It’s Christmas Pageant time here, and Holiday Pageant time in America, which means there’s a great deal of rehearsing go on around my house.
Welcome to my musical world, y’all. Come in if you dare.
Boyish sings about sheep:
[audio http://texasgurl.fileave.com/shepbutts-bizzy.mp3]
Girlish sings about puppies:
[audio http://texasgurl.fileave.com/puppies4xmas.mp3]
They wake up moments before you start vomiting in their bed, cupping their palm beneath your chin while they carry you to the bathroom whispering, “That’s okay, you’re okay, Mommy’s here, Mommy’s right here. Shhhhhhhhh.”
Mommies will do this all night, until it starts to get light outside the window, and then they will cart your lethargic little body downstairs to the kitchen, where they will make breakfast for your brother and sister while they try to figure out how they will walk everyone to school while you lie there in their arms, puking intermittently.
And when your big sister suggests that maybe her tummy hurts, too, some mommies (the rotten ones) will roll their eyes and say, entirely unsympathetically, “Go get dressed; I’m sure you’re just faking it because you want some attention fine.” Or words to that effect.
Until your big sister rushes off to the bathroom to throw up, at which time even the worst mommies will feel terrible and apologize for being so rotten.
Yes, mommies are helpful when you’re sick. Some of them will even let you throw up right on their shoulder because they understand how distressing it must be to face away from the one you love most when you feel so frightened and upset.
And in between letting you nurse all day and sleep in their arms as needed, some repentant and multi-talented mommies will hold you on their hip while they troop up and down the stairs carrying vomity towels to the washing machine, harangue a reluctant boiler repairman over the telephone, and type a pithy pukey blog post one-handed.
And they will do these things, with very little complaining, until you feel better.
First Pair of Big Girl Shoes, originally uploaded by texasgurl.
Baybish got her first pair of real shoes today. They are purple with pink hearts on their velcro closures and they each have a teeny tiny sparkle on the toe.
“Dee?” she said when the shoe store lady put them on her feet. “Dee?”
That means, “For me? Really?”
Then she ran in a circle until she fell down.
Which means she loves them.
This is the buggy parking lot at Girlish and Boyish’s school. The school is, as I have said many times, on a hill. It is so on a hill that once you get there, you also have to go up three long sets of stairs to get to the actual classrooms. Hence, the buggy parking lot.
Note that almost every buggy in the lot has the same sort of handles. That’s because they’re all Maclarens. I have one, too; I bought it when we decided to move here. They’re “Made in England” — it says so right on the sunshade. I have always admired them. Sleek. Light. Expensive.
I won’t lie — whenever something’s expensive, I generally assume that’s because it’s better.
And Maclarens are. Mine weighs like, 9 pounds, which means I can carry it, fully loaded with Baybish and day’s worth of supplies, up and down the stairs at train stations. And I’m pretty sure your average American buggy would’ve have disintegrated inside of a fortnight on the streets of London. (Can you believe they still say “fortnight” here? I thought it was only something people said in Jane Eyre, but actual modern English people still use it conversation.) Take a look at a typical stretch of pavement between our house and our school, which the buggy traverses just about every day:
Baybish is definitely not sipping a cocktail or writing in her journal over that stretch of our daily journey, rest assured.
Back home I hardly ever used a stroller at all; in fact, I was somewhat disdainful of strollers in general. I have always preferred to carry my babies in wraps or baby backpacks, keeping them happy and close to me, and traveling light. Whenever I saw a mother with a ginormous stroller, loaded down with enough crap to last three babies a fortnight and clumsily negotiating the narrow aisles of my local commercial establishment I secretly congratulated myself on my superior methodology.
But back then I lived in suburbia and had a car. Now I live in urbia. Now I walk and take the bus. When I go out for the day I load Baybish’s buggy with all sorts of things besides her: my purse, my camera, a water bottle, some food, rain jackets (just in case), diapers, hats, the odd library book. Because when I go out now I know I can’t carry the baby and carry all those things as well.
And I’ve become downright attached to that damn buggy.
Gooool-azo! [audio http://texasgurl.fileave.com/bernabeu-goalbest.mp3]
On Wednesday, Real Madrid was playing at their home stadium, the Bernabeu (burn-uh-bau), versus Olympiakos. Good-Looking was hot to go there from the time we planned the trip, checking Real Madrid’s website early on on the off-chance they were playing at home during the week we would be there. When he found out they were, he was beside himself to go.
