The unthinkable has happened at last. It was bound to, I suppose. Lovely husband absent-mindedly asked me a question, and called me “Mummy”. Even though contextually the children where both there and theoretically he could have just been calling me that for their benefit, it was just wrong, and he knew it. Before I’d even had time to formulate my witty-yet-cutting retort, he was already apologising profusely. *sigh*

I have to make a concerted effort to introduce myself by my name first, rather than as “Hugo’s mum” at preschool and other places to the parents of his peers.

For a little while now that the whole Mummy thing is starting tohas started feel suffocating. Not in a “walk out the door and never return” way, but I feel like I need something else. That until I actually have to get organised, I never will be. It’s obviously not going to happen overnight, and there’s almost no chance of me studying or working next year, but I am starting to think about what else I want to do with my life. I think it’s partly because I’m just sick of dealing with the “Is Daddy coming home tonight?” aspect combined with Sophie growing up and knowing that she’s really not a baby anymore, and there are no more babies on the horizon, so maybe, just maybe, I can start to spare some of my remaining mental capacity to something else.

Over the past six months I’ve become quite lazy with dinner time. What started as an occasional rug-picnic in the lounge-room gradually became dinner in front of the television more often than not, so we’ve gone back to strict “dinner at the table, no television, no toys, no wandering around” rules. Sophia is big enough now to sit at the table with Hugo but she just doesn’t sit still for a minute. So an average meal time looks something like this:

Hugo sits in his seat, eating miniscule mouthfuls and chewing each one eleventy billion times, to make sure he doesn’t accidently ingest something vaguely resembling a vegetable, other than the two pieces of vegetable I insist he eats, on threat of no fruit after dinner, which he gags on for ten minutes and eventually swallows down with half a cup of milk.

Sophia takes a gargantuan mouthful then jumps up and does circuits of the kitchen/dining room, picking things up and putting them down, studiously ignoring my commands to “Sit Down and Eat Your Dinner!”. I physically replace her in her chair, she stands up on her chair, takes another enormous mouthful, I repeat verbal command, and so on, ad nauseum. And I do mean nauseum.

My eyelid starts to tic. I bring out the big guns. “If. You. Don’t. Sit. And. Eat. Your. Dinner. You. Will. Go. To. Bed. HUNGRY”.

Silence … compliance? But then the first giggle escapes, it might be Hugo but it’s usually Sophie, and within microseconds they are both in hysterics LAUGHING AT ME. Eyelid tic rapidly become full facial twitch.

Any wonder my brain is custard some days?