Knick-knacks, baby crap and Peepee Teepee cones...

Having finally recovered from my quackie duck onesie episode, the broodiness has begun to subside so Hubble has finally agreed to let me out of The Cupboard where I have busied myself stuffing pillows under my jumper and muttering like Gollum about precious wee scrumbums and painting the living room the colour of meconium, under the condition that I stop using the pingu booties as egg cup warmers and quit clucking around like a giant fecking hen.

I am also waiting for the police to inform me that Mothercare has lifted their restraining order and are thankful that I have seen the error of my ways and stopped licking their windows and scaring their pregnant shoppers by dropping to my knees, gently stoking my face with nipple shields and weeping uncontrollably whilst barking all sorts of unsought advice at them like some deranged 'end-of-the-world-is-nigh' sandwich board moon buggy.

Thusly yes, aside from the odd episode whereby I sneak up behind unsuspecting Mumkins and give their newborn's head a damn good sniff in Sainsburys, I'm feeling much better thank you.

So much better in fact that I have gone back to rooting around in my goober schnitzel's bedroom, with the intention of making space for all the squillions of toys and sparkly fun shit that boohound will be gratefully receiving for his 1st birthday next month *gulps at sheer magnitude of occasion, senses familiar gush of broodiness, gets smidge tearful as collates mind montage of poignant moments in the last year accompanied by suitable soundtrack such as The Supremes' 'Baby Love', pulls self together when Hubble mentions The Cupboard and invokes spirit of old iron bollocks, Margaret Thatcher, whilst repeating mantra 'knick knacks on, no harm done; knick knacks off, up chuffing duff.'*.

However, instead of crumbling into a fit of hysteria over a simple piece of cotton (See?! If I wasn't like sooo over the quackie duck onesie and as mentally Zen as Buddha then I couldn't refer to it as a mere piece of cloth now could I? Yep, that's right, these days I'm a double hard bastard) I noticed all the purchases I made when I was pregnant that were either still in their packaging or had been used once and then hurled into the back of the wardrobe in disgust due to its 'doesn't do anything like what it pigging says it does on the tin' ineptitude.

In fact the pile of useless frippery that promises to keep your baby breathing, make them into a mini Stephen Hawkin (without hopefully the Motor Neurone Disease and the voice of a Speak & Spell) and make them happier than teensy wickle piglets in poop, that I assembled, was quite astounding.

Fortunately I have no morals whatsoever and will quite happily sell all these feckless fandangles to overly neurotic, hormonally charged bun bakers on eBay. But for those of you who might be thinking about buying them and are, lets face it, brilliant and probably very beautiful and intelligent for even thinking about reading my blog, here's the shit that Mr Bigass Baby Brand, the porky pie telling pedlar of crud, says you need when I, slightly unhinged poop cleaner of bot, say otherwise:

* Under mattress breathing monitor - they go off ALL the chuffing time making you vomit into your mouth, run like a crazy horse up the stairs, trip up and smack your spam on the landing. But never when your baby has stopped breathing. Because babies like most people, as stupidly inexperienced as they are, tend to just carry on, you know, breathing because it helps them live really and they get that. Clever babies.

They are designed with the sole intention of scaring the bejesus out of you and frankly there's enough to be worried about thank you. Plus you will be standing over your mini potato head for the first few weeks (read: FOREVER) watching them sleep / holding a mirror up to their nostrils / poking them in the face every 25 seconds to make sure they're still alive, so they are needless. And a waste of dosh. Save it and spend it on Gin, much better for calming ones nerves.

* Baby sponges - as rough as a cats anus. Only useful if you want to sand back your baby's bot and give it a lovely French polish. Serves me right for shopping at TheChildCatcher.com

* Pram shoes - Yes they're cute but unless you're giving birth to a foal, your newborn isn't going to be walking and thus necessitate shoes any time soon. However, if you find your lilliputian does exit your womb and suddenly make a run for the door, please give me a call, I would like to exploit you massively and make squillions from your circus freakshow of a child see that.

* Infant Stimulation Mobiles - Bedtime. Traditionally a time for catching zs not, as these bastard contraptions seem to think, for whipping your poobum into a frenzy or encourage them to snort lines of talc or indulge in a scratch mitt rendition of 'big fish little fish cardboard box'. Bedtime is not for raving. GO THE FUCK TO SLEEP.

* Pee-pee Teepee - "A must-have diapering accessory for newborn boys; excellent baby shower gift with guaranteed giggles!" Yes, I nearly died laughing. Putting ice cream cones on my child's penis always reduces me to tears.

