FEAR AND IMAGINATION

It's funny - because Anna knows her daddy, when he dressed up as a very scary vampire for Halloween she didn't even bat an eyelid. But Anna is 10 months old. Léon, however, who is older and therefore has developed imagination, ran screaming in terror when he came across Thomas in the hall. In fact Léon's imagination is currently so vivid that if Thomas puts a towel over his head while getting dried after a bath he almost faints in fear because Thomas has become a ghost. Personally, I found him much more terrifying in Amanda's wig after a beer or two!

IT'S TIME TO BAN THE BOOK

We started playing Scrabble once or twice a month with the bigger kids in the hope it'd help their spelling and vocabulary. I know many of my workmates will die of shock at the thought of a colleague actually playing Scrabble for pleasure (because we publish all the UK Scrabble titles many of our colleagues would feel an hour spent on anything to do with Scrabble was overtime and would feel they'd deserve to be paid for the purpose!) Anyway, the games were going well but there were two main problems when playing with an 8 year old and (as was then) a 10 year old, and that was that finding many words with the X, J, Z or Q was hard work, and that the last two or three rounds when you were down to two or three letters were equally impossible. Thomas came up with the idea of getting the three Scrabble books from the office bookshop: Scrabble words Scrabble lists Need to know? Scrabble Great, we now had a source of two and three letter words. We had lists of all the words beginning with the obscure letters and we had hints at what could be done with many letter combinations. But surprisingly, although the kids are enjoying the game more than ever, given their newfound ability to win with really obscure words, I have gone from relishing our games from an educational perspective, to finding them utterly pointless, or borderline pointless anyway. The kids are using their dictionary skills at least to find new and weird words, but given the Scrabble words book has no definitions, this is simply a means to winning and no longer educational. Tonight the kids came up with bowat, jape, mugg, zelants and qat - all great words but they haven't a clue what any of them mean! As a dictionary writer of 18 years experience I tend to think if even I don't recognize a word, then the kids shouldn't be using it to beat me at Scrabble. We have completely lost focus of why we started to play the game in the first place. It also opened my eyes to the Scrabble nuts out there. They play to win, not to learn anything. In fact winning is so important, they would be happy to play Scrabble in a language they don't speak rather than lose a game... incomprehensible. I guess they are a different breed of weirdo nerd from me.

LATERAL THINKING

Lots at 8
Originally uploaded by PhylB

Thomas and I were sitting moaning about the fact that the doorbell in the house is too far away from the bedroom to be heard. With Comet bringing us a new frost-free freezer and salmonella-free fridge tomorrow, neither of us want to get up at 7-45am only to sit and wait till 6pm for the unnamed-time delivery slot. As we scratched our heads, Charlotte looked at us, as always, as if we were worse than stupid and instantly suggested reversing the baby monitor circuit - ie putting the baby unit in the downstairs hall, and the adult unit in the bedroom overnight so instead of hearing baby snooze while making breakfast, we'd hear the bell from under our duvet. I guess I'm just not as smart as an 8 year old...

BOARD GAMES

I wonder what you can tell about someone from their attitude to games? As a mother I can see quite clearly that kids fall into very distinct gaming groups. Playing ludo on Saturday, Charlotte was completely indifferent to what number turned up on the dice and if her man was sent back to base she just threw the dice again. Marcel accused Charlotte of cheating if she threw a 6, his lip quivered if she sent him back to base, he got angry and cried if she got to base before him and would have been positively abusive if we hadn't taken a break to eat a pizza. Surely by 9 ludo shouldn't really matter? I believe that kids either need to win or don't give a damn. Derek and I were the same as kids. Derek was a really bad loser as a kid. At 5 he screamed bastard! at a game that was meant teach kids manners, just because his turtle was losing a race! I wonder what all this means for their future? It is odd because both Derek and Marcel were/are easygoing kids, Charlotte and I highly strung and yet games always brought/bring out the opposite trait. Hmmm.

SHOULD WE REALLY HAVE BURNED OUR BRAS?

Ok those who know me may not recommend I do this for real, it'd be too unsightly after all those babies and they weren't unobtrusive to start with ;-) but metaphorically speaking, did we really think things through and plan them out properly in the 60s when I was a mere 2 year old bra-burner? Ok some coutries may have got it right, if they have I'd like to hear about it, or at least better than us but we in the UK still haven't got the work/life/kids balance right.

Today I had to take Léon to nursery for the first time for him to get to know the women and other kids he's going to have to spend 5 hours with daily from the end of this month onwards. Five hours a day away from his mum and he isn't a year old yet :-( And yet that in itself is an improvement.

When Marcel and Charlotte were little we were told to hand them over at 29 weeks or lose our jobs. Why 29 weeks? - a strange figure derived arbitrarily, I guess. At 29 weeks Marcel was barely on food, he couldn't sit or crawl or walk or talk - he wanted to hug his mum and drink from her breasts, he didn't want to do finger-painting with a bunch of strangers. When Marcel was 29 weeks old part time work wasn't something you could ask for or if it was it was so hidden in the small print that no one had yet found it. So I left my 29 week old baby and I went and wrote a German-English dictionary 35 hours a week and I drove 5 hours a week to and from work so I spent 40 hours a week away from my precious boy.

Marcel didn't sleep well - he first slept through the night at 15 months. So from 29 weeks I worked those hours and I drove those hours without having slept at night. I sat in the office to keep my job with my breasts aching to feed him, my body longing to sleep and my heart quietly breaking.

But I didn't learn my lesson, because I did it all again 2 years later! And this time I went back and wrote French dictionary while the same pattern set in. But this was crazier still - I was paying out £900 a month to have someone play with my babies while I wandered about like a zombie who hadn't slept in 3 years with aching boobs. And there's that unwritten law that you have to look ok, even when you haven't slept, even when you are worried sick because your kid is home sick and you've been up all night, even when you don't know where to take your sick kid while you go in to the office, or when you use up all your holidays at short notice because your child gets chicken pox and then you can't go away for a much needed rest in the summer.

And then someone suggested part time. That seemed like a reasonable compromise. I started working a 23 hour week instead of 35 but I had moved further away so I was driving 10, so I was still away 33 hours a week and earning even less.

I know it was my choice to have kids but neither the full time or part time scenario really works. It doesn't work because they are ill sometimes, they do cry all night when they are teething etc

So now the magic number is 52 - you have to go back to work after 52 weeks off. Fortunately, as you all remember, I had Léon in the office before I went on maternity leave ;-) so I get to stay off till he is 52 weeks old but that doesn't make it easier than with the others - I still want to stay home and hug and feed and nurture my tiny man. The last month off isn't nice, you get up every morning with a brick weighing down your heart like a prisoner on death row.

Now I am not advocating staying home till my kids go to uni - both they and I would go mad but I think 2 or 3 when they enjoy interacting with little friends and playing would be a better age to go to nursery than giving up babies - I mean we should hand over toddlers not babies. As for fulltime work with a baby - I have done than and what you miss out on is so phenomenal that I can't begin to explain. Getting home at 6 every day and spending just 2 hours a day with these precious people simply means you miss out on the most special times you can never regain.

I for one wish we'd simply gently singed our bras rather than fully burning them back in the 60s.