A Cow in Horse's Clothing

It's shocking.

I've recently been reading a collection of articles on the horse meat scandal, but as if that whole fiasco wasn't bad enough, there seem to be a bunch of people out there trying to act cool about it.

"People eat horse meat all the time!"

Yes, I know, it's very popular in France. But I'm sorry, I can't see it happening in my kitchen. Mainly because I like the cute moonwalking Shetty in the Three advert, and especially if the pony trying to infiltrate my pot is doing it under false pretences.

The best/worst piece I read was in the main national Finnish newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat (sorry, Finnish article only). Someone had interviewed horse owners at a riding stables to see what they thought about eating their mounts. Most of the riders thought it a good idea, as long as the slaughter process was humane.

What?!

I refuse to believe that any normal family would feel completely happy about their daughter's pet pony ending up as part of someone's Sunday roast. Or worse still, if old Rosie was the main ingredient in their own dinner. Please tell me I'm not mental to be thinking this?

Anyway, I'm glad I never bought that jar of ready made baby spag bol for Felix. At least he has been spared the Trojan horse in his ready cuisine. 

Although now the doubts creep in. What if chicken isn't really chicken? What do they put in cheese? And can anyone prove where fish fingers come from?

Ironing, The Devil's Invention

Guilty, is decidedly how I feel.

My neighbor told me that she has just removed their spring clothing from vacuum bags and washed everything, ready to hang in the wardrobe. Just in case, she said, for that unpredictable Spanish March weather. An ex-colleague informed me that she removes dirt from between her bathroom tiles with a cue tip dipped in a special chemical she orders from abroad. Another few acquaintances apparently spend weekend mornings ironing.

The conclusion I draw from all of this, as I nod enthusiastically, insinuating that I too do all those things, that I must be one awful, slovenly, bad example of a housewife. I mean, these women are not ladies of leisure, they work and have kids. So where do they find the time and energy to do all this extra cleaning and ironing? It is a mystery to me.

My bathroom has never seen a cue tip, unless it's about to go into an ear, and the only times anything gets ironed in our house is if it's absolutely necessary. Even then it always gets done in a stressful rush, because we are the original lastminute.com family, permanently late for everything.

Luckily my husband shares my aversion to housework. He agreed to get a fortnightly cleaner when our baby was born, even though I wasn't working, and he doesn't seem to mind the fact that the duster and the mop rarely come out in between the blessed woman's visits. And he reckons that ironing is the Devil's invention. These are just two of the many reasons why I love him.

Please don't think that we are dirty people! I assure you that our house is hygienic enough. Well, at least for our liking. The baby is thriving despite the occasional clump of dog hair on the floor. Don't they say that regular contact with bacteria strengthens one's immune system?

So there, the truth is out! Whenever baby Felix falls asleep, unless I'm working, I don't rush to clean the oven after all... 

Nope. I put my feet up, switch on a soap and drink tea. Beats scrubbing floors any day.

Fat, Glorious Fat

Slim bank account, fat waist. Welcome January!

I blame the supermarkets. As soon as the tinsel-dressed panettone was on display in late October, I went at it. Just a little taste, I said to myself.

So I sampled my way through November and then, well, December was almost kind of Christmas anyway.

I proudly resisted chocolate until Christmas Eve when I ate half a crate load of Ferrero Rocher - and that was after seafood, cold meats, duck, potato gratin and varied desserts.

More and more food - made principally out of sugar, cream and lard - kept finding its way to our kitchen cupboards and into our stomachs: gifts from friends, corporate presents of cakes and sweets my husband brought home... never mind the stuff we bought in. We were gifted a two ton Christmas log made with marzipan, which my husband and I don’t even really like. That went in under five days.
Then it was NYE 2012, time to celebrate! At this point we were sweating slightly when we squeezed into our party gear and ate the canned Christmas goodies for dinner - smoked salmon, pate and various cheeses, a couple of limp lettuce leaves on the side for show. We went out, and since the baby was staying with his grandparents, spent the following day on the sofa watching telly and, yep, you guessed it, stuffing our faces.

Come 3rd January I suddenly couldn’t sit down comfortably in my skinny jeans - the ones I’d been so proud to squirm into after my post natal diet. When you lounge around in pyjamas with an elasticated waistband, you don’t notice the spreading Michelin.

Oh well. Christmas is once a year and they say it’s what you eat between January 1st and 23rd of December that counts. So this week on a mission to put an end to the ugly chocolate binges, I bought a bag of sunflower seeds to nibble on. Like a pair of fat, greedy canaries my husband and I crunched our way through two bags whilst watching Breaking Bad. Today we bought a third.

And dammit, I still know there is a giant Toblerone in the pantry.

