petite anglaise

Every time I think about Tadpole’s upcoming sixth birthday party I am filled with dread.

In previous years I’d always had a cast-iron excuse not to throw one. When she was three, for example, Tadpole hadn’t yet started pre-school and only knew the two other children our childminder cared for. Despite the fact that we’d been separated for over a year by this time, Mr Frog and I rallied around and took Tadpole on a day out to Disneyland Paris, with the help of a kind reader of this blog who worked at Disney head office and offered us free entry passes.

The following year, there was no question of throwing a children’s party in the minuscule flat Tadpole and I had, by then, moved into, and as mamie and papy happened to be in town staying with Mr Frog, all that was required of me was to head over to his place with cake to drink a glass of bubbly with them while Tadpole ripped open her presents.

Tadpole turned five two days after my wedding day and, as space was still a huge limiting factor, I simply invited over a couple of friends and their children for cake and wedding party leftovers, which we shared in my tiny living room cum bedroom. Dazed from the exertions of the weekend, I was inordinately proud of myself for having managed a return taxi trip to Pantin to retrieve Tadpole’s oversized birthday parcel (a wooden dolls’ house) from the postal sorting centre so that her gift would be awaiting her in her bedroom when she got home from school.

This year, however, I’ve finally run out of excuses. I now have the space necessary in order to invite seven of Tadpole’s favourite classmates over for the traditional 3pm to 6pm party slot. Tadpole is ecstatic at the prospect – and has been since approximately September last year. Meanwhile I’m at my wits’ end, wondering how on earth I’m supposed to entertain eight children for three whole hours, indoors. After all, blowing out the candles and eating a slice of cake (or two) will take all of ten minutes, won’t it? French children, you see, don’t eat dinner until at least 7pm. So the British birthday tea is replaced by a mere late afternoon snack.

“What did you play last weekend when you were at Milan’s party?” I enquire of Tadpole, trying to glean as much useful information as possible while concealing my rising tide of panic.

“We pinned the tail on a pig,” Tadpole replies, after a long pause, seemingly unable to recall any of the other activities which took place. “With a bandeau over our eyes… And then we went outside and played in the cour.” I sigh. Letting the children run around in our small communal courtyard was an option I’d been entertaining until construction workers begin to use it as a storage facility a week ago, due to structural work to be carried out on a neighbouring building.

When I discussed the impending party with Mr Frog – it’s actually taking place on one of his weekends – he graciously consented to bring Tadpole over in time for the party and said he would probably stay “for a little while”. Meanwhile, The Boy, who – quite understandably – has little desire to share his Saturday afternoon with a throng of shrieking, sugar-fuelled children and, what is more, doesn’t wish to trample on Mr Frog’s toes, is planning to make himself scarce.

Which just leaves me and my rapidly expanding waistline, armed with any suggestions my kind readers are able share in the comments box below…

Update:

It went really well! Thank you for all the suggestions. I cut the party down to two and a half hours, banished boys altogether (!) – aside from The Boy, who was brilliant. We alternated boisterous games with quieter activities (making bracelets, decorating iced shortbread biscuits). Successes included ‘pin the nose on the Hello Kitty’, a race involving smarties and drinking straws, a variation on musical bumps where the last one to sit each time had to put on an item from the dressing up bag of tricks until everyone had three hats and dissolved in a mass of giggles… And a kind fellow parent turned up a little before the end and made balloon animals. All in all, a resounding success!

I am shelling peas in the kitchen while listening to some vintage Aphex twin when I realise that Tadpole has gone disturbingly quiet.

‘Sweetie? What are you up to?’ I call, peering over the bar, from which vantage point I can see the whole of our open-plan apartment. Save the bathroom and toilet, that is. There is no sign of Tadpole, however, and I have a sudden, irrational vision of her drawing 3D pictures on the bathroom floor with a tube of toothpaste.

‘I’m doing a poo!’ shouts Tadpole. ‘Well… Actually, I’ve finished doing my poo, and now I’m reading the book about the bunny.’

The people who designed our apartment thoughtfully built in some shelf space above the toilet, and this hosts our extensive ‘toilet book’ collection. Highlights include our Larson collection, the foreign editions of ‘petite’, several tomes by Desproges and ‘the book about the bunny’, a.k.a. The Bumper Book of Bunny Suicides. Tadpole loves poring over this, even though I hope/feel sure that she doesn’t really understand a) why a bunny would want to commit suicide, and b) how he’s planning to go about it in many of the instances illustrated.

‘You don’t have to read that on the toilet, you know,’ I tell her, when she emerges, finally, a full ten minutes later. ‘You can borrow books from the toilet library. As long as you put them back afterwards…’

Which is why this morning, I found Tadpole with her head bent over a copy of fellow blogger Andre’s If You’re Happy and You Know It‘ at the breakfast table. Indeed, not just looking at it, but reproducing several of the doodles herself with the help of a biro she’d pilfered from my handbag.

I do hope Andre approves.

I introduced the idea of a new addition to our family several months ago, long before I began taking folic acid or dispensed with taking ‘precautions’. Tadpole was predictably delighted at the prospect of having a little brother or sister to fuss over and urged me to ‘put a baby in my tummy’ as soon as possible.

‘Will Daddy come to live with us when we have a new baby?’ she asks me, between spoonfuls of cereal, a few days after our first discussion. ‘So he can help us to look after it?’

‘Um, no… I shouldn’t think so,’ I reply with a frown. I’m about to ask her why she would think such a thing, when realisation suddenly dawns. In Tadpole-logic, I realise, Mr Frog is the only possible daddy and therefore it stands to reason that he will father all my children. Hence the assumption that he will be sharing the responsibility for caring for the baby, which he can’t very well do if he is living 400m down the road.

I take a sip of coffee before embarking on my explanation. Best to test my theory first, I decide. So I begin with a tentative question. ‘When I have a baby,’ I begin, ‘who do you think the baby’s daddy will be?’

‘Daddy,’ Tadpole replies, her scornful tone making it abundantly clear that she considers my question a foolish one. I sigh and glance towards the bedroom, wondering whether The Boy can hear us. He could be awake – after all, he just snoozed the alarm not twice, but three times – but there is no way of knowing for sure, as he seems to be capable of banging his fist on the alarm clock in his sleep.

‘Honey,’ I say gently. ‘When Daddy and I made you, we were living in the same house. Now I’m living with Manuel. I’m married to Manuel. So this time it’s going to be different. The baby’s daddy won’t be your daddy. It will be Manuel.’

‘Oh,’ Tadpole replies. She falls silent, processing this new information, then gives me a smile and a nod, and spoons more cereal into her mouth.

‘So the baby will call Manuel ‘Daddy’, I continue, thinking it advisable to press the point home while I have Tadpole’s undivided attention. ‘But you’ll still call him Manuel. And you’ll call your daddy ‘Daddy’. Tadpole nods again, her mouth full.

A few weeks later, when the future baby has become less an abstract concept than a grape-sized mini-foetus swimming in nausea-inducing circles, we are discussing the Easter holidays, when Tadpole will stay with Mr Frog’s parents for a week, as per usual.

‘When the baby is born,’ Tadpole says, ‘It will come with me to stay at Mamie and Papy’s house, won’t it? Because they will be the grandparents of the baby too.’

I smile and shake my head. This is going to be more complicated than I thought.

So…

I’ve actually been back for ten days now, and it’s taken me this long to get my act together and upload my favourite photos, let alone open up the “write” tab in wordpress.

The belated honeymoon holiday was sublime and I wanted to blog about it, really I did. But ever since I got home I’ve been fighting back waves of quasi-constant nausea and enduring more than my fair share of insidious, light-sensitive headaches, with the result that I’ve been pretty exhausted and have spent my days doing more sleeping than anything else.

And all because I found out, on the eve of our honeymoon, that The Boy and I are expecting a baby.

It’s early days to be making any sort of announcement, I realise, but I weighed up the pros and cons of coming clean and decided that if anything were to go wrong, god forbid, I’d want to be able to write about it here, so I see no real reason to hold back. I’m 7 weeks in – counting from the beginning of my last cycle, as there are, it transpires, different ways to count – and the automated email that popped into my inbox this morning tells me that the embryo currently resembles a very small Tadpole, which I thought rather fitting.

My five year-old Tadpole, who recently borrowed Babette Cole’s hilarious ‘Mummy laid an egg‘ from the school library, is convinced the baby was conceived while The Boy and I were balancing precariously atop a skateboard. I like the mental image this conjures up so much that, for the time being, I’m afraid I can’t bring myself to disabuse her…

image © Babette Cole

It’s almost bedtime and having just popped a decidedly honeymoon bikini-unfriendly gratin into the oven, I’m putting my feet up for a moment. Tadpole pads out of the bathroom wearing a towel, her hair gathered up into a curly knot on top of her head.

For the past two months, the next part of our evening routine consisted of Tadpole lying on the sofa while I rasped away at the sole of her right foot with an emery board, applied an acid preparation and covered my handiwork in adhesive dressings. But, thankfully, the verruca cluster on her right heel is history now. So when Tadpole slides her bottom onto the sofa by my side, we can devote the last few minutes of her day to more pleasant activities, like reading stories together or just shooting the breeze.

‘How many sleeps is it until theatre class?’ says Tadpole innocently. ‘Is it two more, or is it three?’

‘Three,’ I reply, darting her an amused look. ‘Why do you ask? Are you looking forward to getting Leonardo all to yourself?’

Tadpole blushes. Leonardo is her playground crush. Jules, her amoureux of the first two years of maternelle had the misfortune to be allocated to a different class when they both moved up to the grande section in September. He’s only just a along the corridor nowadays, but this minor geographical shift has made a world of difference. I fully understand, never having been much good at long-distance relationships myself. Loin des yeux, loin du coeur as they say.

Leonardo, on the other hand, is not only in Tadpole’s class but also attends her Friday evening éveil théâtral activity, at a nearby centre d’animation. There they slither along the floor pretending to be snakes, stand immobile side by side with their arms stretched to the ceiling being trees and, according to the teacher, are pretty much joined at the hip.

‘Last time at theatre class,’ Tadpole confides, ‘Leonardo did give me a kiss on the cheek. He said that I have extremely very soft skin and he told me that I’m pretty when I take off my glasses…’ She frowns. ‘But Mummy,’ she adds, ‘when we’re at school, he says he loves Suzanne most of all. And in the cour de recréation today, he did hold her hand.’

‘But what about Nina?’ I say, puzzled. ‘I thought Nina was his school girlfriend, and you were his theatre class girlfriend.’ It is to be hoped that my apparent acceptance of this unusual situation is not paving the way for Tadpole to willingly participate in a ménage-à-trois when she is older.

Tadpole shakes her head. ‘He changed his mind about Nina,’ she explains. ‘Because she chose Raphaël to be her king when we ate the galette des rois.’

I am reminded of when we cut into our own galette at home, just after the New Year. By devious means, I made sure Tadpole ate the slice containing the fève. When the time came to choose her king, however, she protested that she didn’t have a real choice, The Boy being the only male present and startled us all by choosing one of her soft toy frogs instead. The irony of this – although Tadpole has no idea I call her father Mr Frog on this blog – was not entirely lost on me.

‘Well,’ I say to Tadpole, casting around for something wise-sounding to say. ‘If Leonardo doesn’t appreciate you all the time, it’s his loss. One day, when you are much older, you’ll have a real boyfriend. Someone who only wants to hold your hand.’

‘But Mummy,’ Tadpole protests. ‘I am grown up. I’m five years old! And Leonardo is REAL.’

Oh, he’s real alright, I think to myself. And he’s well on his way to becoming a Real Player.

Tadpole and I hurry along the cobbled street, hand in hand, trying to avoid the patches of black ice that have formed overnight. An anxious glance at my watch reveals that it is 8.28, and I quicken my pace.

Tadpole is chattering nineteen to the dozen about the coming day at school. ‘We’re going to do a travail que j’aDORE,’ she says, making me rather nostalgic for a time when I could feel such simple, strong emotions (and also for a time when ‘work’ consisted of doing a spot of colouring in without straying over the lines). ‘The maîtresse has made some sheets with a 2009 on,’ Tadpole continues, ‘and inside every number there’s the beginning of a pattern. And we have to take a different coloured pen for each number, and continue the pattern, and then at the bottom it’s written ‘Bonne Année!’ with a big point d’exclamation, and we have to copy it, to practise how to do writing on a line, and then…’

Meanwhile, I am making a to-do list in my head. I need to edit at least three chapters before dinnertime. I must pop by the pharmacy to pick up my folic acid. It’s market day on boulevard de Belleville, and I compile a mental shopping list (peppers, mushrooms, clementines, kiwi fruit (Tadpole’s favourite), bananas and broccoli). I ought to try and finalise some tentative plans for our coming weekend in Yorkshire, assuming the black ice and minus double figure temperatures expected in Paris later this week don’t ground our plane and scupper our plans altogether. I need to fix the dodgy starter sparky thing on the gas hobs and get a battery for the torch so that if I manage to trip the fusebox again, like I did yesterday, I don’t end up running around in the dark looking for matches while Tadpole attempts to eat her dinner in the dark, with predictably messy results. I need to give UK bank details to my agents, because if they take it into their heads to send any advance money over to me in France at the current exchange rate, I think I will cry.

‘MUMMY!’ shouts Tadpole, her eyes flashing with anger. ‘You’re not LIST-EN-ING to me, are you?’

‘I am!’ I protest, untruthfully. ‘You were saying how much you were looking forward to working on your 2009 picture! It sounded great. I was listening and thinking at the same time.’

‘No you weren’t,’ says Tadpole firmly. ‘You only listened to the beginning. You’re not IN-TER-EST-ED Mummy. You don’t really CARE about my 2009…’

I curse the day Tadpole became so scarily perceptive. There’s no pulling the wool over her eyes any more. Whereas I can still fool The Boy – punctuating his lengthy, blow by blow accounts of poker games with a few strategic ‘mmm’s’ or the occasional ‘mouais‘ without him seeming any the wiser – Tadpole has an uncanny talent for knowing precisely when and why my attention has strayed and pulls me up on it, every single time.

And that’s not all. ‘When you say “Mmm” it doesn’t mean “no” or “yes” or anything,’ she explained to me the other day. ‘It just means you’re not really listening. And when you say “we’ll see”, you really mean “no”.’

