More poo

Felix and Jasmine are both being very difficult at the moment.

Felix is The Unstoppable Baby. He's started to climb - onto stools, sofas, toy chests - which inevitably means falling off too. And despite some pretty nasty tumbles he just doesn't learn what is safe and what isn't. Add to that his fondness for sticking fingers in shredders, pulling on lampstands, playing with dustbins, chewing cables, pulling out plugs, tugging the shower curtain and pulling encyclopaedias off the shelves he is basically a walking suicide mission who can't be left alone for more than a few seconds. The only safe environment for him at the moment is a padded cell.

Jasmine is being nothing short of a Royal Pain in the Arse. I know it sounds awful to speak of your own children like that, but she's just so bloody difficult. It's almost definitely illness-related. (It had better be...) It brings out the diva in her. She's just so goddam particular. Everything has to be done in a certain way. And if you can't read her mind and understand exactly what that certain way is, then all hell breaks loose. Then she changes her mind and all hell breaks loose again. And currently all hell breaks loose every 5 minutes.

For example - today's lunch saga:
Bm: (Calm and patience personified) Would you like a chicken sandwich or pasta for lunch?
J: (All utterances by J to be spoken on whiny toddler voice, permanently on the brink of a tantrum) Want chicken sandwich. Don't want toast want bread. Want bread. Want breeeaaad. NO. Just ONE slice. Want crusts off. NO. Don't want butter. NO BUTTER. No don't cut it that way. Cut it that way. NO. Don't want chicken. NO. CHICKEN. No tomato (angry and insulted) NO TOMATO. Want CHEESE. Want cheese. No. Don't want cheese. Want cheese. (now very confused - does she want cheese or not?) Want small cheese. (small cheese is Jasmine's phrase for grated cheese. I take out grater - Jasmine hits roof.) NO. Want slices. (I take out slicer - Jasmine hits roof again.) Not that one. NOT THAT ONE. NOTTT THATTT ONNNE
...and so on. She issues an instruction, and doesn't stop to notice it has been immediately obeyed but repeats it in her sub-hysterical voice over and over. By the time I have made her a sandwich to her precise specification she has rejected that too and does want a chicken sandwich with butter and tomato.

I know she's small, and innocent, and very ill at the moment, and she really doesn't mean it - but none of that makes it any easier. I have no purpose in life at the moment other than to be her punchbag, and I certainly didn't sign up to that. I find myself thinking over and over: I deserve more than no income, two ungrateful children for company, a talent left to rot and a whole lot of thwarted ambition.

You just have to be calm and patient. There's no other way of dealing with it. But because I can't take my frustration out on her, and because there's absolutely no one else around to talk to who remotely cares or understands, it's all internalised. So I find myself feeling alone, frustrated, unhappy, but most of all resentful of my children and seriously contemplating selling them on eBay. Joking aside, I fantasise about leaving them to the bf and emigrating about once an hour.

Unable to express myself to a real human being, I have no other outlet than to talk to this blog, paradoxically the vehicle I set up to express how brilliant kids are is now the only place I can talk about how much I want to be able to give them back.