Hey Branson! Watch your back!

The husband and I need fret not a minute longer about our non-existent pensions. For our middle child is going to be the next Richard Branson and we shall enter our twilight years rich beyond our wildest dreams.
My boy and his friend have set up their own business, selling miscellaneous items of various worth (2p all the way up to 10p, with some luxury items up to £1) to friends and neighbours.
They have set up a stall of sorts on the pathway at the front of our house. It’s a very quiet cul-de-sac so there’s not a lot of footfall. But they are thinking big and if they are to be millionaires they have to start somewhere.
They stock a wide range of items – when I drove past today I was offered a half chewed pencil void of a lead for 10p. I passed on that but was interested in a black DVD player remote control that looked awfully like the one we own, it even had the same black electrical tape that our one has sported since Finn broke it in half trying to hammer imaginary nails into a wall.
I bought said item for the extortionate price of 40p.
Caolan has so far pedalled the entire contents of his own pencil case and a good portion of his brother’s.
He sells works of original art, mainly pencil sketches of stick men with guns and colourfully attired zombies, at discount prices.
Entire unopened packets of biscuits have been going missing. When questioned, the child told me he is selling them to his friends at 5p a pop at his stall. Taking into account his costs, labour, rent and rates, he is still making a profit of 75p per packet. Which in my eyes is a business victory.
I got an inkling he had a business mind when I took him shopping. I had picked up 20p change from the car instead of a £1 coin I needed for the trolley. When we walked all the way to the shop I discovered my mistake. The boy announced that he had £1 in his pocket and that I could have it only if at the end of the shopping expedition he could have the £1 and the 20p by means of accumulated interest.
There are no flies on him.
I remember having my own business at his age. Myself and my friend from across the street fancied ourselves as miniature florists. There was a lady in our street who had a gigantic overgrown bush at the front of her house, which would burst into bloom for two weeks of the year with magnificent magenta flowers. My friend and I would wait until the flowers were almost ready to fall off, pick a few, mix them with some greenery and sell them to our neighbours for a staggering 20p a bunch.
We actually met the lady who owned the bush on our travels. She asked us where we got the lovely flowers. We lied, told her we gathered them from another location, and to our shame she bought her own flowers off us. We only charged her half price at 10p. We did have morals.
I remember the sheer joy we felt counting our profits. £1.30. We thought we were millionaires. We bought so many sweets in the shop we need an actual plastic bag to put them in. We ate them all and my friend was sick on her living room rug, which is always a sure sign of a good time.
So I’ll let my boy keep his stall, and I’ll encourage his mini-entrepreneurial spirit. For it is he who will be paying for myself and the husband's terribly posh and expensive old folks home further down the line.

The Nursery Blues

Got an awfully bad case of the Mummy guilts last week.
My youngest son, who has been attending nursery school since September, had a day off because he was sick. I wrapped the boy up in a cosy blanket, fed him warm toast and worked from my laptop within ear’s reach of his pitiful pleas for more tea. We lazed around the sofa watching Thomas the Tank Engine, reading books and generally, bar the temperature and the occasional violent regurgitation of foodstuffs into plastic receptacles, had a lovely day.
When I brought him into nursery on Wednesday he cried, begged me to take him home. He said, in front of his teacher, that he didn’t like school, he didn’t like his friends or the toys and that the nursery staff always burnt the toast they give them at break time (which I later found out to be a blatant lie).
My heart broke for the little guy – you and I know that lightly browned toast is a basic human right in most civilised countries – and for a brief moment I did consider taking him home.
The teacher told me that taking him home would be the worst thing I could do. She said that the child would still be sitting on that sofa, watching Thomas the Tank Engine and hollering for more toast when he was 22 years old if I didn’t make a stand now. So I kissed my boy, told him I would be back soon and I walked away, the sound of him screaming ‘Mommy’ ringing in my ears.
You’d think by this stage I’d be well versed in leaving crying children behind in nursery schools. You’d think that by now I’d know that five minutes after I left he would have been distracted by some shiny fire engine and would have forgotten all about me.
But no, the Mummy guilts hit bad. I sat in the car outside. I got out of the car and went to walk back in to get him. I got back into the car. I took out my phone and dialled the number of the nursery to ask if he was OK. Then I hung up before they answered, they would think I was a neurotic Mum.
There are big windows along the front of the nursery. So I formulated a plan whereas I could catch a glimpse of my boy and go home happy, safe in the knowledge that he wasn’t screaming the house down with the most severe case of detachment anxiety those nursery workers had ever encountered.
So I inched my way along the school wall like a spy and peeked around the corner to see if I could see my son. And there he was near the window, playing happily with his friend, not a tear in sight. In fact that boy was laughing like he hadn’t a care in the world.
I drank in the scene for a minute. Him forcing a toy horse into the driving seat of a miniature Ferrari, his friend stealing the car and knocking over the horse. And then he looked up, saw me and although the windows were sealed and soundproofed I could fathom, judging by colour of his face, that the sheer volume of the screaming emanating from the depths of that child’s lungs was exceptional, even to the ears of childcare professionals who had years of experience in their field.
Before I ran away I saw that the boy beside him was screaming, the girl to the left of them was crying, the boy at a nearby table began to cry. I can only imagine that the simple matter of me spying on my boy to see if he was crying after me set off a catastrophic chain of events that led to half that nursery wailing at their teachers well into the afternoon.
Sorry…

Why, why, why, why, why, why, why?

I can handle the terrible twos, the tantrums, the screaming for sweets and stuff in supermarkets, the relentless cheek, the constant messiness and noise that being a parent brings. But carrying one particular parental cross really frays my nerves. The ‘Why?’ phase.
They’ve all gone through it. But a bit like childbirth you forget about the pain once it’s all over.
We are wading through the ‘Why?’ phase at the moment with our youngest son. Up until around two weeks ago he was satisfied with the standard ‘because I said so!’ response to the various instructions that I handed out.
But then he woke up one morning and, like those annoying application forms which demand 300 word answers to questions that really only need a ‘yes’ or ‘no’, he needed substantially more information.
“Stop drawing on the wall,” I would say.
“Why?” he would reply.
“Because I said so,” I’d say back.
“Why?” he would inquire.
“Because your father spend his entire weekend painting that wall and when he sees the artwork you have just fashioned on it he most certainly will not have a big smiley face like the one you just drew.”
“Why?” he would say.
“Because he’s a man, because he takes his DIY very seriously. Because he’s had to paint the exact wall 15 times since July.”
“Why?” he asked.
“Because the people who invented washable paint obviously didn’t test it in a house with such a hardcore graffiti artist such as yourself Finn.”
“Why?” he asked.
“I don’t know, maybe they were experiencing budget cuts. Perhaps they tested the durability in a house full of little girls. Or maybe they haven’t discovered that markers bought from pound shops are practically invincible when it comes to cleaning.”
“Why?” he asked.
It would be worth it if they were actually learning things from all those bogus questions, but that's not really what's happening at this stage. I doubt he’s even absorbing the highly detailed and researched answers I’m giving him. It’s exhausting.
“Don’t eat those dog biscuits, Finn,” I say.
“Why?” he asks, crunching and chewing.
“Because they are for dogs.” I say, fishing them out of his mouth.
“Why?” he cries, distraught that I am denying him their chalky taste.
“Scientists in a big laboratory develop these food stuffs especially for canines. Enriched with vitamins and minerals, which promote a shiny coat and healthy teeth. They do nothing whatsoever for humans. Plus they taste like cardboard.”
“Why?”
“Because they are for dogs and dogs can’t write letters of complaint to major canine food manufacturers about lack of taste and flavour.”
“Why?”
“Because dogs can’t hold pens properly!”
“Why?”
“Argghhhh!!!!”
Yes, this can be quite annoying. But when I get frustrated I look into my baby boy’s blue eyes and I ask myself, how is this child going to know if pot pourri tastes nice, if dogs can type and pound shop pens are indestructible unless he asks me? If he didn’t ask why 125 times per day on subjects as varied as petrol and the moon, how will he learn useless facts about life?
It’s my job to teach him. And teach him well I will.
“Why?”…..

Worzil Gummage vs Dame Judy Dench hair dilemma

We always have music of some description in our house. The kids like certain types of music – mostly awful rock from the eighties due to the bad influence of my husband. When I have them locked down and trapped in my moving car I try and instil some culture into their brains with a little Irish and classical music, but they tend to shout over the top of the soothing tunes until I turn it off.

Daniel, our oldest is particularly fond of eighties music and the husband has notions that he will be the one to grow up, become a rock star and let his aging parents live a life of luxury at last.
Unfortunately the teachings of his father, featuring Powerpoint presentations on the finer points of AC/DC and regular YouTube viewings of Thunderstruck, have spectacularly backfired and instead of wanting to learn to play the guitar, the boy instead just wants to grow his hair long.

Once every eight weeks or so we take the older boys along to the barbers in town. They have got the same short back and sides in that barbers since they were knee high. Daniel refused to go a few weeks ago, stating he was going to let his hair grow long from here on in to see what happened.