‘And how about when I say we’ll do something later?’ I enquire, wondering if my arsenal is now completely empty.

‘Well,’ says Tadpole, furrowing her brow. ‘Later is more difficult. It can means lots of things. Sometimes it means “in a little while”. Sometimes it means “the day after the next day”.’ She pauses, and for a moment I think I may just have got away with this one.

‘But usually,’ she adds sagely, ‘if you say we’ll do something later, you mean never.’

I take out Tadpole’s carnet de santé, the notebook which was presented to me at the hospital when she was born, in which doctors record the reason for every visit and the fill in the vaccinations she’s received. The entries within are sparse, to say the least. This is partly because Tadpole has enjoyed remarkably good health since she was a baby, and partly because I don’t feel the need to have every sniffle or short-lived tummy bug checked out, given that, in my experience, doctors here have an alarming tendency to over-prescribe. Especially antibiotics.

‘Any serious illnesses or operations to report?’ the school doctor asks, flicking through the pages and tutting when she sees that the double page set aside for a reporting the results of a general check up, aged four, remains blank. At a guess, I’d say the doctor is in her fifties. She’ll only ever see us for this one compulsory visit and apparently thinks this eliminates the need for niceties. Her manner is brusque, her voice clipped as short as her greying hair.

‘Um, she had a fall and split open her lip about eighteen months ago,’ I reply. ‘We were in England at the time, so there’s no record in the book. It was glued together at casualty… It seems to have healed really well.’

‘They used glue?!’ The doctor raises her eyebrows ceilingwards. I toy with the idea of ingratiating myself to her by making a snide comment about the NHS, pandering to her obvious feelings of superiority over English doctors. ‘It was surgical glue,’ I murmur instead, just in case the doctor thinks the incompetent English might have used pritt stick. But the doctor is already busy running her biro down the list of vaccinations at the back of the book, and gives no sign that she’s even heard me.  ’I have a prescription for her second MMR jab,’ I interject, seeing her frowning at the blank space next to the family doctor’s pencilled-in reminder that a rappel would be due in 2007/8. I can hear defensiveness creeping into my voice. I’m starting to feel like I’m on trial; my ability to bring up a healthy, happy child called into question.

During the hearing test, my heart sinks into my shiny ballerina pumps. Tadpole, dwarfed by a huge pair of headphones, repeatedly giggles and repeats ‘je n’entends rien‘ when sounds are piped into her left ear. The doctor inspects further and finds a large blockage. ‘There’s a lump of hard matter obstructing her ear canal and seriously impairing her hearing,’ she tells me, sternly. ‘Has your daughter ever had a serious ear infection?’ I reply that she’s only had one, that I know of, and she was one at the time. The doctor looks doubtful, and asks me whether I often have to repeat things to my daughter in conversation.

‘Well… sometimes,’ I admit. ‘But you know how it is at this age… It’s hard to differentiate between whether she’s not listening or she can’t hear. Half the time she’s caught up in her own little imaginary world and just ignores me…’

‘Well, you’ll have to get that obstruction removed,’ says the doctor, ‘and test her hearing again afterwards. We need to know whether this impairment is caused by the blockage or due to some other defect.’ I nod, mutely.

When it comes to the eye test, I feel more confident. After all, how many mothers have been taking their daughters to see an optician on a regular basis since the age of 12 months? Mindful of the fact that I got my first pair of NHS standard issue glasses at the tender age of four, I’ve had Tadpole’s eyes tested several times. At the end of our last visit, we were told there was no need for any action, and we should return in not one, but two year’s time.

‘Well, my test says she’s 9.5 in the right eye and 7.5 in the left,’ says the doctor, curtly. ‘When did you last visit this optician you mention?’ I leaf through the carnet de santé and realise the optician must have kept her own records in parallel. There’s no record of these visits whatsoever. It’s as though she never even existed.

We leave the school doctor’s office with two referrals. One to see an ear, nose and throat specialist and the other to see an optician. I feel utterly dejected. I walked into the room feeling reasonably confident in my abilities as a mother and walked out, half an hour later, feeling like I was guilty of criminal neglect.

I accompany Tadpole back up to her classroom, pausing just outside the door to give her a fiercely tight hug and whisper something in her left ear.

‘Did you say something, mummy? I didn’t hear you?’ Tadpole looks puzzled. I repeat myself in her right ear and she smiles.

When I arrive at the Centre de Loisirs, cheeks flushed from another two-hour session at the gym (my anti-anxiety drug of choice), the children are outside in the cour de récréation.

It takes me a while to spot Tadpole. She’s not dangling upside down by her knees from the climbing ropes, a sight which set my heart fluttering last week. There is no sign of her queuing to go down the slide, either, and she doesn’t appear to be under the inverted V-shaped structure the kids all refer to as la cabane.

Then I spot her, sitting by the edge of the playground alone, back to the wall, hands cupping her chin. With her long, spindly arms and legs Tadpole is often mistaken for an older child. She’s inherited her father’s body shape, something I’m sure I’ll be intensely jealous of one day. At her age my knees were surrounded by little rolls of fat; the kindest adjective to describe my legs would likely have been ’sturdy’.

As I stride towards her, I am waylaid by a black girl whose name escapes me, her hair separated into an elaborate patchwork of squares, each ending in a little knot, bound with a thin band of colour. ‘Elle a fait une bêtise,’ says the girl, gesturing towards my daughter. ‘Elle nous a montré ses fesses au milieu de la cour.’

‘Ah bon?’ I say, trying not to smirk as I imagine relaying this exchange to Mr Frog, later. I have no idea what could have possessed my daughter to lift her skirt, pull down her pants and moon in public, but the mental image it conjures is priceless.

‘Honey, why did you show your bottom to the other children?’ I say, in a neutral voice, dropping to my knees and ignoring the tale-teller, who stands to my left, her arms folded across her chest.

‘Because Edith did tell me to do it!’ says Tadpole, scowling. ‘And then I did get into trouble, and not her. It’s not fair.’

Tadpole stands her ground with me (and the other adults in her life) all the time, but I’ve noticed her behaviour in the presence of her peers is very different. She lives in a cruel world where a classmate may decide to be her best friend one day, her sworn enemy the next. ‘Dina didn’t want to sit with me today because I was wearing trousers and not a skirt,’ she once told me sadly on the way home from school. She refused to wear trousers after that. It went on for weeks. The shy, bespectacled four year old I once was can’t really blame Tadpole for seeking the approval of her peers. But she’s going to have to learn some boundaries. Because I’d rather not pick up the pieces when Edith dares her to jump off the top of the slide.

‘Well,’ I say, ‘maybe next time Edith or any of your other friends asks you to do something that you know is silly or naughty, you should think about saying no. There’s no friend worth getting yourself into trouble or hurting yourself for…’

‘I know that mummy,’ Tadpole says indignantly, pulling herself to her feet. ‘But I didn’t think showing my bottom was a bêtise. At home when I take my clothes off and wiggle my bare bottom you do always laugh.’

‘At home it’s different,’ I say firmly. ‘Outside there are different rules. It’s rude to show your bottom to a waiter in a restaurant, or to children in the playground. But I’m allowed to laugh when you show it to me, because I’m your mummy.’

Life lesson delivered, we head for home, where my rules are law.

‘I’m going to miss you while you’re staying with mamie and papy‘. I snuggle into Tadpole’s back, trying to inhale and exhale in time with my daughter, willing my runaway heartbeat to slow.

At lunchtime I’ll collect Tadpole from the Centre de Loisirs, leap into a taxi, and deliver her into the waiting arms of Mr Frog’s mother at Gare de Lyon. She’ll trundle off with her wheelie suitcase for the second leg of her school holidays.

The panic attack began, inexplicably, on Tuesday morning and shows no signs of abating. My body has slipped free of its moorings, drifted out of my control. It’s a law unto itself. My mind races in pointless circles, skittering from worry to worry. I know my sense of perspective is warped. I know, from experience, that it’s a temporary state. In a few day’s time, when I’m back on an even keel, when I can sleep through the night, I’ll have trouble even remembering how this felt.

‘Don’t worry mummy,’ Tadpole says earnestly. ‘You’ll be with [The Boy].’ She grabs my hand and plants a tiny kiss on the inside of my wrist.

‘And mummy, si tu t’ennuies, and you don’t want to go in your office…’

‘Go TO my office.’ I’m pedantic about prepositions, even at 7.45 in the morning, mid panic attack.

‘If you don’t go to your office,’ Tadpole continues, ‘then, you can play with my toys if you want. You can build some things with my pink Lego, or watch one of my DVDs.’

The back of her pyjamas, where my face is touching them, are now damp. Thankfully Tadpole doesn’t notice.

‘But mummy,’ she says in the bossy voice she usually reserves for her collection of soft toys when she’s pretending to be la Maîtresse. ‘Please don’t forget you have to tidy them up again afterwards.’

Below is the picture drawn by Tadpole over lunch in a café last weekend, using my favourite book signing pen and a rather grainy, textured napkin. It prompted a lively discussion with The Boy, during the course of which I discovered that not only do the French have two different words for owl, but that one has tufty, ear-like appendages (the hibou, pictured), while the other (the chouette) does not. Who knew?

I suspect the inspiration for Tadpole’s picture came from the fact we are currently reading about Plop, the Owl who was Afraid of the Dark, at bedtimes, which is bringing back all sorts of lovely memories of reading the same to my baby sister, many years ago.

But it’s the other, cartoon-like bird on Tadpole’s picture that amused me most. Very Roger Hargreaves, don’t you think?

‘We’re making a “k” for “kite”,’ says Tadpole, her voice a half-yawn. This would be true if her bed wasn’t an extra short lit évolutif from Ikea, which I really should lengthen one day soon, as Tadpole is tall and willowly. My (shorter, stumpier – do I sound jealous yet?) legs are currently bent at the knee, so even if she is lying in a sort of sideways ‘V’ shape, with her bottom nestling against my tummy, we’re making a special sort of K. With a tail.

I glance at the Miffy wall clock, which reads 7.43. Almost half-time.

My morning routine (on weekdays) goes something like this:

7.15: Alarm clock sounds. It’s actually the alarm on my landline phone, and whenever I’m in a shop or restaurant that uses the same ringtone, it sends icicles down my spine.

7.20: I press snooze.

7.25: I press snooze.

7.30: I press stop.

7.32: I get up, walk along the corridor, raise the blackout blinds in Tadpole’s room, then climb into her bed.

7.32 – 8.02: We snuggle. She tells me what she has been dreaming about. Or I guess. It can be one of four things: mermaids, princesses, fairies or unicorns, so the odds are not exactly stacked against me.

8.02 – 8.25: She eats cereal, we get dressed, I drink my first Cloonette of the day.

8.25: We run to school, slipping inside just before the doors close, at 8.30.

I realise that this may not seem like the best time management policy, but try as I might, I can’t bring myself to change any of the above.

‘So, what did you dream about today?’ I ask, my voice muffled by her curls, which are also tickling my nose.

‘I did dream that I was a princess, in a castle,’ Tadpole begins. So far, so predictable. ‘And you were the queen, mummy… and grandma was the maid…’ Chuckling, I make a mental note to tell my mother about her demotion to the servants’ quarters. I wonder whether granddad made an appearance in Tadpole’s dream, perhaps as the court jester, but wisely hold my tongue. We will be visiting England in a few weeks’ time and Tadpole can always be relied upon to repeat precisely those phrases she shouldn’t. (‘Mummy says I shouldn’t eat my spaghettis like that because I’m not a piggy like you.’ Ouch.)

But there is to be no mention of granddad. Instead, Tadpole swivels around so that she is facing me and we (almost) form a triangle. ‘In my dream,’ she says, looking at me intently, ‘my daddy was the king and he did live in the same castle as us.’

‘Did he now?’ I say, reflecting that although my daughter may not look much like me, we’ve both inherited the recessive subtlety gene. ‘But mummy already has a king, doesn’t she? And she can’t have two… I mean, I’ve never seen a castle with two kings in it, have you?’

Tadpole shakes her head, seemingly satisfied with my explanation. I glance back at the Miffy clock. It is only 7.53, but I decide to make breakfast early.

‘So,’ I enquire, ‘did the princess in your dream eat special K with chocolate pieces in for her breakfast?’

The Boy and Tadpole return from their pilgrimage to McDonalds. The Boy is looking disproportionately pleased with himself, far more so than the feat of having hunted and gathered a happy meal and a couple of burgers would usually warrant.

“What have you two been up to?” I ask, suspiciously, as I unpack Tadpole’s chicken nuggets and arrange them on a proper plate – which increases the nutritional value of the food tenfold, because it is no longer takeaway – and set the Asterix toy aside for later.

“We had a very important conversation, she and I, while we were queuing up to be served,” says The Boy, unwrapping his own dinner. “N’est-ce pas biquette?”

Tadpole nods, her mouth full of nugget. We’ve both grown used to being referred to as a “small female goat”, The Boy’s favoured term of endearment.

“Go on…” I say, wondering what on earth the terrible two have been plotting behind my back.

“Well,” says The Boy, pausing to bite, chew and swallow, enjoying keeping me on tenterhooks, “I asked your daughter if it was okay for me to marry you… It’s the done thing, you know, when someone already has children, to ask their permission.” I feel rather emotional all of a sudden, tears prickling the back of my eyes. What a lovely thing to do. Even if McDonalds wasn’t the venue I would have chosen for such a conversation.

“And what did she say?” I ask, wiping some ketchup from Tadpole’s chin with a serviette. I don’t think she has even heard our exchange. She’s selectively deaf at the best of times, but especially so when focused on food.

“She said that she thought it was a very good idea for us to marry ourselves,” the Boy replies. “And then we got talking about princess dresses and flowers, as you do… But when I said ‘you’re going to look just like a princess’, she said the loveliest thing…” He takes another bite, spinning out his story for as long as possible.

“I did say that it’s not me who will be the princess on that day,” pipes up Tadpole suddenly. Apparently she has been listening in, all along. “Because it’s mummy who will be the princess, not me. I’ll just be a little princess. Or a middle-sized. But you will be the real one, that day.”

I smile, under cover of my Royal Cheese, my eyes moist. “What a double act you are, you two,” I say, when I’ve recovered my composure. Then, turning to The Boy: “And what would you have done if she had said ‘no’?”