The original plan was to ditch at least two of the chickens with Grandma for the evening, but her broken arm put a hitch in that giddy-up, fa’shizzle. She loves him so she actually suggested that she would go through with the babysitting for him, but I said no, no way would I leave her with a broken arm and my two rowdy eldest while I went out on the town. But throughout the day leading up to the game GoodLooking kept pushing, looking for a way to go. I said he could go by himself, but he wanted me to come. And of course I wanted to see it, but I wasn’t inclined to drag the whole family out to god-knows-where on the Metro, for an evening wedged in cramped seats among a bunch of screaming sports maniacs.
And all day long we saw them: the Olympiakos fans in their red scarves and jackets, lining the streets, drinking coffee, milling around the plazas.
Poor GoodLooking.
See, I love this man, much as he annoys me sometimes. And I understood what this meant to him. About 10 years ago, he went to Camp Nou and saw F.C. Barcelona, Real Madrid’s arch rivals, play in their home stadium and he pretty much has not stopped talking about it since. He dragged me to Camp Neu for the tour last year when we came to Spain, and it was clear that although I could let him go to the Bernabeu alone, he wanted me there, and the only way I could be there was if the whole fam damily came along.
So we went. I strapped Baybish on my back, bundled everybody up and headed out into the night. When we came up out of the Metro the stadium was glowing above us, the crowd was roaring and people were running to get inside. We were late, but Real Madrid won and we saw FOUR goals. And as I sat there, surrounded by my family, wrestling Baybish in my lap, my husband grinning and giggling, I thought: this right here will last me a good long while.
Bake two layers in sandwich tins (have to find out what these are) at 350 until done. (What am I, a baker? Just don’t overdo it.) Spread jam, then whipped cream on bottom layer; plop other layer on top. Powdered sugar? Maybe just a bit. Voilá!
On Sunday we had lunch with Dear Friend of Girlish’s (DFG’s) family. They are lovely people, and good cooks, too. He is Greek, from Cyprus, and cooked kebab for us on a barbeque about the size of a trombone case, with brackets for skewers and little motorized fittings that turned them. Her mother made cake, and gave me the recipe.
Like Girlish, DFG is a bright and imaginative child. They get along well, engaging in elaborate role-playing games, while Boyish hangs around and pretends to be their dog. DFG says things like, “Oh, it’s really quite wonderful, the rope swing. You simply must see it, Girlish! We’ll go there tomorrow.”
As you might imagine, Girlish is quite taken with her. I, however, am generally suspicious of pretty and popular little girls, so I have kept my heart in reserve.
After lunch we were drinking wine in the garden when I heard Boyish wailing his extremely loud and very distinctive “hurt feelings” wail from inside the house. Not surprising, given that he had been sharing Girlish all afternoon, and he much prefers to have her to himself. I went in to see what happened, and was told that he had messed up something in DFG’s room. She was obviously upset, but I could see that she was trying to be nice about it, so I said I’d fix it for her. Pretty little girls are given to melodrama, I thought as I went up the stairs with Boyish by the hand.
What I found were tiny paper animals: foxes, lions, cats and whatnot–all painstakingly drawn, colored and cut out, scattered under the window on the floor. The animals were arranged inside a complex maze of paths and enclosures constructed from a game of Jenga. The paper animals resided in little piles in each of the enclosures. Or at least they had, before Boyzilla apparently trampled it.
“Oh, my,” I said.
DFG came in behind me and began to put it back together.
“I’m so sorry,” I told her, “I thought I could fix it, but it turns out it’s a bit more complicated than I anticipated.”
“That’s okay.”
“What is that,” I said, “a leopard?”
“No, it’s an ocelot. It’s a zoo for rather less well-known animals.”
“I see.” And I took my heart from my pocket and handed it to her.
365:8 Mommy-Fied, originally uploaded by texasgurl.
I have three chickens. I love them so, but they are work, work, work, and I swear to god is practically a science trying to manage everything that must be managed just getting the basics done. You know: food, hygiene, sleep, transport. And I do what it takes to the get the job done. I can get dressed one-handed while nursing the baby, haul my ass uphill three times a day with her on my back and my four-year old in the stroller, and I can cook dinner, supervise bath time, take out the trash, fold a load of laundry and nag my husband all at the same time.
But–and I admit this freely–motherhood alone is not enough for me. What, you say? Doing laundry and making dinner at the same time isn’t enough?