I spent the following weeks looking at my boy, his hair growing wild and free, sprouting up in clumps at the top, sticking out at the sides, curly in parts, poker straight at others.
I know in his head he has an idea of what he wants his hair to look like, perhaps he imagines himself like the guy on the front of Mills and Boon novels, all flowing, shimmery locks of such glossy power they make girls faint. But unfortunately, as well as a bad taste in music, my boy has inherited his father’s brand of strangely behaving hair.
My husband is probably the only man on the planet who can grow a naturally multi-coloured beard. And the hair on that man’s head is curly at the crown and poker straight at the back and sides. If he were to grow it long it would result in some manner of terribly frightening curly mullet.
A few days ago I bluffed the boy into thinking that hair grows twice as fast when it’s cut a bit and persuaded him to let me loose with a pair of electric cutters. He was rather apprehensive, and wisely so, as the last time I was let loose with the clippers he ended up looking like Dame Judy Dench.
So I set about trimming the wild locks, going at his hair with the same enthusiastic motion and vigour I display when tackling unruly hedges in my mother’s garden. The end result was a tidy hairdo that would be more fitting to an accountant than rock star.
The boy looked in the mirror and went berserk. He accused me of making him look stupid, of stripping him completely of his street cred. He said his friends would no longer want to be his friends now that he looked like Daniel O’Donnell and that I had completely ruined all chances of him ever fronting a heavy metal band.
The next day he refused to go to school. In the end we had to dig him out a woolly hat from the depths of the hot press and I had to write a note to his teacher.
Dear Ms Tracey, Daniel will be wearing a woolly hat for the foreseeable future in class as, due to a dreadful electric clippers accident, he looks like Dame Judy Dench (again) instead of Michael Hutchinson. Apologies for any inconvenience caused. Thanks! Daniel’s Mum.
It’ll grow out and he’ll be back fronting his Primary Five class heavy metal band again in no time.

Vampire parenting

My friend and his wife became parents for the first time a few weeks ago. They live in another part of the country but by the power of Facebook we have been able to follow the first few weeks of their beautiful baby boy’s journey, and their own transition into the super scary world of parenthood.
We’ve seen the hazy, dazed first photos from the hospital. The pictures of him arriving home, complete with the picture of my friend driving 25mph on the motorway. We watched over the next few days as the shellshock sank in and the bags under the eyes got a little heavier. And we’ve seen their boy get cuter by the day.
They are hopelessly in love with their boy, as all parents tend to be, and at times hopelessly lost in new parentsville.
My friend told me he didn’t sleep the night they brought his boy home from the hospital so concerned was he that the mere act of closing his eyes would cause the child to stop breathing. And when the child coughed in the night, he and his wife contemplated ringing the doctor. In fact, he confessed, they had thought on rushing him back to the hospital. We’ve all been that particularly neurotic soldier, I told him, and explained our own newborn Exorcist-worthy projectile boke experience complete with phone calls to the doctor and parish priest.
My friend has traded his nippy, sporty car in for a sensible, reliable one with bigger boot space. He swears that the tiny bundle of cuteness that he adores has totally turned their world upside down and inside out. The child is three weeks old and he is already worrying on university fees.
I suppose it’s because I have been down this road once, twice or four times that people like to bounce ideas off my addled, sleep-deprived brain. Usually they get nonsense replies to their inquiries, but from time to time, even I have to admit, I talk sense.
I told my friend becoming a parent is a lot like becoming a vampire. Your old, human self – the one used to the nice cars, not worrying about stuff, a reasonably clean and presentable house, sitting on chairs void of sticky sweet substances which are a nightmare to wash out – dies in a painful and dramatic way. But, I told him, you do come out the other side of this humongous transformation with immortality, superhuman strength and a penchant for fresh blood. OK, perhaps without the taste for blood, but the other stuff is true.
Then there’s the love. The massive love. The boundless, eternal, life changing, enormous wealth of parental love. Before your own child comes along you look at friend’s babies and perhaps think ‘super cute’. They are maybe on a par with puppies, those baby polar bears you see on posters and fluffy kittens. But when your own child comes along you would happily, without hesitation throw yourself under a bus to save them from harm. That you would gladly take on a ferocious grizzly bear with your bare hands if it threatened your offspring. Having children gives you superhuman strength. Parental feelings are that powerful. That terrifying.
When you hold your son or daughter in you arms, feel their warm body next to yours, feel their warm, gentle breath on your skin. That is a thing of beauty, nothing on earth can compare. Not the most beautiful art, the soul stirring music. Everything pales. Those little wonders is what living life is all about.
When they giggle and laugh at nothing but your smile, they are sharing the meaning of life. That joy, of simply being alive, of enjoying that exact minute, enjoying every moment is what they are ultimately teaching us. As we grow older we forget. Our children are there to remind us. Never mind yesterday, don’t worry about tomorrow. Live for this moment and enjoy it. Laugh, love, live.
The highs of parenting are so high it’s a wonder we don’t get vertigo, and the first few weeks of parenthood are a mixture of dizzying highs and lows.
My advice to him and to all new parents is the same. It’s best to just buckle up and just enjoy the ride.

Zombie Shepherd? That's the Christmas play attire sorted...

My kids love Halloween. The love it because they’re handed a full licence to eat sweets and the air is full of frights and fireworks. And surprises for the Mums and Dads.
We went for a great Halloween spooky walking tour with City Tours in Derry (www.derrycitytours.co.uk). There was howling winds, gothic Cathedrals, our ancient city walls, ghost stories, gravediggers, ghouls, banshees, scary monks and zombies. It was superb. We arrived home cold, wet and well and truly spooked before 10pm.
At 10.15pm my middle son told me that his class were having a costume party the next day and he needed an outfit. Being a competitive character, like myself, he insisted the standard was exceptionally high, better than everyone else in the class, nay the school, nay the universe. I was not to pull together just any old rubbish, he wanted one of award-winning standard as there was a bar of chocolate and a 50 pence piece up for grabs and he wasn’t going to lose out on that kind of cash to no cowboy or fairy princess. I, of course, hadn’t bought him a costume yet since Halloween was three whole days away and it was far too soon to be bothering with stuff like that.
This type of scenario normally unfolds the night before a school Christmas play when Caolan, after swearing blind for weeks that the school will provide all costuming needs, wakes screaming at midnight to inform me that he in fact needs full shepherding regalia and paraphernalia for the next morning as he has a speaking part and he will be ‘stage front’ for an hour, and therefore in all the parent’s photographs and camcorder footage. Hence the reason why my son has appeared, for the past three years, in a fleece sofa throw, with a pillowcase tied around his head by one of his father’s belts and holding a yard brush to act as a shepherding staff.
In those moments on Thursday night, when images of me sewing and snipping until the small hours loomed in my horizon, I contemplated sending that child into school in his DIY soft furnishing combo/shepherd’s uniform. But no, the boy wanted to be a zombie mummy. How about a zombie shepherd, I enquired, thinking with a little white face paint and perhaps a few dark circles under the eyes I might just pull this together. No, an Egyptian mummy zombie with no links to the shepherding profession whatsoever was requested. Nothing more, nothing less would be accepted.
And so began a night that saw me hunt out my baby boys babygros from last year, raid the first aid box for bandages, and dig out my sewing kits and scissors for my grand costume scheme. I got creating, soaked the bandages in tea for that aged effect, dried them with a hairdryer and began the laborious and lengthy task of sewing them indivually onto an old babygro that I wasn’t even sure would fit my boy.
At 4am I hung my masterpiece on the kitchen door and summoned the husband, who had spent the hours following midnight sewing dreadlocks onto Daniel’s pirate hat, into the room so he could express his awe and show his amazement at my creativity.
He laughed. He winced. He spoke. It looks like a gigantic baby grow, he said. A gigantic babygro that someone went mad with the scissors with and stuck (badly) a handful of browny-coloured bandages to. What’s it supposed to be, he enquired?
The thing was deposited into the kitchen bin.
Our Caolan was the best zombie shepherd at school that day, no questions asked.

It's a big bad world out there...

Instilling morals in my children is one of the most important things I can do as a mother. I teach them to treat others as they would like to be treated themselves, respect life, respect others, and live their lives as peaceful, reasonable, rational human beings.

I don’t allow them to watch violent movies or play violent video games. I teach them that violence, never, ever achieved anything except pain and heartache and a legacy of more violence. I do stop just short of having ‘Kumbaya’ themed evenings of song or sticking flowers in their hair, but I want my sons to grow up to be well-adjusted men.
Being a bit of pacifist, I remember having a big problem with them playing with toy guns. I remember the first time someone gave my oldest son one as a birthday present.
I smiled in an over-the-top way, shouted ‘thank you’ all the while trying to control an involuntary twitch in my eye. I hid the thing behind the fridge. But my boys seem drawn to them like moths to flame, alongside cars, trucks, wrestling, loud bodily function noises and stuff getting blown up on TV. They are just boys, and for as long as I’ll live I’ll probably never understand how their minds work.

I’ll try and keep them on the right track. However I cannot police what they see and what they hear 24 hours per day. The power of my preaching/nagging/teachings will be diluted by the outside world, by the television, by what they see on the streets.

This week it was difficult to escape the images of Colonel Gaddafi’s bloody death. The horrific pictures of him wounded, his life blood seeping onto the dusty streets of Sirte, were projected into our living rooms all day whether we liked it or not. Special news reports interrupted programmes, they were on almost every channel, they were on every front page in the shops, on the Internet. I was furious that my children were subjected to these disturbing pictures before I dug the remote control out from the depths of the sofa cushions. I switched the TV off and we watched DVDs for the rest of the day.

