Short and sweet, like my son when he's asleep

Hangovers are terrible things: I've consumed enough wine this week to keep me from tapping out inane bloggy shite for 6 whole days. Fortunately for the couple of people who read my literary efforts, I'm back and I can now sit up unaided.

The Monk has a 3-week holiday from toddler group, due to half term. This is fantastic news on the health front, as it means we're much less likely to contract repeated bouts of toddler lurgy. It's not so great when it comes to knackering the hyperactive little sod out, however; he now attempts to actually jump out of the living room window, shrieking with delight and too much fruit puree. He must be the only kid I know who gets a sugar rush from fucking baby food.

For such a small kid who isn't walking unaided - he still looks like a baby next to the others - Gabriel asserts himself in grand style at playgroup. Bitches in law enforcement outfits on the mini trampoline? No sweat, he'll just grab that sucker by the ankle and fling him into next week. At least, that's how The Monk visualises it: in reality, the kid already on the trampoline has learned to share (an alien concept for my pigheaded loin-fruit), and his mother happens to be watching, so he better be nice to the yelling tot currently trying to displace him, or he'll be facing mama-wrath come hometime.

"Fuck tha police, mama. That trampoline gon' be mine."

Aside from my son discovering entitlement, it's been one hell of an emotional week, folks. My darling niece got married to her lovely husband (now Shiny New Nephew) on Friday, The Monk indulged in some hardcore flirting (and tantrums. Can't forget those), and mama got drunk. Dreadfully, awfully drunk.

I'll keep this post short, as the wedding, the revelry and the subsequent falling over all deserve a post of their own. I'll attempt that one on a day where I've consumed nothing but fruit tea and Omega-3 capsules. Safe to say, I was an horrifically embarrassing, blubbering disgrace of an auntie who probably should've said an emphatic "No, thank you" to the free champagne. But I didn't, and that's how all the best stories start.

I'll leave you with The Monk, suited and booted and trying his best to seduce a cougar.

"How you doin'?"

Motherly love and food fights at Château Deng

Today is Mother’s Day, my very first one as a full-on honest-to-goodness mama. All week leading up to this momentous occasion, I had rose-tinted visions of being told to ‘stay in bed and relax’, a lovingly made breakfast (ferried up to my bed of relaxation on a silver platter), and a smiley, immaculately-behaved little boy. A little boy who isn’t quite a year old yet, but would somehow have grasped the magic and the sentiment behind the day, and presented me with a thoughtfully chosen bunch of slightly wilted daisies picked from between the paving slabs by the front door. I had dreams, people, dreams. I tripped off to bed last night with the warm glow of anticipation in my stomach (though in hindsight, that was more likely to be the bottle of red I’d quaffed earlier). G’night, monkles my baby. G’night, fiancé – it’s your turn to get up early. Mama’s gonna SLEEP.

But OH NO, that’s just not how my son rolls.

5:30AM. A rustling noise issues forth from The Monk’s bedroom, along with his usual tuneful morning greeting, today enhanced with atmospheric coughing and spluttering. “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH. Hack, sniffle.”

5:32AM. The bars of the cot are being rattled by what sounds like a yeti. “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH. Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba. Ah-CHOO.”

5:40AM. By this point, I’ve given up hope of The Monk (sometimes he’s called Gabriel, but not all that often) ever realising he’s actually quite tired and should in fact be slumbering peacefully, fingers corked in gob as usual. Of course, one of us is still asleep *casts hateful glare at snoozing man-shape on the other side of the bed*

The Monk’s sleeping patterns have gone to absolute shit at the moment, thanks to the stinking cold he got from some other snot-nosed imp at his toddler playgroup. He goes once a week, spends the whole two hours trying to escape through the village hall’s kitchen, and spends the rest of the week fighting off bubonic plague or whatever new and exciting tropical disease kids are into nowadays.

To add insult to increasingly knackered injury, he’s also going through a phase described by one parenting website as ‘discovering his autonomy’. I describe it as ‘being an awkward little shit’. He’s developed an intense distaste of his plastic baby spoons and bowls, like they’re not good enough for his rosy pink ass now; if I have the temerity to proffer a (plastic) spoonful of something otherwise delicious from the hated yellow bowl, I get THIS face: 

"Foie gras-stuffed three-bird roast with gratin dauphinoise? Off a plastic spoon? Bitch, please."

When confronted with the Spoon of Doom, Gabriel's first instinct is to wrench it out of my hand and fling it across the room, but! Mama's got the speed of a cheetah, the reflexes of a prize fighter, and the sheer bloody-mindedness of a woman who gets TOO. LITTLE. SLEEP: the Hand of Righteousness is clamped around the back of his head, the spoon is shuttled into his mouth (and quite possibly halfway down his throat, sometimes), past the Teeth of Peril, and the dollop of culinary goodness is home free. There's a bit of gagging and sobbing involved, but I get myself together soon enough, and all in all it works very well. 

I'm just thankful he can't talk yet, as I'm having night terrors about the boy morphing overnight into a Stewie from 'Family Guy'-style fiend. I'm quite happy with The Monk's one-word vocabulary (the word is 'deng'. I don't know either). On that front, all is good. Or deng. Just about everything in our house is deng, from teddy bears to staircases, plants, and toilets, up to and including door locks and postmen. Maybe next week's toddler group disease du jour will be dengue fever, ba-dum TISSSSH!

Happy Mother's Deng, everyone.