As it’s the season for giving presents and generally worshipping the Gods of consumerism, we have indulged with the masses. This year, following the success of the halloween party, we decided to host a Christmas party. I don’t know why I do this to myself: I stress for a week beforehand over food; the state of the house; the number and placement of decorations; and all manner of things. Then I stress for a week after over whether people actually had a good time or if they just said that to be polite; if I overdid it; and what am I going to do with the 6kgs of leftover crisps in a flavour that no one in the house eats. 

On top of all the normal party stressors (well, normal to me) we also had to provide appropriate presents, in appropriately selected wrappings, for the other fae that were attending. To this end, I limited the guests to what we affectionately refer to as the ‘neuro-spicy’s’: my daughter and her three closest friends, all of which have been (or are in the process of becoming) diagnosed with a neurodivergent condition. It makes for an interesting time, but honestly, at this point, normal children scare me and I have no idea how to relate to them. I digress. So, the presents were selected, and my fae insisted on helping to wrap them. To her credit, she did a passable job of choosing paper and ribbons. She also wanted to make sure that, regardless of cost, size or shape, they all had two to open, and that she could identify what they were. Kid logic, I guess. Or so I thought. 

As soon as they arrived – and I mean they had not got completely through the door nor taken off their coats – she was calling them to open their presents. She also informed them what was in them. Thankfully it was so chaotic that no one heard, and I was able to pull her aside and explain that the whole point of wrapping it was so the contents were a surprise; and maybe they would want to wait until Christmas Day to open them. She stared at me blankly, shook her head in a way that informed me that I was very stupid, and marched back into the room and started doling out packages, informing people “I’m not supposed to tell you this is a toy” or whatever. 

Fortunately, the kids were paying more attention to ripping open the paper than to listening; the noise drowned her out so the parents didn’t hear; and within 5 minutes everything was open anyway. 

Today is one of her last sessions with her childminder. I brought her present along, and once again, my fae insisted on knowing ‘what’s in the box’. Trying to hedge my bets – having learnt from the party – I tried not to tell her. At which point, she started undoing the ribbon. So, in despair, I reluctantly  answered with a generic ‘It’s toiletries’. She did the confused puppy head tilt and sniffed it when I tried to explain further. She then decided it was perfume (it’s not, but hey, let’s go with that!) 

So, she hopped out of the car and presented the bag to her childminder announcing ‘happy birthday!’ brightly (I corrected her to ‘Christmas’ and was ignored) And she handed over the parcel, saying ‘it’s perfume’. Now, our fae is still not the clearest speaker in the world, and what came out sounded more like ‘for you’ – for which she was thanked. 

“No! It PERFUME” she snapped.

“No, fae, it’s a surprise,” I try again to explain. This time I get the teenage-like “huff and eye roll”. Before she can try again, the childminder cottons on to what she is trying to do, and ushers her inside while smiling and thanking her, before telling me it’s fine as she didn’t understand anyway. 

So, I have learnt two things before the big day. 1. Don’t actually tell her what’s in the presents. And 2. Even if she does find out it doesn’t matter, no one will be able to figure out what she says anyway.

Season’s greetings, everyone!

Our daughter caught a virus at school. I think she has a respiratory infection; my husband is firmly in the ‘just a cold’ camp. Either way she has a cough; bunged-up nose; and, most, recently, a sudden aversion to any light in her bedroom when settling at night. She started by trying to hide under a cushion, but this made it hard to breathe, so she tried to bury herself in my chest. This made it difficult for me to leave, and consistently work her up every time I got off the bed. Eventually, we bit the bullet and just told her the stories that we could in the dark – the ones we have memorised.

Which is all very well with simple stories like The Gruffalo and Stickman, but her most cherished book/nighttime read is The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samual Coleridge. Which is somewhat longer, and has more challenging prose. My husband is very good: he can do, I would say, 99% of the poem without prompt. But every now and then, it is nice to be able to check the start of a line or verse. 

So, we bought from our favourite online river a couple of book lights that proclaimed ‘low level’ light settings, allegedly ‘perfect for nighttime reading’.

Long story short: they lie. They lit up the room like a Christmas tree. My husband has taken to hiding his light in his hand to muffle it; mine fits snugly down my shirt, which does mute it but I then need to snap my fingers several times to stop said husband from staring at what the light is now illuminating. I tried duck tape but it blocks everything; if you punch little holes in the tape you get a wonderful constellation effect and then she just stares at the stars rather than sleeping.

