By this, I mean things like assuming that men should just drink beer, watch football and leave raising the children to the womenfolk. If they are the things that define a man, I fail on everything except the watching football part of it. I have a couple of friends who regularly pull me up on things like carrying a man bag, wearing lip balm and playing an indoor sport [I don’t know how they can make a case for outdoor sport with Ireland’s climate!] because it doesn’t fit their idea of manliness. I say it takes a real man to wear pink and stand out from the crowd. This is why it was important to me to demonstrate that I was more than capable of looking after my own kids for a few hours.
[Have you guessed how it ends yet? Should I throw in a red herring to keep you interested?]
Anyway, the boys were fairly set in their routine so there was nothing to it but to stick to the schedule and everything would be fine. It was coming up to lunchtime and we used to change the boys before their meal to wake them up a little. Excuse me while I remember the good old days where they slept for 22 hours a day instead of running around tearing your house apart and demanding a biscuit every five minutes.
OK, I’m back.
I had put them in little bouncers that hung from the frame of the door to amuse them while I got ready for lunch. They are great little things, it’s like a cloth seat that is supported by a large spring so that they can jump up and down without fear of concussion. The downside is that should a child have a bowel movement while in the bouncer, the poop will likely be pushed up and out of the nappy with each little hop. Which is exactly what happened to Monkey Boy. By the time I noticed the smell it was half way up his back.
No problem, I thought – I’m a capable guy and I have tidied the likes of this up half a dozen times. It took a few minutes but I stripped him down, cleaned him up and went to prepare their lunch. By now, I was running a bit behind and they were starting to voice their displeasure at my tardiness. I brought in their lunch, picked up Fat Chops and started to feed him. As the nickname suggests he was the better eater of the two. Normally, Monkey Boy wouldn’t be too bothered about it but on this day he was either very hungry or ticked off at being left to wait. I decided to switch up and feed MB leaving FC to wait. That’s when the tennis match began.
It’s a truism that the more people you try to keep happy the more you fail. I picked one up, fed them a spoon of lunch and then swapped for the other. Lather, rinse, repeat. The screaming just got louder and louder and each yell scraped away another layer of calm until I was on the verge of panic. Determined not to fail, I decided to skip the spoon feed and just give the boys their bottle on the basis that it always was accepted gratefully and would keep them quiet. Of course, this day was the exception to that rule. They had worked themselves up to a crescendo and wouldn’t be calmed by the bottle. If I put one down to calm the other he would screech until I started worrying about out next door neighbours calling the police and a murder.
I needed help.
Imagine being a college student sitting at home, lazing a Sunday morning away watching TV and texting your friends about what happened the previous night. Imagine the doorbell ringing and when you answered being confronted with a tall man with a shaved head. He has bags under his eyes and is clearly under pressure. He is holding a baby in each arm, one trying to outdo the other in a shouting match. He asks, no pleads, for you to help him feed the screaming boys. Could you say no to him? Thankfully, neither could the girl next door.
Real men ask for help too!
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Aunty Lemons
Tuesday witnessed a big event in our house. Aunty Lemons, Fat Chops’ godmother, changed her first dirty nappy. I was changing my 8,453th nappy at the same time so it is difficult for me to get all that excited. It was a big deal for her though.
She doesn’t have a lot of experience with babies so she practices on our boys. It may not sound like an ideal candidate for a godparent but her enthusiasm and exuberance more than make up for the lack of nappy changing talents.
I’ve been threatening to write a post dedicated to her for a while but I have real difficulty trying to explain Aunty Lemons. She is someone who works in banking but used to give my wife her bank card so that she couldn’t get into any more debt. She is someone who has a good degree [somehow ended up with Russian Politics as her subject?!?!?] but didn’t know that popcorn was made by heating corn kernels. She is someone who barely knew what end of a baby the bottle went in but is turning out to be a fantastic godparent. She is, without a doubt, one of the most entertaining people I have ever met.
In no particular order, I present some of my favourite stories about Aunty Lemons;
• We’ll start with nappy changing. Lisa is fine changing wet nappies but baulks at dirty ones. There is a rumour that she was corrected by my eleven year old niece one day when she was doing it completely wrong but my favourite story is one day when she was babysitting the boys with another friend, she refused to change a dirty nappy forcing her friend to do it. Bad enough if that friend wasn’t three months pregnant, suffering from morning sickness and hyper sensitive to smells!
