Who's the Mummy?

The Littlest Surrealist

As I walked out of school on Friday with Flea, we played our traditional game of 'you’re a weirdo'. 

It's a mature, sophisticated game that involves us saying, "You're a weirdo" and "No, YOU'RE a weirdo," at one another, in increasingly stupid voices.

One of Flea's teachers overheard us, and started to disagree. She got as far as, "Oh no, F..." then stopped and said: "Have a lovely weekend!"

I suspect the teacher realised the truth: Flea is weird. Not in a bad way - just in the way that many four-year-olds are weird. As proof, here are five things my daughter said on the way home on Friday:

“How cool would it be if we lived in a streetlamp? You could climb up that cylinder bit, and we could swing from one lamp to another lamp, like monkeys. That would be so cool.”

“When food goes in your tummy, does it come to life?”

“Why don’t fishes wear masks and flippers? Is there a lifeboat in case they can’t swim?”

“When there’s an earthquake, does the world change colour?”

“Do you think robots like it when children paint them?”

Like I said, weird.

All the Single Ladies

As far as my daughter is concerned, I’m a nun.

Since I split up from The Father, Flea has never seen me with another guy. Of course, she’s aware that I have male friends, but as far as she’s concerned, these are just friends we meet occasionally for lunch, or who come round to the house to put up lights and fix door handles.

Preserving this illusion takes some effort, and the odd bit of outright subterfuge. There’s a fair amount of military planning involved in my social life, but it means that Flea hasn't encountered any new faces over the breakfast table. If a guy is visiting during the day, then what my old headmistress referred to as “PDAs” are strictly off the menu.

I don’t know when is the right time to introduce your child to a new partner. A few months seems too soon. For me, personally, a year would probably still be too soon – but that's probably just my commitment issues talking.

I had a childhood with more than its fair share of upheaval, and I want something different for Flea. I feel as though, having made the choice to be a single parent, I have a responsibility to provide her with as much stability and security as I possibly can. And – to me – that means not introducing anyone new to our family unless I’m pretty damn positive they’re going to be a permanent fixture.

Flea has plenty of contact with male friends and relatives. Actually, she loves men – I think not seeing her Dad so often means she craves male attention. For example, recently we met one of my friends for a drink in a hotel, and Flea actually moved my chair while I was at the bar so she could sit next to him. She then proceeded to insist he ran through his entire repertoire of magic tricks, while I munched peanuts and read the bar menu 5,000 times.

This is cute to watch, of course, but it worries me that Flea would become very attached to anyone I was involved with, and of course I worry what it would then mean for her if my relationship didn’t work out. I guess at the moment, I feel she's too young and I would rather wait until she's old enough to understand a little more about adult relationships before taking that next step.

I’m not sure there’s a simple answer, but I’m sure it’s something every other single parent must think about. I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences – when did you think the time was right? 

You Know You're a Bad Mummy When....

...you have this conversation with your four-year-old on the way home from school:

Me: “Was it meatballs for lunch today, Flea?”

Flea: “No.”

Me: “Lasagne?”

Flea: “No.”

Me: “Spaghetti Bolognese?”

Flea: “No. It was chicken pie and carrots.”

Me: “Well, what’s this big red splodge on your jumper then?”

Flea: “Oh, that. That’s from Monday.”

Oops.

3am: the perfect time to talk about death.

The annoying thing about crucial parenting moments is the way they sneak up on you. I think you should get a letter 48 hours in advance that says, “On Tuesday you will be required to explain the concept of death to a four year old.  You may not refer to your notes during the examination.”

Unfortunately, you’re more likely to wake up at 3am to find a four year old lying in bed with you, eyes boring into your skull.

“Did you know, lots of Mummies and Daddies die,” Flea tells me, in the exact same voice she uses to say, “I know how to spell cat.” 

“Oh. What?” (my vocabulary shrinks by 60% with each hour after midnight)

“Natasha told me her Mummy and Daddy died.”

“Didn’t Natasha’s Mummy just have twins?”

