I WANT TO BE A TEACHER

Says X. I want to do the register, I want to take the dinner tickets, I want to make the children get their right mums and dads when they go home.

I wonder how she will view this first ambition when she's older. Will I, or someone else, drag it out when she's a bin man? Or will she be laughing about it when she's Prime Minister or a painter or a brain surgeon or a mum with loads of little ones at school.

When I was fifteen my headmistress dragged me in to see her and warned me that if I dropped maths I'd never be a teacher. "That's no problem, whatsoever," I said, no doubt with what is now called 'attitude. ' I regretted that decision such that I taught myself maths with the help of Carol Vorderman and took the GCSE when I was in my thirties. Teaching still wouldn't have me, though.

I think the main thing is that it says a lot about how happy X is at nursery.

We lost it tonight - big time. Well, I did - and she was right behind me, as per usual.

They weren't in my bag- the damn car keys- they were totally missing. Absolutely not anywhere. It isn't even our car, it's a courtesy car from a rather uncourteous garage. By 'we' obviously I mean X and me. We do everything together. If I attempt to even go into the next room she shrieks and runs to tug at my jumper, "don't leave me in the dark, mummy!' Of course it's not dark- well, only outside the windows. Do all children shadow their parents so closely or it because it's just the two of us here? When I turn around it's hard not to trip over her and my jumper is now even baggier than when I bought it at the second hand shop, though the rate my middle age spread is spreading the saggy bits will soon fill out the baggy bits so, of all the incredibly long list of grey worries that fill my grey matter (so grey I'm surprised my hair still grows out of my grey head mousy and not grey) the saggy baggy bits are really quite low down the long, grey list.

When I realised the car keys weren't in my bag and they were pretty definitely lost I had to run to the loo: the contents of my tummy turned to water immediately I thought of all that would need to be done if I couldn't find them. Pathetic I know, but there it is. I am useless at juggling and organising, always have been, I reckon I might be quite heroic if war were declared, that would be a reasonably simple problem- just find some bunker in which to hide- but a missing car key, that creates a whole list of things to reconfigure that reduces my brain to grey mush and all the nerve endings start to twitch. The first thing, I realised, was to call the garage, but they'd gone home. It would have to be first thing in the morning. I needed to get them to send over new keys by bike very quickly or the car would be towed away as soon as the six hour voucher (which we had been putting in the car when we lost the keys) ran out. This was not going to be an easy conversation, given the fact that last time I'd spoken to them I'd terminated the conversation rather abruptly due to their blunt refusal to even hazard a guess when their work on my car might be done.

Not getting new keys and not replacing the voucher was absolutely not an option. I've got two sixty pound fines recently for parking outside my house, even though I've already paid for residents parking, due to silly mistakes with the silly rules. "Silly mummy," says X. I've started to have subliminal flashes where I see the car snowed under with parking tickets in a car pound.

We carefully went through every place that the keys might be; two hours of searching which included undoing about twenty jiffy bags and unwrapping every single Christmas present I'd just spent hours wrapping up, and then doing the whole lot up again. After that I got on gmail and cancelled and reorganised all my appointments for tomorrow so that I could be at home to receive the keys and put a new voucher in the car. One of the appointments is a serious beaurocratic one where I will be penalised for non-attendance. Another of the appointments had taken me about six months to secure. I rewrote the email to cancel three times trying to work out which excuse seemed the least flakey, given how hard I'd pushed for the meeting. Then I contacted both minders involved in the after school care to reorganise X's routine to match mine. After that we went outside and rootled about in the leaves and gutter and then we went through the dustbin and then, I turned around and stepped on X, who was shadowing me. She howled and refused to believe that I hadn't hurt her on purpose and ran back into the kitchen.

At this moment a friend called for a nice little chat.

"We've lost the damn car keys!" I shriek over X's wails.

"Retrace your footsteps, what were you doing?" They shout back.

"Well, we were wrapping christmas presents while cooking supper, and then I tried to pay a parking fine on the phone, while X was telling me about her day and then we realised the car needed the voucher so we went outside and then X wanted to lock the car herself and I was just saying how well she was doing it when the neighbour said hallo and then..."

"Well, if you must let X do things like lock the car you've only got yourself to blame, really, haven't you? When will you learn that keys and phones and cameras are not suitable for a three year old?"

"She's nearly four and anyway we do eveything together," I protest, turning around and nearly stepping on X which made me fall against the back door and spike my hand on.............. the car keys, the damn car keys! They were sticking out of the back door lock. X must have carried them back into the house after we talked to the neighbour and she must have carried on playing locking things while I rescued the burning sausages.

'Found the damn things," I say.

"See, no need for all the drama, eh?" says the friend, smugly.