“When mummy gets married, I’m going to wear an extremely pretty princess dress,” Tadpole has been telling everyone who will listen. “And a tiara. And when mummy gets little bit busy, I’m going to help with carrying the flowers…”

Tadpole’s Disney Princess phase has lasted upwards of a year now, and shows no sign of abating. Given every self-respecting princess story culminates with a sumptuous ceremony, my daughter seems to have all sorts of preconceived notions of what my wedding day should be like. I do hope my strenuously low-key nuptials will not be a disappointment to her, when the time comes, but there’s no way I can stomach the idea of wearing a frothy white meringue, not even for my daughter’s sake.

A few days after my botched proposal, Tadpole returned from her New Year’s holiday with mamie and papy. I hadn’t yet had an opportunity to speak to Mr Frog, so sharing the news with my motormouthed daughter was a risky business. But one morning, when I crawled into her bed for our morning cuddle, I just couldn’t help myself.

“If I tell you something really, really exciting, can you keep it a secret?” I ask. There is a silence, and for a moment I wonder if she’s sleeping. I seem to have a knack for broaching important subjects when my listener is only semi-conscious. But Tadpole isn’t asleep. She turns to face me, her eyes serious.

“If it’s a secret, you have to whisper it in my ear,” she says. “Because otherwise somebody else might hear.” The only somebody else in the flat is snoring gently in the next room, fully aware of his impending marital predicament, but I humour Tadpole and snuggle closer to her ear.

“In a few months, I’m going to get married to …. ,” I whisper.

“Just like Ariel, in the Little Mermaid?” Tadpole cries, her eyes widening to the size of dinner plates, the need for whispering apparently forgotten.

“Kind of like Ariel, yes…” I reply. “Although probably not with the same colour dress. Or on a boat.”

“I’m going to marry myself as well,” Tadpole says matter of factly.

“Well, yes, one day you will,” I say. “When you’re just a little bit older.”

“NO, NOT when I’m older, mummy! I’m going to marry myself with my daddy, on the SAME DAY as you.”

My daughter speaks with such fierce certainty that I decide not to contradict her, for now, and make a mental note to add Freud to the guest list.

To say that Tadpole rarely shares insights about her secret life in the moyenne section of our local maternelle would be something of an understatement. Invariably, on the way home from school, we have a conversation which goes something like this.

Me: “So, what did you do today?”

Tadpole: “Just some things.”

Me: “What did you have for lunch?”

Tadpole: “I can’t remember. But you can look on the computer, mummy, can’t you…?”

Which is why I was rather taken by surprise when she randomly launched into a playground anecdote over dinner yesterday evening. An anecdote which concerned a boy who was in her class last year. I am still at a loss to understand what caused the memory to surface just then.

“Mummy?” says Tadpole between mouthfuls of canneloni (from which I have scraped all trace of bechamel sauce, at her behest). “When I was three years old and I was in the other class at school…” – she holds up three fingers in case I need help understanding the concept – “…one day I did go in the playground with Youssouf while the other children were doing music.”

“Mmhm?” I repy, stabbing several green beans onto her fork, because for some reason, even though Tadpole is perfectly capable of feeding herself, she generally loses the will to eat after approximately five mouthfuls in the evenings and I have to step unwillingly into the breach.

“And I did ask Youssouf ‘tu es mon amoureux?‘ and he said ‘oui‘ and we did hold hands for a little while,” Tadpole continues.

I like the word ‘amoureux‘. The Boy often uses it when introducing me to a friend of his for the first time. I like to think of it as a combination of ‘beloved’ and ‘lover’ – literally it means ‘the person I’m in love with’. It’s so much nicer than ‘ma copine‘ (too impersonal, it could designate any female friend) or ‘ma petite copine‘ (even if I am used to answering to the name ‘petite‘). What the term ‘amoureux‘ implies to a four-year-old though, I’m far from sure.

“Is Youssouf still your amoureux now?” I enquire, setting down the fork for a moment.

“No. He did have the nez coulé and it wasn’t very nice,” Tadpole explains with a grimace. I freeze. Just how close did my daughter get to that runny nose of his?

“And, um, do you have an amoureux now?”

“I play with Dinah now,” Tadpole replies. “And Youssouf, he plays with Hicham.” This, I surmise, could mean one of two things. That their short-lived relationship was so traumatic that it drove both of them into the arms of a same-sex partner, or that amoureux, to Tadpole, simply means ‘best friend’.

“So, who is mummy’s amoureux?” I ask, keen to test my theory immediately.

“You have two,” says Tadpole, with a triumphant smile that means she is convinced beyond the shadow of a doubt she knows the correct answer. “Daddy… And Meg.”

I heave a sigh of relief.

It is a week in which I’ve already made two Paris-London-Paris trips on the Eurostar, complete with identical on-board meals of hachis parmentier and a very bland slice of bakewell tart on both Sunday and Wednesday evenings, and adjusted my watch five times (albeit a little slow on the uptake the day that daylight saving time was adopted, having completely forgotten).

On Thursday, Tadpole and I board a flight to Leeds. I pore over the in-flight magazine, wondering what my collection of loose change can buy us for lunch. I would appear to have exactly £7.70. Just enough to procure one “junior snack pack” and a still mineral water (for her) plus one packet of mini-cheddars and a coffee/kitkat combo (for me). Not the most nutritious meal, with not a hint of the requisite five servings of fruit or vegetables, but we’ve had worse. I wedge the magazine into the seat pocket in front of me and settle back in my seat, closing my eyes for a moment, waiting for the attendants to reach us.

Tadpole is studying the laminated safety card with fierce intent.

“Mummy?”

“Mhm?” I mumble, without opening my eyes.

“Why does a cross sometimes mean a kiss but sometimes it means ‘no, you CAN’T do THAT’? Those two things are not the same at ALL, are they?”

“I suppose you’re right,” I say, opening my eyes and leaning forwards to rummage in my handbag for moleskine and a pencil, nostils flaring. I smell a blog post in the making: Tadpole appears to be on fine form today. “So… what does it say that we’re not allowed to do, on the card?”

“It says no cigarette,” says Tadpole primly. “But that’s alright because me and you, we don’t fume any cigarette, do we?” I shake my head. “And it says no telephone…” she pauses and looks at me accusingly. “Why did you bring your telephone, mummy? It’s not allowed, it says it here!”

“Ah, I’m allowed to bring it, you see, but I am supposed to switch it off…” I fumble in my handbag once more and re-read my last message from the Boy, for the nth time, before complying.

“Why are those people going on a toboggan?” Tadpole wonders aloud, pointing at the picture of a landing at sea – I love the fact that there is a proper French word for this: “amerissage” which somehow makes it sound like something utterly banal and routine, and not at all like an exceptional emergency occurrence – in which several people are calmly gliding down an inflatable slide, minus their baggage and shoes. I decide not to evoke the possibility of planes falling unexpectedly out of the sky and mumble something implausible about people using slides when there aren’t any spare sets of stairs handy at the airport, instead. No sense in worrying her. Flying has hitherto been as natural to Tadpole as taking a taxi, and I wouldn’t want to change that. Pointing at the next picture, I lure her eyes away before she has time to register that the runway is blue and slightly squiggly.

“What do you think this one means?” I say, tapping my finger against a picture of an unfeasibly high stilletto shoe with a bold black cross through it.

“No princess shoes,” Tadpole replies with unshakable certainty.

Chortling, I reach for my pencil.

One of the reasons I have been feeling low since the school year kicked off in September (and yes, I realise this has had some incidence on the frequency of posting here at petite anglaise) was that for a few excruciating weeks, I became increasingly convinced that my daughter had been abducted by aliens.

Gone was the cheerful sprite I had entrusted to the care of the beaux-parents while I skipped off to Greece for two blissful weeks with the Boy. Upon my return, I discovered that a tantrum-throwing, insult-hurling stranger had taken Tadpole’s place. She looked like my daughter – the same blonde corkscrew curls, the same grey-blue eyes – but this little imposter had the power to tear my nerves to shreds, to cut me to the quick with harsh words. She awoke in a filthy temper every morning and greeted me with disdain – if not fury – when I trudged down the hill to collect her from school.

“Hello sweetie, did you have a good day?” I would say, my mouth smiling, but my eyes anxious, bracing myself for what was surely to come.

“I DON’T WANT to come home with YOU. I don’t like YOU and I don’t like YOUR HOUSE. I want to stay at SCHOOL!” Tadpole would reply, her mouth surly, her forehead crumpled. For added effect she also experimented variously with folding her arms, squeezing her eyes tightly shut while putting her hands over her ears to effectively shut me out, or clamping her hands tightly around the bench she was sitting on next to the Maîtresse so that I couldn’t prise her free and pick her up.

In response, I tried:

a) talking in wheedling tones about something “really fun” we would do when we got home
b) pulling a chocolate biscuit out of my handbag as bait
c) pretending to leave without her
d) threatening her with “no CBeebies” when she got home if she did not comply
e) trying to pick her up and carry her out of the school
f) looking askance at the Maîtresse to see if she knew of a magic combination of words which would make my daughter miraculously see sense
g) chasing her around the school hall under the amused gazes of all the assembled teaching staff
h) dragging her outside by force, my hand clamped around her right coatsleeve

Once we were outside, the trials were far from over. The rue de Belleville has never seemed so long, nor its gradient so steep as on those days when I had to climb it alongside a little person who insisted on walking in fairy steps, all the while screaming at the top of her lungs that I was not her friend and she wanted to go to daddy’s house, instead. She would frequently sit on doorsteps, or indeed the middle of the pavement and refuse to move while I stood, arms folded, a few metres ahead, trying valiantly to ignore her until she came to her senses.

By the time we got home it was not uncommon for me to shut myself in the bathroom where I would muffle my howls in the dressing gown which hangs on the back of the door.

She’s tired, I said to myself. She’s in a new class, with lots of children she didn’t know last year. She’s testing my limits now that we are reunited again after the holidays. Mr Frog and I compared notes on the phone, and I was a little reassured to hear that Tadpole wasn’t sparing him either. It’s just a phase, we mumbled soothingly. These things always pass. But my confidence in tatters, I found myself reading chapters from parenting books. I started to wonder if it was All My Fault. After all, the Boy had all but moved in since we got back from Greece. And even if Tadpole and he had always got on famously, could this new development have anything to do with it?

And then one day I went into Tadpole’s bedroom to wake her and, for the first time in weeks, she greeted me with a smile. The school run, that morning, was painless. When I kneeled by her side in the school hall, that evening, fishing in my pocket for a chocolate biscuit, she did not protest. A flicker of something mutinous darted across her face, just for a moment, but she seemed to brush the impulse aside, rising to her feet instead, and taking my hand.

Just before bed, as I bent to give her a goodnight kiss, she made her apology. “Mummy, I did do lots of bêtises, but it’s all finished now.”

I pulled her closer. “It made me sad, you know, when you were naughty every day. I didn’t understand what was wrong… But it doesn’t matter now. Let’s just be friends.”

“I love you, you know,” Tadpole said, her mouth so close to my nose that I could smell the toothpaste on her breath. “I love daddy more, because he is big, and you are only middle-sized… But I do love you quite a lot.”

Padding back into my bedroom, I saw a green light by Mr Frog’s name on gmail.

“The aliens have returned our daughter, safe and sound!” I wrote. “Halle-fucking-luja…”

from Mr Frog
to    Petite Anglaise
date 19 Sep 2007 21:16

subject Quote of the Day

“Aujourd’hui dans la cour de récréation Matthias il nous a montré son zizi…. C’était très rigolo.”

I chuckle aloud, paste the quote into my ongoing MSN chat with the Boy (his response: “let’s hope Matthias is a four-year-old”), then file it in my brain under “things I musn’t forget to use one day in a blog post”.

Several days later, Tadpole and I are in the unisex, open plan changing rooms at the kids’ swimming pool we visit on Sunday mornings. When we first began frequenting the pool, I used to manoeuvre myself into my underwear with embarrassed awkwardness, under cover of a huge towel. Then one day I realised that normal rules didn’t apply here. Something about the fact that we are all parents, surrounded by young children, rubbing the sleep from our eyes and wishing that we were at home with a steaming mug of coffee and a newspaper, makes casual nudity even more asexual than a nudist beach in Greece.

Tadpole sits on the bench, swaddled in a hooded towel, wearing an extremely disgruntled pout. Persuading her to leave the pool had not been easy, and involved my resorting to a whole spectrum of parental behaviour – wheedling, promises, threats, pointless lengthy negotiations, raised voices – approaches proscribed one and all by the child rearing manual Mr Frog pointedly lent me the other day. Our altercation culminated in the tenth “I’m not your friend” of the day (it is midday), followed a dose of the silent treatment (a blessing in disguise).

Suddenly Tadpole’s eyes widen at the sight of the small child opposite, and she opens her mouth to speak, her fit of pique instantly forgotten. “Mummy! That girl has got a zizi! Why has that girl got a zizi?”

I sneak a glance at the child in question – male, without a shadow of a doubt – and consider how to respond. Probably best to keep things simple. Conversations about gender reassignment can doubtless wait until she is a little older. “Well,” I say slowly. “We know that only boys have zizi’s, don’t we? So that means it must be a boy, not a girl.”

“But mummy, she had the voice of a girl!” Tadpole protests with a crumpled brow.

“Little boys’ voices are often just the same as little girls’ voices,” I reply. “But if you see a zizi, it’s always a boy. That’s how you can always tell the difference between boys and girls, ladies and men…”

At this, Tadpole gives me a very strange look. In her opinion, I have taken leave of my senses.

“No!” she says emphatically. “My daddy doesn’t, any more. Maybe he did have a zizi when he was a little boy, but then he growed up and it disappeared.”

“I think you might be wrong about that honey,” I reply, the corners of my mouth twitching. “So, when we see daddy later, perhaps you should ask him…”

Tadpole and I are making our way home from “daddy’s house”. We make excruciatingly slow progress, as she insists on pulling her Miffy wheelie weekend bag along herself rather than letting me carry it. My eyes are riveted on the pavement ahead so that I can give advance warning should we encounter anything unsavoury left behind by a pigeon, dog or human.

Grinding to a halt at a pedestrian crossing, Tadpole suddenly becomes very excited at the sight of a teenage girl across the road.

“Wow! Look mummy! That girl has really red hair! Absolutely exactly the same red colour as the Little Mermaid!”