But there were questions. Why are they attacking that old man? Why did they shoot him in the head? Is this a film? Why are they standing over his dead body cheering? Why is someone filming him dying and not helping him? Why are those people watching his son bleed to death and not doing something?

Yes he was a bad man. I know he was a cruel and heartless man himself and caused many deaths of innocents. I’m sure the world will be a better place without him but regardless of that, the way he was dragged around the streets, shot and killed was shameful, shocking. It makes those who carried out the attack just as bad as him, just as brutal. The scenes played out that day did nothing more than teach young, impressionable minds that it’s perfectly acceptable to let anger and hatred take over your heart and your head. That it’s OK to treat a fellow human in a horrifically brutal way. To glorify and celebrate pain and death, as long as you think it’s justified.
Any prisoner of war who is injured and not resisting – which was clearly the case from the pictures – has the right not only to human treatment, but medical care. Not only the people who lynched him, when he was already severely injured should be ashamed, but elements of the media who normalised this behaviour by printing the pictures of his attack and showing the videos for our children to see in the afternoon are also at fault.
I fear for my children, for the world they are growing up in. A world were war, brutality and cruelty to fellow human beings is normal, celebrated, glorified. They will learn that live isn’t fair sometimes.
I look at them now, their innocence and light almost blinding. But beyond our front door, there’s a big bad world. They will have to grow tough skins to survive. As do we all.

Any wrongdoings will result in jail time....

A mother in England recently reported her son to the police after he stole her yacht and went for a joyride with his mates around the coast of Cornwall.
The 22-year-old university student, who went for the quick jaunt on the ocean in his mum's £10,000, 30ft boat, has now been jailed for nine months.
Last week his mum Annabel said she felt duty-bound to report her son but that taking the decision was 'absolute hell'.
'It's not what you want as a parent but you have to do what you feel is right,' she said. 'Every parent makes their own decision in how they are going to raise their child but I believed that what they did was wrong, and they had to know that.'
Amen to that sister.
It's hard teaching kids right from wrong. It's tough being the disciplinarian all the time. I seem to be always telling my children to stop doing something. And they seem to spend an awful lot of time simply ignoring me and doing it anyway. Sometimes I can't help but feel that I have no clout, that they think I'm a big softie and won't follow through on my threats to paint their rooms pink and force them to watch a Dora the Explorer marathon as punishment.
But then this brave mother went and done the rest of us parents a real favour. Kids need to be taught what's good and acceptable behaviour and what's not. And calling the cops in was a smart move on her part. I think the rest of us should follow suit.
Imagine the power we could wield with a threat of actual jail time for wrong doings. Not cleaning their room could incur a 'woeful neglect of property' charge and a six month suspended sentence. Whopping their brother with an Iron Man figure could land them with an 'aggravated assault' wrap and a £600 fine. Writing on the hall wall with indelible crayons, no matter how nice and colourful it is, could incur a 'wanton vandalism' charge and 12 weeks of community service. Nicking a packet of biscuits from the cupboard and then hiding out on the front step to eat them all with their mates could get them landed with a double whammy, a 'burglary and possession with intent to supply' charge.
And I'm thinking all three of my boys could be put away for life for the litany of criminal damage they have inflicted on my property. If I had of had my head screwed on properly I would have photographed and catalogued all the mobile phones they filled with toilet water after dunking them, the laptops with toast posted into the disc drives, the televisions which blew up because someone kept pressing the on/off button consistently for 20 minutes to see what happened, the car seats which needed industrial cleaning machinery to remove those blasted melted jelly sweets. I could have given all this evidence to the authorities to secure their case. They would have gone down for a long time.
Then again, on the flip side, they could also report me to the police. I could regularly be done for 'cooking with intent to endanger lives' for the burnt, hard as hell fish fingers I present to them sometimes masquerading as dinner. The threats to destroy or damage property - mainly the Playstation when they fail to do move away from it to do their homework - could be taken literally in a court of law. And I suppose the shouty, waving my fist thing that I do when they swing their sodden mucky shoes around their heads by the laces like helicopter blades, making vast mucky water designs on the kitchen walls, that could be taken as 'disturbing the peace'.
So maybe I'll keep my mouth shut, and none of us will get banged up.

Buster is no Mummy's Boy...

My middle son, Caolan, asked me the other day not to call him ‘Honey’ when his friends are around. He told me those are tough streets out there – in our quiet, leafy cul-de-sac – a boy has to fight to survive and that that particular term of endearment was doing nothing for the rough, tough reputation he had worked hard to build. I said I would refrain from the nice names and refer to him as Buster from this day forward.
I suppose there comes a time when every Mum has to let go of their little boy. Realise he is a young man. Unleash, I mean release, him into the world and hope that he’ll be OK on his own. That we, as mothers, taught that boy well and armed him with the power to make the right decisions, look after himself and be safe. There comes a time when we must allow him to fight his own battles.
There are times when he’ll come back and tell you that another boy smacked him hard in the face with a ball and you’ll have to physically restrain yourself from going out there, puncturing that ball and making that boy eat it.
We have to take a step back.
I answered the door to Caolan at the weekend. He didn’t knock, I could hear him shouting and screaming over the television as he staggered up the street. The child has a noise pollution court order-inducing holler and can unhinge his jaw for full dramatic effect and extra volume.
Neighbours were standing at their doors, other’s were twitching their curtains. The boy loves an audience. When I reached him I tried to ascertain what the problem was. Was anything broken? Where was he sore? He took his hand away from his head to reveal a black eye that would have frightened Mike Tyson.
It was a trampoline karate, wrestling-related accident, he sobbed. In between wails and sharp intakes of breath he informed me that his friend had been doing mid-air karate (is this some brand new extreme sport I am too old and uncool to know about?) and Caolan’s head got in the way because he and another boy were doing Triple H’s ‘finisher’ moves. But it was another boy’s fault because he was ‘spinning’.
At least I think that’s what was said.
As I stood with a bag of frozen peas on my boy’s eye head I fought an overwhelming urge to march down the street and confront these spinning, karate-kicking children. I wanted to know, without all the sobbing and confusing terms, who exactly was responsible for the huge swollen eye on my precious boy’s head. I wanted to shout at them that my beautiful, sweet and gentle boy will not be partaking in their spinny, wrestling, karate, boxing games any longer because they were too flipping rough and he was only a child.
Then I thought on what he had asked me not to call him the other day. I thought if I went scowling at his friends about being too rough they might think him weak, a mummy’s boy. He would never live it down.
So I said nothing. It was tough. Anyone who knows me knows I like to say what I see. But I’ll keep my mouth shut for my boy.
Caolan’s friends called for him the next day. His eye was completely closed over, black, purple and blue. They thought it was the coolest thing they had ever seen.
My little boy is becoming a young man. And there’s not one thing I can do about it, except embrace it.

Boys will be boys

It's a mother's natural instinct to protect her child. Sometimes that instinct can lead to us becoming over protective. Sometimes that can lead us to going to Tescos and buying two basket loads of cotton wool, cling film and double sided sticky tape with which to wrap said kids in so that they'll be safe from harm.
Not that I have done that, or anything. When I’m wrapping my kids up I always use bubblewrap. Less mess, less fuss.
But in these past eight years that I’ve been a mother I’ve learned that sometimes it's good to let go a little, let them make their own mistakes, bump their knees, scratch their elbows.
A bit of rough and tumble is fine; it’s good for their development. It teaches them life lessons, makes them hardy and gives them the tools to face life's challenges. It teaches them to know what their limits are and helps them figure out for themselves what is possibly hazardous to their health.
Truth be told I let them think they are doing all this stuff themselves, but I am normally stationed at the sidelines biting my lip hard so as not to involuntarily shout ‘Be Careful!’ every 10 seconds and gripping a First Aid Kit in one hand and a safety net in the other.
My boys are big fans of survivalist Bear Grylls. For those of you unfamiliar with the man, he has his own show where he gets dropped off in dire and dangerous places around the world – think the Amazon Rain Forest, the Sahara desert – ¬ for a week and survives on nothing but his wits and a few bugs for dinner. He climbs cliff faces using rope made from trees, fashions boats from twigs and sleeping bags from sheep carcases - a la sheeping bags.
Even before Bear Grylls was on the scene my boys and my husband would head out into the wilderness of the Donegal countryside at weekends. They would wander around for hours doing men stuff, like climbing trees and stream walking, hiking and, for all I know, seeing who knows the baddest swear words.
The husband has long nurtured the notion that arming them with the skills to catch a fish, climb a mountain and live off the land will empower them, give them the confidence to know that they are strong, capable boys who can push themselves and do anything in life. And I know they are safe in his hands.
The girls in the house are mostly left out of these adventures, partly because we would slow them down - what with wanting to stop and smell nice flowers and stuff - and partly because they all know that my mother instinct would render me a gibbering, blubbering wreck when I bore witness to their antics.
As a girl I don't see the attraction of climbing up a steep, rocky mountain just for fun when it's freezing and there's no Starbucks at the top. I don't really get the thrill of walking up the middle of a stream, getting soaked to the skin. I'm not big on bugs so I'm don't get the whole looking under big rocks for crawly stuff thing either.
The husband knows that if I was to accompany them on these adventures I'd be standing at the bottom of that mountain holding placards saying 'Careful now!', shouting warnings from the side of the stream about 'catching your death of cold' and pleas about not getting muck on their good shoes.
I’ll continue to stay out of their manly adventures and I’ll be here when they come home, with an abundance of dry clothes, plasters and hot mugs of tea.
My husband is creating very happy memories for them. I’ll just have to let boys be boys.