We go to bed, me and X and my mobile and laptop. I start to change all the appointments around again. It's the minders that are the most embarrassing to deal with as, they get it these kind of mix ups from me the most often. No one other mum seems to have to reorganise her life so frequently and the other day I actually turned up to collect X at the wrong minders. Forget lost car keys, it's lost marbles that they think is the problem, I'm sure. Anyone would think I had several children to organise, not just one.

"You hurt me, mummy," says X snuggling up to me.

" I didn't mean to, " I say.

"But you damn did," she says, severely.

IN PRAISE OF SMALL SHOPKEEPERS WHO UNDERSTAND SMALL PEOPLE

I stopped off at a corner shop on my way home with X last night. It was just a newsagents, really, but there, nestling by the box of sprouting onions was the loaf of bread that we urgently needed and it wasn't even out- of- date.

X was tired. Well, that's my excuse for her appalling behaviour. She saw chocolate on the shelves and snatched it up.

"No, not healthy,' I said quite firmly, attempting and failing to wrest it from her iron-firm grip. 'Healthy' is probably a word that isn't used as much as it should be by me. In my life 'healthy' has been a can of worms best left for hunger and what's around to manage, really. Amazingly, the three women at X's nursery, looking after thirty children, seem to manage to actually teach these words which I don't manage to find time to teach the one little child in my care. 'Healthy' is the latest word they have got her excited about. Well, the word. The concept still appears to be a little beyond her. X also clearly gets her own way far too much because, ignoring me, she marched up to the counter where an elderly Indian lady was tiredly flicking through Grazia. X threw the packet up on top of the precariously piled newspapers, and turned around to me, clearly fully expecting me to get out my purse. The right- royal, little madam.

"No, ' I say in a brave attempt to endorse the teachings of the great Miss E. Maybe I would have weakened, I don't know. I'm a weak and feeble woman in the face of a royal tantrum, sometimes.

'Not for sale,' said the Indian lady staunchly, in a way that clearly said this lady was not for turning. She hauled up her sari, picked up the packet of stars, got down from her rickety stool and placed them carefully back, where they belonged, on the shelf. X was open-mouthed for a long moment, a moment just long enough for me to grab her under the armpits. Then the old lady opened the door for me while I hauled a disgracefully kicking, screaming child from the shop. Averting my head to avoid being hit in the eye I just caught a glimpse of the old lady waving us a friendly good-bye.

Now you don't get that in supermarkets. This is not a first. All my local shops are incredible to us.

Any one else got a great story about their local shop?

"Nook Kids" is Here Today. Will nook Color be Here Tomorrow? (via brandchannel)

"Nook Kids" is Here Today. Will nook Color be Here Tomorrow? (via brandchannel)

'Maybe I could ask him if he'd be my daddy,' said my daughter.

The other day I was chatting to the dad of one of X's nursery friends. He told me that his application for flexible working had failed with his employer, which meant that he wouldn't be able to share the childcare with his wife as much as he had hoped. This surprised me as he works for the council who profess to be highly supportive of family friendly working. The dad was frustrated because he'd put a lot of effort into his appeal case for the flexible hours but when it failed his children were totally delighted. The little boy ran around the sitting room whooping. It meant that they'd get to go to X's minder who gives them slush puppies and crisps. The dad said he sometimes wondered why he bothered. He looked quite upset about it.

X asked me why she didn't have a daddy today. She said she'd been thinking about it while having lunch at school. Maybe someone said something, I don't know. I don't know much when it comes to this. I've known this would be coming for some time and I've still not come up with anything to say.

X already knows that she has a tummy mummy who isn't me but that still doesn't explain why there isn't a daddy. She may well never know who her daddy is, since no one seems to know. It makes me want to find her tummy mummy and find out what she knows, and I'll understand if X feels the same way about this. It seems very sad to me to never have any idea at all about half your blood heritage. Of course none of this explains why she hasn't got a 'heart' daddy who lives with her 'heart' mummy - but I'm guessing a blow by blow on every single one of my failed relationships isn't really appropriate for a three year old , though the repetition might be fun in an old Macdonald had a farm type way (Eee! Ow! Eee! Ow! Aye!) and it might be a good bedtime story to get her off to sleep.

I just said that I agreed with her that it was very sad she didn't have a daddy. I mentioned a few male friends and relations who take an interest in her, but she didn't pick up on any of them. Instead she talked about her friend at nursery who's daddy sometimes takes her to school. She said that he was a nice daddy and her friend sometimes cried when he left her. It was the same man who had just told me how frustrated he was that his children didn't care whether he picked them up after school or not.

X said that maybe she could ask him if he might be her daddy too. I said maybe we should do that together. It seems a bit much to lay on a man first thing in the morning when he's probably late for work but I'm guessing at the right moment he might be glad to know that a three year old had noticed that he was a nice daddy.