I take my eyes off the traffic lights for a moment and obediently take a look. The girl in question, striding away on the opposite pavement, has dyed her hair an unnaturally deep red, a cross between the claret colour so often favoured by Parisian café owners when choosing their awnings and my own crimson bedclothes. Uncannily similar to Tadpole’s Little Mermaid doll’s dishevelled mane. A colour which looks better, in my humble opinion, on fabric than on hair.

“Oh look, the green man!” I say, changing the subject and grabbing Tadpole’s free hand.

Later that evening, as I pull a wide-toothed comb through her damp ringlets (amusingly called “anglaises in her father tongue), I make the mistake of doing my thinking aloud. “We really must go to see a hairdresser sometime,” I say. “If we cut your hair just a little bit, then it will grow thicker, and longer.” I’ve been saying this for the past two years, ever since Tadpole’s hair finally deigned to begin growing in earnest, but somehow we’ve never got round to it.

“Mummy?” says Tadpole, turning to face me, her brow furrowed, “when you go to the see the hairdresser, sometimes the hairdresser puts some colour, doesn’t he?”

“Well, yes,” I admit. “I sometimes make it a little bit blonder, because it used to be light like yours, but now it’s darker…” I can almost see the cartoon lightbulb flickering to life above my daughter’s head, and have a sudden inkling of what is coming next.

“So when I go to see the hairdresser, can he make my hair a different colour too? Because I would like to have really really red hair like Ariel’s!”

I pause, wondering how to respond, then a phrase falls from my lips which somehow I never expected to find myself using quite so soon. “Not until you are at least sixteen years old, young lady! Your hair is very pretty just the way it is!”

“But mummy,” protests Tadpole with a sullen pout I find eerily familiar. “Sixteen years old is in a long long long time.”

Combing duty over, I pull myself to my feet and lead the way through into the bedroom.

“Hell yes,” I mutter under my breath.

Tadpole scowls at me across the dinner table. She hasn’t touched her food, despite the fact that I let her choose the dinner menu. Instead she pushes it around her plate listlessly, scattering baby peas and grains of rice onto the tabletop. Every few seconds, it seems, I have to ask her to refrain from pushing with her legs against the wall (after an incident earlier in the day when she ended up on the floor, howling, with the chair on top of her).

My patience, if I could see it, would probably resemble the ketchup on the table in front of me. A few dregs remain, coating the sides of the squeezable plastic bottle, but they are congealed and almost impossible to reach.

I spent the best part of the afternoon standing on a stepladder and scraping paint off the bathroom ceiling with a kitchen spatula. Flakes of slightly soggy paint collected in my hair, fell down the front of my dress, and welded themself to my arms as I scraped. Occasionally, when I pierced a water bubble, a trickle of water ran along the spatula, down my arm, and into the crook of my armpit, making me shiver.

The upstairs neighbour didn’t even have the good grace to look sheepish, let alone apologise, when the plumber sent by the copropriété concluded that a leaking tap in his apartment was the cause, and not the communal downpipe which runs through our bathroom wall. It will probably be months before I manage to get the requisite quotes to fix the warped window and fill in the pitted ceiling and have them approved by his insurance company. The drip drip drip had gone uninterrupted for two whole weeks while Tadpole and I were away in Yorkshire. Perfect timing.

Now my head is throbbing, an insistent dull pulsing which echoes the drip drip drip in the bathroom as the last of the water works its way through the ceiling, and the glass of wine I poured myself a few minutes earlier does not appear to be helping.

I heave myself out of my chair and curl up in a ball on my bed. Tadpole appears by my side and puts her face close to mine. I open my mouth to ask her to sit back down again, then close it. She has begun stroking my forehead, ever so gently, and it is so soothing, I don’t want her to stop.

“What’s matter mummy?” she says softly. “Are you ever so slightly extremely tired?”

“Mummy?” says Tadpole, seconds after the front door closes behind “mummy’s friend”.

“Yes?” I say, hand poised to squirt ketchup onto a slice of baguette, in readiness for a much needed fish finger sandwich.

“Have you got a baby in your tummy yet?”

I flinch, and the ketchup misfires, liberally coating the worktop.

“No sweetie, I don’t have a baby in my tummy…” I say slowly, once I’ve recovered my composure, setting down the ketchup and crossing my fingers. “Why are you asking me that today?”

“Because mummy, when I said that I wanted a sister or a brother, like Anna at school, you said ‘maybe when you’re six years old’. And I’m already four years old. And after twenteen more sleeps I will be five, and then six…”

I sigh, and resolve never again to bow to Tadpole’s pressure to put a time limit on everything. Future events are always measured in sleeps in our household. And she has an alarming habit of remembering throwaway comments made six months or more ago, deliberately glossing over the word “maybe” and then repeating them to me with a “but you said as though I’d made some sort of legally binding promise.

“You know,” I say suddenly, with a sly smile, “daddy could make you a brother or sister. Maybe you should talk to daddy about this, too.”

A problem shared, I think to myself, picturing Mr Frog’s face, is a problem halved.

“Look at my little girl!” I say, handing Mr Frog the cake box over Tadpole’s head and motioning to him to hide it in the kitchen. “She’s four years old!” Tadpole executes a coquettish little twirl in the turquoise dress I bought the day before in an Indian shop, with its silver thread and sequin detail. Any dress with a skirt big enough to curtsey in finds favour with my daughter these days. But god forbid I try to dress her in any sort of skirt which doesn’t have “corners”. That will simply not do. At all. And as for trousers, well, we simply don’t go there.

I had staggered down the rue de Belleville earlier that morning, leaving a mojito scented fug in my wake, and collected the Chinese sponge and whipped cream monstrosity I had thankfully had the foresight to order several days earlier. Now, complete with garish Disney princess decorations purchased on my last trip to England, it is suitably hideous. I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that Tadpole will approve.

“But mummy,” says Tadpole frowning, “when I did wake up this morning, I was not more-ler bigger! My legs are the same. My face is the same. My hair isn’t longer. I can’t be four years old yet. Because when I’m four years old, I’m going to be extremely big. Much biggerer than this!”

“Ah,” I reply, looking askance at Mr Frog, who shrugs and peers inside the cake box, his face registering first horror, then amusement. I dig inside my jeans pocket and hand him four glittery Barbie candles in nauseous shades of pink and purple, then turn back to Tadpole, my head spinning. “Honey, did you think you were going to be all grown up when you woke up this morning?”

Tadpole nods.

“Well,” I say reasonably. “Nobody grows that quickly.” A sly smile spreads across my face as I realise I can turn this to my advantage. “Especially not little girls who don’t eat their vegetables. Because no one can grow if they don’t eat green beans, and carrots and broccoli.”

“You’ll never guess what happened to me last night,” I call to Mr Frog, who is busy melting candle ends in the kitchen with his lighter and sticking them in the plastic holders I have already inserted into the icing. “I got asked if I wanted a student rate on my way into a club. Imagine?!” I for one am not looking forward to the birthday when I suddenly begin looking my actual age overnight. I take a step into the kitchen.

“Don’t come any closer,” says Mr Frog sharply, “you’re probably flammable!” Clearly the lashings of perfume I applied and half packet of chewing gum I’ve put away this morning have masked nothing. “Let me guess. Rum? Mojitos?”

At that moment, Mr Frog’s parents appear at the front door, his father brandishing a bottle of champagne. My stomach lurches at the prospect of alcohol, reloaded and I begin to feel light-headed.

“Hair of the dog,” I mutter under my breath as a generous flute of bubbly is put into my reluctant hand. “And don’t you dare translate that,” I caution Mr Frog as he sets down the cake.

“Wow!” says Tadpole, her eyes like dinner plates. “Qu’est-ce qu’il est beau, mon gâteau…”

At least, I think to myself, taking a celebratory swig of champagne and managing to stifle my grimace, my horrorshow cake was worth the considerable effort I had expended that morning.

Maybe I’m not such a bad mummy, after all.

“Look mummy,” says Tadpole. “I did draw a picture!”

I study the picture dutifully. “Is it a witch?” I say. “Like Meg from Meg and Mog?”

Tadpole shakes her head. “No. It is mummy when she is very fâchée. With cross arms like this.” She demonstrates by putting her hands on her hips.

I try not to show how horrified I am to see myself in this new and disturbing light.

Next week: mummy with a terminal hangover. Which is worse than this.

This post is dedicated to Uncle Norman, author of this rather sparsely punctuated comment on my last “post”: “Stick to writing about your kid and being shagged in work time leave real life to the grown ups.”

So, I’ve written about my daughter, which is a start, and just leaves his second request. Anyone fancy distracting me from my deadline today? Conveniently, I’m working on my bed at the moment (although one end is currently propped up with Le Petit Robert.) So?

Tadpole’s latest obsession is with Lauren Child’s Charlie and Lola.

After the prolonged agony of her Dora the Explorer phase, hearing Tadpole trying to mimic characters with proper English accents comes as a profound relief. And there is something about the way Lola is drawn, with unruly hair falling across mischievous eyes, which reminds me of Tadpole.

The books have names like “I am not Sleepy and I will not go to Bed” or “I am absolutely too small to go to School” or “My Wobbly Tooth must not Ever Never Fall Out”, and cleverly deal with a lot of the issues toddlers have, like having their hair cut (Princess No Knots) and eating vegetables (which seem to go down a whole lot better when you say they are from Jupiter).

If I might put in a couple of requests though, Lauren, would you consider writing “I will not Ever Never wear trousers to school” or “I am absolutely too small to do my poo poos in the toilet”?

Our latest game is to speak in the style of Charlie and Lola – I am, of course, always cast in the role of Charlie – her sensible but wily older brother – and usually end up saying “but Lola!” rather a lot.

Yesterday Tadpole came out with the following gem, which still has me sniggering this morning:

“I am absolutely ever never good. And sometimes I am naughty”

“They used glue?” exclaims the doctor in horror. “That’s very unorthodox indeed.” I grimace, and wish I’d omitted to mention the part where Tadpole fell in England, struck her face on an English manhole cover (which apparently is what happened – my friend went back to the disaster scene), and got fixed up by an English nurse.

“Yes, they used glue,” I say, “and I’m just hoping the wound is tightly closed, but I can’t really tell, it kind of scabbed over in the night and the swelling seems worse.”

“Well, I don’t mind taking a look if you want to bring her in,” the doctor replies, “but you’d be better off going to casualty and asking a surgeon to inspect the wound. Mind you, they might turn you away, because it’s no longer fresh…”

I sigh. A potentially futile morning spent hanging around in casualty it is. I don’t really mind, it’s not like I can work while Tadpole is home from school, deadline or no deadline. When I call Mr Frog to ask him for Tadpole’s carte vitale, he offers to come along too and I am grateful. In stressful situations his quiet insistence tends to be more productive than my short temper.

The urgences pédiatriques at Robert Debré children’s hospital are en travaux. The waiting rooms are freshly painted in turquoise, orange and butter yellow, but there are no toys for children nor coffee machines for adults. Mr Frog sneaks off for a cigarette, and returns brandishing coffee. Tadpole is pretending to read her Disney Princess magazine, her brow furrowed in concentration. Apart from the fact that the right side of her lip is about three times its usual size and covered with dried glue and scabs in various autumnal shades, she’s as right as rain.

“Vous m’entendez?” says a woman’s voice, loud and clear over the PA system. “It this thing working?”

“Indeed it is,” I reply, although we are in a separate waiting room, far from the main desk, and my feedback is not actually being sought.

“Rentrez tous chez vous et arrêtez de nous embêter!” says another, lower voice. The assembled parents exchange amused glances and I accidentally snort some coffee down my nose. “What?” the second voice says frantically. “You mean it works even when the button isn’t pressed down?”

The doctor tuts as he examines Tadpole’s face. “We never use glue on lips in this hospital,” he says. “Stitches are better, because lips swell and the wound can weep.”

“Is there anything we can do to improve things now?” I ask cautiously, not really relishing the idea of slicing the wound back open and pinning Tadpole to a table, but terrified that she will be permanently disfigured.

“No, no, it’s more than six hours old, nothing I can do here… It might be fine, it looks clean and dry. We just would have done things differently, that’s all.”

He hands back Tadpole’s carnet de santé and returns to typing something at his keyboard as I lift my daughter down from the examining table, biting my own lip.

“Oh well, I suppose it was worth checking,” I say to Mr Frog as we gather up our bags and jackets and make for the door.

The doctor looks up from his screen. “Yes, he says, “but what a pity she didn’t fall over in France.”

“Aw, look at the two of them holding hands,” my friend exclaims, as Tadpole and my friend’s younger daughter – both dressed in gauzy pink fairy costumes – walk ahead of us with her dog, their feet crunching on the gravel. Her elder daughter catches them up, and the three advance together as one, picking up speed. The sun is shining, although it has no real force yet. I feel more relaxed than I have in weeks.

“This weekend’s done me so much good.” I quicken my step as the girls round a bend in the track and move just out of our line of vision. “It’s so nice to get away, and lovely to be in the countryside…”

“Well you can come whene…”

She is cut off mid-sentence by a chorus of wails. We sprint forward, expecting to have to mediate for the twentieth time that day between three squabbling fairies, or, at worst, to tend to a grazed knee. But when I see Tadpole’s face, I am horrified.

The blood gushes. I don’t know, at first, where it is coming from. She has the mouth of a vampire in a gore movie. Blood pours down her chin, soaking her pink dress, turning it a vivid crimson red. The metallic taste makes her gag and spit. Blood drips onto the gravel, soaks into my t-shirt, and huge droplets spatter my jeans and trainers as I hoist Tadpole into my arms and stagger back to my friend’s house, mercifully close.

Parking Tadpole on the kitchen counter by the sink, I hold a cup to her lips and she rinses her mouth. Her teeth all appear to be intact, although there is a nasty cut inside her cheek. But the worst thing, the thing I can barely look at without gagging, is the split in her upper lip, on the right hand side. A deep slice exposing dark, purple flesh, like raw steak.

We arrive at the small injuries unit in a nearby town twenty minutes later and I lead Tadpole, still dressed in her blood-spattered fairy outfit, into the reception area. “The St Albans fairy chainsaw massacre,” says my friend wryly, leading her two little fairies inside. I manage a weak smile, but my hands are shaking and I feel nauseous and light-headed. While my friend does everything in her power to prevent Tadpole from catching sight of her face in the huge mirror next to the children’s toys, I speak to the lady at reception. It is all I can do to form a sentence, and I find myself unable to spell out my daughter’s name – my brain isn’t functioning well enough – so I scrawl it illegibly on a piece of paper. I explain we were supposed to be flying back to Paris in three hours time. That, plus the fact that Tadpole’s appearance is going to give everyone in the waiting area nightmares for weeks to come, bumps us straight to the top of the list.