Mummy Guilt 2, this time it's personal....

Parent guilt is as normal as nappies, as common as colds. The guilty switch is activated by remote control in the maternity ward of the hospital in a procedure, which is unfortunately irreversible.
Whether it is the immense working Mum guilt; diet or discipline worries; breastfeeding or bottle feeding; constantly wondering if we are doing the right thing and comparing yourself with other Mums, the crushing guilt us parents experience feels like we are paddling up Excrement Creak without a parenting manual.
A study of 2,000 parents in the UK has found that we are consistently racked with guilt because we believe we are doing a bad job of raising our children.
The study found that more than half felt they were not good parents and did not have basic confidence in their ability. The research also reported that people constantly subjected to parenting advice in the media find themselves led away from their own common sense and down a road where they are made to feel bad about their parental decisions.
People bombarded with a perfectly fluffy version of how parenting should be can be made to feel like their ways are simply not good enough.
That’s where I come in. For the past six years I have regaled you with stories of how I get things spectacularly wrong. Not wrong that people die, wrong in a milder sense of the word where I feel stupid and people laugh. I hope, that by my failings, I make you folks feel better about yourselves and your far superior parenting skills.
My only hope is that I have entertained you with tales of our various trips to casualty, our disastrous holiday experiences, our comedic attempts at organising birthday parties, our novel ideas for First Communion outfits (remember Dan as Darth Vader, Me as Princess Lea, the baby as Yoda?)
Alongside all the other guilts I feel my own unique version of mummy guilt by parading my family’s life, experiences and adventures here on these pages for the world to see. I relay, with brutal honesty, our very trips to the dentist, what my kids do at school, the funny things they say. In a way I invite people into our home, into our family. Others would find this intrusive. Through these pages I have shared with you my son’s first steps, my daughter’s first words, my father’s last breath.
I showcase myself every week here in Technicolor with neon signs pointing at my own failings. I put myself out there for people to criticise my mothering skills. And they do.
We may feel that we are bad mothers on occasion or that we have made the wrong decision. But from time to time total strangers inform me that I am a bad mother, usually via email on a Tuesday morning after this column appears in the Irish News. It can be anything from my choice of career to my decision to breastfeed. Nothing is off limits for people’s vitriol.
But much like the parenting manuals with the perfect fluffy version of how we should behave I completely ignore them. What the hells bells do they know about me, about my kids?
There is not a one-size fits all parenting model no more than there is a perfect mother. It’s no good struggling to be perfect. None of us will ever be that. Just be the very best you can be. That’s good enough.

What, no dramatics?

My baby boy Finn turned three last week and he started playschool to celebrate the occasion.
I wasn’t sure how the boy would take being separated from me for three hours a day, saying as how we’ve spent most of the past three years in each other’s company.
When I left him at the school I was anticipating a bit of screaming, a bit of leg hugging, maybe a spot of banging his fists fiercely on the nursery door with a touch of high-pitched wailing about not leaving him there all alone thrown in. I was highly disappointed that while all the other Mums had to contend with clingy, sobbing children, my little guy waved me a cheery goodbye and headed for the building blocks.
I even went over and reinforced the fact that I was leaving now, going away and leaving him here all by himself in the hope that it might spark a bit of dramatic reaction. He bid me farewell and went on about the business of building a castle with plastic blocks.
I resisted the urge to accidentally push over and annihilate his multi-coloured creation so that he’d cry and I’d have to hug him like all the other Mums were hugging their offspring. His lack of dramatics was making me look bad.
So I shuffled and huffed off back to the car, turning back in the hope that he’d at least have the courtesy to run to the nursery windows, put on a bit of a show of crying after me. I’d settle even for one solitary tear.
Nothing.
When I returned a few hours later I asked the nursery assistant how he had got on. Had he shown any signs of missing me? He had had a great time, she said. They had sung Happy Birthday and he had worn a silly king’s hat. Was there any tears, I enquired? Yes, she replied. He had shed a tear or two when the staff had told the children it was time now to go home.
She commented that my boy was very quiet. I laughed. His nickname in our house is ‘the curly-haired lunatic’. Wait until he settles in, wait until they get him full throttle. Then they’ll be banging on the nursery doors, crying for me to take him home.
After playschool the husband took the boy into town for an ice cream. He was wearing a big blue star badge that read ‘I am 3 today!’ – the boy, not the husband.
By the time the husband had reached the ice cream parlour he had made a profit of £4. Random people – female, average age 80 – kept stopping to admire my boy, his birthday badge and his curls.
When the husband reached the ice cream parlour the owner gave my boy extra helpings and refused payment. Whilst sitting outside the shop in the sun the boy made another profit of £2.70, a badge with a tree on it and a red balloon.
If we continue this way the husband and I calculate that we will be able to retire at 40. I’m sending them both into town next Saturday, adorned with several birthday badges and the husband will be sporting a curly wig for extra effect.

Don't let hatred build a home in your heart....

Ten years ago I was 26 years old, making plans for my wedding and greatly enjoying my early years working as an Irish News sub-editor. My children were not even a twinkle in their Daddy’s eye. The future was bright and laid out before me to do what I willed.
On September 11th 2001 I drove down the New Lodge Road to work listening to a song on the radio when the presenter cut in to announce that two airplanes had crashed into the World Trade Centre in New York.
When I arrived at work my colleagues were transfixed by the images being beamed through the newsroom televisions. No one spoke. The phones, which rang constantly, fell silent. I watched, as the world did, in horror and disbelief as the towers burned. I watched as human beings – people’s husbands, children’s fathers, mothers, wives – fell like burning confetti to the ground below. I watched as live feeds brought images of people hanging out of the skyscraper’s windows, sick to my stomach knowing that there was no conceivable way those poor souls would ever find a way out.
I watched as a man, who looked around my husband’s age, waved his white suit shirt desperately out the window. The camera zoomed in. He’d written SOS in black marker on his shirt. The black smoke from the crash consumed him. I walked to my desk and closed my eyes. I couldn’t watch any more. The image of that shirtless man falling through those black clouds to his death is seared into my memory forever.
I could not imagine that man’s wife, his mother, his children watching their televisions, seeing their loved one’s last moments being played over and over again on the news. I couldn’t imagine sitting at home watching my husband’s building turn to rubble.
For all who remember that day, witnessing and experiencing the last moments of life and death through our television sets from the safety of our offices or homes it was surreal, disturbing, heartbreaking. What must it have been like for the families of those that perished that day?
In the days that followed we went to work, we relayed the news as always. Part of our job was to trawl through news from American reporters, condense and organised the stories for inclusion in the paper.
I read hundreds and hundreds of heartbreaking stories; saw hundreds of heart wrenching images. Some of the details from the more graphic reports had to be omitted in case they would upset our readers. But I read them and I remember them.
I read dialogues of last phone calls to wives, viewed pictures of grief-stricken fathers searching the savaged streets of New York for their missing daughters, read of how entire fire departments had been wiped out. Thousands of miles away from the events of that day, sitting in a newsroom in Belfast, I cried for people I had never met. Just months before I married my husband I cried for the wives whose husbands were never coming home, the children who would never see their fathers or mothers again.
Ten years on the horrific images are on the television again. I have four children now. Two of them are old enough to be aware of world affairs, but too young to fully understand the viciousness of world we live in, the hate that drives people to kill their fellow human beings.
They have asked me, “Why did those bad men do that?”
It’s complicated I say. I have told them there were men who hated America. This hatred was so intense they turned themselves into human weapons and destroyed what they thought were the two great symbols of America.
I tell them that America went to war after that attack and that there are families in Afghanistan and Iraq who are suffering the same horror of having their loved ones ripped from them, just as those on 9/11 did. Entire families have been wiped out. Innocent men, women and children, fathers, mothers, sons and daughters slaughtered as those were on September 11th. That soldiers were sent off to war in unpronounceable places and have never come home again.
I wonder what kind of world I have brought my children into, I worry for them as they grow. As a mother I hope to teach my children that there are no winners in war. Hatred is like poison I tell them. People should never let it build a home in their hearts.
In the days, weeks, months and years after 9/11 there were a lot of words written on the tragic happenings. I don’t recall a lot of them.
What stands out in my mind are the words of my colleague, Irish News columnist Anne Hailes. In the days after the horrific events of that day she told us in her column to gather those we love dear and hold them close, cherish them, appreciate them, tell them we love them. They were wise words then, and wise words now.

Poor Scary, I've been that soldier...

