Letters to my children

Mother of two

Seems a strange thing sometimes, but now you are both so big - like actual people rather than toddlers - I finally feel like a mother of two. Two children that fill my house with so much NOISE and laughing and running. Some days, pulling up outside the house after work, trying to empty my head of decisions and power points and skinny lattes, I switch the engine off and sit, just for a moment, in complete silence. It seems strange, like a ringing in my ears. This is my decompression chamber, just for a few seconds there is nothing. Then a pull, irresistible, to the front door - the key in the lock, and, if I'm lucky, a shout and running feet to meet me and I'm pulled back into the noise of you both again. Imi, you are three and very pleased about it. You've stretched, grown into a big girl. Your hair is growing darker and slightly straighter, and your body grows alternately out and up.. We're currently in an 'out' phase and you are round and cuddly, solid and substantial. When you hug me you cling on tightly, wrapping your arms round my neck and pushing your face into my neck. I breathe you in.

Rafferty, you are five and a schoolboy. A skinny little thing, with knees bigger than your thighs and big feet. You love Lego, building things, shooting games, play fights and shouting. Stories about animals often make you cry, there are film endings we have to avoid because the happy music at the end makes you well-up, you're full of emotion, and sometimes it spills out in ways you're not quite in control of. I love how much you feel. I watched you this evening, building a Lego dinosaur, and the concentration on your face, and wondered at the different versions of you that fill my house with noise. I can live without the ringing in my ears for this.

Big boy. Big school.

Strangely, you're suddenly 4, and so big. Tomorrow you start school. I don't know how to write about how fast those 4 years went without sounding so cliched.. I can't believe it. How did you get to be so big? Reading back through here I remember the two of us floating in the sea in Italy before Imi was born, I remember you toddling through the garden with a shovel the size of your arm to 'do digging', making pizza with daddy in the kitchen in an apron that reached your toes. Looking back through the photos I see your four year old face now in your baby photos, but it's hard to imagine any further ahead. You tried your uniform on the other day and seemed a mixture of proud and embarrassed, the self-consciousness that you'll be stuck with for a while taking over as we told you how great you looked. You have some real fears and some imaginary. For a long time you were scared of the thought of Big School, and even just looking at your face I could feel your anxiety at the unknown. But with the self-consciousness and the awareness of your feelings comes the ability to manipulate others, and you have become quite adept at playing that game, safe in the knowledge that clinging to nonna and telling her you're scared will guarantee your hand is held for longer, and you might even get an extra biscuit.. I can still read you well though, there is a glint in your eye and a tiny and immediately smothered smile when you exaggerate something that gives you away straight away. There is a kind of knowing that I have with you that I've not felt before. I know you completely. A glance at your face will tell me exactly how you're really feeling, I feel it, whatever it is, at the same time as you. It's not a rational thought process, it goes straight underneath the skin. I wonder if this is because you're still open and transparent, and the gradual awareness and positioning of yourself in the social world will mean you build up layers that I can't feel through. I hope not for a while. For now I have to concentrate on my own feelings as you sleep, tangled in your duvet and surrounded by books, preparing myself for your first day at school. It feels like the next chapter, or at least the turning of a page, and I'm not sure I'm entirely ready.. I feel I need a little while longer to think about it. I won't get that though - tomorrow will rush towards me as quickly as it always does, and you will wake up excited and scared, and I will dress you in your uniform and swallow the lump in my throat and you will hold my hand as we walk to school and I will try to freeze it in time like I always do, and try to remember the feel of your hand in my hand and the size of it, and we will get to the school gate and one of us will probably cry.

Autumn leaves

My daugher is two. This amazes me every day. The day before your birthday I thought of you and the tiny person you were about to become two years ago. I thought of the morning sitting on the sofa, resigned to you not arriving, and then the sudden mad rush of you - with us in time for lunch. You were squalling and cross, like a small rain cloud. Not placid like your brother, you took the world head-on, straight away. You were either furiously angry or a smiling chubby ball - there was no mood inbetween. I can't really remember the size of you now, although we dressed your doll in some of your cast-offs recently, and I held the dressed doll and wondered at the smallness.

