Welcome to Baby Brain, a space where I - Charlotte, hi! - write about my life as a mother of three small children - Poppet (m, 4 years), Pickle (m, 3 years) and Peach (f, 9 months.) Those are not their real names. These are real stories from our days.
Last week, Poppet and Pickle finished preschool for the (school) year. They don’t return until mid September which means - as Peach has not yet started nursery - that all three of my children are at home with me full time for six whole weeks. This is fine. IT’S FINE I SAID.
Actually we had a really lovely first week, so it really has been fine. After creating a day by day plan for our time with colour coding and time stamps, every minute scheduled with notes like ‘GO FOR A WALK IN THE DEEP DARK WOODS TO FIND THE GRUFFALO!’ and ‘HARD BOIL SOME EGGS AND THEN PAINT THEM!’ I woke up on Monday morning, got the kids to swimming lessons, got them home from swimming lessons via the play centre, made a cup of tea and thought ‘F this.’ Since that moment we have que cera cera’ed, going with the flow as I follow my children’s leads, decidedly unscheduling their days on all days that don’t need to be scheduled, an approach that has resulted in reading and singing and dancing and drawing burgers in chalk all over the driveway, for some reason. I am enjoying their company very much and, honestly, I probably should have let them take the lead sooner.
Despite everything going well, I fear my mood is about to take a turn. Why? For starters my nemesis - the sun - has arrived and for finishers, I have writer’s block. The first problem is not one I can remedy, for my rain dance isn’t working. The second I can at least placate with short bursts of rambling which is how, dear reader, I am choosing to welcome you to volume two of The Long Days Diaries - a post in which I share disjointed short stories from my days in the trenches of motherhood, starting with…
… An origin story (of sorts)
As a couple, my husband and I have precedent for the making of rash decisions. One such instance took place in the converted attic of our Lancashire home.
“Charl,” my husband had shouted to me, as I watched my shows downstairs, “can you come here a minute?”
I came.
“I’ve just done this quiz online to see where would be best for me to live, I think you should do it,” he said
I did it
“That’s interesting,” he exclaimed, “we got the same result.”
We googled.
“That’s not far from here,” he said, “shall we go this weekend?”
We went, we saw, we put an offer in on a house and that, my friends, is how we moved to Cheshire.
Which is why it’s hardly surprising that…
… At the 11th hour, as the schools were all due to shut down for the long summer break, we changed our mind about which school we would be sending Poppet to this September.
July has been a long month.
Things I could do before I was a mum but can’t do now number one: watch this scene without having a total nervous breakdown. (From A Quiet Place - an excellent film I suggest you watch.)
See also: Sit on the loo without a mini me on my lap, finish a piece of toast alone, leave the house without a suitcase full of snacks.
Speaking of hot weather (because I mentioned it was hot, remember?)
Last time it was freakishly hot, the sun arrived unexpectedly. We were in the middle of a month known for rain and Pickle, Peach and I were dressed for exactly that. Sat in a church hall for our weekly playgroup, we realised the error when: “Bit hot today isn’t it?” my friend said, fanning herself in her top to toe winter outfit. Sweating with Peach asleep against me, I agreed, we all had a (boiling) cup of tea anyway (further exacerbating the unfortunate sweat situation), and then headed home to hide.
Later that day, Peach developed a mysterious rash. Starting on her nose and spreading across her cheeks, the rash was alarming for two reasons: 1/ measles was going around, Facebook was ablaze with it and 2/ so was scarlet fever, we’d had a notice from the school.
Appearing by my husband’s desk: “She has measles,” I told him, “what if her brain swells and she dies?”
“She hasn’t got measles,” he said, not even looking at me.
“Scarlet fever then,” I insisted.
“Nope,” he said, which should give you an idea of how often I go to the extreme when my children show signs of being unwell. Hint: It’s daily.
