Castle

We were supposed to go to Warwick Castle in the summer. We got tickets and everything but we didn’t quite make it and so as a Christmas treat my brother and sis in law bought us a night in a hotel in Warwick so off we drove through the rain!

Since the summer the then two year was the now three year old and so required his own ticket, I began to struggle with this dilemma – would it make me as morally bad as Starbucks to sneak him in? Technically it would be stealing...

But £22 for a three year old to see a castle? When he’s already a member of English Heritage?

My partner had no such concerns and was busy telling him to pretend to be two with the six year old joining in and maybe over doing the ham acting!

When we finally got there (after what felt like a life time of ‘when are we there yet?’) we saw a large amount of children arrive in push chairs that were abandoned on passing the pay desk!

We had a really lovely day despite the drizzle and lack of trebuchet (Summer only) and my two little knights enjoyed climbing and running around the walls, watching a sword fight and posing for photos with a range of waxworks including the Queen – who they didn’t recognise despite loving all the jubilee stuff this year.

Then on to the hotel – a new one – not known by our Sat Nav after ‘reaching our destination’ for the third time on a deserted industrial estate we called in google maps and made it just in time for dinner. The three year old yawning and visibly tired even saying, ’I’m sleepy Mummy!’ through bites of sausages.

Did I dare to think my partner and I could share that bottle of wine, watch a film, read a book or have a bath... well they were sleepy?

Back in our bedroom only moments later the sleepiness seems to have disappeared. The boys refuse to go into their own beds so they come in with me, I find a Disney cartoon and think they will drift off while watching it... of course they don’t. They get wrigglier, more tired and grumpy and begin to fight.

I send them back to their own beds, they scream and sulk. We end up abandoning the glass of wine, reading books etc. And lie in the dark hoping the grouchy petulant pair will finally sleep. It takes me to lie with first the three ear old then the six year old before sleep finally comes – by this time I’m too exhausted to read any way and sleep for an hour or so before the first one creeps back in!

Still, we look forward to breakfast ...we all manage several courses, the table littered with toast plates, croissant plates, fruit plates, cococ pops (which they’re not allowed at home of course!) yogurts and of course a cooked breakfast for my partner and I.

Over breakfast and despite the pouring rain my partner slips into conversation that Kenilworth Castle is so close it’d be a shame to miss it, he didn’t like to mention it before in case I was all castled out prefering to wait for the warm glow of veggie sausage and poached egg to put mein a receptive mood!

Decoration Dedication

So with ofsted over  I de-frost my car and I rush home determined to ‘start’ Christmas . My partner is in the middle of making the boy’s tea but that does not deter me and feeling there is not a second to spare let alone the ten minutes it might take for pasta to boil I bulldoze my way down to the cellar then thump up the narrow stairs precariously balancing the plastic boxes marker penned ‘xmas’.

In what I can only now describe as a kind of mania I huff-a-lump around the place in a flurry of tinsel, first I try to put up fairy lights at the kitchen window and succeed in demolishing my fitted blind – the kids begin jumping over it like little grand national horses.

‘Get away from that, you’ll snap it!!!’ the Grinch in me screams at them and ushers us all into the sitting room with a plastic tree under my arm.

Desperate to put on Christmas music to make this an ‘experience’ for the two little boys I’d neglected a little this week, I bark at my partner to blue tooth something he refuses with a not unreasonable, ‘I’m cooking dinner.’

‘One thing! ‘ I think exasperated ‘We all have to do at least 2 at once, these days! Man up!’

 I search through the free c.d’s my Dad brings us ever year from The Daily Mail (oh, the shame! – Merry Christmas Everyone (so long as you’re not an immigrant, single mum or gay man wanting to marry!) ) Finally I settle on a small, tinny ‘Radio Christmas’ from my net book – we can’t hear it if we talk or try and sing along or breath... it’s not really working!

The three year climbs into the tree box and coffin like closes it up, I scream at the six year old he’s too big to get it and I don’t want to box to rip before I manage to get it back into the cellar, though I have to admit it does make a good pirate ship!

I rush to put up the tree.

‘Dinner’s ready!’ my partner cries from the kitchen,

‘Coming’ I lie.

Clumsily pulling at plastic branches determined this tree would be up before dinner.

I push the second tier of the tree in and ‘snap’ I break the tree.

Tears are starting to prickle the back of my eyes. My partner comes in – he’s fixed the blind in the kitchen and he’s trying not to laugh.

It is funny.

Me - surrounded by tinsel with a limp tree and a goblin on my lip.

He gives me a cuddle, we both laugh and those prickling tears disappear.

We all eat pasta and I calm down.

My partner manages to fix the tree with an old coat hanger and his super brain!

It needs a gentle touch though and as we carefully unwrap the baubles with baby handprints and lolly stick home made decorations the boys delighted with each new decoration, ‘ Look Mummy a reindeer!’ ‘Wow a present!’ ‘It’s a fairy Mummy! Look!’ Look!’

I look at my lovely family and for a brief moment feel content.

Joy to the World

So this week I’ve noticed a little more glitter hanging round the place and a touch more twinkle even a dash more ho,ho,ho...

I love, love love it! From my six year old carefully helping the three year old find the numbers on his advent calendars to baking mince pies with stars on the top after school –(assembling rather than ‘baking’ would be technically more correct as we used a roll of co-op pastry and ajar of mince meat!)

We haven’t put the decorations up yet... I was so excited about buying a red tree on ebay which turned out not to be the promised BNIB and had a piece missing the following dispute dulled my sparkle for a while but I have to be strong and work my way up to it!   Apparently, though,  in my absence yesterday  three (rather pathetic) trees have been madly decorated in my very small classroom!

I will venture down in the cellar soon and put them up with the kids ‘help’ and a mulled wine on stand by!

I saw a trailer for ‘Elf’ coming soon to a Sunday afternoon telly near you and the boys and I are getting excited after crying our way through ‘Miracle on 34^th Street’ last week we think we’re ready for a giggle! Three cheers for channel 5 at Christmas time hip hip...

Yesterday I went to see my six year olds performance in ‘Santa’s on Strike’ in a busy school hall full of parents holding up iphones.

He had been a little put out that he did not really have a part rather being an ‘important member’ of the ‘choir’ they tried to lessen the blow for these children by putting them in costume (he and his little mates were dressed as cleaners, aprons, dusters and black clothing clutching fairy liquid bottles) and letting them stand at the front for one song – ‘Pitching in and helping out at Christmas!’

Needless to say the very religious in-laws did not wish to see this production (‘Do you fancy coming along to the nativity?’ I overheard my partner on the phone... ‘ Well he plays a cleaner... you’re busy? Oh well may be next year?’)  and are still a little raw at our decision not to send him to the catholic school.

He really wanted to be an elf but I accepted that my clumsy, shy boy with speech difficulties was not going to be chosen for a lead role – not yet anyway.

‘Wouldn’t you think she’d be Mary?’ my cousin asked me about her confident, talented daughter when she was cast as .....a camel.

‘I would!’ I replied ‘At least an angel!!’

Finally I can’t finish without mentioning my clever, beautiful, talented niece who is starring in the Royal Exchange’s Christmas production – ‘Rat’s Tales’ (What you hadn’t heard? I’m sure I’ve mentioned it maybe once or twice!)

She is interviewed on the web site and says she is excited that all her family are coming to see her. It made me warm and fuzzy because family with all its quirks, traditions and let’s face it failings is as important to that eight year old as it is to me.