Being Superheroes

Recently I keep coming across things that make out parents are in fact superheroes. Juggling family life with with long hours of work as well as raising children and spending hours driving around from club to club dropping off and picking up from their after school obligations. Heroes with invisible capes. With no ability to fly but with powers to juggle and organise and throw a party together in an instant and, mostly, to do it all without much sleep.

It got me wondering about the kind of superheroes we have in our little family of 3. Then it came to me. We would be the Avengers. It’s obvious when you think about it. Really.

First, The Other Half. With his assertion first thing in the morning of “YOU’VE GOT ONE MINUTE!!!” to get us all out of the door for work on time he would have the entire street, understandably, mistakenly believing we are all part of a critical world saving mission. And sporting his one red eye from “a suspected scratch on the cornea” he is only an eye patch and long leather jacket away (oh, and bald head) from being Nick Fury. The leader of the Avengers.

Next you have the toddler. Little Z. With his ever growing defiance and fear of nothing he could only be Tony Stark / Iron Man. His stunts include repeatedly trying to jump off anything with a good height and any kind of berating induces either a fit of toddler anger or just determination to do it again. He prefers not to wear the iron man suit though. Opting instead to do all his own stunts as Tony Stark.

(I know this post is about parent superheroes but he is Tony Stark. He doesn’t care about rules).

And finally me. With my powers of shouting at the other half and stomping around grumpily at everyone over the last week (“You said you’d clean the bathroom!!!”), I instantly rule myself out of being the black widow. Damn. With my stomping, phantom increasing blood pressure, and inability to touch my toes, I fit one of the other Avengers to a tee…

Our poor neighbours.

Maybe next week we will be less superhero and more 1900s silent movie.

(All photo credits to IMDB)

Advertisement

Foodie Friday

We did something out of the ordinary for us this evening. We decided to be spontaneous and head straight to dinner at a grill place not too far from us. Slightly naughty considering it was so close to little Zs bedtime but we’re not often spontaneous like that so thought may as we enjoy it.

Little Z was mostly well behaved until he knocked over quite a lot of pepper from the pepper shaker that… Umm…I gave him to play with for a while. Im pretty sure thats why he kept sneezing so much for a bit. And the place didn’t have highchairs! So taking turns to balance a toddler on laps was a bit of a challenge.

But the food was verrrrrrry nice….particularly the Texas Chicken and chips…

Dearest 20 Month Old

Hello My Little Man,

I actually had to count how old you were before writing this post because I’m still very much in denial and telling everyone you are “One and a Half”. Can you believe you’ll be 2 years old in 4 months time?!

It’s been a completely mad month for us all. Both your Daddy and I have been fasting all month and then it was eid. I have to admit I was worried how I’d cope now that you run like the wind and play all day (on top of work) but it wasn’t too bad! You’ve loved trying new foods and we’ve discovered you actually like spicy things like kebabs and Bombay mix!

You’re now counting to 10 and your favourite numbers are “WEWEN!” (7) and “TEN!!” and over the last couple of weeks you’ve turned into a little parrot repeating everything, even stuff you’re not meant to. Umm.. Like “Oh Gok!” (Oh God).

This month you’ve also discovered your love of slides. But you’d rather climb up them till you’re almost at the top. Then you fling yourself back down on your belly and come sliding down. Like a cross between a toddler stunt man and James Bond. I, on the other hand, have honed my panicked shrieks of “Noooo!” quite well. When it’s not the slide you’re climbing it’s the sofa, the radiator or the baby gate. You did try to climb up the living room door once but settled for hanging off the door handles. Its kind of broken now. I’m convinced that one day we’ll find you scaling the house or trying to shimmy up the drain pipe just so you have something to climb!

You still absolutely love running and you do it with utter commitment. Like a true athlete you concentrate on your run and only your run. No looking right or left. In your case you don’t even look forward. The other day in Trafford centre was interesting when you kept running straight into people’s legs. That didn’t put you off though. Till you wanted a bit of a break of course and wanted Daddy to carry you.

One of the funniest things you’ve learnt this month is how to “freeze” during the “Show Me Show Me your groovy moves” dance. You wiggle your bum and then suddenly freeze at the right time with your hands by your face and mouth wide open. Then you clap with delight once it’s over. I may be guilty of rewinding it multiple times just to watch you keep doing it.

And we finally went to see In the Night Garden!! It was absolutely brilliant. You joined in with every dance and clapped at everything. You even managed to sit still through at least half of it which was really impressive. You were in complete awe when we met Iggle Piggle afterwards and, whilst you wouldn’t hug him, you kept wanting to touch him and play with him. I was in complete awe too and it was almost like meeting Tom Cruise all those many years ago. Almost.

Until next time baby… Mmmmwaaah!

