Bobbie’s blog

We visited T’s family at the week end, which of course, also meant paying a visit to his granddad at the care home he’s been in for almost a year now.

I’ve had a couple of conversations over the course of the week end that reminded me of how rapidly Granddad’s decline has been. Up until around 18 months ago he was still able to have a life that was objectively really quite enjoyable and active. He was part of an OAP club, he still managed trips to the library, read voraciously, remembered things minutely (he could recite the reigns of all of England's Kings and Queens - not bad going for a 92 year old). And then ever so gradually these threads of  the life he’d been living over the last few years with my in laws slowly began to unravel – his world gradually narrowing and reducing to the boundaries of my in laws’ house, the need to read, to exercise his mind becoming too much of an effort and the general decline that seemed to come about all too rapidly, catching us all by surprise.

Finally the physical and mental demands of living with someone who fell whenever they tried to get from A to B, who refused to go to sleep (leading to their own acute sleep deprivation), from an accumultated and rapid decline proved too much for my in laws to be able to cope with, so Granddad was moved to a home where his physical decline has become complete.

He used to be able to sit in a chair in the living room of the home, which still afforded him a measure of a social life, in that he was able to interact with others in the home, even managing the occasional flirt with some of the resident old girls. But it became more and more difficult for him to physically get comfortable in a chair, so he spent more and more time in his room, joining the main group only very rarely in a wheelchair, to the point where now he’s confined to his bed.

Some visits with Granddad are good, some not so good. This one was good in that it was obvious to us all that his eyes were crystal clear and he was understanding everything that T was saying to him and attempting to respond (his brain no longer seems to be able to send clear signals, so his speech has been really compromised, leading to some visits amounting to a real struggle to engage with him).

The moment I’m referring to above in the title?

That was the moment we were saying goodbye to Granddad at the week end and I bent over, keeping my face next to his and kissing him three times on the cheek while, without thinking about it, my hand stroked the side of his face, told him how lovely it had been to see him and that we’d see him again really soon.

All of a sudden, his whole face creased up into what I thought was an expression of pain and he slowly withdrew his hands away from mine. I walked away on the verge of tears, hugely concerned that I’d done something to upset him – the last thing I would ever intend to do.

As we walked to the car, I asked both T and his mum whether I’d done something wrong to have caused the reaction Granddad had had. They were both quick to reassure me that I’d mis-interpreted his reaction and, instead, that I'd done something very, very right. They said Granddad’s reaction was an expression of happiness, a reflection back of the love I have for him, an expression of joy at being physically touched and cared for/about.

That did reassure me.

However, a little piece of my heart gets chipped away every time I see Granddad, remembering the dignified, smart, savvy man he was, proud of his own independence, his lack of neediness and, and, up to a certain point in his 80s, still so assured by his own physical ability. To now be so reduced physically, for age to have contorted his body so much, to have such a limited ability to communicate properly with his loved ones, to have no life outside of the four walls of his bedroom to me is a living nightmare.

But how very grateful and moved I am that I could somehow alleviate all of that for even a second, with something as simple as a touch and a few words.

We've used pacifiers for both of our kids - mainly for my sanity when they were really tiny. They were both sucky little babies and rather than using me or their thumbs to suck on, I was quite happy to give them a pacifier because we could always, you know, throw it away.

We didn't do the whole throwing away thing with Nic until she was 3 years old and a couple of months before doing so we introduced her to the idea of the Dummy Fairy. It was a bit of genius on my part I have to say, as Nic loves all things fairy, so she was incredibly excited about the Dummy Fairy's visit and the fact that she would be bringing her a gift to replace the pacifiers she would fly away with because that's what happens when kids are a big, grown up 3 years old. 

Despite this careful preparation and planning, I was still really apprehensive about taking the damn things away from Nic once and for all but a mini trampoline and a few teething problems later, and my girl was quite happily going to bed without the aid of her pacifier safety net.

Z is a month away from turning 3 and we figured that what's worked for his sister is bound to work for him, so again, we're carefully introducing the idea of a Dummy Fairy who's going to bring him a gift etc etc.

