Daughter has me wrapped around her little fingers...
Icried in bed the other day and I’m now worried I might be having a breakdown. What happened is this. Mary – who is four – has recently moved into a bigger bedroom. This is because, after at least a year, I finally got around to decorating the back bedroom.
That’s not entirely true. What happened was I ignored Mrs C’s nagging for so long my father-inlaw lost patience and came to do it.
He spent two days painting walls, hanging paper and fixing a curtain rail. I nipped up occasionally to ask if he wanted a brew.
I feel my father-inlaw – and I don’t blame him – looks at me with disdain. He is terrific at DIY. I, on the other hand, will observe a growing damp patch in for about eight months, thinking, ‘I must do something about that’. Then when it’s so bad that black mould has started sprouting, I’ll ring someone and pay a fortune to get it sorted.
Anyway, with the back bedroom finally decorated, Mary has moved in. Because it is different and much bigger, I have taken to – after reading her a couple of stories at 7pm – getting into bed with her until she settles.
Mrs C doesn’t do this. She reads two books, then – even though Mary will be hysterically screaming – flicks the light off and walks out. Mary stops crying five minutes later and falls asleep, allowing Mrs C to enjoy Coronation Street and exchanging messages on her ‘baby mum friends’ WhatsApp group (sample conversation: ‘Our Alfie has a temperature of 38.2 and his poo’s an odd white colour. What do you think I should do girls?’ ‘Aw, poor you hun. Give him some Calpol’. ‘Argh, that’s terrible chick. Is he eating?’ ‘Thinking of you darlin. Hope he settles soon’ … it’s riveting stuff).
I can’t leave my daughter when she’s crying, because I am soft. So instead I get in bed alongside her. What I don’t realise is that my daughter is manipulating me and now has me where she wants. I’m under her control and there’s a routine.
First we play dentists, which involves me sticking my head under the duvet while she’s at work. She hums a tune, then says ‘finished’, at which point I pop my head out and say, ‘good afternoon I’ve got a sore tooth’. She gets her ‘magic grabbers’ then pulls at one of my teeth and triumphantly says, ‘it’s out now, is that better?’
After 15 minutes of this I tell her Winkie is outside. I’ve cleverly built Winkie (you know, the ‘are the children in their beds yet? It’s past eight o’clock’ chap) into some kind of terrifying figure who hovers outside our house, to the point where she’s scared of him.
She goes very quiet until she says suddenly says, ‘tell me a story daddy’. I ask what story she wants and every night – and I mean every night – she replies, ‘daddy bird and the chicks get stuck up a tree in the
I told Mrs C this story when I went downstairs. ‘Have you been drinking?’ she asked
park’,
I have no idea where she got this from but even the most inventive of minds would struggle, for 43 nights on the row, to make up a different story with exactly the same plot. This goes on for about an hour and 20 minutes before Mary drops off.
Anyway, back to my sobbing. I was lying with Mary the other night and she was close to sleep. I’d invented three stories about daddy bird and the chicks up a tree – the final one had a twist involving a squirrel with pneumonia (I’m thinking of pitching it to Julia Donaldson) – and she drowsily looked at me and said, ‘daddy, will you still sleep with me when I’m grown up?’
To which the obvious answer would be, ‘well, no, because that’d be weird Mary and the police would probably get involved’ – but which suddenly made me realise that one day we won’t have this bond, that I won’t always be the centre of her universe, and she won’t beg me to put her to bed… and I began crying.
I told Mrs C this poignant story when I went downstairs. ‘Have you been drinking?’ she asked.
I’m not sure whether it’s embarrassing I cried or a good thing I love my child so much, or somewhere in between. But next time I put her to bed I’m taking a packet of Kleenex.