Tag Archives: childhood

A Train to Somewhere Special…

Posted in parenting by

We’re going on da train Mammy.”

“Are we really?”

I do enjoy how much of a novelty the concept of a train is for my kids. Mini-Me will probably GET that ticket for the Hogwarts Express before we see trains in Donegal in fairness.


“Come on Mammy. Get on!”
“Where are we going?” Mammy asks.
“Somewhere special” answers my wee conductor.

The closest my Donegal Babies will get to a train is the Hogwarts Express


She’s turned the sofa into a train, using cushions to create compartments.
Quite frankly, I’m all for any game that involves Mammy getting to sit her arse on the sofa for a bit.

As I grab my cuppa and walk towards the sofa, sorry train, she is putting the passengers into their “carriages”.

“You sit in here Chase, aside Marshall.”

Aw.

She turns to the ponies… “You guys go in here togever.”

She puts two members of a Sylvanian Family of hedgehogs into the last carriage. “You girls go in here…”

I’m about to ask where exactly Mammy is supposed to go, seeing as that all the carriages are now taken by fluffy bottoms.

“Why don’t you put them in beside your PawPatrol…(sorry POP a Troll)… so I can sit in that carriage I ask.”

“Because of Cowona viwis…”

“Sorry what now?”

“COWONA VIWIS… Only bruvers and sisters can be togever Mammy. We can’t mix them up…”

Fuck.

“You sit here.” I plonk myself at the end of the sofa train and watch her jump on the other end and start to “drive” the train, choochoo sound effects and all.

And while she is off in her imagination, on her way to ‘somewhere special’, I sit at the back, a little bit broken that no matter how much I’ve tried to normalise and downplay the effect of this shitstorm on my wee angel, the impact of it and the reality of it is there in front of me, as plain as a big feckin train.

Fuck you very much Corona Virus.

I never did find out where the ‘somewhere special’ was… I suppose I was already there.

Play It Again Mam…

Posted in Being Mammy, Uncategorized by

We don‘t stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing. George Bernard Shaw

Over the past 4 months, playing has changed.

Our kids went from playing every day with a variety of other kids, enjoying all sorts of games and having all sorts of fun, to playing at home with the same person or people.

On a typical day, my eldest daughter would have gone from playing with the bus kids, to playing with her classmates in the classroom, to playing with other kids in the playground, to playing with whoever was in afterschool, to playing with her sister at home.

On other days, add in the kids she played with at her drama/gymnastics/dance class and maybe even a play with cousins at the weekend…

It was Play Central really.

Rediscovering the simple pleasures…

But isn’t that what childhood IS? Learning to make sense of the world through play and interaction?

The novelty of playing at home was great for a few weeks. And of course, my girls were so lucky to have each other. For every scrap or fight, there were hours of games and being best buddies. It helped.

It helped both them and us.

They spent most of lockdown outside in the garden. Swings, huts, dens, make believe adventures, talking to the cows in the field… I watched them living my 80s childhood, (with the added bonus of more than 4 TV channels and Disney Plus in the evening.)

I did have to stock up on lego and playdoh and crayons after about 7 weeks… but I didn’t mind. I like that they played so much with these.

It was lovely mostly. And the reality that our previously far-too-busy lives had been denying them such simple pleasures was not lost on me.

But they, like ALL children, got to the point where they missed their wee friends. Mini-Me took part in maybe five Wattsapp calls over the few months we were at home. She was so excited by them and so glad to see her wee friends, but in the final few weeks, didn’t really want to take part.

On the last call she had with one of her wee pals, she was so quiet that we thought the call had ended. When her Daddy looked into the room, she was sitting at her desk, colouring, with the phone set up beside her. Her friend was playing with her dolls on the screen. They weren’t really talking.

When Himself asked what they were doing, she looked at him as if he were stupid and answered, “We’re playing together.”

Simple. They aren’t grown ups who thrive on conversation and empathy. They aren’t teenagers who need laughs and craic and affirmation. They don’t yet know that they need conversation or companionship.

They simply wanted to play. Together.

That broke us a wee bit if I’m honest.

All she wanted to was to play alongside her friend. So when last week, we were able to let her meet said friend for a play in the park, I’m not sure who was more excited, her or me.

The playpark was open. Both of us Mammies looked at each other, trepidation about whether to let them in on both of our faces. We were afraid. The kids were not. We both had hand sanitizer with us and figured they deserved to have fun, so they ran and down we calmed.

We sat watching them and listening to the sound that I never really listened to before; The sound of children playing; of running and laughter and squeals of delight and roars of fun. We listened to parents calling out to ‘be careful’ or to ‘stop that’. We listened to the sound of playing.

And we both agreed that it was just lovely. And that there are some things that can’t be done on a wattsapp call.

As the sun finally sets on lockdown…

As the sun sets on the “lockdown”, our children will have to learn many things over the next few months. They’ll need to learn about social distancing, and how to behave in certain situations, about hygiene and danger and how to go to places with new procedures in place. But they’re faster learners that we adults are.

And one thing they won’t need to learn again, is how to play.