“How did this happen to you?” says the nurse to Tadpole, shining a light in her eye. I’ve already given my explanation, and open my mouth to repeat my story before I realise with a sickening jolt that she is cross-examining my daughter on purpose, to eliminate the possibility that it was I who caused her injury.

We emerge, ten minutes later. Tadpole shows everyone the “I’ve been brave” sticker the nurse gave her, which she has slapped onto the front of her blood-spattered dress. Her lip wound has been gummed closed with surgical glue, and I pray it will hold. I glance at my watch: we have just enough time to nip back to my friend’s home, change out of our ruined clothes and grab our bags.

On the plane, Tadpole spies drops of blood on her shoe.

“I’m sorry mummy,” she says, stroking my forearm. “I did spit on our clothes and I did make a terrible mess. I didn’t mean to. It’s all my fault.”

“Oh gosh, it’s not your fault my love,” I say, mortified, “It was an accident. And I don’t care about any clothes! Mummy is only sad because you have a bobo she couldn’t fix. I try to keep you safe, and sometimes I don’t manage to. You were my brave little girl today…”

When the seatbelt signs go off, Tadpole raises the armrest and lets her head fall into my lap. A few minutes later she is asleep. I stroke her hair, my hands still shaking, and try not to worry about the fact that drowsiness is one of the concussion symptoms mentioned on the leaflet the nurse pressed into my hand as we left.

I glance at my watch. 5.30pm. Time to leave the “office” and take myself off to Mr Frog’s house. Tadpole has returned, finally, and it’s time to down tools, scoop up my girl and take her home.

It’s been a tough week. The weather has been unseasonably warm for April but I’ve mostly been indoors, working long days on the manuscript. I was feeling a low, unsure of myself, and it took me a while to realise that the real reason for my despondency was that I missed Tadpole and all the little routines centred around her which give essential structure and purpose to my days. Mornings are no fun when I can’t slip into bed beside her and scratch her back (“not like that, mummy! With les ongles“) or battle over which clothes she should wear (“not a pantalon! Hanna says she is only my friend if I do wear a jupe!”) Without bathtime, bedtime and stories the evenings are formless and dull. I flounder. I skip meals, forget to brush my hair for days on end. Without a little person to care for, I stop caring altogether, least of all for myself.

The cafés on rue de Belleville are overflowing onto the pavements. Girls in spaghetti strap tops, wearing sunglasses, with their shoulders sunburnt. I blink stupidly in the sun. My office looks across a shady courtyard filled with blossoming trees. I am unprepared for the heat, overdressed, I’ve left my sunglasses at home.

“It’s me!” I say brightly into the intercom, my heart doing somersaults in my chest. Mr Frog buzzes me inside, and I race along the corridor to the lift. There is giggling behind the door – Tadpole is no doubt peering at me through the spyhole, in Mr Frog’s arms – then the handle turns, and the door swings open.

At the sight of me, Tadpole’s face falls. “Je veux rester ici” she cries, darting across the room and diving under daddy’s desk, her face flushed and contorted with anger. “I don’t want to go with mummy! I want to stay here, with daddy!”

Her frosty welcome has knocked the stuffing out of me, and tears prick my lowered eyelids, but I sit down quietly on the sofa and accept Mr Frog’s offer of tea. There is a part of me that is so hungry for affection that I want to pick her up and hug her senseless, against her will. But there is nothing for it but to wait until she comes around. She’s had a poor night’s sleep, Mr Frog explains, and a tiring train journey. She’s not being intentionally cruel. However much it can seem that way.

Twenty minutes later, I set down my empty tea cup and gather up her clothes. “They’re all clean,” says Mr Frog. “My mum washed them, to save you the trouble.” I transfer the neatly folded pile from his holdall into a plastic bag, and stoop to fasten the buckles on Tadpole’s shoes. Her tantrum now forgotten, Tadpole is suddenly eager to hit the road.

“Come on mummy,” she says, tugging at my t-shirt. “It’s time to go!”

Outside Mr Frog’s building I pause to assemble the buggy. Tadpole isn’t far off her fourth birthday, and I stopped using it months ago, but Mr Frog insisted on taking it on his trip so since I have it, I figure I might as well stow the bags inside and push them home. Tadpole sits patiently on doorstep, watching me as I flip down the catch with my toe.

I hear a flapping of wings high in the trees above and a viscous green liquid rains down, splattering the front of my dress, the pushchair and both the inside and the outside of the plastic bag containing Tadpole’s (no longer clean) clothes.

I freeze, my expression hovering somewhere between disgust and disbelief. Tadpole claps her hands to her mouth, her eyes wide.

“Ca porte bonheur, il paraît, says an elderly woman as she limps past, leaning heavily on her husband’s arm.

“Easy for you to say,” I mutter darkly, fumbling in my bag for tissues. “You’re not the one covered in pigeon juice.”

I sit down on the step by Tadpole’s side, dabbing gingerly at my dress.

I suppose I should look on the bright side. My daughter is back, and my bloggers block has finally lifted.

Laden with bags, Tadpole and I leap onto a number 26 bus. I still have my carte intégrale – despite it being surplus to requirements most of the time because I now walk to work, and school, and only take public transport about twice a week – because there is no weaning me off that addictive drrriiinging sound said card makes as I swipe it over the scanner. But we still clamber onto the bus using the middle doors, along with the fare dodgers and women with pushchairs. We’re not going far, and this way it will be so much easier to get off again.

Right on cue, the driver plays a pre-recorded message asking people to refrain from entering the bus by the middle doors. For good measure he also plays a message which exhorts everyone to move along to the centre of the bus in order to make more room. We have broken one rule, all the better to comply with another, I think to myself. Perfectly reasonable behaviour.

“I going to show daddy all my new clothes!” says Tadpole excitedly. Shamed into action by Mr Frog’s remark the previous day about how most of Tadpole’s long-sleeved t-shirts barely graze her elbows, we’ve been on a spree at Du Pareil au Même. The bag I’m clutching is filled with garishly patterned cotton skirts and brightly coloured t-shirts, as well as a term’s supply of hair clips. Every day Tadpole leaves for school with a clip holding her curls out of her face, and every evening she emerges sans barrette. Somewhere in that school there must be a huge vat full of hair accessories, but whenever I’ve broached the subject with her teacher, she shrugs her shoulders and purses her lips.

“Hold the bar tightly with both hands!” I say sharply, just as the bus slams on the brakes at a zebra crossing and nearly sends Tadpole flying. But her left hand appears to be otherwise occupied, rummaging in the back of her trousers; her brow is furrowed with concentration.

“But mummy!,” she says indignantly, “I need to help her to escape!”

“Help who to escape?” I lean forwards to try and establish just who, or what could possibly be imprisoned inside Tadpole’s trousers.

“Ma culotte! She’s prisoner! My bottom is eating her!” Tadpole explains, switching into French, all the better to entertain our fellow passengers.

I should probably pitch in and help liberate the pants, or at the very least correct Tadpole’s use of pronouns, but instead, I just giggle, bend to plant a delighted kiss on her cheek and say: “Oh? And is she tasty?”

****

Slightly more serious posting over here, if you fancy joining the debate.

Tadpole sniffs heartily as we trot along the pavement in the direction of home. I feel around in my coat pocket for a tissue, but draw a blank. Permanently unprepared for any eventuality whatsoever, that’s me. No wipes for if she dives head first into a crotte, no umbrella should it rain, no tissues for sniffles or tears, no spare clothes for accidents, and my mobile phone battery is resolutely flat. My fingers are permanently crossed instead, but somehow – touch wood – we seem to get by.

“Mummy” says Tadpole in her ‘I’m about to say something extremely profound which changes the way you see the world around you’ voice. “When my nose gets sniffy. That’s because the winter, it does get stuck in my nostrils.”

Well that’s one way of looking at it. And not a worldview I feel equipped to challenge, as my powers don’t extend to explaining airborne viruses and bacterial infections to a three-year-old. That little pearl of wisdom doesn’t top my favourite quote of the weekend, however. Which I love, even though I don’t really understand it. “I had a dream,” said Tadpole that morning. “Not a dream in my eyes, but one inside my head. We can have two different sorts of dreams, can’t we mummy? Head dreams and eye dreams.”

I glance at my watch. Six o’clock. Plenty of time to get ready before the babysitter arrives at eight, as long as Tadpole shows some mercy and remains moderately compliant throughout. Although the check-list of “Things to Do Before the Babysitter Arrives” is long. Going out on a non-Tadpole free night can be something of a military campaign.

In no particular order, I must:

• Feed Tadpole (cook nutritious meal and somehow ensure fruit and vegetables are eaten using carefully dosed combination of distraction/persuasion/coercion/threats)
• Bath Tadpole
• Tidy flat (abridged version involving throwing piles of things into wardrobe and closing doors)
• Wash up and empty decidedly whiffy kitchen bin
• Log out of my profile on computer and put it into guest mode to avert possibility of snooping and cookies inadvertently taking sitter directly into bank statements/blog backend/gmail
• Hide manuscript
• Put away Tadpole’s toys
• Hide my toys
• Agonise over what to wear to vagina-themed birthday party (don’t ask)
• Supervise Tadpole’s making of home-made (non vagina-themed) birthday card
• Write down contact numbers and dig out spare house keys
• Get changed
• Apply make up
• Text door code to sitter who always forgets it

7.45 finds me at the end of my tether. Every single familiar gesture of our evening routine has been a battleground. Tadpole ate precisely four forkfuls of dinner. She splashed water all over the bathroom floor while I hastily applied make-up. She is now running around naked, refusing to have her teeth cleaned or don her pyjamas. I am dressed, and in between yelling threats and promises I am fiddling with my hair, spraying on perfume. My shoulders are sagging. I wonder how I will muster up enough energy to take the métro and actually spend four hours making small talk at a party before the clock strikes one and I leave before my carriage turns into a pumpkin/my babysitter’s bedtime.

At 8.00, when the doorbell trills, we are ready. Tadpole is sitting on her bed with her library book, the only French book in the house, her mouth minty fresh, patiently waiting for the babysitter to come and read her a story. I am ready, my bag packed with drink, present and card, money for taxi/babysitter. I did it! Against all odds. Cinders shall go to the ball.

I glance at myself in the full-length mirror and do a horrified double take.

Those tights, those magic tights I pounced on in Monoprix which make slightly wobbly tummies disappear, with their “control top” panel? Bad idea. My tummy is flat as can be, there’s no arguing with that. My bottom is also reined in to great effect. But where the controlling part bottoms out and my thighs begin? Oh dear god. I now have saddlebags. Second hips located halfway down my thighs as though there has been some sort of subsidence. It’s too late to re-think my entire outfit. And I don’t have any other black tights to hand.

There is nothing for it but to haul my two pairs of childbearing hips out on the town.

I am woken by the sound of insistent tapping at my bedroom door. It is 9.10 am on Sunday morning. My clothes are in a sorry heap at the foot of my bed, my head is pounding and the light which floods into my bedroom from the hallway when I open the door sends me reeling back to bed again, wincing in pain.

“I’m really sorry, honey, but I’m feeling poorly and I’m not going to be able to take you to the swimming pool this morning,” I say. Just speaking makes me feel pitifully nauseous; I’m amazed to have managed such a long sentence without mishap.

To her credit, Tadpole doesn’t complain or say “but mummy, you promised!” Instead, she retreats to her bedroom and returns brandishing her (pink) plastic doctor’s kit.

“I going to make you feel better,” she says firmly and takes out the tools of her trade, one by one.

• A bizarrely phallic looking thermometer, which makes me gag when she shoves it in my protesting mouth.
• A pink and yellow stethoscope, which she seems to think has healing properties if positioned just so (on my right nipple) with maximum pressure applied.
• A pair of pink tweezers, used for pinching the patient’s nostrils.
• A pair of purple plastic scissors, with which she pretends to cut my fingernails. (If real, Tadpole’s rather haphazard technique would leave me with nothing above the knuckles.)
• A pink syringe, which she presses painfully into my wrist.

“All better now?” enquires nurse Tadpole, who has finally run out of toys. I make a mental note to look for the pink plastic scalpel, which appears to have gone missing. Also, when I’m feeling a little more coherent, I should try explaining that the implements in her doctor’s bag are for diagnosing what is wrong, rather than healing the patient. But today I do not feel equal to such a task.

“I feel a little bit better,” I say wanly, feeling both very sorry for myself and extremely foolish, in equal measures. I need no doctor to tell me exactly what is wrong, nor where it came from.

“Oh. Well if you’re not better, I going to do it all again.” She reaches for the thermometer.

It is torture, pure and simple, but I can’t help thinking I deserve it, so I offer no resistance.

I took a vow on Sunday. Never again will I drink a drop if I’m supposed to be spending the next day with Tadpole. No amount of fun can ever be worth such pain and self-loathing.

I glance anxiously at my watch. It is 8.27. School drop-off time is between 8.20 and 8.30, and the small but perfectly formed tantrum Tadpole threw just as we were poised to leave the flat – when I so foolishly dared to insist she wear a scarf to ward off the biting cold – has cost us dearly. If we don’t get a move on, I will be one of the latecomers, those wretched folk who scuttle past the directrice, head down, shoulders hunched, to escape the full force of her withering stare. I quicken my pace, and Tadpole breaks from a trot into a canter in order to keep up with me.

But when we reach the slightly surreal Chinese shop which sells wedding dresses and ball gowns which wouldn’t look out of place at a Jordan and Peter André wedding, Tadpole grinds to a stubborn halt.

“Look mummy! Princess dresses!” She tears her hand free from my grip and gestures excitedly at the window display. A particularly unattractive frothy pistachio number catches my eye and causes me to shudder, involuntarily.

“I like the white ones better,” I say, pointing towards something marginally more tasteful. “Those dresses are for weddings. Just like in the Little Mermaid, you remember, when Ariel marries her prince?”

Tadpole nods. “Yes, I know mummy.” This is her new favourite phrase, designed to shame me into silence if I over-explain things in a patronising tone, and terriblement efficace.