No, it isn’t.
So, I find other things to do. As you can see. But I’ve been thinking lately about appearances, because no one knows me here. Who do they see when they look at me? When I’m the woman on the left I still feel like the woman on the right, and sometimes I’m caught off-guard when people make assumptions about me that are so far from who I think I am that it’s almost insulting.
For instance, the week that Girlish started school we stopped off at the park on the walk home. This particular park is on the way for many of her classmates, and there’s a group of parents that spend 20-30 minutes there most days after school. I was on the periphery of a conversation, where people were discussing work and family, trying to find balance, blah blah, and one of the fathers said something about how he was still trying to “write that book.”
“A book?” I said. “What kind of book are you writing?”
“Ah, it’s fiction,” he said, and turned immediately away from me. He didn’t say, “You wouldn’t understand.” But he might as well have.
And I thought, okay, this guy doesn’t know me–doesn’t know anything about me. Why would he just dismiss me like that? Was it the baby strapped to my back in the rainbow wrap? The boy sleeping the buggy in front of me? The fact that I wasn’t at work? It got me thinking; would he have dismissed me so if I’d been the woman on the right?
I don’t know the answers. Maybe he was just nervous about talking about his book. Or his idea for one. I don’t discuss my work with every parent I meet at the park, either. But it brought home for me how I like the me that dresses up and goes into town to get something done. I like how people see her and make more flattering assumptions.
I’ve missed her, and I’m glad she’s coming around again.
Nervous, originally uploaded by texasgurl.
Yesterday was Boyish’s first day of nursery school. Nursery here is often attached to a primary school, so he’s attending school just downstairs from Girlish, and wearing a uniform just like hers. Which works, because he worships everything she does.
So he’s off to school in his uniform, fussing about his shoes and his shirt. Many days, he wages war with his clothes, which includes spinning in a circle, tugging and screaming on the offending article until he is able to rip it from his body. Once freed of the shirt, underwear, socks, shoes or pants that have infuriated him, he flings them across the room. Once he threw them out the window, but because I am a hardass I have put a stop to that.
Anyway, because he was admitted to the nursery the third week of school, there were no white shirts in his size at Sainsbury’s, which is the large supermarket/Wal-Mart-wannabe here. So his shirts are too big, and um, if I thought he would let me tuck them in so they wouldn’t hang down to his knees, I can FORGET IT. The deal we struck is that he has to wear his “jumper” (that’s English for sweatshirt) over the too-long shirt. No jumper, we tuck the shirt in.
So far, that’s working–but don’t get me started on shoes.
All this week they’re “phasing him in,” so he’s attending from 9 to 11:30, and then next week we’ll hopefully be in for some full days. He would be happy to go all day, of course, but I get it–the sissy kids need the phase-in, so phase in we must. Which means three 20-minute trips up the hill to school this week, every day, and three 15-minute trips back. It’s a pretty steep hill, did I mention that?
Here’s a picture of the Head Teacher’s big bell. I’m afraid to ask her if I can have a shot of her ringing it. I’ll have to butter her up some. But that’s for later, right now I’ve got pack Babe-ish in the buggy and head back up the hill. Anything for my chickens, right? And all this uphill walking is bound to be good for my ass.
Boy Mischief, originally uploaded by texasgurl.
On walking home from dropping Girlish at school, I’m strolling along the High Street, Babe-ish in the buggy and Boyish tagging along, and I hear behind me, “Mommy, it’s an emergency! It’s an emergency!”
Boyish is potty-trained, right? But he also hates to go to the bathroom, and therefore he often finds himself desperate at the most inconvenient times. I wheel around, expecting to find him dancing on the pavement, clutching his crotch. “Do you have to go the bathroom?” I ask.
“No.”
He always says no. Then I hear it. A siren, close by. “Oh, right,” I say “you mean the siren?”
He nods.
“They’re hurrying to help somebody. They’re saying, ‘Get out of the way!’”
“Who are they going to help, Mommy?”
“I surely don’t know.”
“Prob’ly somebody has a crocodile in their house.”
“Oh, my, that would be an emergency.”
“Yeah.”
First Steps, originally uploaded by texasgurl.
Maybe not the actual very first steps, but she’s only been getting more than four in a row for the last couple of days. She was really hot for the transformer I was tempting her with. Babe-ish is beating the family walking record by more than two months. She’s speshul.