It was a relief when she allowed us to use the side light again. Only for reading, mind, as she has now decided that using the book light to make a shadow theatre is an integral part of her evening routine. 

All this because of her love of long poems. A while back, we bought an illustrated copy of Beowulf, but neither of us have the courage to show it to her.

Why don’t we have a unified half term in England anymore? Letting each local authority set their own term times is moronic. If you have children who go to schools in different authorities it can mean that they never see each other in their half terms; teachers can have different weeks off from their kids; and the only ones who benefit are the travel companies who hike the prices of holidays for twice the time.

Anyway, onto my main post. 

As you can probably deduce, my fae has just gone back to school for the second half of the Winter term. This half term, I decided to try and do some nice things for her and, with the support of my In-laws (I would never have managed it on my own) – we hosted a Halloween party for her. I have never been to, let alone hosted, a Halloween party. I don’t know where everyone else turns when they have questions about anything from the practical to the philosophical, but I use google. 

A quick browse through ‘help I’m hosting Halloween’ and ‘Good ideas for children’s parties’ lead me down a rabbit hole of ‘what is a piñata?’, ‘Age appropriate activities for 5 year olds’ to a debate if beer pong could be acceptable for the parents, providing the kids didn’t have access to it. I quickly gave up with the ‘mommy blogs’ ( and for anyone who puts this blog in that category I take offence, I’m not that pretty, organised, happy or perky) which showed happy, shiny people standing with big smiles behind tables of home made food, with little cherubs with home face painted faces that all were recognisable as what they were supposed to be. I knew my party would not be that. 

Our party would have the parents outnumber the children; if they turned up in costume they definitely wouldn’t end the evening in it; and at least one participant would be in a wheelchair. It would be messy, loud, chaotic and much more fun then the staged photos. I gave up on google and headed to Amazon. 

An extortionate amount of money later, we were in possession of a set of decorations, plates, tablecloth and face-paints (which were for me, not them). I then remember that at least one child is vegan, and that they are made ill by animal protein, so it’s back to google for recipes. If I haven’t made it clear already, I am a big fan of online ordering: food and items magically arrive at your house. 

The day before the party I spent rearranging the house so the wheelchair would fit through the normally blocked hallways, whilst my in-laws did an amazing job of putting up the decorations. By the time my fae returned home from her childminder, the downstairs of the house looked amazing and she was clearly excited. So excited, in fact, that she had to get up at 4am the day of the party. Still it gave me 12 hours to make the cupcakes and cookies from recipes that I found online. It turns out if you put the cookies and the coloured icing in front of children, you don’t have to actually decorate, you can give it to them as a ‘party activity’ and they do it for you. Score! 

As for everything else: we fuelled them up on a few sandwiches; took them out trick or treating; and allowed them to collect their own bodyweight in candy. This was much easier than trying to stop them buzzing around the house like a swarm of riled hornets. 

By 4 (the party was supposed to start at 4pm but I accidentally put 3 on the book of faces, so half the guests turned up early) some of the kids were done with everything and heading home and some hadn’t even arrived; I hadn’t finished putting my costume on; and one parent had texted me to tell me that they had used temporary tattoo paint instead of eyeliner and so were stuck as a cat for the next 3 days.

My predictions of chaos were at least accurate.

I forgot the glow bracelets when we took them out in the dark; I didn’t get the time to put my face mask on; and we completely ran out of spiders for pin the spider on the web (seriously 4 kids, 30 spiders.. it should have been enough). The witch’s hats that were supposed to be hoopla targets were used as inflatable cudgels, and after fights broke out for it I think 6 kids are getting x-rocker chairs for xmas. My mother-in-law had a heart attack when one child shoved my daughter, but she blithely shook it off and roared at the offending child (who’s child doesn’t turn into a mermaid-dinosaur hybrid for Halloween?) and they went off happily together. Situation normal, apparently.

Everyone had fun, and two parents confessed to stealing the cookies out of the goody bags I sent home before their offspring had a chance to see them, so I guess they were a hit. So I think we will call the evening a success. 

Now a month’s break before planning the xmas party, bring on the eggnog. 

So, I meant to write this update some time ago, but life happened and got in the way. Somehow, my daughter has got it in her head that being a human is a dull existence (she’s not entirely wrong) and is trying out being different species.