“No, they are dead.”

“I don’t think so, honey. I am pretty sure her Mummy just had babies.” 

“Natasha told me they are dead. Lots of people have dead parents.”

“We’ve talked about this. With a bit of luck, most people don’t die until they’re really old. Then their bodies stop working and they die, and new people are born. Right?”

“Right.”

There’s a silence. I feel myself sliding back into unconsciousness, when Flea sits bolt upright, and says “Oh!” in a voice that suggests it’s all just slotted into place in her brain.

“Huh?” I mutter.

“Grandma will die quite soon, then, I expect.”

I pretend to be asleep.

Songs and Memories and the Death of Cool.

I got tagged with the Songs and Memories meme a few weeks back by Hot Cross Mum. I could pretend that I haven’t responded yet because I’ve been incredibly super-busy with important professional activities and positive parenting.

But, friends, that would be a lie.

The meme rules are: “Name a song that reminds you of something, that has a story for you. Not necessarily your favourite song or a even a song that you love, but a song that instantly takes you back to that time and place.”

I’ve been wracking my brains trying to find a song, any song, that would make me seem even fractionally cool. I admit defeat. I have every Smiths album ever made. I can quote Green Day lyrics and I know I spent years listening to REM and Billy Bragg bootlegs. But for some weird reason, every significant moment of my life is inextricably linked with a deeply, completely, shoot-me-now-embarrassing, song. 

My first kiss took place while Five Star was playing in the background. Yes, Five Star. I rounded second base to the sounds of Richard Marx. And sadly, those are relative high points in my musical memory bank. I don't even want to think of the memory conjured up by She's Like the Wind. Oh, the shame.

So, after a good deal of thought, I was inspired by Rosie Scribble's response to this meme - she wrote about the song she associates with her daughter's birth. I didn't have music when Flea was born (I was out cold) but I suppose this song is my version of Rosie's single parent anthem.

I wish I could say that my single parent anthem was Green Day. Or Bob Dylan. Leonard Cohen, even. But it's Better Life, by Keith Urban. I know. Please don't judge me. I'm so much cooler than this might make me appear. Well, a bit cooler, at any rate (please note, comments on this post referring to the unfortunate Miley-gate incident will, of course, be deleted) .

To set the scene, I heard this song the day after I had told my ex I was divorcing him. I'd just had a phone call from one of my best friends saying she would never forgive me for what I was doing. And then I'd spoken with my lawyer, who told me what I should expect from the divorce settlement - his guess was somewhere in the region of minus 50 grand. Shit.

I was driving with Flea to our Little Dippers swimming class, which took place in the middle of the Sussex countryside. As we pulled off the M23 onto the road towards Burgess Hill, I was practically hyperventilating. I remember looking at Flea in the back of the car, and thinking, "What the HELL am I doing? Why am I doing this? Lots of women look the other way. I could look the other way. I’d could just look the other way and keep looking at the nanny and the cleaner and the nice house, right?”

Then Keith Urban kicked in and I started singing along. The lyic is : 

Someday baby, You and I are gonna be the ones

Good luck's gonna shine on

Someday baby you and I are gonna be the ones

So hold on

We're headed for a better life

There's a place for you and me

Where we can dream as big as the sky

I know it's hard to see it now

But baby someday we're gonna fly

This road we're on, you know it might be long

But my faith is strong

It's all that really matters

We drove through the country lanes, sunshine streaming through the canopy of trees above us, Flea in the back seat admiring her first ever pair of shoes, and I was just filled with this conviction that, no matter what, we'd be okay.

We still listen to Keith in the car every once in a while, and these days Flea knows the words and joins in, and we sing along together. One day she will tell people about the deeply uncool song that her mother inflicted on her, but I won't care - it's a great song. And it still makes me smile.

I'm pretty sure everyone has done this by now, but just in case they haven't and they fancy it, I tag: Being a Mummy, Glowstars, Beki's Bloggy Bits, Bringing up Charlie and Motherhood: the final frontier.

Because You're Gorgeous...

