Food-flinging and other sports

I first met A&E Mum in antenatal class, just two in a clutch of beached planets who gathered once per week to pine after our toes and look earnest about pain relief options like breathing and essential oils. In spite of some childish pre-term mockery from both of us, we both went on to deliver two kids apiece au naturel using—have to admit it though it pains me—only breathing and essential oils. Okay, so by breathing I mean two tanks of Entonox.

A&E is a fabulous cook. Our firstborn had some raucous food-fights together in our early motherhood days. I've been fondly remembering our wall-painting sessions as I dust off Ana's old plastic riot-eating gear—suction bowls, sporks and the like—for Ali to lob at me shot put-style. Although I am still recovering from the trauma of food-flinging round one, I am already knee-deep in the goopy trenches of round two.

World champion food-flinger sets new messiness record.

As a native of my adopted homeland, A&E has been able to enlighten me on certain things. For instance, Welsh rarebit is as close to heaven as cheesy bread can possibly get. A dummy is silicone teat, not an indictment of a baby's shape-sorting ability. A tea cozy is...apparently a useful thing and not at all silly...actually I'm still researching this last one. But that aside, A&E is a fount of wisdom on many fronts, not just on culinary issues.

Which brings me to the previous post on safety burb hazards. In response A&E Mum directed me to a disclaimer she came across while hunting out a kids party venue—a fascinating scrap of fine print forbidding certain activities on the premises, and apparently written by somebody who has difficulty sharing toys. The blacklist ranges from yoga to freemasonry and everything in between. Of course venues are free to set their own rules and people can go elsewhere if they find those rules bonkers.

But the pesky thing wouldn't leave my mind. Because one detail had slipped through my eye and lodged in a nether-corner of my brain where it's been sat down every since, sipping a cuppa and demanding further explanation. Here's what got stuck: the venue forbids circle dancing. Really? Why? What is circle dancing exactly? Like ring around the rosies, but evil? Like line dancing but circular, so even more annoying? Is it contagious? Should I be worried that my snowflakes are at risk from a new elfin safety issue?!

I am hoping that, as in the past with tea cozies, A&E Mum can enlighten me on this. Till then, visions of toddlers reenacting The Wicker Man will dance through my head.

Through a shape sorter darkly

A question recurs when I am in the presence of another mum of two and we experience a miracle: our babies drift off and our toddlers drop protocol and commence peaceful, bite-free playing for a vast stretch of several minutes (eternity, in two-year-old terms).

There is a pause. Then the question."Why didn't anybody warn me about two?"

Subsequent kids grow families in an exponential, not linear fashion. One is just one. But two is an army (and under-fives don't adhere to the Geneva Conventions). No one gets a break. There aren't enough hands, nor enough hours in the day. There aren't complete conversations, or even complete thought--

Which is why the question remains unanswered. Toddlers notice their respective social secretaries relaxing and  resume protocol. Kid A bites Kid B. Kid B smacks Kid A over the head with the COVETED TOY OF THE MOMENT (think the conch shell from 'Lord of the Flies'). Both babies go off like car alarms. Parenting resumes and the question is forgotten.

Shapeshifter fingerprints.

Perhaps no one warned me for the same reason that veteran mums to never tell expectant mums about the horrors of labour. Or maybe no one remembered to warn me due to a sort of Mama Stockholm Syndrome--eventually we learn to identify with our captors to survive. I suspect this because I feel myself slowly becoming one with the two-kid army. I am forgetting the horrors of the early months with two under-threes, just as a promised I wouldn't.

Recently I watched Ana repeatedly bash the round peg into the square hole of her shape sorter. In that moment I really identified with her. Most of my days feel like that. But there must be light at the end of this shape sorter tunnel, albeit faint, because I have time to sit here and write this.