By the time mid afternoon rolled around, Peach had a rash on her arms and legs, hands and feet as well as her face and so, panicked, I contacted the doctor, who fit us in that afternoon for a full body examination which ended with the words: “bit hot today isn’t it?”
You knew it before I said it, it was heat rash.
Apologising for having wasted GP time whilst being told I’d done the right thing in checking, I headed out to my husband, who was sat waiting in the car. “Not measles then?” he greeted us, nonchalant. “Not measles,” I replied, marking the end of a delusion that could have been quite mortifying, had I not already topped it myself by once having Pickle looked over for a mysterious series of circular rashes on his legs, only to realise he’d been sitting on Cheerios.
Another medical non-emergency
“Pickle has a fever but his feet are freezing cold,” I told my husband, “Google says it’s meningitis.” “Babe, he’s fine,” said my husband. “I’m calling 111,” I said, as he sighed, and so I called, and we went to the emergency room, and we were seen by the urgent care doctor.
Feeling Pickle’s feet as he fed: “they seem a normal temperature,” said the doctor, “have you done anything differently since you called?”
“I put socks on him,” I said.
And that was the answer to that.
This was not the intended purpose of these stars. I admire their creativity, though.
Some quotes about motherhood, just because
"They knew nothing of guilt. They were not mothers." - Little Deaths, Emma Flint
"To be a mother is to live in fear. Fear of death, of sickness, of loss, of accidents, of strangers, or simply those small everyday things that somehow manage to hurt us most: the look of impatience, the angry word, the missed bedtime story, the forgotten kiss, the terrible moment when a mother ceases to be the centre of her daughter’s world." And: "Children are knives, my mother once said. They don't mean to, but they cut. And yet we cling to them, don't we, we clasp them until the blood flows." - The Lollipop Shoes, Joanna Harris
"We take motherhood for granted sometimes, that they’ll love you forever - that they’ll love you at all. When they’re little they need you so much, they hold you and grab for you and you cuddle them. She used to burrow into me. I was the thing she needed most in the world. And then they grow up and you don’t get to hold them, touch them like that, even if you want to. It’s like learning to love the smell of an apple, when all you want to do is grab it and hold it, devour it, seeds and all. And then you realise that it wasn’t just that they needed you. You needed them." - Little Fires Everywhere (the show)
“Will they remember, do you think? Will they know that being an ordinary child born to ordinary parents was the most extraordinary thing that ever happened to you?” - My Child And Other Mistakes, Ellie Taylor
A blast from the past
This Thomas The Tank Engine was, for a short time, Poppet’s favourite toy. He took it everywhere, he called it ‘Big Thomas,’ he loved it. We were very careful to always know where we could locate Big Thomas until, one day: “We’ve lost Big Thomas,” my husband text, as I was off doing errands, “he thinks he left it in a bush, so we’re going to find it now.” “Which bush?” I replied. “I don’t know,” said my husband, “he just keeps saying ‘bush’ so I’m letting him lead the way.” They reached the bush, and Big Thomas was nowhere to be found. “Try the bush near the shop, he was playing there today,” I text, trying to get home faster than planned, “and if not there, the one with all the trees.” High and low, they searched for Big Thomas, checking every bush along a route I carefully detailed on WhatsApp, my husband and I getting more and more panicked about how Poppet, then just shy of two years old, would feel when he realised his favourite toy was gone for good, doing all that we could to find Big Thomas before, finally, giving up and heading home.
Walking into the kitchen after the ordeal had come to an end, I flipped the switch on the kettle and then: “I’ve found Big Thomas,” I called, looking at the bright blue toy sat in the middle of the cream tiled floor, “did you not think to look in the house?”
Skin to skin. Tiny fingers and toes. Sleepy sofa cuddles. Box sets and books and an ever boiling kettle. “Who do you think they look like?” Choosing a name. The unexpected joy of a successful burping. The unexpected interest in poop. A warm little body nuzzled into your chest. Contact naps. Babywearing. The weight in your arms. Random bursts of pride. Squeezable cheeks. The impossibles depths of your love. Milk drunk smiles. Knuckle dimples. The innocence in their eyes. A brand new meaning in life.