A Stolen Cucumber

My husband has turned to crime. 

Some days ago he returned from the supermarket and presented me with a stolen cucumber. It isn't that we are in dire need of vegetables and can't afford to pay for them - he had just popped it into the baby's pram basket while shopping and forgotten all about it at the till. 

As crimes go, this doesn't rate up there with the Kray brothers, but it is a sign of how far we have deteriorated. People did warn us back when life was still orderly and quiet. But even though we nodded and said that we understood - really, we didn't. 

My husband and I have become the living dead, existing in a twilight world of nappy changes, three hour meal routines and nursery rhymes that get stuck in your head, forever. Some days I don't even know what day it is anymore, nor do I care.

The real culprit?

And it is not just the lack of sleep. Keeping up with a baby during the day is almost as taxing. These little human beings have a lot of energy, curiosity and a huge desire to explore the world - and it's your job to help them. It takes a lot of oomph, creativity and patience to make Felix's day constructive and entertaining and at the end of it we are as pooped as he is.

Yet I wouldn't change a thing. 

We loved Felix from the moment we knew he was a microscopic blob of cells in my tummy and we will love him as long as we live, and even after that, if at all possible. We will be there for him, always, whether tucking him into bed with snuggle rabbit, stooped over holding his hands, letting him walk and point and discover the living room for the hundreth time until our backs give in, or kissing and cuddling him when he's angry and sore with teething. Of course in the passing we still worry about the bags under our eyes, the laundry not being done, the state of the house and even fleetingly, the stolen cucumber. But those things all pale in significance. Priorities have changed.

And suddenly, there you are at 11pm, looking at yourself in the bathroom mirror. Baby is asleep, the dish washer is humming, your husband has nipped out in his dressing gown and slippers to take the dog for a quick pee. You brush your teeth and wonder idly when you both started looking so much like your own mum and dad.

And you can't help grinning. Being parents to a little person is absolutely the funniest, most weirdly wonderful feeling in the whole world, no matter how tired you are - and even if your husband is a cucumber thief.

Judge Not...

Oh how I used to criticise.

Watching Supernanny on the sofa (with no milkstains on the upholstery yet), in the orderly and quiet flat (that wasn't littered with musical toys, dummies and soiled milk muslins), my hair washed (sans the porridge clumps), I'd sigh and pity these people. Surely raising kids wasn't that difficult?

Then I had mine.

Felix is only eight months old, so I'm not exactly talking from a lifetime's experience, but it sure has been humbling. Child rearing theory and practice are two different realities.  

For example, TV and food used to be big issues for me. Neither should ever be used to distract a child. Right?

Hah! Meet my new best friend, the Baby Fresh Food Feeder. A tiny mesh bag with a handle, you stuff it with a piece of fruit or a biscuit... to be safely enjoyed by baby, alone. Magic. Gives you time to gobble down your own lunch.

Next, introducing children's TV. Some days the sound of Three Little Monkeys and Felix falling into silence for a minute or so means that I can go to the loo on my own, without having to hear a heart wrenching "Mamamamamamama!" from the playpen as I do my business as fast as possible (not good for the old post partum hemorroids I can tell you).

Because that's just it. I've come to see that we're not talking about toddlers being glued to reruns of CSI for eight hours whilst stuffing their faces with supersized Happy Meals. It's really about having five, yes, literally five, minutes to yourself. A short moment where you can have a pee, pull yourself together, make a cuppa or just brace yourself for the next six hours ahead. 

Keeping up with a high energy little person is hard work. I'm not saying that constantly taking the easy way out is right - or that it wasn't my choice to have a child. But it's not a cardinal sin to pacify your child occasionally with the "wrong thing" either. 

In fact, I'd be concerned if Felix stayed glued to the television like the little girl from Poltergeist. He has an very short attention span at the moment and even as he grows I really doubt I could make him watch TV all day - he's too busy discovering the world. I've also noticed that he stops eating when he's full (unlike many adults I know, yours truly included). Damage limitation seems to come as a built in feature.

Kids are really needy creatures and I for one have had to take my time to adjust to that fact. At the same time, the world is full of well meaning friends and scary statistics that can guarantee a lifetime of anxiety regarding our children's development. Yet why is it that there is no one expert formula that works perfectly for every parent and child? Because winging it with tons of love and an ample helping of common sense still seem to work best. For me anyway.

So as a heartfelt apology to all those people who I used to scowl at on the airplane when their babies cried: 

I promise I'll try very hard not to judge anymore. You're doing a great job without my help.