Like most four-year-olds, Flea rarely stops moving. She resists anything approaching a cuddle during daytime hours, submitting to a moment or two of stillness before wriggling free to get on with her current project.

So one of my favourite times of day is bedtime. Flea has eczema, and each night she lies on my bed while I rub cream into her skin. While she lies there, we tend to make up stories together, or chat quietly.

Tonight, as we finished the story of Steve the Monkey (his favourite food is bolognese), I looked at my little pink girl in her Thomas the Tank Engine pyjamas and said, “You’re gorgeous.”

Flea sighed contentedly. “Yes. I know.”

“Oh, you do? What’s most gorgeous about you, then?”

Flea didn’t skip a beat. “I have a gorgeous smile and I like the way I look in my clothes,” she said.

I really love that Flea likes herself. But almost immediately, I start to wonder: how long does that last? How long before she starts to wonder if she really is gorgeous, if she’s tall enough, thin enough, pretty enough?

God forbid, will she end up thinking she’s ugly? I once knew a woman who put on her make-up each day without looking in the mirror. How does that happen to otherwise smart, rational women?

How can we, raising our gorgeous girls, help them to keep that confidence a little longer?

I don’t have any brilliant plans. I think limiting TV helps. I think not having glossy magazines helps. I think regularly telling Flea that judging people on their appearance is utterly stupid might help. I think single-sex schools can protect girls from some of these issues, for a little while.

But what do you do? I’d love to know how other parents of girls protect that precious self-belief.

Mother, or career criminal?

I hear footsteps on the landing, and my heart starts pounding.

I throw myself on the floor, hurriedly shoving things underneath the duvet, away from prying eyes. I smooth down my hair and put on my very best innocent face.

“What are you doing Mummy?”

Keeping my voice breezy and casual, I say: “Oh, just making the bed, darling.”

“Can I help?”

Bugger. Think fast, woman. She must not touch the duvet under any circumstances.  We need a distraction. “Erm, okay, why don’t you go down and see if there are any clean pillowcases on top of the washing machine?”

I wait until I can hear she’s turned the corner to go downstairs, and I make a run for it, grabbing everything I’ve just hidden in the bed, and transferring it to my weekend bag, which is on the bedroom floor. I manage to sit on the bag and get the zip closed, only breaking one nail in my haste.

“I can’t see any pillowcases Mummy,” says a voice at the door, making me jump a mile. Jesus. How does she do that so quietly? Is she half-ninja?

So now I’ve just got to get the bag downstairs without arousing any suspicion. Dirty tactics are justified in these circumstances. “Hey, Flea, in the lounge, in the sideboard, I think there are some Maltesers left. Why don’t you go and see if you can find them?”

There are no Maltesers.

But all my computer cables are in that drawer and it's such a tangle that it's going to take her at least two minutes to find that out for herself. Of course, nothing moves faster than a four-year-old on a promise of chocolate, and by the time I look up, she's already gone.

As I hear her start rummaging in the drawer, I seize the opportunity to slip downstairs, past the lounge door and into the kitchen, avoiding the squeaky tile. Get the keys from the cupboard, then slip out through the back door to the garage.

Almost there.

I can hear a voice “Mummeee…..where are you? I can't see the Maltesers, Mummy. Mummy?”

She knows something’s going on, but she’s too late. Ha! Mission:Impossible has been achieved. Another bag filled with soft toys, too-small slippers and baby toys has been safely extricated from the house. Phew.

I think being a parent and trying to clear a space in the toy cupboard might actually be the perfect training for becoming a cat burglar. 

The Tots100 Primer

For new readers, this site hosts a monthly index of the Top 100 parent blogs and bloggers in the UK.

We’ve just updated the Tots100 index FAQ (you should now see a link over in the right hand sidebar) to explain how the index works, how the scores are calculated and what to do if you have any questions. I hope it goes some way to demystifying the process for those people who use the index, or want to be listed.