• You may wonder if she is qualified to be Godmother after the previous paragraph but she ran a very convincing campaign during Hannah’s pregnancy. Yes, she campaigned for the title and in fairness has lived up to her campaign promises [if only we could say the same of politicians!]. The clincher was the limericks she wrote;
Lisa lemon is like no other,
Not like your sister or brother
Helping naming the twins,
Watching the growth of their limbs
Who better to choose for Godmother?
Who better indeed?!
• Part of her “Lisa for Godmother” campaign included making friends with the babies early. She used to talk to the boys and sing them songs before they were even born. Sounds ok but imagine one of your friends singing to your belly and then kissing it goodbye. Have you got the mental image yet? Slightly uncomfortable right?
• Aunty Lemons has been campaigning again recently. She baby-sits quite regularly but hasn’t been left alone with them as yet. Reasonable enough since she wouldn’t change a dirty nappy and has limited experience but she does a great job of staying over and then getting up with the boys and allowing us to stay in bed. She’s ambitious though and looking forward to flying solo which prompted this limerick;
There was a young girl who feared poo,
Of dirty nappies she had not the first clue,
But she'll prove them all wrong,
No matter how bad the pong,
Or else teach him to go on the loo
Again, how could you say no?
• She is a creative type. The boys were born in October but Lisa decided that it is too long to go without a present from Christmas to their birthday so she invented a half birthday to be celebrated in May and bought them gifts and a half birthday card.
• She loves playing with the boys. She called in the other night and started a game of chasing in our open plan kitchen/dining room running after Fat Chops and Monkey Boy alternately. The boys took breathers while she chased their brother but Aunty Lemons kept going until she started getting light headed and had to sit down and catch her breath.
• The creativity doesn’t stop there. What do you do when a child refuses to eat from a spoon. Most of us would either try a different spoon or engage in a battle of wills and try and force the child to eat but not Aunty Lemons! One day when faced with a stubborn Fat Chops refusing his lunch she threw him a curveball by feeding him by scooping up food on her finger and feeding him like that. I don’t know whether he was confused or amused but the bottom line is that he ate his lunch.
• That reminds me, she wrote a song for them too. It’s called The Lisa Song and is intended to help the boys say her name. Granted she started singing it to them when they were only weeks old which is a bit over-ambitious but it’s a catchy tune. I often find myself humming it after she leaves but the boys, typically, are refusing to sing along. So far! It’s a little less sophisticated than the limericks but lyrics such as “Lisa, Lisa, Lisa, Lisa” are easy for the boys to remember.
So, based on this and many other anecdotes too numerous to detail here, I’m guessing Fat Chops is going to have a great time on Saturday. I just hope that he doesn’t wriggle too much during the nappy changes.
You can leave feedback or comments below or on the facebook page.
She doesn’t have a lot of experience with babies so she practices on our boys. It may not sound like an ideal candidate for a godparent but her enthusiasm and exuberance more than make up for the lack of nappy changing talents.
I’ve been threatening to write a post dedicated to her for a while but I have real difficulty trying to explain Aunty Lemons. She is someone who works in banking but used to give my wife her bank card so that she couldn’t get into any more debt. She is someone who has a good degree [somehow ended up with Russian Politics as her subject?!?!?] but didn’t know that popcorn was made by heating corn kernels. She is someone who barely knew what end of a baby the bottle went in but is turning out to be a fantastic godparent. She is, without a doubt, one of the most entertaining people I have ever met.
In no particular order, I present some of my favourite stories about Aunty Lemons;
• We’ll start with nappy changing. Lisa is fine changing wet nappies but baulks at dirty ones. There is a rumour that she was corrected by my eleven year old niece one day when she was doing it completely wrong but my favourite story is one day when she was babysitting the boys with another friend, she refused to change a dirty nappy forcing her friend to do it. Bad enough if that friend wasn’t three months pregnant, suffering from morning sickness and hyper sensitive to smells!
• You may wonder if she is qualified to be Godmother after the previous paragraph but she ran a very convincing campaign during Hannah’s pregnancy. Yes, she campaigned for the title and in fairness has lived up to her campaign promises [if only we could say the same of politicians!]. The clincher was the limericks she wrote;
Lisa lemon is like no other,
Not like your sister or brother
Helping naming the twins,
Watching the growth of their limbs
Who better to choose for Godmother?