* Wipes warmer - if you want your binky bubblebum to grow up like Little Lord Fauntleroy then this is the product for you. Your life will be littered with scweams of: "Mamahhhh! What is this muck you're trying to feed me? READY BREK?! Do I LOOK like a backstreet ruffian? Fetch the Fois Gras immédiatement and tell that simpleton, Sir Poochalot, to bring the moo cow walker around, I feel like a turn about the estate", and the like.

The choice is yours but heed these wise words from, erm, some very clever Mumkin who may or may not write this blog: "A toasty botty wot a coddled crumpet createth." Yeah I know right?! I'm basically the Dalai bloody Lama.

* Steam sterilizer - This honking great space station of a twat takes up nearly one whole length of the kitchen and melts everything in its path into submission. You may as well invite a Dalek to sit on your work top and ask it to lick all the germs from the bottles. Get a microwave one. Or a dishwasher. Or a Dalek...

* Baby cologne - Because babies smell DISGUSTING don't they.

* Swaddling blanket - Upon finding himself out of a job, ousted by the dastardly Ben Shephard, poor Gordon 'Krypton Factor' Burns decided to get his own back by inventing the world's hardest puzzle.

Introducing the Swaddling Blanket - 25 pieces of Velcro that can never and will never meet up to make a fastening and 8 frustrating holes for which no-one knows the purpose (whose baby has 8 limbs? Oh right yes, you Mrs Tarantula, I do apologise. Oh no no noooo I wasn't all suggesting that your baby is a freak...although YOU are for getting it a with a spider, dirty arachnid fiddler).

Well Gordo, you succeeded in your cunning plan, my brain is now but a pile of liquidised turnip. And my wee flipflop is cold. Oh but hang on, there's a proper blanket over there! And looky here! If I wrap it around nutterly butterly...it SWADDLES him! Who knew eh? Who kneeeew!? Genius.*

I could go on but I fear I may sully my reputation *hears shouts of "What reputation? You're a twazzock love!" Meh* by painting myself as a compulsive shopper of total crapola and also wildly offend any of you who may have bought this stuff and found it to be absolutely chuffing wizard. *Bum squeaks uncomfortably in seat*.

The moral of this story boys and girls is to never go shopping when you are hormonal. If you feel like your belly dweller is telling you to buy this stuff because he/she neeeeeds it, back away from the Pee Pee Teepee and reverse out of Boots in the manner of someone who has just detonated a bomb (always a laugh to make the shop assistants brick their undercrackers and create unnecessary panic, narf!), go and find a cake shop, stuff yourself until bilious and then count all the money you didn't just spend on an item to decorate your loft.

Right, I'm off to coerce pudding club dafties on eBay into buying all the doohickeys and floss I just warned you off. *Oh hello Mr Devil, yes, yes I know you're here to take me to hell for my acts of villainous extortion and cashing in on the misfortune of wibbly gestationals but is it ok if I just wait til the auction for the Wipes Warmer ends? Hang on, you don't fancy it do you? You know, in case we hear the pitter-patter of tiny cloven hooves one day? Awww go on, £2.99 'Buy it Now', for the warmest toosh in the underworld. Bargain!*

Gone quackers

I am spent. Having whiled away the last three hours booing like a wounded goat into several plastic storage containers, folding and refolding Boohound's newborn era threads whilst growing intoxicated by the lingering scent of Lenor’s ‘Essence of Sprog’ fabric softener, my face now resembles something between a puffer fish and bum-soothsayer, Jackie Stallone.

For in my naive ignorance of the power of a 0-3 months quacky duck onesie, today I blithely began the business of sorting out Mcmuffin's drawers with the intention of making space for his big boy dungas and summer wardrobe.

It seems bloody unfair by the way that my dunkin' doughnut, a BOY nontheless, has a seasonal collection of clothes whereas I have feck all. I own approximately one cruddy old jumper with spag bol stains for winter and a summer dress with a pigging great rip from a day of denial whereby I tried to stuff my enormous preggers bulk into it. And failed miserably. Then spent the rest of the day crying mahoosive hormonal tears and refusing to go out lest I be subjected to jeers such as: “Oi! Nelly! Pack up your trunk and naff off back to the circus would ya?!” *imaginary cockney rascal clicks heels, links arms with Dick Van Dyke and The Artful Dodger and skips off to the chimes of the Bow Bells through Laaahndaaan Tahhhn. Tsk.*

However, me being jealous that nippy longstocking has more clothes than the entire cast of Sex and the City is not the issue here. The fact that sorting through Boo's just-born togs reduced me to tears and nearly impelled me to rip off Hubble's undercrackers, wrestle him to the floor and demand that he impregnate me immediately, is. Again, nobody warned me about the power of a 0-3 months quackie duck onesie, so I am warning you.

