POO AND BISCUITS

We call our daughter ‘Silent But Deadly’ because she does everything by stealth, and every stealthy action is an awful action. So it came as no surprise to walk in to the kitchen in search of Billie and find her sitting under the table with a large family assortment of biscuits laid out on the floor each with a bite taken out of it. ‘I is having a bikkit,’ she points out helpfully. ‘Oh Bill’ I groan and bend down for what feels like the millionth time to clear up the mess.

I am always cleaning up food mess after Billie. She is the ‘chuck food and grin’ type so I fish bits of food from her high chair, off her clothes, her hair, the crease in her neck, everywhere in fact, while she smiles and smiles. She is a very poor eater and sometimes I look at her empty plate with delight, lift her out of her high chair only to witness a cascade of mangled broccoli, potato etc and realise despondently that probably nothing has passed her lips.

So there I am again picking up bits of biscuit, grumbling and clucking away at her while she blithely gazes at me with absolutely no sign of a guilty conscience, when it happens. I pick up another bit of squidgy biscuit and my nose goes on to red alert. This is not biscuit: this is poo. ‘Billie’ I yell. ‘Have you done a poo?’ Why I bother asking I have no idea. Clearly she has and clearly she is not about to admit it. ‘No, just only a tiny wee’ replies my little darling sans nappy. Despite the chilliness of the season, Billie’s bum has decided to dine Alfresco (she can whip a nappy off quicker than you can say ‘don't’) and such was her contentment during her munching that the poos just popped out and scattered amongst the biscuit debris. Billie’s poos resemble rabbit droppings, probably because she eats so little, so I guess I have been spared a messier task but even so, picking up poo - it’s just no fun.

Olly strolls in, wielding the obligatory stick required for bashing and mayhem. ‘Something’s happened Mummy’ he observes, pleased I guess that it’s not him in trouble for a change. ‘Billie you is a naughty mooglut’ he chastises looking at the mess of biscuits. ‘I is not a mooglut I is Billie good girl’ she retorts and they square up for a scuffle. Still holding bits of poo in one hand I attempt to intervene before diplomatic relations break down entirely and realise to my horror that I have just knelt in more poo. ‘Poo!’ cries Olly forgetting the previous aggro and whoops with delight as he sniffs the air. Billie sensing the festival atmosphere raises her chocolate covered hands and begins to dance. I, meanwhile, feeling very much like the stuff I am now covered in sink back against the kitchen cupboards and give up. 

This is not the golden image of motherhood I daydreamed about whilst pregnant and naive. A life where I, smiling and indulgent (and of course, still glamorous) cooked and listened to Radio Four, whilst praising my children’s various artistic endeavours and laughing at their antics in the sun-filled kitchen of our gorgeously decorated though slightly bohemian home. The reality is Radio Four doesn’t get a look in whilst Nick Junior is blaring. Art is limited to paint fights, the smearing of glitter glue and Pritt over the table or stuffing Playdoh into each other’s mouths. And those delightful antics inevitably descend into violence and tears in a house where not one wall has remained clear of crayon nor any surface free from something sticky.

But hey, who needs the sophistication of elegant decor and the delights of home baking? We’ve got poo and half-eaten biscuits round at ours.

Quote of the Week

Olly is, yet again, bashing the side of the cooker with a big stick:

Steve: ‘Olly will you please stop that bashing.’

Olly: ‘But Dad, I am just trying to make a loud noise.’

Juliet Jones lives in domestic chaos with husband Steve, son Oliver (aged 3) and daughter Billie (aged 2) in Hertfordshire.