10 Entertaining Uses for a Baby Monitor

If you're ever bored (unlikely with a newborn in the house) or depressed (far more probable thanks to sleep deprivation and WTHTMLSS - What The Hell Happened To My Life Stress Syndrome), here's a list of things you can get up to with a baby monitor to give yourself a bit of a larf...

10. Get back at your snoring husband. Use the baby monitor to amplify his thunder-like nasal rumble right back into his ear. Then watch him jolt awake while you snigger into your pillow.

9. Sneak into the baby's room and do the Darth Vader breathing at whoever's in the next room. "Luke, I am your father... Ggghhhhhhh....", and so on. 

8. Combine a baby monitor and a few subtitled YouTube music vids to create a DIY alternative to a Karaoke evening.

7. Sneak the mike end into your boss's office / neighbour's kitchen / teenage daughter's room to spy on them.

6. Take the above one step further. Using the talk-back feature, suddenly speak to them when they think they are alone. Even better if you have a video monitor and can catch them picking their noses.

5. This one works with video monitors only: Find the freakiest looking doll, teddy or book cover in your baby's room and point the camera at it, then get your other half to turn the parent device on and watch them have a momentary short circuit when they think your baby has mutated into Thomas the Tank Engine.

4. Surprise your dog in the middle of a bin raid, when he thinks you've left the house.

3. Get easy parking spaces. Find a clipboard, hard hat and a yellow luminous vest, strap the BM to your belt. When the car ahead of you tries to park in the space you saw first, run out, tap on their window and tell the space is reserved for roadworks machinery. If they argue, pretend to call for a tow truck on the baby monitor and watch them drive off swearing.

2. Break up inane work meetings, stop your kids killing each other or just grab some much-needed attention when feeling ignored: bring together the mike and speaker ends of your BM to create a spine chilling screech of speaker feedback.

1. Use the talk-back feature on your BM to recite times tables, foreign languages or the Catechism to your baby while he sleeps. It's never too early to start learning/brainwashing.

New Mum Anxieties

I'm an nervous, jumpy sort of person. Loud noises make me leap out of my skin, I get a stress headache from watching horror films and I once drove my car into a ditch when a wasp flew in through the open window. I live by the motto "Everything that can go wrong, will go wrong".

Bad, I know. I need to lighten up.

But then at 37 years of age, just as I felt I was entering maturity and learning to let go a little, I became a mum.

Now my fears have multiplied by about, oh, maybe a zillion. Seriously. Danger lurks everywhere.

Thank God apparently I'm not alone in this. Other mums tell me that when it comes to their babies, they immediately think of the worst case scenario too. We like to call it "catastrophising" (as opposed to fantasizing).

Here are some of my favourite Impending Doom moments:

• When dad plays rough with baby. Yes, my child is screaming with delight as he's being spun, flung and hung upside down. Me, I may be smiling on the outside. In my head I'm already dialling for the trauma unit.

• When friends, neighbours and family smother my new born with kisses (this is the thing about Spain, there's LOTS of kissing). I'm trying to appear relaxed and go with the flow whilst silently panicking about all the deadly diseases my child is catching. Afterwards, I'll clean his little face down with baby wipes. And pray.

• This is the obvious one: when he sleeps. I admit mums are not alone with this one, dad's do this too. Is the baby breathing? Will he have rolled over and can't cry out for help? Is he suffocating on his blanket/sleepy toy/milk chuck up? For the tenth time that night, despite the baby monitor and that tiny little bit of sanity you still have left, you get up and check. It's almost a relief when he wakes up screaming at 4am. At least you know he's still alive!

• When you leave him with your husband/grandparents/baby sitter/nursery for the first time. Oh. My. God. Will they give him the right food? What if there's an accident? What colour is his poo today? You check your phone constantly. Eventually you give in and call. It's not that you don't trust other people. It's just that they are not his mum.

• Solid foods. A total pitfall. Half the time you're convinced he's not having enough or your giving him the wrong thing. During the other half you just know he'll end up obese. And blame you for it.

• Now this is a trickiest one of them all: disfunction. If you've never tortured yourself by over analysing your and your partner's behaviour, now's the perfect time for it. As you nag, complain, project and over eat through your day, there are ample moments when you can stop to consider the vast psychological damage you're inflicting on your offspring by, well, just being you. Welcome to parenthood.

Seriously though, it's not all that bad. When I lie awake after the 4am feed, terribly alert and unable to get back to sleep thanks to the adrenaline that seems to pump through my body 24 hours a day, I sometimes get humbling moments of clarity:

Despite all the back chat, the arguments, the sighs of frustration and the rolling of eyes you have subjected your own mother to over the years... She was only reminding you to take your scarf and gloves, or asking for the hundredth time if you'd eaten enough, because she loves you so damn much.