Things is, now that rinky dink is virtually self sufficient (well not in as much that he plants taytos, cultivates Swiss chard and milks his own moo cow), so far as holding his bottle, entertaining himself and probably, if he felt so inclined, cooking a perfect lobster soufflé whilst conducting a shares trade on his Chatterphone and teaching the dog Mandarin, I feel like I am slowly becoming obsolete.

I know this is silly really. I know that I am still called upon to wipe crap from botty wots and scoop Weetabix from chins, walls and pooch’s spam, implement mountain rescue missions for scuppered attempts at bookcase scaling and perform the fish-and-flick manoeuvre for masonry nails, shards of glass and rusty razor blades that Boo has inexplicably discovered under the sofa and stuffed recklessly into his goblet but I miss the hazy, sleep deprived, covered in weird yogurty smelling poop months of total dependency.

Yes, it’s so wonderful that my little fruit bat is thriving, growing-up and becoming his own person but one never quite realises that the time between ejecting them from your twinkle to packing a box of impossibly small rompies, booties and all sorts of other cutesies, ready for the loft, has gone by lickety-split until you’re wailing like a foghorn and blowing your hooter on a teeny weeny quacky duck onesie.

Odd isn’t it? How anyone can miss being relied on completely? Well firstly, I am a bit *read: ALOT* mental. Secondly, all that neediness makes you feel super important. As important as say, oxygen or food or telly – yeah, that’s right, TELLY. Pretty freakin' important then.

Because, as much as you might have been CEO at your company during those heady days of employment, you didn’t have to breastfeed the Accounts Manager every three hours did you? *Oh you did? Er ok, sicko...* And you didn’t have to sing the receptionist to sleep because you were the only one who could or change the intern’s nap-nap whenever they did a monumental turd that stank out the office.*Oh, again, you did? What sort of frickin’ company were you running you mucky reprobate?!*

Anyway, back in those first few months, you were needed. In fact you were actually completely chuffing vital...and now you’re not. Well, not as much. You’re just a bit of a shitty party pooper really Mummy because you perpetually interfere with plug socket play and force boring old lunch down tiddlywink's throat just as he was about to conduct electricity. Bah.

So yes, as fruitloopy as it sounds, I miss being God and controlling everything and being pigging indispensable so now I’m a bit emotional and a smidge power hungry.
And now I want another baby. A tiny one that is basically as incapable as a potato. Oh quacky duck onesie, what have you done?!

Thus, to prevent myself mounting my poor, exhausted and now rather terrified hubble at every given moment and demanding another totally reliant moppet, I have taken to watching Teen Mom on MTV. A natural course of action I’m sure you’ll agree.

This programme, in case you’ve missed it (quite likely really if you're over 13 years old and haven't been grounded), is what doctors should prescribe to prolific procreators who refuse to use contraception and horny adolescents who think that parenthood looks like a reet hoot and no harder than keeping a Tamagotchi alive (which is actually pretty chuffing hard so another comparison may have been more suitable. I mean, why does one need to feed a keyring exactly? Do keys get hungry?).

Whilst I am not a teen and do not have parents that hate me / live in a shoe / sprinkle crystal meth on their Cornflakes / want their grandchild to be called Franchise, Bidet or T-Bone, the daily grind that these young Mumkins face caring for their wee ones in the first throws of parenthood changes very little as time moves on and one supposedly gets older, wiser and less libidinous *yawns at mere thought of rumpy, pulls on pjs with split in the arse and smell faintly of chips, fastens chastity belt securely over the top, swallows key and collapses face first into ungainly heap on unmade bed*. You may even find that you empathise with the mini Mumsies. And suddenly remember why you make Hubble wear eight condoms and shower in spermicide before a round of mattress dancing post-monkeychops' arrival.

Thus, if you’ve yet to start sorting your treacle tart’s too small smalls into ickle bickle piles ready to be stored away, arm yourself against broodiness - take the opportunity whilst your lovely stationary milk dud is sucking on your nip to flick over to Teen Mom.

Now dig out that quackie duck onesie. Go on, give it a good sniff. Can't even FORCE a tear can ya eh?! Even if you jab yourself repeatedly in the eye with a teething spoon you can't quite muster a blubber. And why might that be you hardened embittered old fart? Because the image that is ingrained in your mind of some spotty spud in Juicy Couture looking at her screaming newborn with utter disbelief that it has dookied up its back and created a poop toupee for itself for the 14th time in two hours, has popped up and slapped you in the face. No, really, there's no need to thank me. Thank Teen Mom - the most effective form of birth control since Y-fronts.