She tried being a lizard but was unimpressed that she couldn’t stick to the walls and climb to the ceiling. She tried being a spider, but no matter how much effort she put into it, she couldn’t spin a web (all that happened were some impressive farts that made the cat dart out of the house with its eyes watering). She has more success being a puppy, but I was becoming concerned that I was raising a baby furry, and told her to knock it off or I would take all her stuffed dogs out of her bedroom: we have just spent 5 years getting her to speak English; I’m not going to have her start barking instead.

Most recently she has gone back(!) to being a butterfly. Specifically a monarch blue butterfly. (She would, of course, be a royal butterfly.) She has demanded, and been provided with, a pair of blue wings. This is a piece of hair-thin nylon that has two straps of elastic to keep it on her shoulders and two more little loops of elastic to link them to the middle finger of each hand. She has been happily flapping around the house ever since. Occasionally, she has flung herself off the sideboard, flailing her arms and claiming she has achieved flight. She is reluctant to believe that she is (in the words of Toy story) ‘falling with style’.

She has also decided that, because she is a butterfly, my husband and I must also be butterflies. Thus, I now have a delightful set of light up wings that do my head in every time they ping off and smack me in the head, and in a moment of sheer Machiavellian genius she demanded that my husband get a pair of green toddler fairy wings. My husband is (as I think I have mentioned) 6’4 and built like Captain America, but when your 5 year old bats their eyes and asks you to wear the wings YOU WEAR THE WINGS (and then ask your wife to help you get them off after).

This was all very well, until she stood at the top of the stairs, contemplating the top floor balcony, and announced she was ‘going to fly downstairs’. I would like to say that our fae does have some sense of self preservation, and would not throw herself off a 20ft drop believing that flapping her arms would save her. I really would like to say that, but it would be a lie. She has NO sense of self preservation, and I’m not entirely convinced that she wouldn’t do this. So, at the moment, her wings are now only allowed downstairs, and she is very upset that I have literally clipped her wings. 

I can’t wait to find out what she’ll try to be next.

We have rules in our house. I’m sure everyone does. Importantly, they apply to us as well as our daughter. The most sacred of them is ‘if you say it, do it’. This goes for consequences, as well as rewards. We never promise anything that we are not sure we can deliver on. This means that she never calls our bluff on anything – which is a saving grace as it allows us to quell misbehavior with a simple ‘either/or’ choice. For example, “Either you sit properly in your car seat, or I will put this chocolate in the bin.” You’d be amazed how fast she can buckle up and sit right. 

Right now, our fae is going through a phase of seeing sleep as the enemy: one that must be fought on every front. She will weld her eyes open in bed; plead for just ‘one more’ story; and do everything she can to stay up late. I would say she’s suffering from FOMO.. but seriously, once she’s asleep, all we do is sit on the couch and scroll instagram whilst drinking tea. I’d love to have the energy to do anything else. 

To this end, my kid found a new way to stay up late by ‘being good’. She has recently discovered (via a show called “Yakka Dee’) soft boiled eggs. For anyone not yet familiar with this particular animated children’s entertainment: keep it that way, unless you are a fan of constant repetition or raising a functional mute. Each episode is just a few minutes long, and consists of repeating the same word over and over until you feel your eyelid twitching, and the urge to hurl something – possibly yourself – through the screen is almost unbearable. 

Eating the egg takes a while which means our evening routine is already running late, which we are okay with, as this is the first non-porridge food she has eaten since January. She then looked around with a calculating look and decided she wants an apple. Again, whilst this will take time, fruit is good for you and eating them is to be encouraged. So she gets a (peeled, sliced) apple. Halfway through it she wants a banana instead. I tell her she can’t have a banana because she hasn’t finished the apple. She proceeds to take 40 fricking minutes to eat the goddamn thing and THEN smugly demands the banana. By which time we’re so late for her bath that we should put her straight to bed, except breaking routine is as bad as breaking rules.

And I can’t say no, because she kept her side of the deal by eating the apple. This kid doesn’t eat fruit.  She has never been fond of fruit, but no, today, 40 mins on an apple and 30 on a banana because proving a point is a hill she will die on. This has my husband cracking up as he knows she’s doing it to see how long she can extend dinner by, I know it, and she knows it and there is absolutely NOTHING I can do about it. Because she is Being Good. 