11 Months… And Counting!

Hello My Cheeky Little Monkey

And so it is, you are 11 months old. How the hell did that happen? Actually, I’m going to be saying that every months aren’t I?

So it FINALLY happened!! You have teeth. TWO of them! I wrote this last month whining about how you had 0 and then it suddenly just came out of the blue the next week. I’d been looking out for your top two teeth for so long it took me totally by surprise when you bit me one day and I realised one had popped up on your bottom gum. Typical!

So what else has been happening?

Well, you are currently screaming “TaaaaaTaaaaa” repeatedly. You’ve been doing it for days and days and yesterday I went to bed with it echoing in my head!

You’re also learning the art of efficiency. So, somedays, instead of picking things up and putting them in your mouth you worked out it would be far easier to place your mouth directly onto the food. I’ve also caught you doing the same thing with your milk bottle. Why place it to your mouth when you can lift your entire body and place your mouth over the bottle? Hmmm.

The weather forecast excites you to bits. Completely on par with Iggle Piggle. I just don’t get it, but you’ll shout happily and even clap through the while thing. You love it do much we’ve recorded one so you can watch it before you go to bed.

And you know that baby boy down the road, the one that can do everything? You met him for the first time the other day and instantly held your hand out to touch his face (you like doing that!). He was a bit shy and frowned back. I don’t think he felt ready to have his face scratched by you just yet. But I’m sure it’ll come, in time. He is very cute, very round and his eyes light up whenever he sees a bird.

We’ve also started planning your first birthday party! Two of them. When I say planning, I mean I keep texting your daddy with various “menus” and “what do you think if?” type things. He usually replies with “can we not just buy lots of pizza?”. It’s still a work in progress but I’ll definitely buy balloons because I know you love them.

I better go, you’re trying to repeatedly share your dummy with me. Its a lovely thought but tis a bit gross baby.

So, until next time. Mmwah!!

Emerging from the Baby Fog

I’ve recently noticed a few things that have made me believe I may be finally emerging from the baby fog. I mean, for one thing, I am starting to remember exactly what i was talking about 30 seconds previously. This is just amazing. A massive achievement for me. I was getting so sick of forgetting what I was talking about midway through a sentence that I was starting to give up finishing a conversation. I’m not sure my hubby actually noticed me say “oh, forget it!” countless times. But still. After the 10th time of forgetting what the hell you were talking about you kind of get a bit frustrated. As well as that, I think I *may* be finishing my time on the “emotional baby roller coaster of those first few months”. This bodes well for my husbands sanity and his bald patch. The poor guy has been at the receiving end of emotional outbursts for a few months now, as well as a lot of “I don’t know why I’m crying!”. I went through a phase of crying at everything. And I mean everything. Even hypothetical scenarios like “what will I do when my cousin gets married (to the guy she’s just started dating) and moves away and I won’t see her regularly!”. Or when I cried my eyes out when the vampire with the terrible British accent died after two episodes on Vampire Diaires. That was a bad one, from what I remember.

These little self discoveries clicked to me when I went round wedding dress shopping with my cousin last weekend. I watched her try on about 12 wedding dresses and I didn’t cry once! I’m hoping this proves my time on the emotional roller coaster is coming to an end. Now, don’t get me wrong. I think I am still a lot more emotional than I was before the baby. But I’m probably on the emotional tea cups now (I hope). A bit of nausea, a bit of boredom and a whole lot of spinning, but it makes a nice change from the extreme highs and lows of that emotional roller-coaster.

Mind you, a couple of strange things have happened recently. Last week I was trying to get to the cupboard under the stairs and went to step over the very visible laptop wire. Somehow, even with it in full view. I misjudged my footing, whilst looking at the wire, tripped over it and went flying solidly into the floorboards, banging my knee in the process.

Slightly worse still, and I’m still not sure how this happened, but, during our hunt for a wedding dress trip, I happened to be standing patiently outside the changing rooms waiting for my cousin to try on dress number 3. As I aimlessly glanced around the shop floor I noticed a woman who looked like she was focussed on finding something in particular. She looked familiar but I couldn’t put my finger on who she was. In her focussed hunting she wandered over to where I was standing, only noticing all the products on the shelves. Then I gasped with a sudden realisation, grabbed BOTH (yes, both) her hands and bellowed an emphatic “Hello!!!”. She was clearly terrified at being grabbed and in that same split second, jumped out of her skin and tried to save herself. She then realised who I was, raised her hand instantly to her chest, and relaxed. Slightly. She was my cousins Mother-In-Law-to-be. We’ve only ever met once before and the very excitable greeting was not one she looked that comfortable with. She was very pleasant for someone whose blood pressure had probably gone through the roof and as we were talking I felt more and more mortified at what I’d just done. She made her escape quite quickly and (thankfully) finished with “see you at the wedding”. Phew.

This better not be a new phase.