Melanie Brown, aka Scary Spice, welcomed her third child into the world last week. No word on the name yet, but big sisters Phoenix Chi and Angel are, I’m sure, as eager as the rest of the world to hear what wild and wonderful title by which the child should henceforth be addressed.
The baby girl’s arrival was not the only significant part of the story. Poor Scary Spice was photographed in the throes of labour, stumbling through the hospital car park in her jammies (which were not even her good ones), with no make up, hanging on to her husband, walls, cars and passers by, trying desperately to make her way into the maternity unit through a sea of paparazzi photographers and the excruciating waves of labour. For a PR conscious celebrity, who has full make–up and hair done before she even pops out for a pint of milk, I'm sure she would agree it was not her finest hour.
I cringed when I saw those pictures in the papers. I think every woman who has ever had a baby did. For we all knew that labour is a most intensely private moment for us ladies. We are vulnerable, we are in pain, we are stressed and worried about the health of our babies. We are often in awful, terribly mismatched night attire and unflattering bedtime slippers. Labour is not glamorous, it is not fancy. It’s as rock bottom as a girl can get and it’s not a time for meeting people you know from work or getting your photograph splashed all over the front pages of national newspapers.
The last time I was in labour the midwives sent me out walking around the warren of corridors in the hospital to help things progress quicker. I wasn’t adequately prepared for the expedition – wearing a horrendous navy blue nightshirt from a budget retail outlet and bedroom slippers circa 1986 which, in any other scenario, would have assured my arrest for crimes against modern fashion.
So off we set, the husband and I, around the lovely new wings of the hospital and into the hospital proper.
We walked and we walked. And we stopped and held onto walls, said bad words and told husbands that there was never to be any more children, ever. And we walked some more. It was like we were in a cocoon, just the two of us. I didn’t for a moment stop to think that folk might judge me on my bad choice of nightwear or how the sight of my make-up free face, or my poor choice of hairstyle that day might burn the very irises out of ordinary hospital dwellers.
Thing is, when a girl’s in labour, the fashionable side of her brain that would ordinarily make her shun bad nightwear or hairstyle choices shuts down in order to give full power to the ‘Please God, I’ll do anything, make the pain stop’ department. Simple fact of the matter is, labour means for a few hours she doesn’t actually care how she looks.
That’s why it’s good to have a sensible man around.
On our travels around the hospital we turned one corner and walked into a crowd of people. While I held onto the wall and breathed the husband quickly established that the gathered crowd were not normal visitors and that there was a clear and present danger of me appearing on the six o’clock news. Someone – it may have been the Queen of England – was cutting a ribbon at the bottom of the corridor and those milling around with their cameras were a broad selection of my journalistic colleagues and friends from across the North with various digital recording equipment.
If you look closely at the footage from that day you will – in the far right hand corner – see a big, fat pregnant lady wearing a £1.50 nightgown with rabbits on it being manhandled around the corner with a coat over her head. This was not a kidnapping as you might assume, it was the husband saving me from the eternal shame of having pictures of me in labour beamed all over the world.
So Scary Spice, I do feel your pain. I did feel sorry for you. I was almost that soldier. However, I admire your restraint. Had the paparazzi decided to snap me while labour was in progress there would be threats of violence, there would be actual violence, there would be the forceful positioning of digital photography equipment in certain regions that biology determines the sun cannot possibly shine.

The Big Red Button Phase....

Today marks the official end to the summer holidays. It’s been fun but I welcome the return of routines and the military boot camp-feel the school mornings have. I suppose if I’m honest I missed all the clapping in an authoritive manner, the barking of orders and the taking away of privileges from those who did not comply.
We didn’t go away this year again. The thought of taking four small children on an airplane fills me with dread. The thought of having to spend two weeks cooped up in a compact hotel room with them fills me with despair.
No matter where we would go they would be bored within two hours, guaranteed. If I booked us a week on the moon they would complain about the cold, that they were bored looking at outer space, that once you’ve seen one star you’ve seen them all and where was the intergalactic drive-through McDonalds?
I would also be at pains to take an airplane anywhere until our middle child Caolan grows out of the Father Dougal phase he’s been going through this past six years. This phase means he cannot physically help himself and has to touch dangerous stuff when told not to. We call it the ‘big red button’ fascination.
I would imagine that any land, sea or air vehicle that child is found on would surely come to grief because he has pressed the big red button onboard, the one with the sign which clearly states ‘Self Destruct Button – Do Not Touch’ on it.
We visited a country house and gardens last week as part of the O’Neill Staycation 2011. It was a glorious day, the gardens were beautiful and we were milling around enjoying ourselves. One walled garden was cordoned off and there was a large sign on a closed iron gate saying ‘Do Not Enter’ and smaller lettering warning folk that there was some manner of pesticide spraying going on to kill bugs and beasties and that the chemicals used could irritate skin and eyes.
I could see Caolan’s radar bing into action and I told the child in no uncertain terms that he was absolutely forbidden to enter that garden. He was told that ‘Do Not Enter’ means exactly that. No ifs or buts. That there was poisonous substances there that would positively burn his skin off and possibly his eyes out of his head. He might never see again and would have to live his live out the rest of his life void of flesh on his bones. This warning served to entice him further. He seemed drawn to that ‘Do Not Touch’ sign like a moth to a flame.
I’m not sure what way the child’s brain computed this information but it was probably something along the lines of…’See over there, there’s a world of dangerous and exciting things hiding behind that cordon just waiting to be discovered. Wouldn’t it be great to tell your mates you ate/stuck up your nose/stuffed into your ears one of those poison plants and it turned your tongue/nose/ears green? That chemical stuff could turn your hand into a skeleton hand. Imagine your friend's faces. They’d be all like, Wow!’
We were sitting on one of the picnic benches when he arrived over, the skin on his hands a flamey red colour. He rubbed his eye and the skin on his face got enflamed. He was trying to pretend it didn’t hurt but we had to spend half an hour with his hands and face under a gushing outdoor tap to get his skin back to normal. There was no scientific proof that this would cure his sore skin but I figured a good dunking would probably do him the world of good.
I cannot impress upon you, readers, how many times I have been to the doctor with this child in the aftermath of one of his ‘big red button’ events. His exploits are the stuff of legends in our medical surgery.
There was the time I gave him an art set and told him not to consume any of the small fluffy pieces. Two weeks later after a nosebleed, and the discovery of a lump I made a frantic dash to the doctors telling him I thought my child had a tumour in his nose. The doctor fished a small fluffy art ball from my son’s nose with a pair of tweezers. Caolan told me he sniffed it up to see what would happen.
The first time I took the child to the beach as a baby, just walking, he ran straight into the water, diving head first into the oncoming waves. He has had kitchen table jumping injuries and a scar above his eye from when he was swinging Tarzan-like on a kitchen cabinet door and it fell completely off onto his head.
The child literally jumps first and thinks later, usually while rolling around the floor in agony.
I doubt he’ll ever be any different. I have just resigned myself to the fact that I am the mother of a kamikaze kid.

Oh hail glorious Saint Back to Schoolness...

Is that a choir of angels I hear? Does the world somehow seem a brighter place? How is it that I can see colours more vibrantly, that music sounds somehow sweeter? Because there’s only one more week left until the glorious school term starts, that’s why.
There were days we thought we would never make it this far. There were many dark, dark times. Many days we teetered on the brink of insanity as dozens of children, only a fraction of whom I could claim as my offspring, rampaged through my house and garden, ate everything in our cupboards like a pack of ravenous piranha and sent the neighbours running, screaming for the ASBO hotline number due to excessive noise levels.
We have spent entire days praying. Praying that the Lord would end our suffering. But we obviously weren’t praying hard enough for he kept sending the apocalyptic rain and the hoards of neighbours noisy kids to our door. We must have done something terribly wrong in a previous life to deserve this type of torture, otherwise why would he have sent a child with the ear-drum piercing Barbara Windsor-style laugh to our door this summer or the one who could eat seven packets of crisps in a row and then ask if we had any available biscuits?
As usual I have left the purchasing of school uniforms to the last minute. I’ve discovered over the years the purchasing of school uniforms is a bit like a safari. Lionesses prowl around the shops for weeks beforehand on the hunt, sniffing out the best bargains, waiting for the special offers to raise their heads. Once they have their prey in their sights they slink around and pounce on the best deals for their cubs, biting and scratching other mother’s eyes out if they put their paws on the last pair of good school shoes.
Last year I figured that their old uniforms would suffice, that lack of sunshine and our wet Irish summers would have stunted their growth sufficiently that I wouldn’t need to purchase new ones. Three days before school started I found myself trawling through the rejects that the good Mums, the ones who buy their school uniforms in May, had discarded. And much like the African safari the uniform section of many stores was like the carcass of some savaged wildebeest – just the bare bones and the bits that were chewed and spit out left, like the odd shoes and trousers that won’t stay up for love or money.
And the hunt for those PE slippers, the pumps that the school insist in making the kids wear so as not to ruin their wooden floors, gets me every year. When do the good mothers purchase these elusive items, in January? That’s just plain sneaky. There are never any left when I seek them in the summer. I’ve more chance of discovering the lost treasures of the Knights Templar. Quite frankly I’d rather pay to have the PE hall floor completely replaced every year than to have to search for those blasted black pumps.
But at least now we know that there is light at the end of what has been a very, very long and torturous tunnel. We’re now talking days until normal service resumes and we can offload our offspring onto the professionals and have our days and our routines returned to us.
If you’re looking for us next week you will find us camped outside their school, as has become tradition. Those teachers have had a long, stress less holiday season. I wouldn’t want to deprive them of a single second of my kid’s colourful company.

Wanted – neurotic Mary Poppins for childminding duties...

