Biggles

This is the soundtrack to Easter round our gaff: the intermittent barked shout of “Chocs away!”.

We're not re-enacting scenes from Biggles. It doesn't mean: "Sling the wooden blocks away from the wheels of the plane, Algy, old chap." It means, perhaps more obviously: "Put the chocolates away."

When you have a teenager with Prader-Willi Syndrome (who never feels full up) and a four year old with a sweet tooth (who never shuts up), the burning questions being considered over the Easter Bank Holiday are as follows:

• How many chocolate eggs to allow
• What healthier alternatives need to be supplied for my PWS daughter
• Where the blinking hell to hide everything

So thanks to Nanna & Grandad, Grandma, Mum & Dad and Uncle Mark, Drake Minor got a chocolate rabbit, a Celebrations egg, a Chocolate Buttons egg, a bag of mini chocolate bars and some chocolate easter chicks. Drake Major, who isn’t allowed chocolate, bagged a Hello Kitty Magazine, a One Direction Activity Book, One Direction ‘Yearbook Edition’ CD, Hello Kitty mug (bringing the number of different Helly Kitty drinking vessels in her collection to six), and some Weight Watcher lemon slices.

In order for the forbidden food not to be an issue, all we had to do was try to prevent our son scavenging for it too often, and to whisper to our daughter that her haul was much more expensive and she gets to keep her stuff forever (apart from the lemon slices).

Hollow plastic eggs filled with no-sugar sweets for strictly-timed and counted treats were also an effective weapon in the Easter Peace Process (see previous post Chocs).

Keeping busy helped, as always. 

We went on an egg hunt in the woods at the RSPB lodge, finding pictures of wildlife in return for a creme egg (swapped for the aforementioned sweets in our daughter’s case). 

We also went out for Sunday lunch at a local pub.

Incidentally, in case you were thinking this post sounds like a smugfest of my parenting skills and our biddable, delightful children, you’ll be pleased to know this trip ended in mayhem.

Not because of the girl with an insatiable appetite, who actually waited very patiently for her dinner to be prepared.

No, this was down to her little brother, who decided to empty the pepper pot all over the table, refuse to either sit down or eat his plate of meatballs (specially ordered), and who FLIPPED THE FLIP OUT, when I carried out my warning of ‘no ice cream if you don’t behave’, then literally carried him out of the pub, kicking and screaming, flung over my shoulder in a fireman’s lift as a consequence of his response to the awful reality of a no-pudding-situation. I was hoping for a round of applause, or at least an admiring glance or two from fellow dining parents, in recognition of my iron will and disciplined parenting, but nothing. I got nothing. 

Song is Tindersticks - Chocolate. Not necessarily apposite, but it is *called* Chocolate.