So, no more babies for me just yet thank you please. Guess I’d better put the scissors down and back away from the diaphragm then. Unless I want a new MTV series named: ‘I was hornswoggled by a quacky duck onesie into making multiple Boo Boos’ *swells with pride at incredibly succinct and catchy title, lights cigar and considers new career as TV fat cat* made about me.

No, perhaps not. Although I am now considering calling my next child Bidet...

I want candy

So the last few days have been shit. For the naturally thin amongst you please stop reading now. Not only will what I have to say mean nothing to you, it will most likely offend as frankly, I hate you. Yes, that's right, YOU and your stinking metabolism that burns a squillion calories simply by dialling a taxi to take you from the couch to the biscuit barrel. YOU, who can say things like 'oh I can eat whatever I want and never put weight on'. Seriously? Feck off. One day I hope you are run over by a cake truck.

Bitter? Moi? Abso-frickin'-lutely. Not only am I blessed with the metabolism of a hibernating tortoise but also am still adorned with a delightful pair of baby handles which have not fallen off from breastfeeding / pegging it after Mcmini / the shock of finding that the hippo you keep spotting in windows as it wanders about the house is actually your reflection, despite what Holly Willoughby, Penelope Cruz and Heidi Klum told me. Liars, liars, pants on fire.

Ok, maybe I shouldn't have left it til 10 months after I squeezed Boo out to start thinking about shifting the baby weight but if I'm being truthful, I think I developed a taste for patisserie whilst rather aptly, baking my little bun. In fact if he'd been available for the day I would surely have chosen Mr Kipling for my birthing partner so that he could stuff Fondant Fancies into my howling gob mid contraction.

Embarrassingly (and I'm not sure I should mention this lest it destroy my reputation as a glamorous sexpot *heeds universal snigger*) I am also still wearing some of my maternity clothes. Yes, I am aware that I gave birth to wee lederhosen nearly a year ago and thus should no longer require them but blimey O'Riley, they're so pigging comfy.

They have to be of course because pregnancy usually comes with its own suitcases, hand luggage and Winnebago filled with aches and pains therefore, clothes need to swaddle, snuggle and soothe. If they aren't and cause us hormonal sprog vessels to be irritated further in ANY way we would surely be impelled to find Mr Mothercare, shove his sewing machine up his pile-less anus and and burn his stupid house down.

I haven't cared that I look like a deflated Mama Cass or that the maternity bras leave my baps swinging so far south that penguins use them as pillows, you simply don't throw seriously comfy threads away without good reason. Or without one's husband prising them out of one's perpetually chubby pinkies and ceremoniously burning them along with your muumuu and gargantuan over-bump antenatal knick knacks.

But this week something changed. This week I looked in the mirror and saw a pregnant woman. Which is not good when you're not one. So this week the diet began.

The first day was a piece of low-fat, no sugar, pine nut and wheatgrass cakey. Day two was slightly harder as Boo spent its entirety whingeing in that low hum of a whine that international intelligence organisations use as torture and makes you want to do a double Van Gogh (but instead of posting your ear flaps to your lover sending them to God with a note attached that reads: 'The whimpering noise that my wee misog makes? You created that you did. What the jiggery pokery were you thinking? You did bad. Naughty step for God.')

By day three I had started licking the telly every time an ad for pizza or ice-cream or dog food was shown and on day four I got angry, very very angry. Especially when The Hubble came home from work and made a chocolate sandwich sprinkled with biscuits and a pie garnish. Well, I may have hallucinated that snack but whatever it was I wanted it and if I had to gnaw off my beloved's mitt in the fight to get it, so be it.

The excuses have started to rear their fat little heads too. This morning I woke up with a genius cover story poised for the moment my pious little conscience appears on my shoulder when I shift stealthily toward the Doritos:

"Oh yes, I see your point but I neeeeeed the extra calories for running around after plinkyplonk all day! I can't let myself run on empty or else I will burn out and that simply won't do will it? I'd end up in hospital and no-one would be around to look after my schmoo and then Arnold Schwarzenegger will be sent back from the future to destroy me and prevent Boo, our planet's saviour, from fulfilling his destiny..."

Oh no, hang on, that's the plot of Terminator isn't it? See, lack of cake has made me delusional.

