Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah!

Click here, turn the volume up and then read on.... (actually, because I can't get the silly link to launch in a new window or embed the clip you'll need to have a listen and then click the back arrow)

Why you ask?

Last night son 2 - aged 3.5 - slept without a nappy and kept the bed dry. First time ever.

He normally manages to fill a nappy with so much wee that it leaks. But last night he said he didn't want to wear a nappy. And he was fairly adamant about it.

I was willing to give it a go. He emptied his bladder before bed and I managed to put him on the loo at 10pm (on the few occasions I've tried this before, all of hell's fury has been unleashed by the small boy).

I put him back into bed, crossed my fingers (and his legs) and this morning he woke up DRY!!

Ironically I bought a new pack of pull up nappies yesterday, cursing under my breath that I was still buying sodding nappies, five years on (taking both boys into account).

Now it seems that our nappy days might be over. Small miracles.

Slice of life

Three comments to provide a snapshot of my life:

Three year old son
Peering into the salad bowl. 'Please can I have...ummm....ummm...errr...a spaceship?' Me a little confused, wondering how we'd managed to get Apollo 13 in amongst the radishes, finally twigged. 'Oh, you mean rocket...'

Four year old son
'Mummy, where does God go if he needs a wee?'
'I have no idea. Where do you think he goes?'
'On a potty.'
So there you have it, even Godly beings need to go sometime.

Husband
Looking perplexedly at the bathroom scale which was shoved into the bin.
'Is this here because it doesn't work, or because it does?'
He then got a slap.

Little boys and their willies

Being one of three girls we never really had a problem with toilet seats being left up or pee on the floor. People did mention these things to me when I had two boys in that 'poor you' type of way but I was convinced that I could train my boys to pee on target and to put the toilet seat down.

What I hadn't factored in is the errant nature of willies. Having never had one myself I have failed to grasp the mechanics of these strange things. For a start, little boys, from the earliest age tend to wake up with willies that have woken up five minutes before the rest of their bodies do. Let me spell that out for you in case it isn't clear. They wake aroused, angry, erect, with stiffies. You get the picture. It's obscene really but you learn to avert your eyes. However, they tend to need to wee the minute they wake up which means you can quite regularly have wee carving a brave arc towards the ceiling before landing anywhere but the toilet.

The same thing happens when they have a poo. Not always. But with enough regularity to lead me to believe that boys genuinely find having a poo an orgasmic experience. It might explain their lifetime affinity to toilet humour and their desire to sit there for hours with the paper. If their tackle isn't correctly tucked in during the evacutation procedure, you're going to end up with a puddle on the floor.

Which leads me swiftly onto the 'Tucking In Procedure' or TIP as I like to call it. Unlike girls who can simply plonk themselves on the loo and pee at will, boys need to sit and tuck. This means they have to be scooched far enough back on the toilet/potty to allow space at the front for their willy to be tucked inside the rim. If not, get your dettol wipes out. This is a learning experience for mothers and sons. We don't have to tuck anything in when we pee. It's like the blind leading the blind.

And once they've grown tall enough to not sit on the toilet and they see other kids at school or daddy standing to pee, all of a sudden you're in a whole new world of nastiness. Boys, like men, are not able to do more than one thing at a time. So if you make the mistake of, say, calling your son's name while he's standing and peeing, he will turn his entire body to answer you, spraying the floor, walls and anything else unlucky enought to be in his firing line. Then there's the ol' target practice game in which they see if they can aim all along the rim, skirting the edge in a death-defying stunt, except missing and pissing on the floor. And let's not forget the tandem pee. The one in which both boys need to pee with equal urgency and so decide to pee together which quickly turns into a battle of pee against your enemy. Their respective wee flows criss cross and do battle resulting in full blown carnage, a change of clothes and bleach for the entire room.

My dreams of having little boys who neatly pee, return the toilet seat to it's rightful position, flush, wash hands and leave has indeed been flushed away. I've achieved none of the above. What's worse, is that I tend to discover my failings in a very tactile way. Like any mother, I delay having a pee until it's beyond putting off any longer. I then dash to the nearest convenience before the next fight over who has the most cars breaks out, and plonk myself down breathless, only to discover a wet stickiness all over the toilet seat...and floor...and walls. I then have to dettol wipe myself before heading out and reading them the riot act. Again.

But I can't really blame them. I mean girls can only aim down. Boys have a multitude of options open to them. Their willies are small missiles which they can pivot and aim at will. (Will. Willies. Hmmm. Maybe that's why they are so called??) Let's face it girls - if you could, you would, wouldn't you?

The art of resting. Or not.

If you'd told me that I could have a whole weekend to sit on my butt and do absolutely nothing I would have thought it was a dream come true. I NEVER get to sit and do nothing.

