Babyhood

I got up early and took Kevin shopping on Saturday morning (Pauline often prefers to stay at home with her Daddy). There weren’t too many customers, so it only took and hour, even going at a leisurely pace – my serenity continues! Amazing how much nicer Kevin is when I’m relaxed, well that’s a stupid thing to say, it’s not amazing at all, but perfectly logical. We did a really big shop and filled the trolley. When we got home P. said he wanted to go to Paris for the day, so I was pleased, thinking it would be a nice easy day. However, I wanted to do a special fun meal for the kids. I cooked cubes of fresh fish in beaten egg and bread crumbs and served them on a huge platter with grapes, cubes of cucumber, cheese and apples, cooked broccoli and gave them short wooden skewers so they could make their own kebabs. I did this in a big hurry under lots of pressure with hungry brats pestering me the whole time (it was only 11.30) and absolutely ran to get it all on the table, thinking they would really love it. They looked happy at first, but I shouldn’t have put everything on one platter, because Pauline took all the cheese, so Kevin screamed and took all the fish, so Pauline screamed and threw things on the floor. All hell broke loose and my serenity and new-found calm came to an abrupt and horrible end. I shouted myself hoarse, smacked them both, threw a few things and lay face down sobbing on my bed while they happily ate their cubes of food with their fingers, completely ignoring the skewers.

By the time I’d tidied up and taken them to a birthday party I had a raging headache and was depressed for the rest of the day. On Sunday morning I was tempted to leave them with P. and go into Paris myself for 12 hours to cool off! But P. was in a horrible grumpy mood too, so I gritted my teeth, pretended to be jolly and took the children to the market to buy mussels and prawns which are quite cheap at the moment. So we had a slap-up feast, which was some consolation. All afternoon I kept them upstairs, away from grumpy Daddy and we did painting, ink stamps and play-dough sculptures. Then we went into the kitchen and made a fabulous apple crumble (with rolled oats and brown sugar). I let them spoon the ingredients into the scales and stir the mixture while I stewed the apples. Their little fingers are also very adept at getting the lumps out of brown sugar! Pauline of course, didn’t want to eat any of it when it was cooked, but Kevin and P. ate a bucketful each, they loved it! So, good humour was restored to the entire household.