We explained this all to him and he carefully considered it and obviously thought that the DF should be bringing a whole lot more to the party if she's going to try to persuade him to give up his precious dummies, because his response was "And chocolate?"

(So you would think that, given that I have absolutely NO work on at all at work at the moment that I would be blogging like crazy but apparently inertia breeds inertia.)

When I found out I was pregnant I was - of course - beyond overjoyed and contemplated very hard the life changing differences that would happen in my life after I had the baby and one thought overwhelmed all others.....

I would actually have to stop swearing.

Now for all those that know me in real life I'm sure they all collectively thought - she's never, in a million years going to manage that but instead envisaged me having pikey, sweary children who would possibly be born swearing. Now, it's not like every other word that came out of my mouth was 'f***' - it was more like every fifth word maybe. I was both creative and enthusiastic in my swearing

Well to all those real life friends - how very wrong you were mofos!

Not only did I manage it but I managed it brilliantly - everytime 'Shit!' was about to come out of my mouth, it turned into a 'sugar' (now that my 5 year old has an amazingly perceptive brain this puzzles her no end - why on earth do I want to say sugar when I'm mad angry or have just managed to hurt myself), every 'fuck' turned into 'flipping' - you get the picture. If I do say so myself, I've been aces at stopping myself swearing.

Don't get me wrong - I've not totally kicked the habit but it makes me smile no end that my seemingly-angelic husband swears much more than I do in front of the kids. 

However, recently, I not only made the mistake of saying 'Shut up' to Nic (which I dislike myself for) but said it in front of Z. I thought it had passed him by (although god knows how, given the pitch at which I'd said it) until one day recently, I asked him to do something and he told me to shut up. Now if you needed any sort of illustration of how you set your kids an example/your kids behaviour is totally learned from you - then that's it right there.

What a total and utter arse I am!

Ever since he's said it I've been desperately hoping I'd disciplined him enough to understand not to say that word again and have obviously not said it again myself in front of him.

Except of course he's almost 3 years old and sees being told not say something as a challenge as to how many times he can actually say it.

And what's worse - he's said it in front of/to my parents, more specifically, my disciplinarian, take no shit, dad. And my dad's asked me where he's picked that phrase up from.

And because I'm an absolute chicken shit, I've said that I have absolutely no idea!!!!

I've been meaning to blog about this for such a long time and am sure it's probably been written/blogged to death about but I still want to add my bit anyway!

I never really appreciated exactly how amazing women are until I had my babies. I could appreciate the female form and think 'we're made so much prettier than men' but not much more than that.

I appreciated theoretically what my body could do but never really understood it and found my period every month a total pain - an unnecessary inconvenience.

And then I had my kids. And the revelation of what my body could do was immense, something that continues to surprise me as I watch them grow.

When I was pregnant I received updates every week of exactly what was going on in my body over the 9 months I was pregnant and, until I had a fully established tum and felt the baby kicking, actually being pregnant with a baby still seemed to be a bit of an abstract concept.

It was only when my 9 months was almost up that it occurred to me that when the time came I would, somehow, need to get this baby out of my body but hadn't really fully come to grips with the mechanics of exactly how that would happen, despite reading the books, watching the video and attending the NCT classes.

My first baby was produced after 16 hours of labour*, hooked up to a monitor, taking lung fulls of gas and air and finally, high on pethidine. With my second baby we luckily had only 6 hours of labour - two of which took place in a cinema in Leicester Square and whose speed denied me the opportunity of getting into water like I'd intended or any sort of pain relief (something I thought you'd have to be insane to try).

But it has been amazing watching my children enter the world and I've been in total awe that my nothing-so-special-about-it-body has helped create, nurture for 9 months, labour and finally push out into this world visions of total and utter perfection.

The way a woman's body has been designed and engineered is outstanding. What an absolutely amazing thing to be able to do - create, produce and nurture life.  There is nothing on God's earth that can beat this, nothing.