Not many three year olds could carry off baldness with such aplomb as X's best friend

Every day for the last couple of years or so X and I have suffered hair envy. We've stared with longing at her best friend's hair: it's heavy swishing volume, it's dark lustrous curls, it's glorious bouncing mass. We've fingered clips in Sainsbury's and longed for the day when we might need them too. We thought her little friend was just so lucky. But then her little friend always seemed so lucky in so many ways: great looks, fantastic parents, obvious intelligence, natural confidence, a born leader.

X, on the other hand, has always been folicle- challenged. This was a huge blessing to me as I was only allowed to adopt her on the understanding that she was a white child. It was only, post adoption, clear when her hair finally twisted it's way out, that there was definitely more than a little bit of fuzz to it. Caribbean ladies have come up to me on the street and asked which island her father came from. X has an orange Jackson Five fuzz around her head, but she still has a very high forehead so she sometimes looks a bit like Queen Elizabeth 1. More often, though, she looks like a saffron colored sheep who's wool has got matted from a winter out on the hillside. I've developed a nervous habit of plucking at it it to tease it out to stop it looking as if she's a feral child with unkempt matted locks. I've had long conversations in the African hair product shops about what might turn it into lustrous curls and ended up with lots of pots of sticky, stinking brilliantine. My ex-social worker in the adoption process sent the best product. We have a little smile to each other sometimes about X's hair. I have a feeling that she, being a lady of Caribbean extraction, might have had a little suspicion that X's hair wasn't going to be totally English Caucasian, but maybe I'm wrong. I like X's hair now she's got some. When the light shines though it she looks as if she has a halo and I love it's mad look. I just wish it started further forward. If she was a middle aged man I'd be advising her to shave the lot off and not to pretend it wasn't badly receeding.

X is in love with long, straight hair. When she came to me she couldn't go to sleep without fingering her foster mother's hair and now she can't sleep without fingering mine. She's been envious of her friend's hair for two years and has insisted on clips just like her.

Now her little friend has lost all her hair from chemotherapy. Not so lucky after all then. Her poor little body is a bit skinny at the moment. Though the prognosis on her type of leukemia is good, the treatment sounds brutal. Her tiny little frame is blasted with toxins and all her incredible, thick, lustrous locks have fallen out. X has steadfastly ignored this, not mentioned it at all. Her friend, though, is the feistiest little girl with the most indomitable spirit. She said to their childminder the other day:

'So, what do you think of my new haircut, then?'

The minder said she was lost for words, which in itself is a little miracle.

MUMMY TANTRUM

I wanted one. I really did.

I'd had a horrid day, missing the little one, wondering how she was doing at school. She's only been there two weeks and now she gets passed through several carers hands every day in a patchwork of minders, school and minders. I have to cling to my diary just to keep up with the schedule myself and every day she wakes up and says: 'where today mummy?' I worry that I'm causing irrevocable damage by not being there at the end of the day to share her tales of ten green bottles and who weed on the floor. I worry, full stop.

Today? Today I was very organised all day but I finally had a little wettie when it looked like I was going to be kept way after end of play. I kicked off just enough to extricate myself from where I was without ( i hope) causing lasting bruising, and I rushed to pick up the new schoolgirl from the new minder. I was amazed how quickly the journey went, and was thrilled to be early. The day was looking up. I'd be able to microwave some beans for her! Cook for her!

i rushed into the minders, but did my little one come running to me? No. She was very fed up that I'd come before I was supposed to. She wanted to play more with her new best friend from school, who also hangs out there. She wanted to go to the shops with the new minder. She was on the loo and wanted the minder's daughter to wipe her bottom, not me.

Not me? My heart was shattered. It was a first. The first time my little one hurt me. I know it will happen a lot more,and it's a mummy's job not to count or care, but this was the first time and my inward breath was sharp and cold.

There are limits, however. I may have to grovel when it comes to getting work to support my little one but groveling to wipe her bottom is one step too far. I demurred. I was sent away again. Of course I pretended it was all great and fine. You can't dump people together and then object if they get on. I'm truly amazed and relieved that the new minder is that popular. i'll write a reference stating that from the very first day my child didn't want to come home, wanted the new minder to wipe her bottom.

I did feel, however, like rolling on the pavement and kicking my heels and screaming and having a spoilt little temper tantrum on my lonely walk hone to kick my heels looking a my tax form. I'm sorry but I did. I'd done my work, I had more to come later. The one good bit of the day had gone, the one bit that I do everything else (all the working and earning and sorting and running and the damned dull tax form ) for. All gone. But I'm not going to tell the little one that.

I know many women go through moments like this and I'm bigging up my part with mountainous molehills. But if you have had a moment like this recently, well then, lets just say I really, really empathise.

By the way, by the time I went to pick up my little girl I'd my little temper tantrum all on my own and was a nice mummy again, all very grown up, and I didn't sulk one little bit.

Can I have a gold star, please?