I remember taking you to Hong Kong with your brother, for Uncle Mark's wedding - and how hugely angry you were at 6 weeks because your world had changed and you couldn't understand how. Time moved differently, and the air felt strange, and you were hungry. And tired. And angry. Funny girl. I knew then that you would need structure, and order and to understand your world. I hope for your sake you are not too much like me and you will be satisifed with just knowing it instead of trying to change it. There, surely, is a recipe for happiness that I would like to pass on to you - be happy just to know your world. Not to change it too much.

What else shall I bequeath you - now you are two? I would like you to keep some of your hunger always, to push yourself towards something, whatever it is. Pottery, brain surgery, plumbing... I don't mind what - just something. I want you to want. I would like you to throw yourself fully into every experience that comes your way, to love with wild and reckless abandon. I don't think there will be any difficulty for you there. I would like you to cry whenever you want to, and not to worry about it. Crying always makes you feel better. if you don't get enough opportunity, go and see a sad film at the cinema, sit in the dark and lose yourself in the sadness. It cleanses you. I would like you to travel, to live in other people's worlds. Never to be complacent or to forget that other people don't have and will never have the amazing opportunities you already have in front of you.

Just before you turned two you suddenly bloomed into a beautiful, beautiful girl. I remember your brother at a similar age, reaching his peak of childhood gorgeousness, and you took a while to catch-up as we waited for some hair to grow, but now it's here... you have white-blond ringlet curls, and huge blue eyes, and a smile for everyone. You are sturdy, chunky, and brilliant to cuddle. When I come hom from work you run at me - shouting 'mummy!' and then when I lift you, you hold my face between your chubby hands and stare at me, stroking my cheek, or my hair. Mimicking me when I pick you out of bed in the morning. Then you lean forward and give me a kiss, and I don't think I could ever be made happier by any single action. You follow your brother everywhere, copying him, screaming with laughter at him wearing pyjama bottoms on his head, and when you get to wear your own on your head and be like him you are breathless with laughter, giddy with the subversion of it all. You speak now - full sentences sometimes, and I can hold conversations with you that delight me. 'Did you have a lovely day?' 'yeth.' 'What did you do?' 'Nonna house.' 'wow - did you play outside?' 'yeth.' Solemnly lisping your answers at me, as if conversation is a practice that needs your entire attention and should only be taken seriously. You are brilliant.

Bigger and still bigger

My babies are turning into people.. you are both so much bigger - I look at you and see stranges glimpses of different ages, like a fairground hall of mirrors. Raff, I creep in each night to kiss you goodnight and see you sleeping, face down with head twisted sideways and bum in the air and suddenly in the half light you're a tiny baby again, all cheeks and smiles and glinting eyes... then another night you're lying on your back, arms behind your head, t-shirt off because it's hot, one leg kicked over the duvet and suddenly you're a teenager.. I stand in the gloom and wish so many things for you I can't even get them into thoughts properly, they just merge into a blur of hope.

At nursery school you are shy again, fingers in your mouth, unsure of your popularity and unwilling to test your fragile confidence. You soon forget about this though, and I hear stories of role plays and friends and made-up words that make you giddy with hysteria. A hot day in the garden - your sister in bed for a nap - we look at the clouds and imagine... what shapes do you see? A dinosaur's footprints, marching across the sky on his way to New York to eat up all the tall buildings... an angel flapping his wings against the sky and sprinkling magic down on our heads. You are still happiest in your imagination but need us to come along with you. I'm happy about this, wanting to share your thoughts for as long as I can, anticipating one day not having this access to your imaginings.

