Despatches from a mother who started late (and is running to catch up)

Beanie

Manna

None of us were expecting to find one of Beanie's snacks growing on the slopes of Ben Lawers. You can miss a lot, not knowing where to look. We discovered that when we spent this weekend in Perthshire, (staying at the wonderful Kiltyrie Farmhouse), and tackled one of Scotland's highest mountains.

Fourteen shimmering miles of loch lay far below us in the valley. The sun had broken through low cloud cover, rain was holding off and we could hear rushing water in the brook that gave Ben Lawers its name; (in Gaelic, Beinn Labhair means Hill of the Loud Stream). We loaded Button (aged one) into a carrier on her father's back, strapped on our walking boots and set off up the path towards the summit of the 1,200-metre massif.

Only a mile into the walk I could feel my pelvis begin to ache. Struggling for breath, I stopped walking, sat down with a thud on the path verge, pulled out my water bottle and began to gulp at it.

"Do you know what these are?" said my husband, pointing to a shrub by the path. The shrub in question had small, boat-shaped leaves, and a speckled look. It was growing so close to the ground, it was almost indistinguishable from the heather, saxifrage, and other plants growing nearby. In many years of hillwalking, I'd never even noticed this plant before. Had we stopped further up the mountain, we would have missed it altogether.

I think I would climb a mountain any day, dodgy pelvis or not, for the pleasure of watching Beanie's joy at picking fruit on a hillside, seeing blueberry juice stain her face purple, knowing she will understand that good things do not always come pre-packaged from supermarkets. Sometimes, in fact, they're right there next to us, waiting for us to notice them, even if we need someone else to point them out.

Posted 16 September 2009 19:46 | Number of comments: 6 | Comments

Beanie Button Fun Holidays Out and about

Flowers and Stripes

Have I mentioned before that husband Va-vay writes verse? He wrote me a sonnet for our wedding day, and when he read out the bit about us both being "awake to happiness we dared not dream" as part of his speech he brought tears not just to my already reddened eyes, but also those of many other female guests. The following lines, Flowers and Stripes, are jokier than the wedding poem and were inspired by the arrival of our first daughter, Beanie. The background to the poem is that what with Va-vay being a bloke and everything, he initially found female clothing, especially female clothing for the under-ones, something of a mystery. I found myself giving him some advice and tips for those days when it was him getting Beanie ready, after we had some rather odd combinations of stripey trousers and flowered tops. Of course, if we'd had a 'boy baby' the tables would have been turned, since I have no brothers and went to an all-girls school. Even twenty years later I'm still no great shakes on the nuances of male dress, but as reproductive chance turned out, it was darling Va-vay who had to put up with lectures from me on what constituted stylish dress for the girl babies of 2006. Trinny and Susannah - remember them? - were popular at the time, and it appears from Va-vay's verses that I might have followed their bossy, stern ways too closely when I was advising him against mixing flowery items with stripey ones.

Flowers and Stripes

"No, no, no" said the little Beanie Boo.

"You must never dress me up in flowers and stripes.

You can dress me up in pink,

You can dress me up in blue,

You can take me to the park,

You can take me to the zoo,

You can put me in a rocket

And send me to the moon.

But....

Never, never, never," said the little Beanie Boo.

"You must never dress me up in flowers and stripes!"

Posted 02 June 2009 13:40 | Number of comments: 10 | Comments

Beanie Fun Husband

Sometimes

Elder daughter Beanie is in the kitchen, toying with the pink plastic plate containing her supper. It's bananas, broken rice cakes and raisins tonight. Her choice. She glances down to where I am knelt on the kitchen floor, scooping up old rice cakes, encrusted porridge and moulted hairs.

"I love you, Mummy."

I wipe sweat from my face, push the hair out of my eyes and smile at her.

"I love you, Beanie."

She looks thoughtful for a second.

"Actually," (a favourite new word of the moment, signalling she is about to say something she knows I will not like) "Actually, sometimes I love you." She frowns. "And sometimes I don't." My heart sinks, part of it plummeting downwards towards my stomach.

Beanie now looks at me expectantly, as if waiting for me to provide an explanation of these difficult emotions. I'm not sure what to say. I put down the cleaning cloth and rifle through my memory for inspiration.

"You see, Beanie, when two people love each other and are close to each other, like we are, it's normal to have disagreements. Times when you argue or don't get on so well. That's part of loving someone. It's normal to get annoyed with each other, it's real, it doesn't mean you don't love them. The love is always there. You know like in your book?"

She looks thoughtful, clambers down from her turquoise booster seat and walks over to the other side of the kitchen, to her sticker board. It is festooned with 'trophies' - stickers from home and nursery given for good behaviour. She inspects the board, selects a sticker and unpeels it from the paper with painstaking care, worried in case she tears it.

She walks back to where I am sitting, having given up on floor cleaning, takes the sticker and presses it to the middle of my chest.

"There you go, Mummy."

I peer down at my chest.

Upside down, I can see the sticker has writing on it.

I look more closely. I can make out two words.

It reads: "Well done."

Posted 25 May 2009 09:44 | Number of comments: 11 | Comments

Beanie

Dawn raid

A small person materialised in our bedroom this morning. Out of nowhere. Like she'd come via Transporter. Friends had warned this might happen, and I have been half-expecting a matudinal visit for weeks. Elder daughter Beanie has spent many hours rattling the large, round door handle to her room in hope of early-morning release. It was still a shock when a voice broke into my dreams: "I need to go to the toilet, mummy. I really do need to go to the toilet. I really do!"

Posted 15 May 2009 12:29 | Number of comments: 5 | Comments

Beanie