Who better indeed?!
• Part of her “Lisa for Godmother” campaign included making friends with the babies early. She used to talk to the boys and sing them songs before they were even born. Sounds ok but imagine one of your friends singing to your belly and then kissing it goodbye. Have you got the mental image yet? Slightly uncomfortable right?
• Aunty Lemons has been campaigning again recently. She baby-sits quite regularly but hasn’t been left alone with them as yet. Reasonable enough since she wouldn’t change a dirty nappy and has limited experience but she does a great job of staying over and then getting up with the boys and allowing us to stay in bed. She’s ambitious though and looking forward to flying solo which prompted this limerick;
There was a young girl who feared poo,
Of dirty nappies she had not the first clue,
But she'll prove them all wrong,
No matter how bad the pong,
Or else teach him to go on the loo
Again, how could you say no?
• She is a creative type. The boys were born in October but Lisa decided that it is too long to go without a present from Christmas to their birthday so she invented a half birthday to be celebrated in May and bought them gifts and a half birthday card.
• She loves playing with the boys. She called in the other night and started a game of chasing in our open plan kitchen/dining room running after Fat Chops and Monkey Boy alternately. The boys took breathers while she chased their brother but Aunty Lemons kept going until she started getting light headed and had to sit down and catch her breath.
• The creativity doesn’t stop there. What do you do when a child refuses to eat from a spoon. Most of us would either try a different spoon or engage in a battle of wills and try and force the child to eat but not Aunty Lemons! One day when faced with a stubborn Fat Chops refusing his lunch she threw him a curveball by feeding him by scooping up food on her finger and feeding him like that. I don’t know whether he was confused or amused but the bottom line is that he ate his lunch.
• That reminds me, she wrote a song for them too. It’s called The Lisa Song and is intended to help the boys say her name. Granted she started singing it to them when they were only weeks old which is a bit over-ambitious but it’s a catchy tune. I often find myself humming it after she leaves but the boys, typically, are refusing to sing along. So far! It’s a little less sophisticated than the limericks but lyrics such as “Lisa, Lisa, Lisa, Lisa” are easy for the boys to remember.
So, based on this and many other anecdotes too numerous to detail here, I’m guessing Fat Chops is going to have a great time on Saturday. I just hope that he doesn’t wriggle too much during the nappy changes.
You can leave feedback or comments below or on the facebook page.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Halloween in August
Yup, the title isn’t a misprint. We had Halloween on the first day of August this year. It’s actually a tradition at this point. Every year my mother has a Halloween party during the summer, reason being that it’s great for the kids to get out and play games and not have to worry about the rain and the cold. Obviously, it rains every year but it’s still great fun.
There is always water balloons, whipped cream pies, eggs and the like being thrown around. This year there was a new addition when Biff filled one of his sons nappies with chocolate gloop and rubbed it in my nieces face. There was a look of pure terror, followed by the nappy, followed by relief when she realized that it wasn’t baby poop.
Time and a lack of imagination led to the boys being dressed as football players but they enjoyed it much more than last year. They didn’t enjoy when my brother filled a rubber mask with whipped cream for a can and pulled it down on my head. Nice guy that he is, he did it while I was holding Monkey Boy and feeling invulnerable [who pulls a prank on someone holding a baby? Too cruel!]. Monkey Boy took one look at my new visage and shook the windows with his screams. He wasn’t much happier when I took it off and had a halo of whipped cream. As an aside, I don’t know how people eat that stuff, I couldn’t get the smell out of my nostrils for the rest of the day.
After we left the Halloween party, we went back to my mother-in-laws for a while. She has a large trampoline in the back garden which the boys are only getting around to liking. Well, one of them likes it. Monkey Boy likes the idea of it and will ask you to put him up on it but if his cousins are up there already and bouncing around then he will take one tentative step forward and then run back into your arms. Fat Chops is a different story. He is perfectly willing to abandon himself and just bounce along with the momentum that his cousins generate. He has finally got the hang of jumping [I love when kids think they are jumping and they squat down, then straighten up and throw their arms up to help them jump higher while their feet remain rooted to the ground] but landing is another days work. He leaps, salmon-like, into the air but can’t get his feet back under himself so he just lands on his bum. Fine on a trampoline but it’s a challenge to be straight faced and sympathetic when he does it in the living room. He has no chance of a straight face when he stands up looking aggrieved and gesturing for you to rub and kiss his bum.
