Moody

I’ve just had a bit of a row with my daughter.

She snuck onto my computer while I was unloading things from the car. This wouldn’t necessarily be a huge problem - the worst she usually does if my attention is diverted is print off 50 copies of Hello Kitty colouring pages. This time, though, I’d stupidly walked away without logging out of my Amazon account, which meant that my girl and her trigger finger were able to discover the Buy Now With One Click button.

Put it this way: I wasn’t actually planning to order a Kindle version of My Secret Garden.

“WHY did you buy this without asking? You haven't even GOT a Kindle!” I yelled, searching frantically to see if the £1.98 digibook was just an apéritif. Images of £200 Dr Beats headphones started to flash before my eyes.

Luckily, the damage to my bank balance remained minimal. She had ordered several DVDs and books, but luckily these were ones that she had meticulously entered on her Santa list, so I was planning to get them anyway. Not that I told her this. I said I had just cancelled all her purchases, and she would have to wait until Santa came to see if she would get what she wanted.

We talked further. I wasn’t at my most patient. 

“I’m sorry, Mummy, I didn’t know I was buying things,” she said. 

“Well, I think you did, because you pressed the Buy Now button, and I know that you can read those words perfectly well.”

“Oh.”

“I’m not very happy, because you haven’t listened to me very well today.”

“I HAVE!”

“And you’ve answered back a lot.”

“I HAVEN’T!”

She stomped off. The next thing I heard was her reading out aloud, very POINTEDLY, from the library book she’d brought home from school. It was a chapter called ‘I Get So Moody’ from a book called ‘Me And My Feelings’. The story involves a girl telling her friend how her mum has shouted at her ‘for nothing’.  It actually then goes on to relate how the girl admits to her pal that she'd been really moody, had lost control, and didn't blame her mum for shouting. Did my daughter read this bit out? Did she my arse. She just made sure the 'SHOUTED at for NOTHING' was HEAVILY EMPHASISED, and shot me a few meaningful glances over the top of her glasses. 

She's just gone to bed. With a big, happy smile on her face. I'm now grinning, too. Somehow, somewhere along the line, this little saga seems to have ended up with me being firmly put in my place. Me and my bloody feelings.

Video is Arctic Monkeys - Mardy Bum

Unhinged

Two hours sleep is not enough to survive on. It makes you slightly unhinged. Margaret Thatcher managed on four, and to be honest that explains a lot.

Last night we had meltdown. I’m still trying to get to the bottom of why it happened, but so far I’m stumped. 120 minutes kip is not sufficient to keep the brain cells whirring fast enough to do the necessary sleuthing. I’m chalking it up to ‘just one of those days’.

My daughter had had a twitchy evening, asking random questions, repeating herself, and nervously sticking her fingers in her mouth.

The volume got louder, the questions more off-kilter.

“Am I going to shrink. Shrink. SHRINK?” was the starter for ten (explained by the fact that her prescription for growth hormone hadn’t been ready at the chemists, so she knew she’d miss her injection for one night).

Next minute, it was “Is Hitler alive? Hitler. Hitler. HITLER!” (this one made me laugh, I must admit. She’d been learning about World War II in her history lesson. Apparently at one stage, she thought he was in the school toilets). 

“No, he’s dead. He died in 1945, sweetheart. Sixty something years ago.”

“Ah, so if he hadn’t died he’d be dead.”

“Er...yes.”

“IF HE HADN’T DIED HITLER WOULD BE DEAD.”

“That’s right.”

This was a bright spot in a dark night.

From this point onwards, my usually compliant, polite daughter clambered into her stubborn shoes and wouldn’t take the cement bastards off.

Getting her to have a shower was a battle I wish I’d never started. Getting her to clean her teeth was another. Persuading her to stop cleaning them was another. She didn’t want to go to bed, she got up six times for a wee, she turned her light back on countless times, searching her room for books she couldn’t find, wandering down the stairs to put them in her school bag and take them out again. All the time, all requests were ignored or given some serious attitude. “NO. I WON’T. I’M JUST DOING THIS. No, no, NO. I will NOT.” Every time I told her off, she giggled to the point of hysterics. Threats to ban favourite toys, and subsequent confiscations, had no impact.

I tried ignoring her because surely she’d flag, but after hours more of footsteps, bangs and crashes from her room, more visits to the loo, her dad ominously putting a shelf-load of books in a black bin-bag, more loud backchat, and finally, the piéce de resistance - wetting the bed (quite deliberately) at 4am, I gave up. Nothing, and I mean nothing was going to stop her mini-rampage. So I left her to it, and snatched a couple of hours kip.

This morning, I was shattered. My daughter, of course, was bright and breezy. 

She smiled up at me, bashfully. “I’m sorry, Mummy. I’m going to be really good today.”

Video is Eels - Unhinged

Related posts: 
Meltdown
Wave
Dam

Teen

My daughter is 13 years old today. My sweet, odd, wonky, wonderful daughter is a teenager.

She's not your typical teen:

• She still believes in Father Christmas
• She asked for a Tinkerbell duvet cover for a present
• She never really wants to stay up past 8.30pm
• She's never been allowed out of an adult's sight on her own
• She's not got a mobile phone
• She hardly ever answers back
• She thinks Doctor Who is just about the monsters
• She doesn't do status updates, texts or messaging, although she does send emails on her iPod Touch, at a rate of about one paragraph per 20 minutes
• She's never got drunk on alcopops in the park
• She always eats everything on her plate, even Brussels sprouts
• She keeps her bedroom very tidy
• She still wants to hold your hand when you walk down the street.

It's been interesting getting from Ground Zero to Teen Queen.

I've a feeling it's going to be even more interesting getting from here to her 18th birthday.

Bring it on.

Video is a Kevin & Perry clip from the Harry Enfield show

Video is Teenage Fanclub - About You