So today I am searching Amazon for fridge padlocks and an electric fence to install in front of my larder. I have also begun training the pooch to nip my ankles if I make a run for the bin (seriously though, you never see a fat tramp do you? Maybe eating out of trash cans is the way to go non? Ooooh hello Monsieur Lightbulb, I think I may have invented a new celebrity diet. I cannot WAIT to see pics of Jennifer Aniston papped in a poo stained trench coat, ferreting about in her neighbours wheelie-bin looking for a half eaten doughnut).

The thing is, I clearly have the willpower of Homer Simpson and if I am ever going to fit into clothes that can't also be hired out as a wedding marquee then extreme measures need to be taken.

I will call this lard-proofing and will go about my day being electrocuted, bitten, flummoxed and thwarted at every turn until I learn by association, in the way you would teach a stumbling ninny of a cow not to wander from the field or lick pylons, that candy ain't dandy and too many sweeties a meaty mum makey.

Wish me luck and keep a look out on the local news for a singed woman with a dog hanging off her shin, gibbering like a loon about Vienetta being admitted to hospital after a ballsed attempt to mainline sugar. Ah, fame at last...

Wee ones wobble and they DO fall down...

Eee by gum last night were a bad 'un. I spent from dusk til dawn waiting by the phone expecting Barnardo's, Social Services or Esther Rantzen to tinkle and tell me in no uncertain terms that I am a terrible mother, utterly incapable of looking after little yum yum and that basically, I smell.

Thing is, yesterday evening around din-dins (the time is firmly implanted in my mind as I recall chocking on a piece of stuffed crust in horror) I noticed a honking great bruise on the side of Boo's spam.

Now, I know I have a tendency to overreact and am, at all times, trembling with a sort of wibbly neurosis (well, maybe a little more than wibbly - think the possessed chick with the spinning noggin from the Exorcist) and in reality the bruise is probably about 1cm square. Ok, EXACTLY 1cm square. I measured it. I need to know these things so I that I can leap to my feet and squeal 'OBJECTION!' (I've always wanted to do that) in response to evidence brought against me when I am inevitably summoned to court for being a neglectful wench. Nothing like a bit of make believe drama to make things seem a whole lot worse now is there?

Am I being ridiculous? Yes, probably. But will knowing that I am being a hammy moonbiscuit about all this help at all? No, probably not. Still, wingnut or no, the fact remains that my perfect wee Boo has suffered a knock and I feel like I have failed in my role as safety net / bouncer / sheep pig.

Remember how poor old Kevin Costner was haunted by his absence at President Reagan's attempted snuffing at the beginning of The Bodyguard? Well, *sniffle* I feel his pain. I just hope I don't have to boff Whitney Hoowoo to get over it.

The reason behind scrumple stiltskin's injury you see is not as mysterious as it may seem - Boo has started cruisin'. I hate this term by the way, it makes mini muffin sound like a lechy wee kerb crawler in a grubby mac and pedal powered Ford Cortina.

And cruisers, as you may well know, are like drunken tramps out ferreting through bins for half eaten kebabs and the odd dribble of Special Brew. They think they can stand, they even think they can walk but then, all of a sudden, SPLAT! Oopsy-daisy, heap of baby on floor / tramp in bush.

So I have two options here, two ways of dealing with my intrepid, albeit clumsy, little platypus. I can either strap a number of well-fed gerbils to Sir Poop-alot's tiny bonce to cushion his fall or just suck it up and accept the fact that sproglets tumble. They twat their melons. And no amount of pigging baby-proofing is going to change that.

It's a hard decision to make but, as gerbils allegedly create a lot of mess and one hairy smellbag is enough for one house (poochface not Hubble, although saying that...), I guess I'm just gonna have to gather my marbles, tighten my loose screws and man up. *Puffs out chest and salutes poster of Private Benjamin*.

With pookie's 10 month review on Wednesday (I am setting up his Powerpoint presentation and flip chart as we speak. We are both hoping he gets a pay-rise and well-deserved promotion) I am hoping the consultant looks kindly upon me and more importantly, upon Boo's bonk blemish.

If you see me on Crimewatch next week however, with a bounty on my head and a sign across my chest that reads:

"WANTED: BAD MUMSIE AT LARGE WITH MAIMED INFANT IN TOW. EASILY IDENTIFIABLE BY 1CM SQ BRUISING TO CHILD'S SPAM AND TINY USELESS JEREMY BEADLE HANDS OF MOTHER THAT COULDN'T CATCH A COLD LET ALONE A TUMBLING TOT",

then you know the bint squealed.

Happy Holidays!

Today I am missing the live-in help. By that I am referring to the Hubble and not a nanny I had to sack for stealing my très expensive face cream (lard. I swear by it) and rubbing her mangy little foot up and down my beloved's leg during dinner.

