Exhausting Options

1.  Two Princes

2.  King Canute

3.  Sleeping Beauty

Glory, Glory.  Son 1 aged 5y 10m and Son 2 aged 2y 10m did not go wandering about The House yesterday evening, they both slept all night and they stayed in their own beds all night.  Son 2 drifted upstairs at about 0615 and Son 1 turned up twenty minutes later but yabba dabba doooo.  So. The message is pretty clear. Over-exercise them - like yesterday for example, with an hour and a half in a swimming pool, and an hour’s play at  a friend’s.  The morning summer sunshine streamed in, and I suggested to Son 1 that as Wonder Nanny had the afternoon off, we should go to the Beach and then tidy up when we got home. He wasn’t happy.  But I liked the idea of another peaceful evening and night. They can have a quiet day tomorrow, I thought, when The Man is back to help with any midnight meandering. 

We went to the Beach By The Garden, and looked for somewhere to spread out and pitch the tent.  I saw a seven-year-old we know, and his mother, one of our Turkey Casserole friends, sitting on a natty beach chair, blanket laid out beside her, big thick novel and surfboard at her feet.  The Turkey Casserole 2009  We invaded. The seven year old and his friend wanted to look after Son 2… Son 1 wanted them to take notice of him and yelped and jumped around like a puppy. They all ran off to the rockpools, and after chatting to TC friend, I went after them, planning to just sit on a rock and drink coffee from my flask.  I picked a little rockpool, shallow, no seaweed and self-contained so any critturs couldn’t get away. ”Son 1! There’s a fish here if you want to catch it!” All four arrived.  My rockpool was well-stocked, but most of the fish and shrimps and crabs escaped, because every time I saw something, eight feet stomped over, eight hands splashed and three fishing nets swirled. Son 2 just dropped rocks in from on high.  We got a couple of hermit crabs, including one comically big one and a couple of small-ish crabs.  Son 1 ached to catch something, but the bigger boys couldn’t help piling in.  Son 2 cried for his lunch, and afterwards Son 1 wanted to go body-boarding. I blew up Son 2’s inflatable surfboard, and we all went down to the water. Son 1 paddled off with the two other boys, and Son 2 lay on his surfboard, drifting with the tide, laughing and laughing as he bobbed about. He was a delight.  Then he wanted to dig, so I fetched the spades and dug him a little pool in the channels of water from the rocks into the sea. Then I built it up round the edges… then I blocked a couple of the streams so that the water would fill up the pool… then it started breaching the sides because it was too full and we had to quickly fill in the cracks…  Son 1 and seven-year-old friend arrived and took to the job with gusto.  We soon had a pretty big main pool, and a little one further along where we’d dug out the aggregate to shore up our levees. Son 2’s teeth started chattering and he complained he was cold, so we went up to the tent to warm him up. When we looked back ten minutes later, Son 1 had five or six other children, plus supervising adults, involved in the swimming pool maintenance. In the end the incoming tide swamped it. “I’m very sorry Mummy. I tried and tried and so did lots of other people, but we couldn’t stop the sea coming in.”

We had a brilliant afternoon. Another family joined Turkey Casserole Mum.  Many bags of sweets were handed round, and Son 1 and Son 2 couldn’t believe their eyes.  All that Haribo meant I couldn’t get them interested in the strawberries and pomegranate seeds I’d packed for them. Son 2 belted out “JINGLE BELLS, JINGLE BELLS, BATMAN SMELLS AWAY. AUNTIE TILLY LOST HER WILLY ON THE MOTORWAY, HEY” to a rapturous reception from the other mums and older children.  So he did it again, much louder, still laughing. And again and again. You win some, you lose some. I started to pack up, and the boys’ behaviour nose-dived… but it was nearly 5pm when they usually eat, so they were knackered, hungry and high on sugar. A gorgeous combo. It’s a mile drive from The Beach to The House, but they both fell asleep. They’ve also both been comatose this evening, so the plan has succeeded. However.  I am so tired I can barely sit up.  I ache all over.  My stomach feels like it’s been punched in several places. The deepest irony is that I’ve now made myself so tired that I  wouldn’t wake up if both boys bounced onto my bed on pogo sticks.

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