I grab her hand and we hurry on. I dare not look at my watch. I’m simply banking on the fact that it may be one minute fast.

“When I’m a big lady,” Tadpole says suddenly, “just after my tooth gets wobbly, I’m going to marry a prince as well.” She has a slight obsession with wobbling teeth at the moment, courtesy of a Charlie and Lola episode entitled “My wobbly tooth must not ever never fall out”. I have assured her that there will be no wobbling before she is six years old, but she seems to have decided that grown up teeth equals adulthood.

“Hmm. Maybe a little while after your teeth start wobbling, but yes, I’m sure you’ll get married in a pretty dress one day,” I say brightly, although I feel like I’m sucking on lemons.

“Yes, I’m going to marry a prince. Daddy is my prince,” she says with absolute certitude.

Will someone who, unlike me, actually reads all those parenting manuals and knows about the phases little girls go through be kind enough to reassure me that this is a Perfectly Normal Phase?

Please?

Tadpole’s most prized gift this Christmas was not one of the carefully selected educational toys I ordered from the wonderful Fnac Eveil et Jeux catalogue. Nor was it the Princess Barbie or the stable of my little Ponies she received from her French grandparents, or indeed anything from the sack of presents which awaited her in the UK (although the sack itself, it has to be said, was a great success).

No, Tadpole’s favourite new toy is a Little Mermaid Barbie, with glittering removable turquoise tail, a purple plastic strapless bikini top (which falls off, baring her breasts, approximately ten times a day) and a mass of unlikely, blood-red hair. She found “Ariel” on a recent visit to the bio-parents’ house, amongst a tangle of Barbies and Sindy dolls of all shapes and sizes which used to belong to my bio-cousins and, given that she had already seen the Disney cartoon of the same name, there was absolutely no way we could leave the premises mermaid-less.

The Little Mermaid used to be my favourite fairytale, once upon a time, never failing to make me shed a tear. I owned a dark red hardback collection of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales – sadly I have no idea where that book is now – and when the Disney version saw the light of day many years later, I refused to watch it with my little sister on the grounds that I objected to the making of a sanitised version with that obligatory happy ending.

My Little Mermaid had to make huge, painful sacrifices to walk on the land. Every step she took felt like walking on the sharpest knives. Her voice didn’t transmit itself to the wicked witch by means of a pretty ball of light flying from her throat; her tongue was brutally severed. And of course at the end of the story, when her prince marries another woman, she is given the opportunity to return to her life as a mermaid if she stabs him through the heart with a knife provided by the witch, a deed which she refuses to do, casting herself into the waves instead and becoming a spirit of the air, condemned to live in some sort of strange limbo for three hundred years, after which she will go to heaven.

That I remember all of this is a testament to how much I loved the original story, because in general I have a terrible memory for books. I’ve read too many, too impatiently quickly, and occasionally start a new one only to realise part way through that I have read it before.

Tadpole, however, is in love with the pain-free Disney version, in which the mermaid gets her prince and everyone lives happily ever after, and if I let her, she would watch it from start to finish every single day. At night, long after the lights are out, I hear her singing the Mermaid’s song, pausing to adopt the voice of the wicked octopus witch to boom “keep singing!”, then switching back to the sweet song of the mermaid once more. In the morning, when I wake her, she waves her legs together as if they were joined and says “mummy! Look at my tail!”

She’s got it bad.

Which is why I really shouldn’t have been surprised when she began using the Little Mermaid to get her own way.

“I can’t eat this dinner,” she said, as I placed a plate of fish fingers and vegetables on the table before her.

“Why not?” I asked in puzzlement. “Those are your favourites!”

“Because I’m a mermaid,” she said gravely. “And mermaids don’t eat other fishes.”

It took a few minutes of negotiation before I was able to overcome this hurdle. Suffice to say that mermaids apparently like nutella very much indeed and are willing to compromise their principles to obtain it.

As we walked home from school the next day, I quizzed Tadpole, as usual, about her day. I don’t usually obtain a very clear picture of what went on, but a few tidbits are enough to satisfy me. Those bruises on her knees, for example, were caused by Jules who pushes her over in the playground and apparently climbs on top of her, although she assures me it is a game and she doesn’t get hurt. The splotches of red on her t-shirt the other day came from the lasagne she had for lunch.

But on this day Tadpole was unusually silent.

“What on earth is the matter?” I said. “I’m asking you a question, it’s rude not to answer!”

Tadpole shook her head and gestured silently at her throat.

“You’ve got a sore throat? Shall we go see the doctor?”

Tadpole shook her head.

“Well what then? Come on, tell me what’s matter.” I came to an abrupt halt on the pavement and dropped to her level, refusing to go a single step further until she told me what was going on. With a sigh, she pulled back my long hair to expose my right ear and began to whisper.

“The wicked witch stole my voice!”

I’m starting to wonder if those éveil théâtral classes I was going to sign her up for next September are really such a good idea, after all.

As I stumble out of the lift which takes me to the first floor of Mr Frog’s apartment building, I rub sleep from my eyes and curse Mr Frog’s friend under my breath. “I’m helping someone move house tomorrow,” had been his parting shot as Tadpole placed her hand in his and they turned to leave, the previous evening. “You’ll have to come by at 10 am to pick her up.” I groaned at the prospect. Despite my good intentions, it was my first night back in Paris with my friends and there was talk of going on to a party after dinner.

Cut to Sunday morning: predictably, I am sluggish and irritable, a band of pain tightening across my forehead.

I press Mr Frog’s intercom button, pretending not to notice the twitching of the concierge’s curtain opposite. I look at my watch. 10.09. Not bad going, all things considered. Particularly in view of the fact that I had set my alarm for 9.55.

There is no reply.

I sigh. There are two possibilities here: either Mr Frog and Tadpole have popped out to the local baker’s for pain au chocolat, and I narrowly missed them as I dragged myself from my house to his, or, the more likely explanation, they are both still asleep. The blinds on Mr Frog’s bedroom window are scarily efficient, letting not even the merest chink of light through, and Tadpole consequently sleeps later here than anywhere else.

The next ten minutes are spent alternating between buzzing the intercom and calling Mr Frog’s mobile, which rings and rings before playing his voicemail message. I wonder how long I have to stand there before the concierge will actually stop her covert surveillance and come out to ask me if she can be of assistance. Her unseen presence is the only thing which prevents me from sliding down the wall and putting my head in my hands and rocking back and forth like crazy people always seem to in films.

Suddenly the door buzzer sounds, and I am in. I take the second lift, combing my fingers through the dreadlocks which seem to form at the back of my head when I sleep, and perfect my pained “you got me out of bed for nothing” expression in the mirror.

“Hi,” says a sheepish, pyjama clad Mr Frog. “I was asleep. I was dreaming that there was someone at the door…”

“I see that,” I reply drily. “She still asleep?”

We tiptoe into Mr Frog’s bedroom, where Tadpole is gently snoring, as she always does when she has a cold. Mr Frog strokes her cheek, and I take a seat on the floor by her bedside. It occurs to me that the last time we woke her together was at least eighteen months ago. I hope she won’t be too confused when she wakes.

By the time we have given her time to “come ’round” and Mr Frog has showered and breakfasted, it is 11 a.m. I spend much of the hour lying prostrate on the sofa, examining with some interest the undercarriage of a Christmas Princess Barbie, who has flesh-coloured, high-waisted pants covering her modesty. Textured underwear which forms part of her plastic body, and which may never be removed. I furrow my brow, trying to remember whether Barbies had chastity pants in my day. Meanwhile Tadpole dresses herself, putting her t-shirt on back to front, omitting pants altogether and getting her jeans back to front.

There are tears when we leave, which not even the promise of a trip to the baker’s for breakfast can banish. “I want to help daddy’s friend move house,” protests Tadpole. “I can carry the very small things…”

I pick up my own small thing and kiss her tears away. Something tells me it is going to be a long day.

I am sitting in bed, watching episodes of Desperate Housewives back to back and feeling sorry for myself. Despite the Christmas tree sparkling winsomely in the corner of the room, I have never felt less festive, or more hungover. That’s what happens when you go to a party for grown up singles on Christmas day, instead of more traditional activities such as watching the Top of the Pops Christmas special in the front room of your parents house, or sulking when your mother refuses to put any alcohol in her Christmas pudding. Grown up + singles = unfeasible amounts of drink. My liver is determined to find me a boyfriend. It’s an act of self-preservation.

The phone vibrates on the bedside table, almost making me jump out of my skin.

“Hi there,” I say to Mr Frog. “I was just thinking about phoning you. I need to think about plane tickets for the February holidays…”

“Already?” he replies. He never did understand my impulse to organise things in advance. “Well, er, that’s not why I’m phoning. My Doctor friend just stopped by to see Tadpole and I have some news.”

“About that little scab on her head?” I ask, puzzled at his rather ominous tone of voice. There has been a crusty patch above Tadpole’s right ear since she caught chickenpox back in November. It was taking a while to clear up, so I’d suggested to Mr Frog that he might want to show it to his friend if he stopped by. “Right, well, what did he say?”

“Well… it wasn’t healing right, and he actually cut off the hair around it and opened up the wound. So now she’ll need to wear a compress and a bandage around her head for two weeks…”

“A bandage? For two weeks? For a scab the size of a one euro coin? Why on earth? Was it infected or something?”

“Well, I don’t think so, but he did prescribe a week of antibiotics. And a special gel…

“Jesus,” I say, choosing my words with festive care. “Why didn’t I take her to the doctor’s earlier? I feel awful now. But it looked dry and fine and I was just expecting it to fall off any day now…”

“Hey, it’s not your fault…”

I replace the receiver.

So, the pictures of Tadpole’s Christmas this year will feature her head mummified in bandages, perhaps with a tiara perched on top to cheer her up.

And the in-laws have just spent the holiday with the gauzy white evidence of my neglect staring them squarely in the face.

Roll on 2007, things can only get better.

We arrive at school, breathless as usual. French maternelles have a ten minute drop-off window in the mornings, ours being between 8.20 and 8.30. Latecomers must brave the Paddington stare of the stern looking directrice and the tut-tutting of her faithful assistant, so I do everything in my power not to incur their wrath. Not always easy when your toddler is capable of ripping off her own clothes at 8.15 if she suddenly decides that they are neither pink nor flowery enough.

We hang Tadpole’s coat on the hook bearing her picture (it trails on the floor, surely she isn’t that tall?) and I glance at the noticeboard. My turn to take in yoghurts for the morning snack tomorrow. And in January, there is a class trip to the cinema for which parent volunteers are required. Mr Frog mentioned at the weekend the possibility of participating. I smile to myself. Clearly he didn’t notice that the trip is scheduled from 8.30 to 12.30. Suffice to say he is not exactly a morning person.

I weigh up the pros and cons of helping out myself. Obviously I choose my own working hours, so that isn’t a problem. And it would be nice to have an opportunity to cosy up to the teachers a little and show willing. On the minus side, I can think of little more nerve-wracking than accompanying 25 under 4’s on the métro. I take the felt tip pen which is stuck to the wall with a ball of blu-tack (a misnomer, French blu-tack is yellow) and add my name to the list. I stop short of adding Mr Frog’s, but I won’t say I didn’t consider it.

As we enter the classroom, I see one of the parents handing the teacher an envelope. I freeze. Suddenly the whole thorny subject of étrennes – which I had thought would be less complicated this year as I no longer employ a childminder – rears its ugly head. Am I supposed to give the teacher a card? A present, even? I have no idea if special treatment is frowned upon in the egalitarian paradise of French state schools, or whether, like in other spheres of the French civil service, bribery and corruption are the done thing. I have four days to find out. Advice welcome.

Tadpole takes her name card from the door and places it on the board between those of her two current best friends, Hannah and Luce to signal that she is present. Her friendships change every single day. The laws of the playground apparently change little, regardless of the passage of time or the country you live in.

“Mélusine, elle m’a dit qu’elle n’est plus ma copine!” she told me as we left school on Friday afternoon. She didn’t sound particularly traumatised by the fact, I have to say.

“She’s not your friend any more? Why?”

“Because Luce is my friend now.”

You can’t beat three year old logic.

“And what about boys? Do you have any friends who are boys,” I enquired mischievously. It hasn’t escaped my attention that a very attractive young blond boy with a twinkle in his eye always prances up to Tadpole when we arrive in the morning and takes her by the hand to the reading corner. His name is Jules. It is one of the names I had picked out for Tadpole, had she been a boy.

“No, I don’t like boys,” said Tadpole emphatically.

This morning, as usual, Jules approaches with a smile. Once Tadpole has given me my quota of four kisses and two cuddles I turn to the teacher for a quick chat.

When I turn to wave goodbye, I see two blond heads bent over a book.

I haul Tadpole out of the bath, wrapped in not one, but two towels (one large bath towel to swaddle her adequately, and one baby sized one which she still is rather attached to because it has a hood with ladybirds on). Sitting on the toilet seat, I cradle her in my arms, savouring the moment.

“Mummy, can I be the petit chaperon rouge?” says Tadpole.

“If you’re little red riding hood, who am I?” I ask, knowing full well what the answer will be.

“You be the wolf, and I ask you the questions.”

I thought as much. I growl, although I think the sound I make is more bear than wolf. Not that I’ve ever met either, of course. The only wildlife I have seen in Belleville are pigeons, cockroaches and dogs.

“What big ears you’ve got,” says Tadpole, stepping into character.

“All the better for hearing you with!” My gruff voice (usually reserved for Gruffalo’s and Wild Things) makes Tadpole giggle.

“What a big nose you’ve got!”

I rub my nose against hers. “All the better for sniffing you with!”

“What big eyes you’ve got!”

“All the better for seeing you with,” I say, rolling my eyes.

I gnash my teeth, certain I know what is coming next. Tadpole looks up at me, a mischievous smile on her face.

“What big spots you’ve got!”

I stop, mid-gnash, the wind abruptly knocked out of my sails, and put a finger up to the small pimple on my chin, to see if it has grown since I last consulted the mirror. Tadpole’s smile falters for a moment as she waits to see how I will react.

“I’m not a leopard,” I reply, eventually, with forced joviality. “I’m a wolf. Wolves don’t have spots!”

This evening I have been mostly turning my flat upside down looking for the referral my doctor gave me for a dermatologist when I came off the pill. Over-sensitive, moi?