My baby girl is a year old now and I need to make some efforts to return to full time employment. This will involve me getting some poor unfortunate to care for four rowdy kids and one deranged dog. With all family members flat out with work I may be forced to pay an individual to replace me during the working day, ie look on as my children break stuff, attempt to kill one another and destroy my house and sanity.
I put an advert in our local paper. I am expecting a positive deluge of eager applicants and have put Royal Mail on full alert in case they need to buy their postmen fabric extensions for their postbags.
Wanted: Neurotic Mary Poppins-style Health and Safety obsessed individual for childminding and/or industrial cleaning responsibilities. Must have degree-level qualification in worrying with particular interest in the subjects of terror and asthma attacks, economic uncertainty and terribly frightening and unpronounceable health complaints. Ninja skills, cage fighting referee experience and extreme survival skills preferable but not essential. Full training and hands-on experience will be given on site.
Main duties: Worrying about children from 9am to 9pm, Monday to Friday, some weekend and evening worrying assistance may also be needed. Applicant must be flexible.
Applicant must be youthful, full of energy and willing to sacrifice sitting down or having a nice cup of tea for a nine, possibly 12 hours at a time.
We are essentially looking for a kind, warm individual with a good sense of humour (you will need it, trust me) who is willing to muck in, muck out, tidy up and not freak out. Mountaineering and/or sheer face cliff climbing experience may also be beneficial when tackling the weekly ironing pile.
Advanced and defensive driving skills course will be offered to the successful applicant to ensure the picking up of three children from three different locations at exactly the same time is handled correctly.
The successful applicant must enjoy cooking and have a healthy interest in trying new recipes that do not have baked beans as their core ingredient. Family would love to try exotic new dishes, for example macaroni cheese or chicken nuggets.
The successful applicant may be expected to travel on holiday during the summer with the family – to the bright lights of Donegal – and not have an aversion to spending a wet week in a cramped caravan with four crazed caravan-hating children, two rather grumpy, deranged parents and a dog who despises the sound of the countryside.
Our home in Derry is of adequate size. If the successful applicant wishes to live with us there is accommodation available in our family's beautiful home. There is a nice space out in the garage, in between the dog and right next to the washing machine for convenience – you can continue the endless washing cycle throughout the night for handiness, might take the pressure off your extensive daytime chores. The job is to start in September.
Pay rates are atrocious and there is zero likelihood of any type of benefits, apart from having a really good laugh.
Please send CV, references and most up-to-date criminal record to the usual address.
Thanks!
The O’Neills

The garage that time forgot....

Our garage was a big mess. At the back of it we had big boxes secured tightly with brown tape and marked with things like ‘kitchen’ or ‘living room’. They had arrived on the lorry from Belfast seven years ago and got lost among the vast amount of other useless clutter that we have managed to accumulate in our time together.
When I walked into our garage I was always reminded of that scene from the X-files when Mulder and Scully found a huge warehouse that had boxes full of secrets as far as the eye could see. The boxes in our garage do not contain ancient lost artifacts or solid gold tablets that Jesus Christ wrote his shopping list on. It’s more a case of old framed pictures, ancient bills and toys with bits broke off them that I couldn’t bear to throw out.
We decided to tackle the monster last weekend and finally clear the thing out. The husband has big ideas for the place that doesn’t necessarily include my big ideas of filling it with more rubbish moved in from the house.
We opened boxes that hadn’t seen the light of day for seven years. Every item had a memory attached, every scrap of paper told a story. It was like opening a time capsule to a previous existence.
In one box I found a case with all our very important documentation (so very, very important it has been hidden at the back of the garage for seven years).
I found a contract of employment from one of my first employers and it took me back to the excitement I felt at becoming a real live journalist, getting handed money to do the two things that I loved most – talking and writing. I remember looking at my yearly income – the heady sum of £11,000 – and thinking I had won the actual lottery.
I found the mortgage details from our very first house in North Belfast. We bought a three storey house on the peaceline for £13,000. I remember the husband, who was then the boyfriend, and I almost passing out at what we thought was an absolute fortune.
In the same box I found a small yellow plastic duck on a string. The boy, who now almost reaches my shoulders, used to pull this duck everywhere behind him as he toddled around our Belfast home. It would quack as it moved. It used to drive us insane. But I pulled it along the garage floor and it brought back those early, nervous days when we first started out on this journey. All wet behind the ears as to how kids worked, stumbling in the dark, tripping over the obstacles of brand new parenthood.
I looked at that little duck and out the garage window at the tall handsome boy wrestling with his brother in the garden and thought how far we’d come, how many blessings we’ve been given in those days and since.
In the same box I found a letter from my father in his beautiful, swirly handwriting. It was in the days before email – yes I’m that old – texts, pages, electronic everything. Yes, there were phones but my Dad adored writing letters and how I love finding these little reminders of him around our house. Reading his turn of phrase is almost like talking with him again. All of them signed off with ‘Love Dad x’. They are all little treasures.
There are framed pictures – a youthful us in France before weddings and christenings were even thought of; the husband as a schoolchild, a mirror image of our boys; a picture of the husband’s mother – who died before she met our youngest children – and the pictures from the day our son made us a family. All special, all lost and now found.
There were boxes marked ‘toys to fix’ which were packed with cars with only three wheels, action figures with limbs missing and teddies who had seen better days. We found the computerised bunny that talked, which malfunctioned one night and led us into thinking someone had broken into our house and was asking people in a southern American accent to ‘follow me’.
There was too much, too little-used exercise equipment to mention. There was a skiing machine, a rowing contraption and a thing, which enabled the user to swing arms and legs wildly at the same time. Walking from the sofa to the kettle burnt more calories than the grand total of calories clocked up on all of the above. In the skip they went alongside old chairs that we never got around to upholstering and huge cabinets that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a 70’s parlour – you know the ones, everyone’s elderly aunt has one.
In the skip went rusty tent poles, clutter inherited from relatives and useless DIY paraphernalia that we bought on sale thinking we might one day need them.
But there was a small box set aside for special stuff. Things to add to my memory chest – Daddy’s letters, a portrait my eldest son did of me when he was three years old (big round face, gigantic orange eyes, spiky black hair) and the pictures which tell the story of our lives. Little treasures, all of them.

Dear Vicky....

Little Harper Seven has been all over the news this week.
The new baby daughter of the Beckham household has caused quite a stir, not just for her unusual name, but because she’s the first girl in that particular house.
Now I know Victoria reads this column, I know she follows the lives of the O’Neillios in an almost stalkeresque fashion. Me and her can relate, you see. She’s all fancy shopping bags, groceries from Harrods and holidaying in Bermuda. I’m all under-eye bags, messages from Sainsburys and holidaying in Buncrana.
She, obviously, saw my stunningly beautiful baby daughter Maolíosa on these very pages and said to herself, ‘I want me one of them girl babies’. Well, Victoria is a follower of fashion and we do constantly strive to set trends, us O’Neills – look at our Finn’s hair for example. He has brought the curly haired bird’s nest look back. Where we lead others do actually follow.
Saying we’ve so much in common now – we both have husbands who are Adonis’s, are utterly fabulous ourselves and have found ourselves in the wonderful, fluffy land of pink things after three boys – I thought I’d write her a bit of a letter, offering some advice.
Dear Victoria,
How’s things? I bet you’re really knackered at the mo, what with the new addition and all. Take it easy, love, let that nanny earn her £70,000 a year. Just you sit back and keep looking fabulous like you did in that not-posed picture of you in your false eyelashes pretending to sleep after a long labour. I looked that good two hours after giving birth too, to onlookers who were a good 300 metres away and looking at me through heavy tracing paper with their eyes squinted.
You and me have led almost identical lives, Vic, and that is why I’m writing. I too met a handsome and talented man around 15 years ago. He wasn’t a footballer, he was a photographer but I suppose both occupations start with the same letter don’t they? When we got hitched we too had a million pounds in the bank, of love that is, not actual pounds like yourself and Dave.
And like you and your man we had three sons in a row. I too thought I’d never have a daughter to do girly things with – like not watching football, like not digging for worms, like not having burping competitions.
Your daughter is only a week old, Vic. What delights await you with her. You will, at last, find yourself in the baby girl department of Next and think you have died and gone to pink heaven. David will no doubt go a ghostly shade of white and take one of his turns when you inform him you’re going to the Debenhams sale and need his bank card. Don’t let him put you off, love, this is your right of passage.
Your house will look like a pink-coloured bomb exploded – pink blankets, coats and cute hats strewn everywhere like debris.
You will find yourself strangely drawn to random pink stuff – fridges, cushions, computers, curtains – and will try and introduce it to a household mostly used to manly colours like magnolia and brown.
You will find yourself dressing your girl up like a pink blancmange – big floaty, impractical dresses with sequence in the daytime, cute neon pink sleepsuits with little bunny hoods on them for night.
But remember this Victoria. Pinkness is not an illness, this compulsion is because you have been blueified for so long. Just roll with it, sister. Pink never did anyone any harm.
Enjoy your baby daughter Victoria. Scoop her up into your arms, take a big whiff of that gorgeously sweet newborn smell and savour it, for she will not stay small for long. In the blink of an eye she’ll transform from the cuddly little bundle with the squishy face to a giggly ball of gorgeousness like my own little star.
Much love to yourself, Dave and the fam,
Leona
x

Happy birthday Maggie Moo...

