Bad Mamma

I’d been a bad mummy. I told Chickie that we’d bake some dinosaur bibbicks. Then I went and cleaned the kitchen. I took a deep satisfied sigh as I viewed the sparkling taps, spotless floor and perfectly buffed worktop. It was beautiful and I was happy.

Then Chickie tugged on my cardigan and enquired as to when all the baking was going to begin. I pictured a mushroom cloud of icing sugar engulfing the house, buttery stalagmites being squished into the floor before being padded around the rest of the house by two small, sticky feet. Hundreds and thousands of hundreds and thousands would still be being discovered in three years time.

Biding for time, I enthusiastically redirected Chickie’s interest to Scooby Doo. “Wow look Chick, a ghostie!” By the time he’d tired of it, I’d come up with a cunning plan. “Let’s go to Waitrose and buy a choo choo bibbick!” He liked that idea and off we trotted.

Unfortunately, my conscience wasn’t so easily appeased. ‘It’s only a biscuit’ I told my inner ‘Bad-Mummy-Monitor’.
‘You broke your promise’ she replied.

After that, ‘Bad-Mummy-Monitor’ was on high alert. “He needs some fresh air” she said as Chickie sat watching telly.

I looked out of the window at the endless gloom. “But it’s so cold and he’s so quiet. And he’ll want to jump in all the puddles”. She reminded me of the dinosaur biscuits and dragged me off of the sofa to prepare a small suitcase of munitions. Spare trousers, spare pants, spare shoes, wellies, plastic bags, towels, wipes, hypothermia blanket, pressure washer hose and scraper.

“We’re going on an adventure” I informed Chickie as I vacpacked him into his old coat, one size too small. He couldn’t move from the neck down, but at least he was snug.

“Where we going?”
“To the best puddles in town” I replied, already planning the five stage clean-up operation in my head.

As we pulled into the Bluebird Cafe car park, puddles as big as paddling pools rippled in the icy winds. Within approximately two minutes, Chickie was lying on his back in one of the larger ones. He turned his head, like a robot, to see how mummy was going to react to his baptism. His first of three as it turned out.

As I skidded along behind his mud caked frame, watching him testing puddles with his special ‘adventurers stick’, I knew these were the memories I’d dreamt of making before being introduced to the magic of antibacterial wipes. We watched the river for crocodiles, poked the unblinking frog (gently) to check his vitals and had sword fights with our sticks. I even jumped in a muddy puddle.

We returned home with red cheeks, runny noses and muddier than a pair of pigs.

It was probably the messiest day of my adult life, but it’ll be the one that I remember long after my son considers going anywhere with his mummy an ‘adventure!’.