A: Week one

My life as a parent
I'm settling into the horrible realisation that I am not going to be
able to drink myself under the table on my 30th birthday. It's out, the
fact that I am now the home of number two, and the looks will be coming
thick and fast if I so much as pick up a cigarette packet or sniff a
glass of wine. Instead of being in Las Vegas, gambling my hard-saved
kitty (which disappeared about a year ago anyway), I will be
entertaining friends and their families with a forced grin of bon-homie
and lots of discussions about the sex of number two. I can hear it
already: 'Judging by the weight you're carrying on your back, it's
another boy.' I will smile serenely and refrain from mentioning that I
am not yet showing and that weight that I am carrying is still the
remnants of number one son: Dylan.
The fact that I am finally thirty will pass all these people by,
overshadowed by the fact that I am to be producing offspring again. I
will be forgotten and the only way in which I will get to mark my day
is to start listening to Radio Two.
Actually, I started that earlier this week in anticipation. It was
awful, they were playing golden oldies and I could distinctly recall
the first time that all the records were released. I have passed into
the stratosphere of being old, but nobody cares because not only am I
no longer a twenty-something (how carefree that sounds), I am also a
bearer of a new life, a life that will not be at this anxiety stage for
thirty one years. As a person I am over.
My husband has been standing to attention all night, waiting for me to
awake this morning in my sexual prime. He thinks he's onto a double
whammy, during Dylan's pregnancy I was horny continually and now that
I'm with Edna, he was hoping for the same. Poor soul, how woefully
disappointed he's been so far, we've had more takeaways than sex which
is really saying something as we are desperately lacking in the
financial stakes. But with the huge guarantee of sexual prime looming
oh so imminently, he's just a singing and a dancing.
Our foreplay, since Dylan's arrival two years before, has refined
itself into that intimacy that you read so much about in articles about
long-term couples. It now consists of: 'D'you fancy it?' and my
response: 'if you're quick'. Where once I might have lamented a session
under at least thirty minutes, I now revel in it. I have ten extra
glorious minutes of sleep - way ahead in the benefit department of any
orgasm that I can remember.
Aside from my surprise party this afternoon (I'm pretending I don't
know it's coming), the week has been a social one. Dylan and I have
been to the library and to the supermarket, which makes me feel
distinctly cosmopolitan. We did have plans to go and buy him a new bed,
but the Post Office was closed and I couldn't get out the family
allowance, so we've had to scupper that activity for a week. But, best
of all was Dylan's and Bernard's (my husband) own party. (We're all
born in the same month.)
A few friends came round and we sat in the garden, watching the
children throw sand at each other, and discussing the new CIF window
cleaning clothes as opposed to the use of regular wetwipes (on windows,
not bottoms). The latter tend to smear rather badly, although they are
great for the first ton of snot and saliva that needs removing. I've
added CIF cleaners to my shopping list - in the luxury items column -
for when I have a few pounds to spare. The entry is directly under one
of those Swiffers. Oh, how many years ago was it when luxury items
where things like Clarins moisturiser/cleanser/anything? And the worse
thing is, the CIF entry was made when I was still 29.
I did have a moment of luxury this week if the truth be told. I've been
asked to write an article on a month's trial of some beauty creams. I
had a wonderful massage and facial (I woke myself up on the table I was
snoring so loudly) and have now come home with four delicious bottles
to pamper and preen myself with twice a day. Sadly, Dylan climbed on
top of the en-suite toilet and managed to reach my toner from the shelf
above. While I dozed on, he gainfully spritzed it onto every surface
and then went through a whole roll of toilet paper wiping it up. His
cleaning habits are the only thing he doesn't take after his father
in.
But, back to the massage. I told my facial beautician that I was
expecting number two, and that I was worried that I haven't lost the
excess two stone from Dylan. She clucked in sympathy and then informed
me that it was now all too late for my figure, the same had happened to
her. As she now sports more rolls that the entire wall paper display in
Homebase, the whole relaxing effect of the afternoon disappeared in an
instant. My fat fate is sealed.
I read an article this week about a computer school that takes students
from the age of two. Apparently these kids learnt to type their names
before they can write them. Ah yes, I say, well and good, but can these
children press their faces to windows, wipe snot across them and then
clean said windows with their mothers' toner? I rest my case.