Every creature is a wonder - a woodlouse, a butterfly, a ladybird... you plant seeds and water them in the garden, watching closely for every new shoot. This world of ants and digging must be so much more accessible from your height. You love cooking - standing up at the hob, cracking eggs, stirring mixtures, testing every mouthful, measuring flour - you spin pizza dough from your fingers and pound bread - you love getting to the essence of things. I want to keep that.You're three and a half.

Baby sister Imi - there's not much baby left... I cling to every tiny hint of it. The roundness of your cheeks, slowly deflating as your little body grows and gains definition, the clinging arms in the middle of the night or first thing in the morning when you wake, the hot face pushed up against mine as you try to get as close to me as possible, the abandoned sleeping, legs and arms spread wide as the bars of your cot, the baby sighs and rubbing of eyes with a fat fist when you're sleepy. You're talking. Real words emerging from the babble, and you copy everything. You love lists, the intonation perfectly matching mine as we categorise our surroundings; table, chair, book, doll, ball! Flower, tree, bird, grass, aeroplane! You love to copy your big brother - screaming competitions that hurt my ears while you giggle, going red in the face at each other across the table, splashing competitions in the paddling pool that render you helpless and out of breath with happiness.

You have the same half-run that I remember Raff doing at the same age - charging purposefully around the house, furious with any impediment - shouting for help when stuck. You have no fear.. you climb obstacles that must look like mountains in your eyes with no hesitation, leaving me weak with nerves, but your look of achievement is wonderful - your pride in your new-found climbing ability makes me bite my tongue and sit on my hands. Food is still very important to you - watching you eat a bowl of pasta is a portrait of abandon, a happy swirl of smiles and shovelling forkfuls, fiercely independent, you've been feeding yourself for months and months with no help at all.

You are very in love with Dolly - who is pushed around and around the house and garden, getting dirtier and dirtier every day. Mainly naked, sometimes clothed - dolly seems to give you a sense of purpose. You call for her with a longing only a 20 month old could muster. Your love for Dolly is surpassed only by your love for Bear, who remains the favourite thing in the whole of your small world. Bedtime, warpped up warm and glowing from your bath, you have your bottle sitting on my lap, demanding poems and stories - then as soon as the milk is gone, like Old King Cole, you call for your Bear and dummy, a cuddle and a kiss, then point to be put down in your cot. I obey.

Giant baby girl

You are 10 months old. You are crawling properly, real baby crawling - hands and knees, ponderously. You still have a great commando shuffle but you use it less often now. You pull yourself up on anything you can reach - tables, chair legs, mummy's legs, dog-dog... you are just so pleased with yourself. You've learned that when you hold a phone to your ear and 'talk', people applaud you, and now you do that with every object you can find: a fridge magnet, a stick, a plastic farmer. I applaud you every time.

Every new thing, every new movement you master is a mountain you've climbed, and watching you climb is amazing. It maybe because I've watched your brother through this stage but I'm somehow more aware of you and your 'babyness' - knowing it will pass so quickly. I feel you're on the verge now, of babyhood and toddler. I was longing to see every new stage with your big brother, and with you I want it to last and last.. I want to hold you, ten-month-sized daughter, forever.

Big boy

You are officially a Big Boy. You wake up between 6 and 7 every morning, desperate to start your day, beginning at full volume and full velocity and not slowing unless you're strapped into a car seat and driven for more than ten minutes. If there are no car journeys planned you'll keep going.. and going... and going... until bedtime comes round again. Then you'll demand more stories, more cuddles, more conversation - until we leave you to play in your bedroom, hearing ominous thuds and thumps as you potter around until you eventually decide to be sleepy. Where do you get all this energy from? For such a small boy you have an amazing capacity for movement.