This day last year I was dandering around the corridors of Altnagelvin Hospital in my night attire, intermittently hugging walls and calling my husband very, very bad names.
I had not finally cracked under the pressure of being a super multi-tasking working mother of three noisy, messy boys. We were about to welcome our baby daughter, Maolíosa, to the world.
We had discovered we were expecting her the week my father passed away from cancer. From the very beginning of her life’s journey she was a light in the dark.
I had a pretty non-eventful pregnancy apart from epic morning sickness that had me pray, on board the Derry to Dublin bus, that the Lord might take me away from the awful nausea. Perhaps maybe to a seat across the bus, away from my Mum and her vast array of pungent egg and onion sandwiches.
I survived for three months on a diet of still water and fruity chews. Apple flavoured sweets were my only means of consuming five-a-day, although I did guess that the only true apple content was the picture on the front of the packet.
We decided not to find out if this baby was to be another boy. We had wanted to keep it a surprise. I had long ago resigned myself to the fact that boys were the norm in the O’Neill bloodline and I would probably never have a daughter. I prepared a cupboard of truck-themed sleepsuits and Bob the Builder t-shirts.
One of the best days of my life was when, three weeks before our baby was due, the midwife inadvertently informed us that our baby was a girl. I remember asking the midwife to check again as the husband turned a ghostly white colour. I’m in those 30 seconds it took him to move from a standing position to a seating one that his life flashed before his eyes – him standing with his just emptied wallet, him brandishing a shot gun as he answers the door to her boyfriend, him walking her down the aisle, a vice-like grip on her arm.
As we walked out of the hospital that day I felt pure happiness, undiluted joy. It had been a long time. We had been wading through suffocating grief for months. Suddenly I could see the pretty blossoms on the trees on the walk back to our car, appreciate the warm sunshine on my face, see the joy and beauty in the world. Such was the power of our baby girl.
Three weeks later we were back at the same hospital, walking the corridors as the midwives suggested. We turned one corner and came across a vast number of my media colleagues. Someone, it may have been the Queen, was opening a new wing of the hospital and they were there in force with their TV crews and cameras.
It may have been the shock of almost appearing on the TV news in my nightie, make-up less and hair in a mess, but our baby girl was born very shortly afterwards ¬– all plans for a peaceful waterbirth, whale music and dimmed lighting were forgotten.
Just months after my father passed away, descending our family into darkest grief, our baby girl arrived in the world, bringing with her sunshine and joy to our house.
She brought with her a sense of peace – and in a house positively brimming with male testosterone that was most welcome. She got a nickname – as is tradition in the O’Neill house. She joined Dango, Caolan Baylan and Finnbo O’Neillio to become Maggie Moo. She has absolutely no bovine traits at all, the name just had a nice ring to it.
She turns one year old this week. She is a gentle, giggling bundle of pink loveliness and we adore her.
Happy birthday Maggie Moo.
x

Memories are made of this....

Frank McCourt once said “Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.
I often fret about what kind of memories my kids will have of their own childhood. It’s obviously a million miles away from McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes but I want them to think back with fondness for our home, their parents, the adventures we had, the world-famous O’Neill holidays.
It’s the time of year we have to start thinking about taking ourselves off on holiday. In typical O’Neill fashion we have nothing booked and will probably head down south for a few days of relaxation and/or getting on each other’s nerves.
When I think back to my own childhood, my resounding memories of family holidays are blurry. My parents took us away somewhere every year ¬ – never foreign, we always stuck close to home.
We went to England one year and have an album full of photos of us at various historical sites, museums and general places of interest. I remember none of it.
What I can recall is the sinks on the ferry on the way to England positively swimming with vomit and the captain of said ship laughing as he announced that his superiors in Belfast told him not to sail because of the whole ‘worst storm in living history’ thing. He told us over the loud speak that it was his wedding anniversary and his wife would most certainly kill him if he missed their romantic dinner, thus forcing him to sail on. There were many prayers said that wet and stormy night. Many of them to the god of ceramic sinks.
On another holiday in Mayo my resounding memory is of my younger brother, Cathal, jumping on an old bed and unleashing a massive cloud of ancient country dust thus setting off my asthma. We also visited numerous touristy places of fabulous interest, which I don’t remember.
Then there was the time we went to sunny Sussex for two weeks; the windscreen of the car got smashed on the outside lane of the motorway and we all nearly died. And also we visited a few towns, museums and I think Glastonbury, none of which I remember.
I asked my boys what they remembered about our previous holidays.
We went to a hotel in Newcastle a few years back. We visited butterfly sanctuaries, mazes, museums, castles, had walks on lovely beaches, met a load of ducks. Caolan remembers absolutely nothing of our trip. Daniel’s only memory of the entire holiday was throwing up over his precious Ben 10 schoolbag in the car.
We went to Donegal last year to a gorgeous house overlooking an awe-inspiring scene of fields, cliffs and crashing waves. For 10 days we wandered around historic houses, dandered around beautiful lakes, went to adventure playgrounds, took on the wild Atlantic, relaxed on steam trains, had epic treks around mountains.
Daniel’s only memory of this particular trip is the husband struggling in gale force winds and punishing rain to determinedly dish up real BBQ food. He remembers us laughing out the windows of our holiday home as he threw petrol on the flames to keep it lit in the never-ending downpour. He even remembers the colour of the pathetically inadequate raincoat the husband wore that was so wet it became like a second skin. He remembers how he never gave up on it and we were eventually served delicious burgers in rain-soaked baps.
There’s really no point in us planning a trip to Disney World or New York anytime soon. The kids are too young. They would only come away from such an epic adventure with memories of chocolate ice cream and car sickness.
I dare say we’ll stick with Donegal again this year again.

Dear Lord....

We are five days into the summer holidays and tempers and nerves are already rather frayed. We’ve already had several meltdowns, apocalyptic rain and a level seven bug that swept through the house like wildfire.
I know for a fact that God reads this blog – Bishop Daly told me – so I thought I’d give him a shout with regards furnishing me with patience and strength for the next 64 days.

Dear God,
First off, a question. Why did you make the summer holidays so long? You made the earth in seven days. Seven is a nice round number. I’m thinking the school holidays should span a long weekend in July or maybe just a week in August.
And Lord, I feel that you’ve been too lenient on teachers. You should really introduce a new law that they must education and entertain our children at their houses throughout the summer when the schools are shut. Fire down a few lightning bolts for those that don’t comply. I’m not telling you what to do, Lord. I’m just saying.
Lord, please keep me from the temptation of giving into the begging of my small children and booking a week at Legoland. I know that the husband would consider a visit to Legoland on a par with sticking forks in his eyes. In the grand scale of things listening to the husband whinge for a week while we’d be there is infinitely worse than all my children combined expressing their disappointment at not being able to visit a theme park based on tiny colourful blocks. Give me the strength to say no to Lego.
This year, Lord, grant me the grace to keep a cool head on the O’Neill family holiday. I apologise for the string of obscenities you must have overheard that time in Donegal when I flipped under the pressure of trying to entertain three young children and a Belfast man. There really was no need for me to dramatically stop the car at the roadside and throw all my Bord Failte documentation into a field. I know I most certainly worried some sheep with my behaviour. Please bless them with your peace.
And grant me the serenity to prevent a synchronised meltdown on the scale of the famous Wicklow incident when maps were waved about in a threatening fashion and family members were called derogatory names. Please bless those American tourists who hurried away from the scene in case by gawking they would somehow be sucked into our world of madness and mayhem. I also realise Lord, that your name was taken in vain a number of times and for that I apologise.
I’m also awfully sorry for shaking my fist at the heavens and shouting ‘why me, Lord, why me?’ It really was unnecessary. Only you in your divine wisdom know why you sent me these fussy, easily bored, forever hungry, peace, quiet and countryside hating children.
Please also grant me the foresight to get to the shops before the good school uniforms all sell out and I am forced to alter (badly) ill-fitting rejects.
I don't want you thinking I'm always on asking for stuff so please allow me a moment to offer up thanks to Tescos for introducing the cheapest school uniform in living history, thus saving our nerves when the middle child comes home on the first day back at school with his trouser knees completely missing and totally indestructible stains on his new school jumper.
And while you’re on Lord, please let me thank you for sending the most fabulous of husbands my way, blessing us with four amazing, beautiful, awe-inspiring children and a great, great family. Good work, Lord. I couldn’t have chosen them better myself.
High five.
Amen,
Leona.

The Hospice gave my family the chance to say goodbye to our Dad

I wrote a feature last week in the Derry Journal to mark the 25th year of the Foyle Hospice in Derry. My Dad was a patient in the Hospice in October 2009.....

Two year’s ago my father’s prostate cancer went from manageable to terminal.

He had battled the disease for four years before that day the doctors told him there was nothing more they could do.

Over the next few weeks and months my Dad – who was a strong-willed, fiercely independent man – got sicker and weaker and eventually so tired that his legs couldn’t carry his weight.

We managed at home for a time, our family rallying around, trying our best to function under a black cloud that my Dad’s illness had brought over our lives.

Monica from the Foyle Hospice was a regular visitor to our house. She listened when Dad needed to talk, she was there with a shoulder when we needed to cry, she knew all the answers when confusion, fear and frustration overwhelmed us. She was honest, caring and comforting.

Dad didn’t want to go to a hospice, he wanted to stay at home with us, but as he entered the last few weeks of his life, and his body shut down, we all knew we needed extra help with his care and the Hospice offered Dad respite care.

I was at work when my sister and Mum drove Dad to the Foyle Hospice. As I sat at my desk I could only imagine what was going through his mind when he left the home he shared with my Mum for 40 years and made his way down the tree-lined avenue that led to the Foyle Hospice.

He was met at the door by a beaming nurse who showed him his comfy, cosy room, complete with TV and glorious view over the fields and Foyle Bridge.

