It's CHRISTMASSSSSSSSS!

It’s Beginning to Look A Lot like Christmas

So this week I’ve been bribing the four year old, pretending to look over his shoulder out of the window at the tiny elves that are making copious notes in little books for Father Christmas, adding their own ammunition to the naughty and nice list! My sister in law had her kids believing that Father Christmas had the place wired up with CCTV cameras – (that were actually the burglar alarms) and every time the red light went on (i.e. someone walked into the room!) Santa was watching.

It worked for a bit but as all these things he soon got fed up and back to his usual challenging behaviour………

This time of year makes me even soppier than usual and much as my brother called me a weirdo for saying, ‘Bad Santa’ was my favourite Christmas  film, (though I have to admit I do love ELF!)  I can still watch ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’ or even ‘A Muppet Christmas’ and develop a little tear……

It might be something to do with the hormones that kick in once you become a mum that even the most ridiculous thing can tug at your heart. My ball breaking , business woman friend re-calls a time not long after her son was born when her husband came home from work to find her collapsed on the sofa baby clutched to her breast in uncontrollable sobs,

‘My God’ he said, ’what is it? What has happened?’

She was unable to speak for a few minutes before she managed to blurt between snorts and sobs…’EMMERDALE!!!!!’

I know the feeling…

I was driving to work last week listening to the radio when amongst all the other festive cheery songs I heard the classic, ‘It’s Beginning To Look A Bit Like Christmas!’  I love an old time quirky tune and sang along happily – it’s funny how you know all the words to most of these songs  through the  39 years of total emersion for  one month a year; when I came to the line,

‘But the prettiest sight to see,

Is the holly that will be,

On your own front door’

It made me cry! ‘Yes!’ I sobbed to myself, ‘It is the prettiest sight, going home, being at home, being with my lovely family’

 It’s a bit Hollywood the reality of being with my family is not always that relaxing….but the sentiment had got me!

I’ll be sobbing my way through to the new year………

Nativity

Last week in my 4 year old’s bag was a request, ‘Please send in brown trousers and a brown long sleeved T-shirt as your son has been chosen to play the Ox in the nativity, please encourage him to learn these lines,

Have you brought a present for the baby King?

Have you bought a special gift just to give to him?’

Wow, I thought brave, giving a kid with speech difficulties two lines, OK, so they don’t really make sense and a talking Ox? Still, better get to it and teach him them.

……and so I began,

‘Right son, repeat after me, Have you brought a present for the baby King?

Have you bought a special gift just to give to him?’

‘No’ says number one son.

‘Ha, ha’, I say, ‘No son, I want you to say it’ (I break into strange over enunciated story voice) – ‘Have you brought a present for the baby King? Have you bought a special gift just to give to him?’

‘No!’ says number one son looking a little perplexed.

‘No, no, no’ I say ‘You have to say it! I’m not asking you!’ after about half an hour of this, I decide to let him practice it at school a bit first, maybe they haven’t started it yet, as he really doesn’t seem to have a clue what I’m talking about!

As the date of the big show due ever nearer I was worried he refused to say these lines and checked,

‘Are you the only Ox?’

‘No, Faisel is an ox too’

Phew, I thought they must have coupled a good speaker with a less able one to do the lines together, yet still he didn’t really seem to understand what was going on.

I was a little sad that due to work commitments I wouldn’t be able to see the nativity but careful what you wish for folks because, the baby’s ear drum burst- gallons of seeping yellow gunk,  blowing all work out of the water and leaving me free to watch with a snuggled, sleeping, doped up tiny one on my lap.

In came the children to the hall, mammoth proportions, 15 of each character, angels, kings, shepherds, sheep, stars, donkey's and oxen – lots and lots of nose picking, play with your hat, yawning, mucking about oxen…..I began to see the peer group my son was in.

The nativity was a little under rehearsed, but pretty cute, the angels did a dance, the kings did a march, the shepherds and sheep a song, the stars a rhyme even the donkey’s did a sort of thing.

The oxen remained, bare foot on the gym mat all in brown trousers and paper bands around there heads with paper ears stapled on.

The lines I’d attempted to teach were a repeat throughout the show said by all – except of course most of the oxen including my little calf who all seemed oblivious to the holy story unfolding all around them.

I told him he was the best ox I’d ever seen and that I was very proud of him……..and I was!

Atishoo, atishoo they all fall down.....

Atishoo, atishoo they all fall down……

When I got home tonight, through the sleet and slippery roads, I was greeted with the news from my mother – in – law (almost anyway, I’m not actually married to my man) that the baby had a ‘weeping’ ear. Clear discharge had been squelching out of it throughout the day……must say not a total surprise and answered a few questions really like -  Why has he been crying through the night? Why has he been so grumpy? Why has he been banging the side of his heard whilst making blood curdling baby dinosaur noises? Ah-ha Miss Marple so maybe it’s not his teeth / the cold/ growth spurt hunger or all of the above…..

We’d taken his ear rubbing as a sign of tiredness – not the sign of agonising pain it might be…. Hey ho! Am I still in the running for this year’s bad mummy award?

But, you see, although my first thought was concern for the weefella my second was,’ Will I have to take any time off work?’ – You see it’s only last week I was at the doctors with him for – now let’s just call it an eye infection…..

I took an hour off work to go to the doctors and was forced to ask that mummy divider question,

‘ Erm, (slight cough) is he O.K. to go into nursery?’ my voice tailed off into the void…..

I fortunately have a lovely doctor who does not make me feel bad about asking this question and even sympathises, ‘Well’ she says ‘There’s no official ruling to say he can’t go in with conjunctivitis’ – yes, my friend the shame, he had that highly contagious eye nasty and here I was trying to shove him into nursery to spread it round the other pure little babies – ‘It’s really up to individual nursery policy’

So eye drops in hand – (I surprised him with the first set of one every two hours, so surprised was he that a treat to follow suggested by the pharmacist went unswallowed.) I sheepishly made my way to the kindergarten….

Armed with the knowledge that the doctor did not think it bad enough to be off nursery, (What? That’s not the way you heard it?) Yet conscious that the nursery may indeed have its own policy on it I dropped him off and chatted to his key worker using a number of words to describe what was clearly conjunctivitis.

‘gunk eye’, ’snot’ ,’mucus’,  ‘stickiness’, ‘mild infection’ and my own personal favourite, ‘ cold in the eye’

‘And what are the drops called?’ she asked as she filled in the medicine form for me to sign………..

‘Conjuncticure’ I Said…….Busted!

If you are lucky enough to stay at home with your children or work for an understanding boss or have a job that you can do at home in your own time you will not understand me, if you’re not get thinking of less serious ways to say ‘discharge from left ear’ for me please!!