We’ve also created a new online form where people can ask questions about the index. You’ll see on the FAQ page there’s now a box where you can submit questions – and the answer to your question, along with questions posed by other users, can be read at the Tots100 FAQ Forum. I hope this will provide one place where you can see information about the index rather than ploughing through individual posts and comments.

That said, I’m very aware that not everyone blogging is a sad stats nerd like me. So I wanted to provide a really simple example of how the index is actually put together each month, with some examples.

What I’d say above all about the index is that you don’t really have to do anything much more than write great blogs to be in the index. You don’t have to submit your blogs  to most of the sites we use, or do anything in particular. The exception is Twitter - we do look at how prominent blogs are on Twitter so you might want to consider signing up if you haven't already.

Some  bloggers MAY find they also need to submit their blogs to Technorati – if you’d like to know more, read the FAQ to see how you can find out if your blog is currently listed on Technorati, and how to submit it for listing if it isn’t.

How the Index Works:

We score blogs using seven different measurements, which we've chosen because they tell us things about your blog like how many people link to you, how many people comment on your posts, do people submit your content to sites like Digg and StumbleUpon, and do people subscribe?

To read about each metric in more detail, see the FAQ. But here, we're going to show how we use the metrics to score three imaginary blogs written by Abby, Bob and Clare.

Scores 1 and 2: Google Blogsearch

We put each of the three blog addresses into Google Blogsearch with the following results:

Abby (A) has 20 links in Google Blogsearch, and 5 from this month.

Bob (B) has 200 links but only 2 are from the past month.

Clare (C) has 24 links, with none from the past month.

We then score the three blogs with the lowest scorer getting 1 point and the high scorer getting three points. Because we're looking at 2 metrics, there are 2 scores to award: 

A: 1 point + 3 points
B: 3 points + 2 points
C: 2 points + 1 point


Score 3: Yahoo Inlinks

Of course, we know that Google doesn’t pick up all the inbound links for these blogs so we head over to Yahoo to look at Inlinks, a measure of all the links to a site. By putting the address of each blog into the Site Explorer bar, we can see how many web pages link to each site. This shows that: 

Abby (A) has a total of 10,000 inlinks
Bob (B) has a total of 16,000 inlinks
Clare (C) has a total of 650 inlinks

So the scores are:

A: 2 points
B: 3 points
C: 1 point

Score 4: Postrank

We put each blog address into PostRank to see how many comments, links and shares each post on each blog has received. We discover that:

Abby (A) has posted 10 times this month, and received a total of 100 comments, Tweets, shares and bookmarks. Her average PR score is therefore 10.

Bob (B) has posted 30 times this month and received a total of 200 comments, Tweets, shares and bookmarks. His average PR score is therefore 6.66.

Claire (C) only posted twice this month but she received 130 comments, Tweets, shares and bookmarks. Her average PR score is therefore 65.

This translates into scores of:

A: 2 points

B: 1 point

C: 2 points

Score 5: Google Reader

Now, we head over to Google Reader to see how many subscribers each site has using Google. We do this by opening Reader and adding a subscription to the blog address. When the blog pops up in the viewing window, we click on ‘view details’ and we can see the number of Google subscribers for the blog. If a blog has more than one feed (sometimes happens) we do this twice.

Abby (A) has 130 subscribers so scores 3 points

Bob (B) has 65 subscribers so scores 2 points

Clare (C) has 24 subscribers so scores 1 point

Score 6: Klout

To get a blogger’s Klout score, we will look at whether the blogger has provided us with their Twitter ID already. If not, we go to their blog and look for a Twitter link on the site. Once we have the Twitter ID, we put that into the Klout website and it calculates a score for us.

Abby (A) doesn’t use Twitter and so scores 0 for Klout. She therefore scores 1 point

Bob (B) has a Klout score of 42. He scores 3 points.

Claire (C) has a Klout score of 22. She scores 2 points. 

Score 7: Technorati

Our final metric is Technorati Authority. To check a blog’s authority we put the following into the browser’s address bar: "www.technorati.com/blogs/blogaddress" where blog address is the name of the blog without a 'www' or 'http'.