When I arrived later that evening I found that in just a few hours the doctors and nurses had assessed him and made him comfortable – so comfortable that he was like his old self again, raving about the ensuite bathroom and asking what time the Man City match was starting. They took away his pain, eased his concerns, brought back his humour. The Hospice gave us our Dad back for a few weeks.

For the next few weeks we circled around that room, around our new family headquarters, like satellites. Dad was kept happy and comfortable with constant care from the Hospice doctors and nurses. They treated him with dignity and grace. Nothing was too much trouble for them. He raved about the Hospice chef who, hearing how he loved lemon merangie pie, fashioned him one from scratch and delivered a slice to his room with a mug of hot tea.

They set up his WiFi connection so he could view photographs of his brand new grandson, the first to carry the Breslin name.

The Hospice was not somewhere my father went to die; in many ways it brought him back to life, back to us, before he passed away.

I would often arrive in the afternoons to find Bishop Daly and himself debating world politics animatedly, him joking with the nurses, my mum and him out in the garden, looking out over the city where they met, married and raised four children.

They handled everything physical, mental and emotional so that my father felt no pain at all in the final weeks of his life. He slept well, he was comfortable, he ate, he caught up with old friends that came to see him, he laughed. For that we will be eternally grateful.

The peace they gave him allowed us, in those final weeks, to be a family.

They afforded us the time to talk, to just be together in a beautiful, peaceful environment without beeping and whirring machines.

I often sat in the communal room. It was a peaceful place for reflection, filled with awe-inspiring paintings and art donated by the families of loved ones whose lives the Hospice touched in a positive way.

I remember reading a poem in a frame. It said…

“When the natural exhultation of this day fades into the reality of daily life, the doors of this hallowed place will welcome its first patients. For them the shadows will have lengthened, their evening has come, their busy world has hushed, the fever of life is all but over and the work is all done.”

My Dad knew when he was almost at the end of his own journey and requested to go home. The Hospice, knowing how very ill he was, respected his wishes and organised a team of nurses to help our family with his care.

He arrived home by ambulance on a sunny Tuesday November afternoon. Within the hour the nurses were there with us, explaining how his hi-tech bed worked, about his medication.

He wanted to come home and be surrounded by his family, his books, the sound of the trees and his grandchildren playing in the garden.

The nurses - Una, Paula and a band of girls - prepared us for what was to come. They gently helped us get ready to let him go. They kept Dad pain-free and happy. They talked, they listened, they answered our difficult questions openly and honestly. They picked us up from the floor when we couldn’t go on, they held our hands through it all.

Monica from the Hospice was a constant visitor. As Dad neared the end she spoke to us. I remember her standing by the window in Mum’s living room telling us that we must prepare ourselves and gather the family, that the end was very near for my father.

The sun was shining through her blonde hair, giving her a halo of sorts. Like all the staff in the Hospice, she was an angel on earth, doing God’s work.

My family will be forever grateful to all of them for the care they gave Dad and us during his illness.

My father passed away at home surrounded by his family on November 17th 2009.

He was 69 years-old. He was husband to Gloria, father to Aidan, Carla, me and Cathal and proud grandfather to eight grandchildren.

It is still difficult to see a landscape that doesn’t include him. Yet I see him every time my youngest son smiles, I feel him in my spirit.

When I’m lost, up he pops - philosophical, intellectual, consoling. He’ll forever be my guiding light.

Did I get the job?

The youngest boy is hopefully heading for playschool this September and I have him booked in with a place near where we live.
I got a letter from them today asking him to come in for an ‘interview’ at the end of this week. An interview. With a three-year-old.
I can only imagine how this is going to pan out.
So Finn, could you explain to the panel your day-to-day responsibilities in your last role?
Yes, well, I worked in production, mostly of sandwiches with half a jar of jam in them. And also demolition. I concentrated mainly on electrical items and furniture. My day to day duties involved critical analysis of mostly Postman Pat in the morning, then a bit of Peppa Pig in the afternoon. If I was lucky there’d be a Fireman Sam marathon on that I could study for an hour then question my collegue, my mother, repeatedly on why Norman Price wasn’t given an ASBO. I used the time between programmes wisely by asking for biscuits and overflowing the sink in the bathroom. In the afternoon I’d torture my brothers by screaming that everything was mine and keep my sister from sleeping by making sporadic loud noises. I had sole responsibility for household aesthetics – mostly drawing on walls with marker and smearing yoghurt on sofas etc.
What major challenges and problems did you face?
Well, basically the ma and da. For example they were forever telling me not to eat dog biscuits. They were a real challenge, but I overcame this by hiding up the stairs with the canine confectionary and stashing it in my jean pockets.
Why are you resigning from your current position?
I’m resigned from my role as Professor Chaos within the O’Neill household because I am interested in a new challenge and an opportunity to use my skills and experience in a different capacity than I have in the past, in here. Do you know I can take a kitchen cabinet door off its hinges or cause a remote control to malfunction just by looking at it?
What is your greatest weakness?
I would say that I can be too much of a perfectionist in my work. Like sometimes I would spend an hour drawing on the wall in the living room. I just can’t leave that little stick man until he is perfectly formed, curly hair and all.
Sometimes, I spend more time than necessary on a task, or take on tasks personally that could easily be delegated to someone else – like getting my brothers to throw cushions all over the floor or fully unroll a toilet roll into the loo instead of myself. Although I've never missed a deadline, I suppose it is still an effort for me to know when to move on to the next task, and to be confident when assigning others work.
What is your greatest strength?
My time management skills are excellent. I get my mum up every morning at 6.33am on the button. I shout ‘Mum-meee!’ constantly until she lifts me out of bed. So you see I'm organized, efficient, and take pride in excelling at my work.
How would you describe yourself?
I'm a creative thinker. I like to explore alternative solutions to problems and have an open mind about what will work best. That and a curly-haired lunatic.
How do you handle stress in the workplace?
Stress is very important to me. With stress, I do the best possible job. The appropriate way to deal with stress is to make sure I have the correct balance between good stress and bad stress. I need good stress to stay motivated and productive. I also scream in a high-pitched tone until the cause of my stress ¬– be that the switching over of Fireman Sam or not being allowed to consume ice cream at 8am – is resolved.
Is there anything about the playschool that you’d like to know?
Are Custard Cream and pension schemes available? And also are you insured against breakages?

Wrestle Mania!

A few weeks ago I reported that my eldest son wanted to attend his First Holy Communion Mass as Darth Vader.
At the time the boy refused to wear an ordinary suit and was convinced that the Darth Vader get up would render him virtually unstoppable, with an off-the-chart midichlorian count and a deep, smoky heavily computerised voice that would render his classmates speechless when he did the whole ‘Amen’ thing at the altar.
A few other people were concerned also. I was stopped no less than 20 times over the course of the week by complete strangers, spoken to by the school principal, offered a slot on the radio to talk about my family’s would-be jaunt to the chapel in funny gear, offered money to go to Mass in a metallic bikini and a television camera crew were all set to document our family as we got into our Star Wars attire and attend the church. The lady trying to sell me the TV idea – using her level seven Klingon powers of persuasion I imagine – described the proposed programme as being kind of like ‘my Big Fat Gypsy Wedding in Space’.
That wasn’t really the theme I had envisaged when dreaming about my boy’s special day, so I declined.
Besides Daniel has gone completely off the idea, and completely off Star Wars. There’s a mountain of expensive Star Wars toys lying dormant in the corner of his room. Obie Wan Kanobie sits on an idle space cruiser waiting for a space adventure that will never happen. Yoda sits cross-legged on the shelf waiting to converse in condescending and confusing tones to anyone who will listen. A battle cruiser sits silently under the bed, it’s little plastic pilots stare out at odd socks and missing jigsaw pieces, dreaming of the glory days when they flew missions around the rose bushes in the back garden.
My boys’ new fad is wrestling. The bane of mothers everywhere.
We must spend Saturday mornings watching giants of men – with silly names such as Triple H and Ric Flair – jump around a boxing ring in their pants to the soundtrack of bad eighties rock.
My boys spend hours out on the front lawn practising dangerous moves with their wrestler mad mates. There is an injury approximately every 33 minutes and I’m there, like the St John’s Ambulance, with ice packs and ice cream when Indian Deathlock or the Modified Swinging Neckbreaker goes wrong.
I am now forced to go into shops and pay actual money to purchase magazines with really cross-looking, sweaty, brief-attired gentlemen on the front for £5.99 a pop. My boy’s bedrooms are adorned with posters of big scary undertaker impersonators and men with names like ‘Smack Down’. What ever happened to gently, cuddly Winnie the Poo who used to gaze in a friendly manner down from their walls?
This week my boy and his friend had the wrestling match to rival all wrestling bouts out on the street. The fight got dirty – somebody tried an illegal Running Over-the-Shoulder Powerslam – and my boy came home with a shiner which covered half his face.
Yes the bluish tinge of his bruised skin matches his shirt to near perfection.
Yes, it looks awful.
Yes, I have pondered the thought that the Darth Vader mask and cloak might look better in the photos than a big black eye.
I suppose we should be grateful for small mercies and that the boy isn’t insisting on going to the church dressed as a wrestler. At least he will be wearing a proper suit. I feel turning up at the chapel in a pair of red pants with lightning signs on the sides and a silver cape might be a bridge too far.