Category: The magic of newborns
Continuing the medical theme
An excerpt from a post I started (and abandoned) in January.
Three AM: “MUMMY YOUR HAIR IS TOO LONG IT’S TOUCHING ME,” Pickle yelled, annoyed by my audacity to be in my own bed, with hair attached to my head. His sister, on my other side, woke with a whimper.
And so began the day.
It was Blue Monday. Blue Monday, originally a marketing gimmick designed to sell holidays, is said to be the most depressing day of the year. ‘Reclaimed’ in recent years by companies wanting to piggyback with their own marketing efforts (I see you), Blue Monday has been hailed a made up phenomenon due to its association with a travel agent. I would challenge this by saying that most phenomenons are at least a bit made up, and also they worked with a recognised psychologist to come up with it so maybe it’s a tad more credible than is being made out?
Anyway, I didn’t know it was Blue Monday when my 2 year old loudly told me “MY TOENAILS FEEL LONG MUMMY” that morning, as I tried to gently quiet him down for fear of again waking the baby, “NO I DON’T WANT YOU TO CUT THEM MUMMY I LIKE THEM.” I just knew it had the makings of a bad day. Also, for the record, his toenails are fine (his fingernails, however, could slice your face right off.)
All of them were sick that day. It was a long, long day.
Related: Pickle once got up out of bed and proceeded to vomit all over his carpet. My husband, delirious and half asleep, started shouting “OH MY GOD IT’S BLOOD AND GUTS!” upon seeing the sick was red. Guys, it was partially digested strawberry. Honestly, the drama around here, I don’t know how we survive.
And, to wrap this up, speaking of my husband…
“Did you hear that?” my husband said one night in bed, “the cat just shouted hello.”
Perturbed: “What do you mean?” I asked.
“Listen,” he said, “he’s shouting hello” and, then, he imitated the cat: “HeWWWWOW”
“Are you OK?” I asked.
The next day: “So anyway it really does sound like he might be saying hello,” I said to my friend, recounting my husband’s insistence that the cats had started learning English. It sounds a bit like this (insert sound of me, too, imitating the cat.)
Eyebrows furrowed: “Sometimes I think you hear what you want to hear,” she replied, which is a weird thing to say, because perhaps the last thing we want to hear is our potentially senile, semi-deranged 13 year old cat screaming HELLO!
That’s all for now, folks. If you need me, I’ll be at the park, at a play centre or hiding in my house, singing Encanto (I’ve finally gotten them into Encanto) putting away washing or pretending - on demand - to be Andy from Toy Story. It’s a good life. It’s a life with far, far less screen time than this paragraph implies (too much makes them punchy) but a good life all the same. I wouldn’t change it.
Until next time ☀️
I love this, Charlotte. Being a parent is wild. My little one is only 14 months but he got very upset with me this morning because he wanted to drink water out of his water bottle rather than his cup. Gave him the water bottle and he was trying to drink through the closed lid and getting very upset about it. I asked “shall mummy help” - response was “yes” with an emphatic nod. So I reach over and lift up the straw spout bit so he could actually get some water. Cue complete meltdown and lots of “noooooo”.
We repeated this about 3 times before he got distracted by something else.
Kids are weird. 🙃
(Also, I didn’t realise you were in Cheshire! I’m in Stockport. Hi! 👋)
Hahaha… putting socks on baby’s cold feet. Who knew? My days are very much like this right now, except with two and not three (although lately I’ve been noticing some minor yearning for a third. Am I ok?!) Also, living on the west coast of Canada, I relate completely to the sudden and dramatic onset of sunshine after a long, wet, cold winter. You’re doing great, mama. Thanks for this funny and well done post :)