However, just because I had an ankle the size of Britain that really should have been kept up in the air, didn't excuse me from my maternal duties. I mean, what are you going to do when your 2 year old yells: 'I need to pee mummy!' while doing his little wiggly bottom dance which means pee is imminent? Husband was mowing the lawn as our newly recruited teenage lawn mower decided that after doing it once he really couldn't be arsed to return. So of course I had to get up and hobble to the loo (about 60 times). And then there were all the fights induced by boredom, which needed to be broken up all while trying to keep my ankle out of the fray.

There was the lack of anything to eat due to no grocery shopping getting done, so at some point I resigned myself to baking a cake just so that the children could have something to look forward to/stick in their gobs to keep quiet for a few moments. Only, I didn't quite think that through, so once the chocolate and sugar kicked in, the fights and bouncing and general mayhem increased ten-fold. Never has bedtime been so appealing.

Also, sitting on your bum all weekend is vastly over-rated. It might not have been had I been able to watch things on tv that I was interested in instead of Cbeebies. Or if I'd been able to read a book or magazine in peace. Or even had I been allowed to surf the interweb on my laptop without clamours for 'my spelling game' (which for any parents out there is a cunning website called http://www.starfall.com/ that is entirely free and teaches children to read albeit with an American accent).

But obviously none of those things happened. So sitting on my bum actually sucked. What's more, it's pretty boring which meant I ate lots of the aforementioned chocolate cake. And not being able to move and burn off any calories means that my arse and thighs have doubled in size, much like my ankle.

This morning I had to attempt to drive a car with my poorly foot so that I could get the boys to nursery. It wasn't good. Pushing the accelerator down was fine. Lifting it back up again wasn't great. So changing gears involved a lot of unnecessary revving. And then there was the swivelling of my foot sideways to get to the break pedal. Not good. Luckily the children aren't yet old enough to commentate on my driving skills although there were several chirps from the back along the lines of 'Go faster mummy. This is boring'. Not from where I was sitting it wasn't.

Anyway, must attempt to get back into work mode although the peace and tranquility of the empty house is strongly suggesting that perhaps I should do what I should have done all weekend. Put my feet up and rest.

Telling lies to little children

Some people think you shouldn't lie to your children. Ever. I just want put on record that I think that idea is just plain bollocks.

Let's start with some of the big lies we all tell our children. For example, there's that fat old man in the north pole who happens to deliver a bazillion presents every Christmas Eve with the help of just a few reindeers. And it's not just one lie. There are all the little lies we have to add to somehow make the story plausible. But there are those sad people who believe it's wrong to lie to children and who completely take the magic of Christmas from their child. Bah humbug to that.

However, there are other day-to-day lies that parents tell. My favourite is: Look! A purple dinosaur just ran past the window (in a bid to distract a yelling child who is refusing to get into their car seat). Or in a similar vein: Wow! I just saw a hawk catch a bird (there's a story behind this which I will share one day) or: Is that a fairy?!

Then there's the cunning ways to get children to eat: if you eat that broccoli, you'll grow taller than your brother (not necessarily a lie but a bit of a long wait to find out). Or: there's absolutely no onion in the sauce. The shiny bits are transparent carrots, which you love. (actually they're onion but I'm not going to pick them out one by one).

There's the 'I really need to go check my emails but need to pretend I'm not working' lie: I'm just going to put on a load of washing...

There's the standard lie when shopping for groceries and the nagging for sweets starts: 'We'll see'. Which means no. (Incidentally, I've been told by a friend - you know who you are - that my use of the word 'groceries' highlights the fact that I am foreign as a normal British person would simply say food. However, I feel groceries is a more all-encompassing term so shall continue to use it and while I'm at it, will say traffic circles instead of roundabouts).

But yesterday I told my 2 year old a bit of a whopper and I'm now reaping the not-so-clever rewards. He has been out of nappies for almost a year but seems to forget this on a daily basis and pees in his pants constantly. It is driving me insane, not to mention what he's doing to our washing powder consumption.

So in an effort to get him to not pee in his pants, I put him in a pair of underpants that has a little monster on the front with sharp teeth. I told him the monster was called Morris. Morris the marshmallow munching monster. And Morris doesn't like getting wet. And if he peed on Morris, Morris would sink his sharp teeth into his willy and give it a bite (obviously mistaking it for a marshmallow). The child - with fairly large eyes at this point - asked what would happen if he didn't pee on Morris. Not being able to think quickly enough, I said that Morris would give his willy a cuddle instead.

Sigh. You know what's coming next.

'Mummy, I haven't peed in my pants so Morris is cuddling my willy'. And this morning: 'Mummy, I'm not going to let Morris bite my willy today.'

Which is all well and good when it's just the two of us having this conversation, but when he relays it to staff at the nursery it's really not great. I fear I might be getting a letter from them soon suggesting that social services might want to come round.