Papa Smurf went back to work this morning after four glorious days off at home during which I sat on my piggy wiggy boco and oinked my way through a glut of chocolate eggs and shouted such demands from the sofa as:

"Feel. Thirsty. TEEEEA!"
"Remote. Lost. FIIIIND!"
"Choc. Egg. Finito. NEEEEXT!"
and
"Nappy. Pooey. CHAAAANGE!" (ickle bickle's you understand, not mine).

I know, I know, it sounds like he is my man slave. Which he is. But he gets treated pretty flippin' well the rest of the time. It's just bank holidays when I get to dust off my crown and poke him with my jewel encrusted sceptre, scweaming for the odd cuppa and peeled grape. Besides, he is really starting to like his gimp suit now.

I freakin' LOVE April and May. Littered with bank holidays I find myself skipping about the house like a Spring lamby, drinking entire cups of tea (Yes, really. A WHOLE delicious cup. Before it gets cold. Piggin' ACE.) and sleeping in until, oooh I don't know, at least about 6.30am. Yippee.

The only thing that would make these months better in fact would be that my birthday could be relocated to say, Easter Sunday? If you can change your name by Deed Poll why can't you change your birthday eh? Might make Chrimbo a bit of a nightmare I spose with all the fruity loops opting for December 25th and pretending to be the baby Jesus. Yup, maybe that's why.

Bank holidays are not even marred by the fact that as self-employed people both Hubble and I do not get paid for these imposed vacations. No, I am quite happy to lose a few squids here and there, even paupering it up good and proper by adopting a gimpy leg and contracting a few weeping sores for effect if need be, just to have my sweetheart home and some bleedin' help with button bum.

For nobody warned me that once tinky winks start crawling, they literally don't stop. NEVER FECKING EVER. I reckon, just like the pooch chases pesky wabbits and bites postmen in her slumber, Boo crawls up Everest, across burning coals and along the full length of the Great Wall of China. Of course in his bestest dreams the Great Wall would be littered with all manner of electrical wires for him to chew on and rickety bookcases for him to climb.

No-one warned me how fast the little tinkers go either. Once Boo gets up his pace he whizzes across the floor as if some bugger has snuck in, given him a Weetabix laced with amphetamines and stuck a firework up his bot. Even getting the dog to lie strategically in the middle of the lounge to act as a speed hump is no deterrent, he simply clambers over her and keeps on truckin'. Speed kills dontcha know Boo Boo? Mummy mainly. I may need an iron lung if he keeps up this sort of lick.

So, basically, I am pooped. Running around after Boo is exhausting and no amount of baby-proofing allows for smidget stuffing the hound's paw down his throat and sniffing out my mobile to speed dial my bank manager and blow raspberries down the line. Fortunately I couldn't have phrased my feelings toward my bank manager better on that occasion. However, constantly hunting chimpy bum down, rescuing him as he attempts to abseil off the dining table and fishing fluff and oomska out of his gob is a wee bit wearying.

To make matters worse my hoover has blown up. Beyond repair. I have even tried shouting at it and kicking it but it remains on the fritz. I am not just relaying this incredibly tedious piece of information because I fancy a reet good whinge, which I do, but also because it means the carpet now appears to be generously sprinkled with Shrek's gruffnuts. So, until the clever wee Doozers from Morphy Richards turn up to shout at it a bit more in a language it understands, my little sproglet has a veritable feast laid out in front of him at every shuffle. *Neurosis shifts up a gear into 'twitchy'*

Thus to have Hubble home and enjoy the advantage of another pair of paws to help block Boo's path of destruction has been lovely. But alas, the long weekend is over and it is back to being a two person race between me and mini to see who can get to the crusty looking unidentifiables on the rug first.

Thankfully however, it is only a three day week as Willsy Poo and Katiekins (oh yes, we're very close and even have pet names for each other. You may curtsey now) have decided to tie the knot and as such, we have another bank hol. But of course you knew that.

What you didn't know is that Watie planned the timing of their nuptials around Boo Boo finding his kneesies and getting his crawl on. Knowing that I would be pooped and in need of either a clone of myself or Hubble to be present in the moments that I am on the bench catching me breath as a result of pegging it after my wickle Thundercat, the Prince and his missus decided to make their engagement a short one and get married at the time when I, weary old Mumsie, need a siesta most. TRUE STORY. *Crosses fingers and waits to be dragged snivelling to the tower for beheading over treasonous claims*

If I wasn't planning on sleeping all day Friday and leaving Hubble to run the gauntlet with Boo you know I might have organised a street party, gravy browned me legs, made bunting out of old undercrackers, baked a rock hard Victoria sponge and broke into a medley of Roll Out the Barrel / God Save the Queen for the occasion, you know, to show my gratitude.

