AKA A Nightmare in Budapest
Not to be trifled with
Before fatherhood, if you’d asked me to list stressfully moments fraught with peril I might have said things like deactivating a bomb, subduing an angry honey badger, parachuting out of a burning plane, or a Friday night out in Pontypridd. Putting socks on a toddler would’ve been unlikely to feature.
Maybe this isn’t a problem that all parents face. Maybe it’s just bespoke to our particular little three and half year old diva, but every morning, the moment when sock meets foot brings with it a similar tension (I’d imagine) to taking a penalty in a World Cup final. The right socks open a gateway to utter elation, whereas the wrong socks lead to nothing but soul-crushing despair, what-ifs, a ruined morning and lots of tears.
“NOOOOOO!!! DADDY! NOT THESE SOCKS! THEY HURT! WAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!”
At this point you might be wondering what kind of crazy socks we’re putting on our daughter? Are they doused in acid or constructed from broken glass? Well I don’t think so, although the description was in Hungarian so I can’t be entirely sure, but I think they are just cotton socks.
Anyway, the point is, because of this daily sock dilemma, as well as various other similar genre toddler obstacles that we have to tackle every morning, the first hour of the day is a treacherous, chaotic, stressful land, riddled with metaphorical landmines.
So that’s the preamble. Let’s crack on with the rest shall we?
It’s now 10pm, the kids are finally asleep and I’m lying in bed with Zsuzsa. This morning our sock choice was particularly dreadful and as a result the day has been a write-off, bursting at the seams with tantrums and despair.
“Maybe we need to buy her some new socks?” I say.
Zsuzsa scoffs.
“She doesn’t need new socks. We just need to work on our morning routine.”
“What’s wrong with our routine?” I reply.
“We haven’t got one.”
To be fair she’s got me there, unless you consider a routine to be a random, sleepy, frantic scramble to clothe, feed and water two little humans before the small hand hits nine.
“We need to have more structure from the moment we get up. It’s the only way. We need more serenity. A peaceful, orderly, efficient routine.” says Zsuzsa.
I gaze upon my mentally exhausted wife, her words swirling around in my head. “Order”, “structure”, “routine”, “efficient”. I decide she’s right. We need to become more German. I don’t mean go total German! Of course not! We don’t need to start ironing our socks or colour coding our underpants (you know who you are), but a little bit more German efficiency wouldn’t go amiss.
“Guten nacht frau!” I whisper softly.
“What?” replies Zsuzsa.
The next morning and I’m up and at it, tackling the morning head on with such systematic efficiency that I briefly considering changing my name to Helmut Müller. The morning goes like a dream. We navigate teeth cleaning, breakfast and even the dreaded sock roulette without a hitch. As I leave the house to take Mila to nursery I smile at my beloved wife. We’ve bloody nailed this. Obstacles obliterated and serenity has been restored.
Three minutes later and I arrive at the nursery with Mila. That’s right! Her nursery is three minutes walk away. If I worked on my hammer throwing technique I’m confident that I could hurl my daughter to nursery from our bedroom window, yet bizarrely, we are still always late. But not today. Today we have made it on time thanks to the Germanic efficiency of Helmut Müller and his serene lady wife.
The sock choice was good! HUZZAH!
It’s a cold morning, but the sun is shining as Mila skips in to the nursery with a big smile…then promptly trips and falls flat on her face.
“FIDDLESTICKS!”
I rush over and pick up my daughter. Her mouth is bleeding. She screams. I look around for help, but we’re alone. Blood drips from her lip. Quite a lot of blood. Using my highly tuned parental instincts I decide that we’re going to need a tissue, but first let’s get her scarf off before she stains it. I pull her scarf over her head and…
“SON OF A MOTHERLESS GOAT!”
I’ve managed to smear blood ALL OVER MILA’S FACE! Her entire face is blood red! She screams again, only the whites of her eyes visible through her blood-smeared veneer! It’s like a toddler reenactment of the final scene from Carrie!
“Halo” comes a voice.
Intrigued by the blood curdling scream a nursery teacher has wandered over to investigate.
“Uh” I reply.
Mila turns to her, revealing her blood smeared face and the nursery teacher freezes, obviously wondering what the hell is going on. I rack my brains for the Hungarian for “Don’t worry. It looks worse than it is. She just has a bleeding lip and I accidentally smeared it all over her face when I removed her scarf”, but all I can remember at this moment is…
“Uh.”
I take Mila to the toddler’s bathroom and wash the blood off her face with the nursery teacher. And by this I mean we wash her face together, not that I use the nursery school teacher as washing implement. Although to be fair, she did look quite spongy so probably would have been an effective and absorbent tool.
With the bleeding stopped and Mila once again not looking like an extra from Hellraiser, I ruffle her hair, give her a cuddle, ask if she’s okay (she says “yes”), bid her farewell and head to work.
A few moments later and my phone buzzes. It’s a message from Zsuzsa.
“All good honey?”
I ponder this for a moment. How to reply? What would Helmut Müller do?” I decide that being the sneaky swine that he is, he probably wouldn’t say anything, instead letting her read about it in a blog a few weeks later.
“All good darling.” I reply.
Bloody Helmut!