Highlight of the bank holiday weekend was the boy sleeping until 9.30 on Sunday morning. It would have been better if I hadn’t habitually woken at 7.30 wondering why they were still quiet, then dozed off, then woken again about an hour later and dozing off before waking at 9.30 and deciding that something must be wrong and rushing in to the room to make sure they were still breathing.
Fight of the week was also on Sunday morning. The boys were playing on the deck while myself and Hannah had a coffee and read in the sun room. After a couple of minutes quiet I decided I should stick my head out and see what was happening – it’s slow going but I’m learning! I saw Fat Chops with his hands in a flower pot and shouted at him to stop what he was doing. He ran over and stood beside me and then started shouting at Monkey Boy to show me that he was on my side and strongly disapproved of putting his hands in the pot. Piecing it together from the shreds of evidence available it looked like MB had taken a couple of handfuls of muck and thrown them over FC [MB had dirty hands and FC was covered in muck, circumstantial evidence but I know them well enough to make the assumption]. Obviously, I had interrupted Fat Chops as he was about to get his own back so he decided to take the high moral ground and berate Monkey Boy for the terrible crime of throwing muck that FC himself would never lower himself to partaking in.
There is always water balloons, whipped cream pies, eggs and the like being thrown around. This year there was a new addition when Biff filled one of his sons nappies with chocolate gloop and rubbed it in my nieces face. There was a look of pure terror, followed by the nappy, followed by relief when she realized that it wasn’t baby poop.
Time and a lack of imagination led to the boys being dressed as football players but they enjoyed it much more than last year. They didn’t enjoy when my brother filled a rubber mask with whipped cream for a can and pulled it down on my head. Nice guy that he is, he did it while I was holding Monkey Boy and feeling invulnerable [who pulls a prank on someone holding a baby? Too cruel!]. Monkey Boy took one look at my new visage and shook the windows with his screams. He wasn’t much happier when I took it off and had a halo of whipped cream. As an aside, I don’t know how people eat that stuff, I couldn’t get the smell out of my nostrils for the rest of the day.
After we left the Halloween party, we went back to my mother-in-laws for a while. She has a large trampoline in the back garden which the boys are only getting around to liking. Well, one of them likes it. Monkey Boy likes the idea of it and will ask you to put him up on it but if his cousins are up there already and bouncing around then he will take one tentative step forward and then run back into your arms. Fat Chops is a different story. He is perfectly willing to abandon himself and just bounce along with the momentum that his cousins generate. He has finally got the hang of jumping [I love when kids think they are jumping and they squat down, then straighten up and throw their arms up to help them jump higher while their feet remain rooted to the ground] but landing is another days work. He leaps, salmon-like, into the air but can’t get his feet back under himself so he just lands on his bum. Fine on a trampoline but it’s a challenge to be straight faced and sympathetic when he does it in the living room. He has no chance of a straight face when he stands up looking aggrieved and gesturing for you to rub and kiss his bum.
Highlight of the bank holiday weekend was the boy sleeping until 9.30 on Sunday morning. It would have been better if I hadn’t habitually woken at 7.30 wondering why they were still quiet, then dozed off, then woken again about an hour later and dozing off before waking at 9.30 and deciding that something must be wrong and rushing in to the room to make sure they were still breathing.
Fight of the week was also on Sunday morning. The boys were playing on the deck while myself and Hannah had a coffee and read in the sun room. After a couple of minutes quiet I decided I should stick my head out and see what was happening – it’s slow going but I’m learning! I saw Fat Chops with his hands in a flower pot and shouted at him to stop what he was doing. He ran over and stood beside me and then started shouting at Monkey Boy to show me that he was on my side and strongly disapproved of putting his hands in the pot. Piecing it together from the shreds of evidence available it looked like MB had taken a couple of handfuls of muck and thrown them over FC [MB had dirty hands and FC was covered in muck, circumstantial evidence but I know them well enough to make the assumption]. Obviously, I had interrupted Fat Chops as he was about to get his own back so he decided to take the high moral ground and berate Monkey Boy for the terrible crime of throwing muck that FC himself would never lower himself to partaking in.
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