The alarm goes off at 7.15 am. I groan, and press snooze. Today is admittedly less painful than yesterday, when I got a OuiFM wake-up call at 6.55 am and then had to speak to some chirpy, wacky and thoroughly annoying radio talk show presenter for five minutes while lying semi-comatose in bed in my undies.

I am not a morning person, you see. All those proper writers who say they do their best work at dawn, well, what are they on? Personally I function best in the afternoons, or occasionally in the evenings, once Tadpole is in bed, a glass of wine within easy reach of the computer.

At 7.35 am, I finally stop hitting snooze and muster up the enthusiasm to go and wake Tadpole. Creeping into her bedroom I watch her for a moment. She is deeply asleep, on her tummy with her head wedged up against the wall, as usual. She has been busy in the night: the dolls she took to bed with her yesterday evening are now stark naked, their clothes scattered on the floor. I pick a pair of knitted pants out of the (empty) potty by the side of her bed.

Whispering her name, I muss her curls and feel the warmth of her neck against my fingertips. She grimaces in her sleep, eyes firmly closed, then stirs, before shifting her position slightly and going back to sleep. So, pulling the covers back, I slip into bed beside her (a manoeuvre which involves bending my legs as the bed is a special lilliputian version) and cuddle up. This is my favourite part of the day: the snuggling, the warmth, the sleepy smell of her body and pyjamas, the fact that she is too comatose to actually protest and wriggle out of my arms. It’s perfect, except for one little detail.

I’m lying slap bang in the middle of an enormous wet patch.

“Darling,” I say when she finally opens her eyes, determined not to sound cross, or accusing. “You’ve had a wee wee in the bed. Were you sleeping? You know I put the potty next to your bed for when you feel like you need to go…”

“I had a dream about a monster,” Tadpole replies. I’m not sure if this is an explanation, or just her way of avoiding the subject at hand.

“I’ll have to wash the sheets now, and get those trousers off you sweetie, can you sit up for a minute?”

“But mummy?”

“Yes?”

“It doesn’t matter because you put the special cover on the mattress yesterday.”

I did indeed. I bought a quilt (for Mr Frog’s house) and a waterproof sheet (for mine) so that we could prepare for nocturnal potty training, round two. Tadpole had watched me fit the waterproof undersheet, and seemed to be paying attention when I patiently explained what it was for. Clearly I was mistaken.

“But darling, that’s for if you have an accident, but you still need to do your wee wee’s on the potty when you can, now that you have no nappy on.”

I see realisation dawn in her face, as clearly as if a cartoon lightbulb had suddenly appeared above her head.

“Oh. I thought it was alright to do a wee wee because the bed is wearing a nappy,” she explains.

I giggle. She giggles. I hug her to me.

I decide to lie in the wet patch for a little bit longer.

I hear the unmistakable sounds of Mr Frog and Tadpole approaching in the stairwell and fling open the front door eagerly. Despite her pitifully spotty and feverish state, Tadpole dives enthusiastically into my arms, giggling with pleasure at being reunited, finally, after a long week apart. I scoop her up and carry her through to my bedroom, where we sit on my (scarlet) bed and I hug her needily, in silence, nose buried in blonde corkscrew curls, while Mr Frog starts unpacking his holdall.

“Mummy, I’ve got la varicelle, look!” whispers Tadpole. At this stage, fully clothed, the full extent of her affliction is not apparent, but the area around her mouth and nostrils is red and inflamed with a swarm of tiny blemishes, and a few larger, crispier specimens are clearly visible in her scalp. I scratch my own head, in sympathy. “Do what I say, not what I do” is my motto.

“Do you know what that’s called in English?” I reply, catching Mr Frog’s eye and smiling.

“Chicken POTS!” shouts Tadpole, triumphantly.

The first I heard of the whole fiasco was a text message received while swaying drunkenly in a London pub, in which Mr Frog informed me that Tadpole had been afflicted with “the chicken pots”. Too preoccupied to correct him, I had allowed him to labour under this misconception for the whole weekend, and any attempt to convince Tadpole that this is not the correct name for her illness is now unlikely to be met with success. Once my daughter gets an idea in her head, she will not be swayed.

“I stopped in Boots and got calamine lotion,” I say to Mr Frog, pointing at the bottle of strawberry milkshake like liquid which sits by the computer, proud of my foresight. I notice then that he is brandishing a prescription as long as my arm. Clearly a French doctor has already been consulted.

The resulting prescription:

• Digluconate de chlorhexidine – a mysterious potion to be used instead of soap to avoid infection;
• Anti-histamine medicine to counteract itching;
• An antiseptic spray to be used on any sores which have been scratched;
• Doliprane syrup – equivalent of Calpol.

“No suppositories?” I remark, an eyebrow raised in mock surprise.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

This morning, after a night of fitful co-sleeping, Tadpole and I make it to the neighbouring pharmacie with our shopping list. My gaze is riveted on the till. Things have been getting tight since I signed off my benefits. For Tadpole, it’s business as usual, but I am mostly existing on Franprix’s own brand packet soup and wholemeal sliced bread.

Which makes it all the more galling when the rest of the day is spent arguing with an ungrateful Tadople who:

• refuses to have a bath
• refuses to let me dab on any calamine lotion or use the spray (too cold, apparently)
• refuses to wee for several hours (it hurts, and feels hot)
• refuses to take her anti-histamine (the first dose didn’t taste very nice)

Such is her state of distress whenever I mention any of the above, so pained is her “no THANK YOU mummy!” (I note her rare, desperate use of politeness in this context), so immune is she to bribery (chocolate biscuits, cbeebies on the computer, ice cream) that I find myself utterly powerless to do anything to help Her Royal Itchiness.

My unappetising tomato and vermicelli soup simmering resentfully on the hob, I wonder whether to try and administer potions and lotions in Tadpole’s sleep.

“But I want my Auntie R to read me a story,” Tadpole cries.

I feel another of her little tantrums coming on. We seem to be going through a particularly wilful phase, and a typical exchange tends to involve me patiently explaining why something she wants can’t actually happen right now, and Tadpole replying “but I WANT TO!” approximately fifty times. It usually ends in tears and “time out”, whereby I shut her in the bedroom and keep repeating that she can come out when she’s ready to calm down and be reasonable. I thought the cycle might be broken while we were staying with my folks, but no such luck. Some holiday this is turning out to be.

The silver lining is that I’ve been able to get quite a bit of reading done while sitting outside her bedroom door, listening with one ear to make sure she is not wreaking revenge by shredding a box of tissues or writing on the wallpaper with marker pens.

Tadpole’s latest protest, however, is going to require very careful handling indeed. Auntie R, Tadpole’s favourite person in the world, was admitted to hospital while Tadpole and I were out visiting a friend of mine.

“Darling,” I begin, wanting her to understand, without being unduly traumatised. “Your Auntie R is poorly. She would love to read you a story, but she had to go to the hospital to get better.” My youngest sister, doubled up with stomach pains, has suspected gallstones and is laid up, connected to various tubes, awaiting the results of various tests and a possible operation. Luckily, she was off work at the time, staying with my parents so that she could spend time with her favourite niece during our stay in England. At least this means that she is in a hospital close to home, and my parents and I are on hand.

“But,” Tadpole replies, in the whining voice I dread, “if she’s poorly, why don’t we give her some magic pink medicine*? Then she’ll be better. And then she can read my story!”

“Well. When you are a little bit poorly, medicine helps,” I explain, anxious not to play down the miraculous (largely psychological) healing properties of magic pink medicine, as that would really be shooting myself in the foot, “but if you are very poorly, you need a doctor, and sometimes if you are very, very poorly, the doctor needs to look after you in a hospital. So Auntie R is going to sleep there tonight, and we’ll visit her tomorrow.”

“Auntie R can read me a story tomorrow in the hospital?”

“Yes, I think so. If she’s feeling up to it.”

I read the story. It is mercifully short. As I turn out the light and adjust the door so that it lets in just enough light to keep whatever nocturnal demons Tadpole now seems to fear at bay. As I inch sideways through the gap, Tadpole raises herself upright in bed, clutching dolly to her chest.

“Mummy?”

“Mmmm?”

“I feel very, very poorly. I want to go to the hospital.”

* * * * * * * * *

The next day sees us sitting around Auntie R’s bed, an assortment of Mr Men books strewn across the covers, attempting to make cheerful conversation. I attempt to block out the rasping sounds of an elderly lady being violently sick behind a flowery curtain in the corner of the ward, and manage to catch Tadpole just as she attempts to yank Auntie R’s drip tube out of a machine administering fluids. Upon closer inspection, I see that the contraption bears a sticker with the reassuring words “do not use after Aug 06″.

When a nurse comes to take a blood sample, Tadpole is fascinated.

“Look mummy! It’s a piqure just like in my doctor’s bag!” she says, not phased by the sight of dark brown blood filling up a test tube, while my sister’s complexion fades even paler, competing with the starched white of the hospital sheets.

One hour and twenty chocolate buttons later, we leave the hospital with my mother, pathetically relieved to have averted several possible Tadpole meltdowns during our visiting slot.

After bath time, I hug my daughter to me more tightly than usual. Seeing my mother’s face as she sat helpless by her youngest daughter had got me thinking about how I would feel if it was Tadpole in a hospital bed, and I was powerless to make things better.

“Mummy?” says Tadpole, running little fingers through my hair. Little fingers which then encounter a knot and tug rather painfully, causing my eyes to water.

“Mmmm?”

“Can we go to the hospital now and give Auntie R some magic pink medicine?”

*calpol, or doliprane – somehow, regardless of the country, paracetamol syrup always seems to be pink and taste the same.

I am beginning to rue the day that I allowed Tadpole to sit on my white chair, adjusted to its highest setting, and taught her how to use a mouse. Within minutes, with the help of the CBeebies website and, in particular, the Teletubbies section, Tadpole had grasped not only how to move the location of the arrow around on the screen, but also how to click. Mastery of click and drag was not far behind.

Suddenly a whole new virtual world was open to her, where she was able to colour in pictures without getting felt tip pen on her fingers and sleeves, play simple interactive games and navigate freely around children’s websites, only coming unstuck if she accidentally executed a right click and was suddenly faced with an incomprehensible grey menu (she can’t read yet) or if she had the misfortune to select a game which required use of the arrow keys (a leap too far, at the moment).

On that first day, I sat patiently by her side, showing her what to do, where to click, and generally giving her encouragement. We built an adventure playground with Bob the Builder, watched a Dora The Explorer adventure and sang with the Tweenies. On the second day, I opened a book and had a sneaky read while she clicked away by my side, looking up once in a while to check that she hadn’t strayed from her CBeebies playground, to, say, buy a car on ebay, or delete a string of comments from my blog. On the third day I let her loose on the internet whilst I made her dinner next door, popping back in whenever her yelp of frustration indicated that she had got herself stuck somewhere and couldn’t work out how to navigate back to the main menu.

But on the fourth day, parental pride and the novelty of having something new to bribe her with (“you can have a go on the computer, but only if you are a good girl”) gave way frustration, jealousy and a whole host of jittery withdrawal symptoms.

“Ping,” goes the sound of an incoming message on gmail chat, in another firefox tab, tantalisingly invisible.

“Sweetie, can mummy look at her message? That noise means there’s a message…”

“NO! I clicking! I not finished yet,” says Tadpole in a voice which leaves little room for debate.

I pace around the apartment, trying hard to contain my curiosity, wondering whether the message was from a friend or an admirer. What have I missed?

“How about mummy puts the Mr Men on the television?” I suggest, finally convinced I have hit on a viable alternative to clicking.

“No. I want to play Mr Men on the comPUter! Not the television. I want to CLICK!” replies Tadpole, remembering the official website where she had watched Mr Greedy and guests having a birthday food fight.

I retire, crestfallen, to the kitchen to make a calming cup of tea and plot my next move. I don’t think I had realised until now just how often I sneak a couple of minutes to check my email, my comments, or have a quick chat, but now, suddenly, my daughter has the power to cut me off from the outside world for half an hour at a time. Now, every time my fingers so much as stretch towards the keyboard, a little person drops whatever she is doing, a leg is flung over mine, and she tries to clamber onto my knee, comandeers the mouse with her small fingers and refuses to relinquish it.

Finally, Tadpole has found my achilles heel. God help me.

“Soon, I’m going to grow into a big lady, jus’ like you,” says Tadpole, between forkfuls of rice. “I’m going to be thirty-ten years old – not yet, but in a little while – and then I can be able to touch the lights and the ceiling.” She stretches her arms high above her head to demonstrate. I decide against pointing out that I can’t actually reach the lights or the ceiling at the grand old age of thirty four, not wanting to burst her bubble, and take a sip of lukewarm tea instead.

I wonder what it is that makes my daughter so desperate to grow up. “Stay young!” I want to say. “Enjoy pre-school! Don’t wish your life away.” There are days when I would happily trade places. I could go to the maternelle and spend a day looking at picture books, playing in the kitchen corner, getting kissed by the small Chinese boy who simply won’t leave the girls alone, or drawing pictures with brightly coloured felt tip pens. Instead, I spend hours chasing tax forms, cleaning, buying groceries, procrastinating, feeling guilty about procrastinating or staring at a computer screen and wondering whether I’m writing well. Or not.

“When I’m a lady,” Tadpole continues, “I’m going to touch all your things.” I raise my eyebrows, remembering an altercation which ended in tears earlier when she made off with my bag and all its precious contents. “I’m going to buy something in a shop,” she continues, “and put you in the bath. And put the dryer on. And hang up the clothes.”

Put like this, my life sounds truly fascinating. I suppose Tadpole doesn’t get to see many of the fun things I do, like drinking lots of gin and tonic or dancing to electro, as they invariably happen when she is elsewhere. The result being that I don’t particularly like my life as seen through Tadpole’s eyes. I’ll have to set her straight, one day, when she is all grown up.

“And will you be able to read my bedtime stories when you are thirty-ten?” I enquire.

“No, I don’t know how to read stories, mummy,” Tadpole says, in a tone which makes it quite clear I am an imbecile for even suggesting such a thing. “I’m not grown up like a lady yet, but I’m going to eat rice and peas mixed up together and that makes me grow quicker and mucher bigger like you. So I’ll grow a bit soon, in two holidays. After the weekend, and Christmas. Tomorrow. That’s going to take two months so we have to wait a minute!”