Still, the day after, it was my turn to try and keep a straight face: when he asked her if she ‘wanted anything else to eat’ after eating her porridge.. and she wanted a dippy egg. Which he had to then cook and present to her. Because eggs are good for you!

(She also made us play one of the most bizarre games of “I spy” ever known whilst she ate the egg. It starts out different by saying the colour of the object instead of the letter. Fair enough, she can’t spell. But then it went meta – “I spy, with my little eye, something hiding.”

Not to be outdone, her dad went back with “Is it a big green monster with three eyes and purple toenails?!?” She gave him a strange look and said “No, daddy” which he seemed very relieved to hear.

By the end of the game, we had looked for “things you can’t see” and “things that are invisible” and “someone that isn’t eating the damned egg fast enough” and I think maybe we need to introduce some rules to this game)

She was late to bed that night too. 

Being good my arse.

This weekend, my daughter was invited to a birthday party. She was one of 4 known fae children, in a room containing 30+ youngsters: running around; bouncing on one of 4 bouncy castles; eating candy floss; and generally going manic. It was an interesting study: once you know what to look for, it is very easy to spot the neuro-spicy kids, even in the melee that was going on in there.

First, to set the scene: we were crammed into what I presume during the week is some sort of nursery, but looked like a large village hall. In it were the aforementioned bouncy castles; a small stall where people could get the candy floss; a long table set with kids party food; and the deafening sound of poorly performed Disney cover music. The music was loud enough to drown out the kids screaming and the noise of the generators for the inflatables, and made conversation practically impossible. Why is it necessary to have music at this volume? (Yes, I sound like a grumpy old lady. No, I don’t care).

Ten minutes after arriving, my daughter has climbed the side of a bouncy castle and is allowing the constant motion of the mini-mosh pit from below to rock her to sleep despite the noise. Her fae friend thinks this looks like an excellent perch, and tries to join her, but lacks the physical capability to climb so has to get a boost by climbing on nearby ‘normal’ kids who can’t see the appeal of climbing the sides of their inflatable fortress. Looking around, they are the only two on the side. A third fae child is (in my view, sensibly) wearing ear defenders, and runs past to devour the end of his second stick of candy floss (these were both the size of his head, and required perseverance to consume). 

Halfway through the session, I spot my child who has, at some point, ‘lost’ her socks. When interrogated, she reluctantly points to a safety mat where, with some effort, I extract her socks from underneath. She point blankly refuses to put them back on. I try to make her, but I’m still holding her sodding candy floss in one hand – she got an extra large one by looking cute at the stall holder. She doesn’t even LIKE candy floss. I manage to grab her round the waist and haul her like an uncooperative and angry set of flies over to my husband, whilst she dead weights on the floor flapping her legs in the air like a landed fish. The same best friend from the wall-climbing saga thinks this looks like a great dance move and flops down on the safety mats under the inflatable slide and mimics her. I always knew my girl was a leader. Many other neuro-typical children start edging away, somewhat confused. The fae with ear defenders steps over both of them to get more candy floss from his parents. 

15 minutes before the end of the session, the final fae child seizes his opportunity: whilst most children and parents are occupied playing musical statues, he decides to take a running jump and somersault down the largest inflatable slide. His parents watch in horror; he flunks the dismount; and lands like a sack of potatoes on the safety mat where his sister was doing the ‘landed fish’ dance earlier. This distracts the staff member running the musical statues game long enough for my daughter to help herself to the prize sweets despite never managing to be a ‘statue’ in her life. 

Finally, they are called to sing happy birthday to the birthday girl – of landed fish fame. She is nowhere to be found, until both she and my daughter reappear from an out of bounds area where the slushy machine was located. I pretended not to notice. 

During the party tea, my daughter would not eat anything, so I provided her with emergency snacks (trust me all parents of fae carry emergency snacks); the birthday girl only ate the sausage rolls; her brother only ate the cup cakes – of which he had three; and ear defenders had all the bags of vegan cheesy puffs my daughter could steal for him. Every other child ate what was put in front of them. None of them would drink the juice, and all of them left early to go bounce again. 

Throughout the party all the other parents sat around, chatted and looked relaxed. I hope they could feel the hate emanating from our haggard corner where no one ate, barely sat down and ended up sticky and covered in half eaten candy floss. 

Also, if you find my daughter’s socks: keep ‘em, they’ve probably evolved by now.