Your welcomes are the best in the world, and worth going away for - even if only to London to the office for the day. 'MUMMY!' you shout, and grin, and hurl yourself at my legs. You tell me about your day, so desperate to be heard your words tumble over themselves, stumbling in their urgency. You tell me about sharks, and tigers, and Harry Potter falling from a flying car, and DINOSAURS. I understand you perfectly - most of the time. The sentences I don't understand straight away I ask you to repeat and you do, explaining yourself carefully, looking at me closely to check I've got it - 'No Mummy, not that... this!'

You learn from us - such an obvious sentence - but you learn from everything we do. if I get shout at the dog jumping up at the table you copy immediately, telling him sternly to Get. Down. Now. Dog-Dog. You're learning how to manage people, arguments, expectations, reactions - all from our example. Such a weight of responsibility! I want to be teaching you patience, and love, and calm... I hope that the majority of the time I am.

Baby girl

You're eight months old. You're huge - a big bundle of girl, all rolls of fat and grins and grabbing hands. You've learnt to move, commando crawling around the house at top speed, yelling with delight at the new-found freedom. I turn my head and you're gone, zooming out of the room, your position betrayed by your own exuberance and your escaping shout. You greet us now, the ones you know - with a specific call, an almost-sigh and a smile as we come into view, you reach up your arms and gaze upwards waiting for one of us to hold you. If we're late by a milisecond you shout at us - 'how dare you move past me? How DARE you ignore me?' You're changing by the second and also not at all - you've always been like this, you're just growing in confidence.

 

We danced, yesterday, around the kitchen before tea - you holding my neck and giggling, and me pressed to your cheek, swinging you around to the music on the radio. I used to dance like this with your big brother, and I danced too while you were still inside, holding the bump of you and dancing to the same songs. Maybe you remember them. I hold you and breathe in the still-baby smell of you and wonder how to keep this moment. How to keep it safe and remembered because it passes too fast. You grow almost in front of my eyes. I imagine your future - spiralling away in front of us, of you, and it looks brilliant. I watch you from two angles - I see you now, bright and bouncing and grinning in front of me, and at the same time I'm hurtled into the future, looking back on this, remembering it as it happens - my children growing up while I stand and watch - a spectator.

 

My boy is 2

So, you're 2. You're more than 2 now - 2 and 3 months, and convinced you are not only the centre of the universe but controlling it too. It's your job to tell people what to do, when to do it and if they're not doing it exactly right. You are our self-appointed policeman. You're always on duty - from 7am until you finally give up after an hour of talking to your toy dogs in bed you don't stop talking: 'What's that mummy?' 'What's that lady doing mummy?' 'Where are you mummy?' 'What you doing mummy?' 'What does that do mummy?' I answer all your questions, so aware that this is building your world. Every question has an answer and each answer is stored away carefully, to be brought out when I'd forgotten all about it and marvel again at your memory, at your capacity to learn. You literally soak everything up, even things I don't think you're taking in. I have to remind myself sometimes that although you can't always uphold your part of the conversation you definitely understand everything. I creep in to make sure the duvet is over you at night when I go to bed, and sometimes you stir as I tuck you in - you shoot your head up and shout out 'yep!' or  'tractor!' then lie back down and sleep again, it makes me laugh that you're still reporting for duty even in your dreams.

You're aware of the dark suddenly, not necessarily scared of it, you'll sit happily in your pitch-black bedroom still, but just aware of it, the absence of light. One night I wasn't allowed to turn the light off at all, and for another hour you played in bed in the light, until I had to go upstairs and tell you to lie down as I switched the light off and gave you darkness back again. You accepted it then. At some point in the last month your imagination suddenly switched on, perhaps that's linked to the wariness of dark - before that, the world was all that you could touch and see, but now there's that extra dimension of imagination, and there could be things in the dark that you can neither see nor touch. The upside of this is the imaginary games; every spoonful of food is an aeroplane, every chair a tractor. We make journeys of thousands of miles a day to visit 'Mark and Saja', and reenact stories again and again. You are often the doctor and I'm the patient, and you earnestly consult your imaginary medicine cupboard for the right medicine before pouring it, complete with sound effects, into an imaginary spoon to make me better. 