They are heroes and play is their superpower…

You is My Baby

Posted in Being Mammy, Uncategorized by
57811507_2261470637254140_417131304006451200_o.jpg

You is three.
You is clever.
You is strong.
You is beautiful.
You is brave.
You is kind.
You is sensitive.
You is stubborn.
You is headstrong.
You is frightening.
You is craycray.
You is scary.
You is manipulative.
You is powerful.
You is exhausting.
You is expensive.
You is strong … strangely strong.
You is hilarious.
You is cute.
You is a monster…


But you is OUR monster.

You is Me and your Daddy combined and we have no one to blame but ourselves. 😂😂

We is exasperated and we is proud and we is always behind you and your glittery wee wellies.

Go Baby, go.
You’ve got a world to change.

 

I am Scheme in the Sunshine Mum

Posted in children, toddlers by

Scheming, in the Donegal dictionary, can also mean to intentionally avoid going to school.
Playing truant, mitching, scheming…take your pick.
Last Monday.  I schemed school.
Well, technically, Mini-Me schemed school.

But honestly Teacher, it was my idea.

I didn’t even have to open the curtains at 7am to know that the sun was splitting the rocks in that wonderful way that suggests that today was going to be a scorcher.  It may only be March, but the little weather-predicting farmer in me, just knew that it was going to be fantastic.

I looked at the clock.  I looked at the clothes I’d laid out for her the previous night.  I looked at the blue sky and I knew before I’d even allowed the thought to articulate in my mind, that the blue sky was the only one of the these things that mattered.

My girl was not going to school today.  She was going to scheme.  With me.
We were going on an adventure.

I let her dress herself in whatever the heck she liked.  She chose her favourite dress-up dress; lilac and sparkly and hideously ‘Little Miss’ Pageanty, blue leggings, her gold glittery welly-boots and a multi-coloured hand-knit cardigan that we usually keep for shopping trips.

She added the final touch…a huge pink flower headband and Peppa Pig hat..and announced “Now, I’m perfect!”
And she was indeed perfect.

image

We wrapped the Princess into her pram, sloshed on some suncream and packed a “picmic” of apple juice and Gingernut biscuits.
And off we went on our adventure.

We’re blessed to live in the absolute sticks…  I mean, if you’re looking for our house, you must first find the “back arse of nowhere” and take the third left.  We’re on top of that hill past the house with the fancy stonework.  If you start going down hill again, you’ve gone too far.
Sally SatNav would need three bottles of wine to find us.

It’s Heavenly.  We live on the family farm, a full field away from where I grew up.  So today, I decided it was about time I took my girls on a trip through my childhood haunts.
We wandered only a mile down the road and back, but we went so much further than that.

image

We went back to the 1980’s.
Mini-Me saw the tree in the hedgerow that Mammy used to climb with my best friend Roald Dahl, which no longer has the full covering of foliage that used to hide me from my sister and brother.  (A Neighbour broke my heart when I was 14 by getting too happy with the hedge cutter.  It was never the same and my hidden reading den was destroyed.  For the record, I haven’t forgiven him yet.  I’m looking at you Mr. Bellybutton.)

We stood in the deep mud at the gate to the potato field where we used to spend a fortnight “scheming” each Harvest. (“Slave labour” some might say, but what memories we have.  I swear that there is no better taste than jam and clay sandwiches with tea in a plastic flask cup.)

image

We looked at the fields where we used to tie the long grass together and run through it, playing ‘Trippies’.

We found a magic stream… a newly dug drain, but humongously exciting.  it required the immediate throwing in of twigs.

image

I showed her the gate the the Fairy Kingdom which lies at the border between Dad’s farm and the next.  The old gate has been lying in that spot, above a busy babbling stream, for over 30 years.  It’s rusted, ruined and utterly convincing as an enchanted gate.  It only opens for Fairies in the moonlight…of course.

image

We saw the enchanted tree in the middle of the neighbour’s field.  That’s where Pixie Hollow is…obviously.

We saw the “Jungles”; the messy, overgrown batch of whin bushes where my siblings and cousins and I had the most spectacular adventures as children.

And to top it off, as we munched our bickies and drank our juice, Mini-me realised that we were surrounded by glimmering fairies! (Midges…but hey!)
Oh the excitement.

When we returned home, she was buzzing from the fresh air and the fun.  I was buzzing from the nostalgia and from the realisation that while it may not be quite as safe as it was when we were children, my girls will have the same opportunities for imagination and explorations as I did.
They’ll play in fields.  They’ll get wellies stuck in mud.  They’ll have adventures in jungles of whin bushes and they’ll hide up trees with their favourite books.
And where my Mum used to sound the car horn as our signal to haul our behinds back to reality for bedtime, I’ll probably just text them to come home.  Because times have changed.

But what hasn’t changed is the fact that sometimes, you have to simply turn away from routine and convention and go have fun.
And you can’t measure, grade or assess how much a child can learn from simply going on a walk outside with Mum or Dad.

So for one day only, I was Scheme in the Sunshine Mum. (and it was awesome!) 🙂

Follow S-Mum on Facebook
https://m.facebook.com/Secretsofsmum/