Becoming a mother has also given me a totally new perspective of my own mother - a deeper, better understanding and appreciation of the choices she's made and just how downright bloody hard the whole bringing up children thing is. It's also allowed me to put away my judgemental hat on those choices and just be thorougly grateful for the kind of mum she was/is. I have no idea if this change of perspective has ever really fully come across to my mum and I certainly haven't really ever expressed myself in quite those terms but I've certainly hugged her more often, for longer and with more feeling than I ever have before in my life.

Viva la Mama.

*I realise that that's nothing compared to some, but it's plenty enough for me

I don't watch Britain's Got Talent - I tend to try and avoid shows like that but particularly anything that features Simon Cowell, let alone the unholy trinity that is him, Amanda Holden and Piers Morgan. Yet yesterday at work my friend was talking about the fabulous Susan Boyle whose singing made my jaw drop and my eyes water and he mentioned a rotund little Greek duo who he said 'danced like butterflies', so they being my brothers and all, I had to look them up.

And here they are (you tube won't allow me to embed the video) - and they are utterly, utterly fabulous!!! I particularly love the little boy - an amazing amount of confidence for a 12 year old - to stand on a stage and dance, topless, in front of all those people and to be so confident and cheeky in his responses to the comments afterwards - absolutely wonderful.

You could tell that their family were there as one of the things Greek people definitely do well is holler their support for the ones they love...

When do they stop running to you to kiss it and make it all better

When do you stop being the first person they want to share their news/new experiences with

When does going to the park stop being the highlight of their day

When do they start thinking that holding your hand is a childish thing for them to do

When do they start wiping away your kisses from their cheeks with the backs of their hands

When does coming into your bed at night stop being a comfort to them

When do they want you to stop singing them a song before they go to sleep

When do you stop being the centre of your child's universe?

I was driving the kids back from my parents' the other night when Z let rip a parp. I glanced at him and asked him whether he had let one off.

Without missing a beat my 27 month old said said "No. Nicole" indicating that in fact, the accoustics of the car were all wrong and that it had, in fact, been his poor, innocent sister who'd done the dirty deed.

He was absolutely straight-faced about it for about half a minute before he gave me the most deliciously cheeky little grin.

I think I can tell how his relationship with his sister is going to develop!!!

I was on the tube this morning after a particuarly stressful start to my day (rush to get my child to the childminders, rush to the train station, no trains, rush to the tube station and then rushing at the other end to get into work on time) and I saw this and it lightened my mood instantly.....

Tortoise

Under the mottled shell of the old tortoise
beats the heart of a young dancer.

She dreams of twirling on tabletops,
turning cartwheels,
kicking up her heels at the Carnival ball.

“Oh, who will kiss my cold and wrinkled lips,
and set my dreaming spirit free?”

By Judith Chernaik

I sang the words in bold to my husband after 12 last night.

Yeah there's no need for introductions
No dark corridors and fame
You will find your fortune
You'll might find some pain
I wanna lie, lie together
Feels like our last embrace
In a world full of confusion
Yeah the human race

But I'd rather be here than be anywhere
Is there anywhere better than here
You know these feelings I've
found, they are oh so rare
Is there anywhere better than here

Sometimes life seems to tear us apart
I don't wanna let you go
Sometimes these feelings hidden
I start to cry
Cause I won't ever let you go

Always livin' under some vow
Always on the eve of destruction
Make you wanna scream out loud
And as I watch the birds sour
Amount of lies in which you spun
O mamamamma, while I'm still crying
Oh another day is coming

Cause I'd rather be here than be anywhere
Is there anywhere better than here
You know these feelings I've
found they are oh so rare
Is there anywhere better than here

Sometimes life seems to tear us apart
I don't wanna let you go
Sometimes these feelings hidden
I start to cry
Cause I won't ever let you go

But I'd rather be here than be anywhere
Is there anywhere better than here
You know these feelings I've
found they are oh so rare
Is there anywhere better than here. [repeat]

Sometimes these feelings...
These feelings are oh so rare

I love The Verve and remembered this song and downloaded it from iTunes last night as a perfect summary of my how I feel about Tim.

Look here....