‘No!’ she shrieks.
‘How about I put on the soundtrack toFrozenand you can sing along to Elsa and Anna?’ I say in my happiest voice.
‘Yes,’ says Teddy delightedly.
Thank goodness small children can sometimes be easily distracted.
I can now tune outFrozen. That’s progress.
We get home and I manage to get a snack into her.
‘Don’t want the rest of it,’ she says, looking at her homemade fish fingers with a tiny can of baked beans that has cartoon people on it.
‘Now darling, you like fish fingers,’ I say, crossing my fingers behind my back. She always has up to now ...
‘I want a dog. A dog would eat the yucky fish fingers. Timmy in school has a dog and when he doesn’t want to eat his food he gives it to his dog and his Mummy can’t see.’
I know Timmy’s mother. Should I pass on this bit of important intel or should I let it ride? I dare say Timmy’s mother has already noticed the dog delightedly eating half of Timmy’s dinner. And indeed when Teddy was younger we could have fed a whole fleet of dogs from what she threw on the floor around her high chair.
‘We can’t really look after a doggie but maybe when you’re older,’ I say, which is what I always say. Teddy slams down her cup.
‘George and Patch’s, now,’ she demands.
In the end I give in. I am writing recipes again but I’m slooow doing it and besides which the only way I could get any work done would be to park Teddy in front of the television.
‘OK,’ I sigh. I know when I’m beaten.
We head round the corner and into the café which is mercifully empty. There is no sign of Miss Primrose, Patrick or Giorgio and one of thestand-in baristas, a handsome young Argentinian student named Matteo is behind the counter. His English is flawless, his skill as a barista amazing and he’s even patient enough to carefully help Teddy choose her favourite bun, which requires the patience of Job.
‘Half now, half after dinner,’ I say fiercely. I have to win some battles or I will lose my Mother badge altogether. ‘Won’t you cut it up into two bits, Matteo, because Teddy and I have an agreement.’ Teddy eyes me like a hawk watching a mouse it’s about to kill.
I eye her back.
She realises that this is not going to work because I’m wearing my steely face. So she turns to Matteo, giving him the small child version of an ‘I have not been fed in a very long time and I’m beaten’ look. Given that she’s still a bitpaint-splattered, this is very effective.
‘Vewwy hungry, Mattie,’ she adds.
‘Go on,’ I said to Matteo, sighing. ‘Give it all to her.’
I’m just not strong enough. At four, Teddy has broken me. I will have to hire Supernanny for her teenage years or else the house will be full of unsuitable boyfriends who sneak in late, stay overnight and I will be able to do nothing apart from be a Granny to quadruplets.
An hour and a half later, we are on our way to pick up Liam, who is delighted because he scored four goals today. Dan has been helping him with football because this is definitely not my area of expertise.
‘Aren’t you brilliant,’ I say, then follow this up quickly with ‘and you worked so hard!’
He’s sitting in the front seat because he’s tall enough now and says he’s not moving when Lexi gets in.
I sigh. Despite thefront-seat rota, there is a constant battle between my two eldest for the shotgun seat and Lexi might get a little irritated when we roll round to the hall where she and Caitlin do ballet. For a long time, she was always the person who got to sit in the front seat: the eldest child’s prerogative. I remember the arguments when I was growing up and I, Maura, Scarlett and eventually Con were old enough to sit in the front seat. There was an actual rota stuck on the dashboard and we had to mark everyone’s goes off in pen. It was that bad.
How patient my parents were at going along with this. But they did, and eventually at some point they put us in charge of the rota, so we had to make sure it was all fair and square.
By the time we make it to the ballet school Liam and Teddy are chattering away to each other, Teddy discussing her bun and how a dog would be very helpful around the house for eating yucky things like scrambled eggs, and Liam explaining how one of his new soccer friends got a puppy and it can already offer up a paw.
There’s a lot of dog in this conversation, I think, wondering how I’m going to nip this in the bud.
I like dogs but I just don’t think I could cope with an extra soul in ourcurrently-complex world.
And then we pick up Lexi and Caitlin. I can instantly tell my daughter’s angry or upset from the way she walks out to the car. You notice stuff like that about your children: their walk, their movements. They don’t have to say a thing but you know when there’s something wrong.