Abby (A) isn’t registered with Technorati so scores zero and 1 point
Bob (B) has a Technorati Authority of 123 so scores 3 points
Clare (C) has a Technorati Authority of 65 so scores 2 points

At this point, we have seven scores for each blog, based on their ranking in each of our seven metrics. We simply add up those scores to generate a total score for each blog. Our imaginary blogs scored as follows:

Abby – scored 13 points
Bob – scored 17 points
Clare – scored 11 points

So in our imaginary index, Bob would rank first, Abby second and Clare third.

Child Labour....

If there’s a phrase that is guaranteed to make my motherly heart sink, it’s “Grandma doesn’t make me do that…” 

Turns out that Grandma zips up Flea’s coat when they’re out. Grandma opens the car door for Flea, so Flea doesn’t risk getting her poor little hands dirty. If it's raining, Grandma has been known to carry Flea from the car to the house, so Flea doesn't stand in any puddles. Crikey, Grandma makes breakfast, serves it at the table, and clears the dirty dishes away afterwards. Grandma goes to the bathroom with Flea.

In a way, it’s great – grandparents should spoil kids a bit. But it makes it harder for me to get Flea to be independent, and I admit it does make me feel a bit guilty about how much I expect her to do for herself at home.

At four and a half, Flea can get herself up and dressed. She brushes her own teeth and hair. Depending on what we’re having for breakfast, she usually gets her own food, and clears her own dishes away. If she’s thirsty, she’s long been allowed to go and get a cup and fill it with milk or water, without any supervision.

If I’m cooking, Flea always helps with some of the preparation, even if it’s just getting the plates and cutlery, or chopping vegetables. She likes spreading her own Marmite on her toast, and cutting up her own slices of cheese, or adding herbs to a sauce.

Flea has chores, too. She’s responsible for folding and putting away her own laundry (though my need for order means I have to go and re-do it while she’s at school, obviously). She tidies away her own toys each day, and she helps to put groceries away when we’ve been shopping. She polishes her school shoes on a Sunday, just as I did when I was a kid.

Being a single parent means she also gets roped in to DIY chores, and has done a lot of “hold that steady while I get the screwdriver” type activities – I’m pleased to say she can identify and pass me most of the tools in my toolbox if I’m on top of a ladder pointlessly trying to repair something in our tumbledown house.

Still, sometimes I think wonder if it is all too much for a four-year-old, and that perhaps as a single parent I expect her to do things most parents wouldn’t expect of their kids. So, I’m curious – what chores do you give your children, and when did you start expecting them to help out? 

The Weird and Wonderful World of Flea

There are loads of things I love about Flea. She's a crazy perfectionist, and never does anything until she's sure she can do it perfectly. She can't sleep unless one leg is hanging out of the bed. She's obsessed with being a boy and since I bought that six pack of sports socks, she hasn't worn anything else apart from her "boy PE socks".

But most of all, I just love talking to her. At four years old, kids just have a naturally surreal outlook on the world that makes me laugh like a drain.

We unexpectedly had a weekend together this week, after The Father had to cancel, and rather than moaning about all the work I had to do, I thought I'd make a note of 10 brilliant things Flea said to me this weekend: 

1. You were a little bit grouchy just then. Have you got anything you'd like to say to me about that?
2. That wasn't very good sharing on the biscuits, Mummy.
3. We've got no brioche for breakfast. I suppose I will have to have pain au raisin.
4. Guess what my favourite word is to say. It starts with 'a'. What do you think it is?
5. Which do you prefer: money or food?
6. It wasn't me, it was the magic man. No, you can't see him. Because he's magic.
7. Oh, yes, I got a merit certificate. What for? Oh, just being super, I think.
8. My favourite sort of kisses are when you lick someone's face like a dog. Me and Max do that.
9. You want to share my brownie? Is that actually a joke? 
10. It's a really good idea that you put a photo of my Christmas list on your computer, Mummy. Because when Santa checks his email, he will know what I want.