Thing is, I'm just too chuffing cream crackered. Mahoosive thanks and all for the extra day off though Mr and Mrs Windsor, oh, and congratulations (although it should have been me obviously, am clearly Princess material). Your fondue set is in the post.

NOTE TO MUMKINS: If you would like to sign my petition to the palace to wangle a day off every time someone of royal affiliation goes up the aisle, including the Her Maj's third favourite Corgi (I have heard a rumour that it got amorous with a roguish Beagle and now they may have to wed to avoid a scandal), please leave your name, if you're not too tired to remember it or type it, in the comments section.

Laughing (dementedly) in the face of danger

Having a look around my house this morning, I am filled with a sense of calm. The kind of calm you would experience after an extended mental illness that has seen you impersonate chickens, wear colanders as hats, bash your spam repeatedly against walls, imagine that you are Napoleon and finally, to the relief of you, all your family and chums (even the imaginary ones), carted off to the fruit farm. Yeah, the sort of peace bestowed upon a post-committed wingnut, that's it.

For today my house looks like a padded cell - a guise I was most certainly aiming for but isn't likely to get me on the pages of The Sunday Times' Style supplement - not because I am insane in the membrane you understand (just lingering this side of 'nanas I reckon) but because I have been a-baby proofing.

Sorry, it took a while to get to the point there didn't it? It may be because my new high security, padded, squishy squashy sanctuary is a little distracting. It's as if I have taken up residence in Mr Staypuft's anus.

Baby proofing - sounds easy enough doesn't it? In theory it is. You simply take a glance at your hoosey and pick out all the potential dangers to your cheeky chimpy.

However, those of you who have been through such defence armament will know that one glance uncovers that in fact you have been living in an Afghan minefield for the last five years and your lovely little scrumpy bum is only one shuffle away from being maimed / electrocuted / charred / decapitated / blown-up into a mini mushroom cloud.

The more you look, the more you realise it is a miracle that you're still alive and moving house suddenly becomes a very attractive option. For those whose tots are too teeny to worry about turning your homes into cushiony fortresses just yet and have still to experience the horrifying realisation that you live in a abominable sty, let me put it like this:

If your home was featured on Watchdog, Lynn Faulds Wood would be wagging her finger violently and screaming "pooootential diiiith trap!" in your face.

If Cowboy Builders visited, Dom Littlewood's shiny wee face would be screwed up like an angry pug whilst he jabbed his stubby pinkies into your plug sockets and became almost incomprehensibly cockney in disgust.

Worst of all, if your Mum came over and saw the squalor you have been subjecting her beloved grandie to, visualising your buttonhole lying in a pool of petrol whilst chewing on the frayed laptop lead and playing with steak knives, you'd be sent to bed without any tea.

It's this kind of neurosis that has led me to buy every item available on Amazon to protect my midgey widge from my jeopardous armpit of a dwelling and watch YouTube video after YouTube video featuring experienced Sparkies frying themselves with defective plug protectors and the like.

Long suffering Hubble has, this past month, spent every spare minute of his evenings and weekends clamping stair gates to door frames, screwing socket covers to walls, catches to drawers and mopping the dribble from my chin as I rock myself into a jibbering frenzy calculating the lurking hazards in my home (read: slum).

On the odd occasion that I am not incapacitated with terror, I have scaled the lockable pantry shelves and stored every bottle and container dotted with images of skulls and crossbones (note to chemical and pharmaceutical packaging execs: You're really not helping the hysteria with that one), the Grim Reaper or a baby exploding on the top shelf and moved heavy objects that, inexplicably, are like cat nip for smallies, down from sproglet splattering heights and out of harm's way.

So this morning when I bounced down my foam stairs into my lovely padded room I felt better than I have done in weeks. The fact that pickle wickle has decided to get off his lazy toosh and start crawling this week as well as pulling up on the pooch and using her as a walker, means also I feel rather smug and vindicated in my meticulous preparations. My Brown Owl would have been proud. Badge now please.

Who says you can't wrap them up in cotton wool? Methinks the sleepsuit I'm knitting from flame retardant, anti-suffocation, hypo-allergenic, non-toxic bubble-wrap says otherwise. In your face peril. IN. YOUR. FACE!

Mum's the word. Or at least it should be...