Earlier this morning I bent down to your level to talk about something, and you held my gaze absolutely throughout our conversation, you forget how little eye contact adults give you until you talk to a toddler on their own level. You stared at me intensely, your eyes telling me the bits your vocabulary didn't stretch to, then you considered for a moment and hurled yourself at me for a hug, flinging your arms around me, but only fleetingly. Everything you do is still done in short intense bursts. A hug may only be a few seconds, but those few seconds hold the world.

You use car journeys and the time before sleep to categorise your world, put it all in order. You list your family: mummy, daddy, dog-dog, midge. Over and over - building us around you. You like boundaries too, like your baby sister. 

Things I've learnt about you - baby daughter:

1. You demand my absolute and full attention. There's no fobbing you off with half-hearted, half-glancing looks; you fix me with your glare, demand to be looked at. It's no hardship to look at you, and maybe you do me a favour. I have to stop what I'm doing to attend to you, you will not tolerate multi-tasking. You want it all, and you want it right now. It makes me stop, and live the moments seconds by second with you. I'm there with you through your fury at being slighted, deposited, carted around in car seats and bouncy chairs. You hate to 'put' anywhere, unless it's on your terms. I like that about you. You're feisty.

2. You need to be held. Often and close. You like to know where your boundaries are, and you like to know that they're very close to you indeed. You will only sleep in swaddling - even four months along - your arms bound tightly to your sides, your head turned to the left, a satisfied sigh and then surrender.

3. Your moods are often but not various - there are only two: VERY angry and VERY happy. Your smile is amazing. It can change my day in a split-second, from a grey haze of sleep-deprivation to elation. Your eyes smile at me from behind a bottle, they sparkle at me during nappy-changes. Bathtime elicits peals of silent laughter from you - your mouth open wide and tongue sticking out - you chuckle as you kick your chubby legs up and down, your smiles replaced only with a look of intense and solemn concentration as you try to figure out what your legs do.

Baby

You're here! After weeks of waiting for you, longing for you (swearing at you to just get out) you came. I sat, miserable, on the sofa, counting down hours to induction and talking to a friend on the phone when I suddenly realised you were on your way. Three hours later I was holding you in the water - my big, wrinkly, scrunched up, flailing daughter. I stared - "you're here! You're here!", still reeling from the speed of you, after all the waiting, the sudden rush of you into my world. You arrived blue and mewling - all 9 pounds 12 of you - like a fat kitten. Whilst your brother's eyes opened straight away and looked at me for hours, you were blind and tentative, eventually opening your eyes to look at me quizzically, wondering, perhaps, if you'd made the right decision in coming here.

Afterwards, I laid down to watch you in your daddy's arms, frantically eating to try to regain some strength. You'd taken me by surprise - I hadn't had any breakfast that morning and was shaking with hunger. After you'd been weighed and measured and examined, investigated from all angles, you were handed back to me - wrapped in a bundle - all cheeks and double chin. I stared at you - exhilarated. My baby girl.

That night, on the ward, you screamed. Pretty much all night. That new-baby screaming, more of a squall, like a small localised storm. Searching for food that I couldn't quite give you yet. I bundled you close to me and lay next to you, breathing your breath, stroking your head - trying to remember every second of this angry little beginning. Lines from poems running through my head. Maybe some things can only be captured by cliches or poetry, something about the concentrated intensity of the experience. Flushed with relief and hormones and endorphins, and giddy from lack of sleep - I loved everyone. Gushingly grateful to the midwives who took you away, fed you and brought you back an hour or so later so I could sleep. I lay and remembered this feeling from your brother's birth - a feeling of belonging, of solidarity. A room full of women, variously bruised and battered, who had all gone through the same incredible thing as me that day. I couldn't wait to take you home.