The Morning that Was

My day was one out of the box. It began at, say, 10:00 p.m. the night before, or perhaps, 1:00 a.m., or perhaps 4:00 a.m. – I’m not sure anymore where the cut-off lies. Perhaps you could ask my 3 month old baby who decided to have a series of midnight feasts in quick succession. (Think: Lord of the Rings – breakfast, second breakfast, elevenses…. My child is a hobbit.) Anyway, the day did happen, even if it was a seamless continuation of the one before. My baby and I were joined by my two-year old at around 5:00 am, so we could all enjoy the sunrise together. Pity no-one told Master Two that sunrise doesn’t happen until around 9:00 at the moment. (I like the way I said ‘joined’ back there, so calmly. What I really meant was, Master Two rushed to his door when he heard the baby crying at 5:00 a.m., and opened it, howling, ‘IS IT TIME TO GET UP? I’D LIKE SOME LUNCH!!’ Can I truly describe just how deep a heart can sink?’)
So there we all were, squashed into our little dining room, while I tried to keep the household quiet for at least another hour so my husband could get a bit more sleep. I didn’t really see why all of us had to greet the morning so brutally. The dialogue went like this:
Mum: (brightly)Right, it’s time for breakfast.
Master Two: eeeeuuuugheeeeoooghhhh
Mum: (with even more feigned brightness): Please get into your chair and we’ll have some porridge.
Master Two: I don’t like porridge.
Mum: Ok, well, no breakfast for you.
Master Two: I’D LIKE SOME PORRIDGE
Mum: What do you say?
Master Two: (ominous silence)
Mum: (doggedly) What do you say?
Mum: (grimly) What do you say?
Mum: (desperately) WHAT DO YOU SAY?
Master Two: (in the tiniest, smallest, most miniscule voice) Please
Mum: (with tangible relief) Thank you! Right. Here comes the porridge.
Master Two: I’m sorry Mum was noisy.

And so it goes. We were all over being out of bed and we hadn’t even had breakfast yet.
Well, the breakfast was eaten, the toast toppings were chosen, chosen again, denied, requested, received, and duly smeared on face, and it was time for baths. (We have no shower in this house, and instead we have a somewhat monastic, ascetic morning ritual of shallow baths with a plastic yellow bucket thrown over our heads to wash hair. It was novel for the first 2 weeks.) Still attempting to keep the house quiet, I dumped a pile of Lego in the bath, dumped the child in the bath with the Lego, and sat on the (closed!) toilet lid feeding the baby. My husband opened the bathroom door and gazed quizzically, in his morning glory, at the scene of domestic bliss that awaited him. ‘I wanted to let you sleep longer’, I explained. ‘Ah’, he said. ‘Thanks.’

………………………

Husband off to work, trailing clouds of glory (“Don’t go, Dad! Stay and build a helicopter….Bye Dad….See Dad? See Dad? See Dad? See Dad? See Dad? See Dad? See Dad? See Dad? See Dad? See Dad? See Dad? See Dad?)
……………………..
Mid-morning.The baby roared. The toddler roared. I considered roaring but decided that of the three of us, I was probably the grown-up here. The situation was degenerating. I briefly considered phoning a friend and describing just how terrible everything was. Oh, no! No, I was coping well. The phone rang. I left the room, with howling in my wake.
‘Hello?’
‘Hi! How are you?’
‘Oh, fine!’
And so it goes.
…………………..

This day, of all days, the joiner was coming to pull up the floorboards in two of our rooms – the baby’s, and the toddler’s – to investigate the chronic damp and mould problem (I know, don’t ask). He was coming at 10:00. At two minutes to ten, I was desperately rocking the still howling baby, willing those little eyes to close. At 30 seconds past ten, he abruptly closed his eyes and went to sleep, just as the joiner was coming down the path!
Hurrah! The joiner opened the door to our tranquil scene of domestic bliss. Hello, I smiled, hastily rubbing the baby sick into my jersey.
I had forgotten Master Two. Furthermore, I had not noticed that he had taken his trousers off while I wasn’t looking. ‘Hello, man’, he beamed, trouser-less (though not pantless, thankfully), with cracker crumbs stuck to his chubby cheeks. ‘I am having a picnic with chocolates and cakes and sausages and Meat.’
‘Ah’, said the joiner, looking helplessly at me for guidance. ‘Er…that’s nice.’
‘She’s got a good appetite then, eh?’ he said to me, grinning.
I had to restrain the ridiculous urge to tell him that my child ate a healthy diet and was not, in fact, stuffing his face with such goodies.
Oh, and that she was a he. Obviously time for a haircut.

……………………
The last scene from our epic morning of creative and educational activities that I will subject you to is the one where the joiner proceeded to pull up the carpet and saw into the floorboards with a huge electric saw-thing that emitted a kind of high-decibel screeching whine. The resulting smoke also set off the fire alarms, which added their own shrill harmony to proceedings – sort of ‘baby-waking machine in stereo’. Perhaps there’s a market somewhere. The three of us hid in the kitchen, willing the man to finish soon, while we watched far too many episodes of Pingu, the mindless plasticine penguin who communicates with a sort of Tele-tubbies meets Morse code nasal honk, linguistically indefinable. I assuaged my maternal guilt with the reassuring scream of the saw in the background, telling me that I had no choice.
And that, friends, was our morning. I shall leave the afternoon’s capers until you, and we, are sufficiently recovered.