This week I have mainly been seething under my breath. Seething whilst drinking tea in the sunshine (as per the positively tropical weather of late) with the little tweety birds twittering and trumpety daffodils fluttering in the breeze however, is far less bleak than it is sitting in a shadowy corner of one's lounge, rocking backwards and forwards in a threadbare armchair like a Dickensian miser watching the pishing Blighty rain spatter against the window so you know, cup half full and all that.

And the reason I have been such a crosspatch? Well, one week ago today I was having a blissful Mothering Sunday, my first nonetheless, with Boo, pooch and the Hubble (my treasured spouse not the honking great space telescope you understand).

I had managed to have a bath - worth mentioning as I believe the last was when I was nine months prego, involved a giant shoe horn and me moaning and sweating profusely like a perverted Teletubbie - and removed all traces of porridge from my hair, read the paper and was settling down for an evening of smallhausen snuggling, Antiques Roadshow, tea and toast. I know, I know, I'm less Keith Richards than Cliff Richard these days but my toast DID have Marmite on it and by my reckoning, that's pretty fecking rock n' roll.

Then, just as I was gearing up for a deliciously devastating valuation dished out by my secret crush (don't judge me), tache-tastic David Battie (I said don't judge me!), from across the room on his father's knee the wee man beams, giggles and pipes up: "DAAAAADDAAAA!"

ARE YOU FREAKIN' KIDDING ME?

You pick Mother's Day to say your first word and it's "Dadda?". A giant cloud of huff instantly descended upon my evening and I felt the hot surge of stampy feet and sniffy, snorty sulk rise up through my body and into my nostrils, inducing them to flare like a peeved warthog.

'Dadda' smiled smugly at me from his throne and much to my annoyance, provoked our little button to repeat his new communiqué, you know, just to rub it in:

Hubble / Stinking Bastard: "What did you say Boo Boo? Did you say 'Dadda'?"
Boo: "Dadda. Dadda. Dadda. DAAAAAAAAADDAAAAAA!"

Poo bags. I went to bed.

Now, I have read the baby books and know full well, in the teeny tiny sensible part of my mind, that little cherubs find it far easier to enunciate "babba" "gagga" and "dadda" hence why most babies utter these words first.

I was counting on my mini being amongst the refreshingly beatnik minority however, and stroking my ego with a beautifully constructed first sentence that went along the lines of:

"I adore thee Mummy, you are my whole world and I love you more than words could possibly express."

A little ambitious perhaps. "Mamma" would have done though. I coulda gone to bed and slept soundly and vaingloriously next to my miffed Hubble with that.

But no, instead Pops gets another point and I am left floundering once again somewhere in the shallow end of the parental dream pool, swallowing verruca riddled Elastoplasts and trying the avoid the floating turds. I know it's unhealthy to have a league table of favouritism that charts how much your dinky dotes on each of you but no-one knows that I have one (apart from you now), not even my beloved (unless he too reads this. Not that he'll have time, he'll be too busy being my son's bestest and practising being smug).

So here we are. A week of scowling and seething and I now have the permanent expression of a Jack Russell terrier who has just seen an unsuspecting rat he wants to bite on the bot.

Still, I have a cunning plan to win back my crown as Mum-ber 1 and laugh victoriously in the face of Hubble.

I am considering repeating the word "Mamma" into a Dictaphone for twelve hours straight, sewing it into Wibbly Pig and playing the recording back to monkey chops as he softly slumbers. I believe this is known as subliminal messaging and is very possibly illegal. Frankly a meagre prison sentence seems a small price to pay to regain my parental sovereignty - just as long as I hear Boo chirp my name before I'm led off to my (likely padded) cell.

The second option is a little more drastic in the form of a sex and name change to 'Dadda', which I'm not quite as into if I'm honest. Not because I think being a fella would be totally rubbish per se but more that I'm likely to turn into Brian Blessed if I take on any more facial hair. Yup, they don't tell you THAT in the lovely floaty pregnancy books do they? I do believe condom wrappers should feature pictures of bearded ladies, Santa, goats and David Bellamy alongside the warning: 'Fasten securely, pregnancy may cause Yetiness'.

I'm not ruling option two out though. Never say never. I'm willing to get me a winkle if midgey widge persists in his exclusive Daddy worship.

In the meantime however, I shall sit here in the sunshine plying my wearying vocal chords with honey and lemon, recording my sweet revenge. I'm pinning all my hopes on you Wibbly Pig. Once you were a mere whimsy, a pre-school plaything covered in Boo Boo's dribble. Tonight my furry porcine pal, you are a double agent.

Sweet dreams my wickle peanut, MA-MA-MA MAMMMMMMA loves you...