I am left hoping that she will grow up soon enough to catch my head when it falls off, and to drive me to casualty to have it stitched back on again.

Tadpole and I walk hand in hand up the rue de Rebeval, bound for home and, as usual, I try to extract some meaningful information from my daughter about what she has been up to that day.

Our conversation goes something like this.

Me: “So, what did you do at school today sweetie?”

Tadpole: “Er… something nice”

Me: “Something nice. I see. Did you draw some pictures?”

Tadpole: “No.”

Me: “Read some books?”

Tadpole: “Yes.”

Me: “What were the books about?”

Tadpole: “Er… I can’t remember.”

Me: “And what did you have for lunch?”

Tadple: “Chips. And chocolate.”

It is like extracting blood from a stone, pulling teeth or trying to establish whether Mr Frog has a girlfriend. A meeting with her maîtresse last Saturday was enlightening: we were told that all children tend to be reluctant to discuss what goes on at school with papa and maman. Maybe the school day is so action packed that it all becomes a blur in her tiny head. Or she so enjoys having her own little jardin secret that she resents my trying to peep over the top of the hedge. Whatever the reason, it is clear that nothing more is forthcoming.

I have a fair idea of what a typical day comprises: play, some supervised activities, lunch, storytime, sleep, a stint outdoors, and the fascinatingly named motricité sessions held in the school hall. This appears to be a typically French, scientific sounding word for PE, which includes circuit training and teetering about on stilts made from upturned buckets with string handles.

There is however one part of Tadpole’s day that I can spy on from the comfort of my own home. Canteen lunches are detailed on a very helpful website. There is week 38 in all its glory. Accompanied by an illustration of a dragon flying through the sky with two suitcases in his hands. Chips and chocolate indeed. On the day in question the menu was, in fact:

Betteraves (beetroot)
* * * * *
Rôti de dinde (roast turkey)
Gratin de blettes (gratin of ??????)
* * * * *
Petit-Suisse (sort of fromage frais thing)

The mind boggles. My very own Little Miss Fussy has been busy eating things I don’t even have the wherewithall to translate. My first thought on “blettes” was cockroaches – until, happily, I realised I was confusing “blettes” with “blattes”. Extensive web research yielded “Swiss chard”. Now let me see, I may have tasted it once, in Nice, in the filling of my ravioli niçoise, but until I looked on google images, I couldn’t have told you whether it takes the form of a bean, a root vegetable or a leaf. Tadpole eats Swiss chard? Swiss chard gratin? My daughter, the same child who refuses to mix peas and carrots (canned) in the same forkful? Who invariably turns up her nose at any item she has never tasted before? And which sadistic dinner lady dreamt up the idea of feeding beetroot to 3 year olds? Clearly one who won’t have to wash their clothes afterwards.

I suppose I should be thankful that Tadpole appears to be getting a balanced diet, something Jamie Oliver would no doubt work himself into a lather of enthusiasm over.

Later that evening, I decide to give the interrogation one last try, fortified with this new information.

Me: “So, did you have some beetroot for lunch? Some little purple squares? Some betteraves?”

Tadpole: “No, I had chips and chocolate. And cereals. And after, I had a strawberry milkshake!”

I can’t help giggling. Not only is she maintaining her barefaced lie, but now the little monster is embroidering around it, adding increasingly implausible embellishments.

Tadpole: “Mummy! Why you laughing?”

I snort apple juice out of my nose.

Tadpole: “Is it because I talking rubbish?”

Ever since I picked Tadpole up from school, crying, this time, because a classmate had tried to remove one of her Hello Kitty hair clips in the playground using brute force , I have had to remain in character. Or characters. It’s difficult to keep track, as Tadpole keeps changing her mind about who I am supposed to be.

“… would you like some Kiri on your pasta, Mr Happy?” I say in an exaggerated stage whisper as I pour the steaming contents of the pan into a colander.

“Yes, Kiri on my pastas. And sweetcorns,” she replies. There is no “please”, but I decide to let that one slide, for now.

“Baby tomatoes?” I continue, at normal volume.

“Mummy! I sayded that you were Mr Quiet!” shouts Tadpole, indignantly. Past tenses have taken an odd turn recently. Where previously they were correct, my daughter has started inventing new, arguably more logical forms, sayded, growded and cryded being the most common.

“Oh, sorry…I forgot you said that…” I whisper, battling to appear suitably contrite.

“You being just like Mr Forgetful, mummy.”

I perk up at the prospect of a change of character, tired of having to lower my voice. We move into Tadpole’s bedroom, where the Miffy table now has pride of place in front of the window. It’s less than ideal, but I don’t really have a dining area in the new flat, so for the time being I make do with this dolls house type arrangement, even when I dine alone.

This overwhelming obsession with the Mr Men began one fine July day when Tadpole spied the boxed set of books I had been saving until she was older as I unpacked our belongings in what she still refers to as “mummy’s new house”. I suppose I should be grateful for any Dora displacement activity. But now, every day, we have to talk like Mr Topsy Turvy (“Night good, mummmy!”), I am called upon to impersonate Mr Tickle on a regular basis and I spend a great deal of time sticking errant pages back in with “ruban daddyseive”. Clearly there was a good reason why this boxed set was so cheap.

“Oh calamity!” cries Tadpole, the next morning, quaking in front of her breakfast cereal, “jus’ like Mr Jelly”, because it is making a “sound noise”.

Drama school beckons, and, quite frankly, the prospect terrifies me.

Monday 4 September was the very first time that the words la rentrée were charged with special significance for me. My daughter has talked of nothing else since Spring, when she first visited her future école maternelle. Aged 3, like all little French children, Tadpole has already started school.

Of course at that age, it’s not about discipline and copying things off the blackboard. It’s more like a playgroup, with different activities going on within the classroom: a reading corner, a (toy) kitchen corner, the teacher doing some sort of drawing or counting with a small group, her assistant keeping watch over the other fifteen or so children who are more or less left to their own devices. But there will be communal eating in the canteen to adjust to, and in a room adjoining the classroom there are toddler-sized bunk beds where the children will have their nap in the afternoon. It’s beyond the reach of my imagination to visualise twenty toddlers going to sleep at once in the same room. Twenty toddlers who are only just out of nappies, and, well, accidents will happen. Rather la maîtresse than me.

Monday morning, Mr Frog rings the doorbell five minutes earlier than expected. Like me, he has been pacing his apartment, feeling rather emotional at the prospect of our Tadpole reaching this important milestone. We take a look at one another’s tense faces and laugh nervously. Tadpole, on the other hand, is impatience personified, scrambling into her coat and shouting “come on mummy, we got to go now…”

As we walk down the hill, Mr Frog and I exchange worst case scenarios.

“You know that thing she does where she she takes a crotte de nez* and holds her finger out, with the crotte on the end of it, and expects us to take it off her?” Mr Frog says.

“Oh my god, yes. I really hope she doesn’t do that to the teacher,” I reply. Trying not to sound like I’m accusing him of teaching her this charming behaviour, I add an innocent “where on earth can she have learnt that anyway? She looks oddly proud of herself…”

We both fervently hope that there will be no toilet incidents. I have a shoebox tucked under my arm with a change of clothes, all dutifully named, au cas où, but still, I’d rather they remained there unsolicited, all term.

Tadpole barely makes eye contact as we wave goodbye and turn to leave her classroom. She is already pottering in the toy kitchen with a really cute Asian girl whose name I can’t pronounce. I look at the other wailing, distraught children clinging to their parents and feel ever so slightly smug at how easy Tadpole is making this for us.

Of course I should have known I wouldn’t get off that lightly.

Because when I come to fetch her, both on Monday, and today, it is upon seeing me that the waterworks and histrionics begin. The long, high pitched scream of doom. The stamped foot. The “No No NO mummy I want to stay at school!” The source of her disappointment is simple: canteen and napping start next week; this week, school is just a collection of three hour morning sessions. Not long enough for my daughter. Adaptation is for pussies, in her opinion.

I put on my best poker face, striving not to look perturbed by her performance, when in fact I’m petrified that every other parent (currently being joyfully reunited with offspring who leap into their arms for bear hugs) is thinking “how awful must things be at home for a child to want to stay at school.”

And to top it off, today I found my daughter in the classroom doorway, arm outstreched, a crotte bejewelled index finger slowly but surely travelling in the direction of her teacher. I pounced with my tissue before anyone was the wiser but clearly, it’s only a matter of time.

So when Tadpole asked me this evening, as she does at least fifty times a day at the moment, “which of the Mr Men are you, mummy?” I answered, without hesitation: “Mr Worry”.

At least I got a picture out of it.

*crotte = a versatile noun which can be used to describe any undesirable bodily by-product, whether it originates from the nose, the bottom, or the corner of one’s eye. In this case, I hasten to add, from the nose.

I have hinted, in recent weeks, at events which were unfolding in the background. Sinister events. Events I was not at liberty to discuss on my blog, just yet.

In the meantime I stuck to the safest anecdotes, seething with frustation at not being able to write about that One Single Horrible Thing which was preying on my mind, night and day, causing dramatic (and not entirely unwelcome) weight loss, panic attacks and sleepless nights, in the beginning.

The waiting is over, and I will begin by turning back the clock to my unexplained two week hiatus at the end of April this year. Starting with a post originally written on Wednesday 26 April 2006.

Here goes.

I step into the lift, inspecting my face in the mirror for tell-tale streaks. As I make my way across the park, I wonder whether the nanny will notice that I have arrived from the direction of home, wearing jeans.

I take a few deep breaths as I approach, hoping that my facial expression does not betray my inner turmoil. I very much want to hold things together, for Tadpole’s sake.

Tadpole greets me with indifference, which is not unusual. She is far more engrossed in trying to wrestle a very large Noddy doll off one of her playmates. Her own – a more pocket sized version – lies abandoned on the floor, a grass stain across his cheek.

It would appear to be high time for us to have a mother-daughter conversation about how size isn’t (always) everything.

“Come on sweetie,” I begin, brightly, “you can’t take the big Noddy. It’s not yours. Yours is much better, because he fits in your bag, and you can take him everywhere.”

“NOOOO! I want the big Noddy!” Tadpole rages, face set in a stubborn expression which reminds me, suddenly, of her father.

“Well, that’s a shame,” I continue, with a sudden flash of inspiration, “because it’s little Noddy’s birthday today, and he wanted to invite you to his birthday party… but if you don’t want to come…”

“Can we get a birthday cake?” Tadpole enquires, playing into my hands as I knew she would. “And some candles?”

On the way home we discuss how old Noddy is today (definitely 3) and what kind of cake he would prefer. I realise the boulangerie is closed, and we settle for a chocolate swiss roll from Franprix, the only thing which looks remotely festive.

Once the candles are lit, Tadpole looks at me, suddenly anxious. She points at Noddy’s embroidered smile.

“Noddy can’t blow the candles. Look, he hasn’t got any mouth, mummy,” she says, sounding genuinely sorry for her little doll.

“Well, maybe you can do it?” I venture, trying not to dwell on the parallels between Noddy’s mouth and my self-enforced silence in the days to come. Tadpole obliges, with great enthusiasm.

I look at my daughter, her beautiful chocolate-icing coated cheeks, and wonder how on earth I have managed to make such a mess of things. Here I am, holding a fantasy birthday party, while our whole world is literally crashing down around our ears.

I was “dooced” today.

Suspended without pay, pending a dismissal meeting in ten day’s time.

Asked to collect my belongings together and leave the building immediately.

The words “faute grave” were used. Translated into English: gross misconduct.

Petite Anglaise: the blog that got me fired. Call me naïve, but I really didn’t see that coming.

Please note that due to the rather unexpected levels of traffic (most doocelike) today my host has had to redirect the blog address, create static entry page and all sorts of other tomfoolery, so we don’t bring down the shared server and disrupt other people’s service. In the meantime you may not be able to leave a comment. Hopefully things will calm down shortly, and I will still be able to post in the meantime.

I drop to the floor wearily, mopping my brow with my t-shirt then adjusting my glasses, which are gradually sliding south, towards the tip of my nose. I have just finished taking apart a sofa-bed, and am feeling suitably smug that I had kept both the assembly instructions and the little metal keys which Ikea so thoughtfully provide.

The apartment Tadpole and I are leaving is starting to look rather forlorn. There are yellowed patches on the paintwork, the ghosts of pictures which once hung on these walls. The surface is pitted with screw holes I have filled, a little clumsily, many with rawl plugs still inside. Most glaringly obvious though are the gaps where pieces of furniture once stood. Downsizing has meant bidding a fond farewell to many of the purchases Mr Frog and I made together eight years ago.

My secret weapon is a yahoo group called Freecycle. No sooner have I compiled an email saying “DONNE: meubles ikea, à emporter avant le 29 juillet”, pressed “send” and repaired to the kitchen to fetch a cold drink, without fail, upon my return, my inbox is groaning under the weight of a multitude of clamouring messages. The principle is simple: don’t throw anything away which may be of use to someone else. The real advantage being that the recipient has to take the items off your hands, which means huffing and puffing down five flights of stairs before they have even left the building. Rather them than me.

Tadpole has been watching recent developments with some concern. If another piece of furniture has disappeared while she slept, she bombards me with questions the following morning.

“Mummy, why is the television on that table?”

“Because the other table, where the television was before, has gone now. Mummy didn’t need it any more…”

Tadpole frowns, trying to picture what the old table looked like. Apparently failing.

She takes herself off to the bedroom and I hear the ominous sound of rummaging in her toybox. She returns brandishing a plastic harmonica in one hand, a stethoscope in the other.

“Mummy. I need to take these with me to the new house,” she says, firmly.

“Darling,” I say in my most reassuring tone,”we are going to take all your toys to the new house. Everything. And your clothes, your bed, your furniture…”

I wonder if the poor child imagined she would wake up one morning to find I had given all her toys away?

Tadpole nods, and I feel confident that she has understood.

Five minutes later, she returns, this time clutching Noddy’s red and yellow car.

“Can I take this as well?”

TGV Paris-Angouleme, Friday 30 June

Tadpole heaves the armrest up and down violently, watching my face intently, wondering when I will crack. I am biding my time, because she has already done the high pitched screechy crying thing twice in the space of the last hour and there is only so much I, or any of my fellow passengers, can take. She hasn’t had a nap today, and it shows. I am utterly drained after all the dashing around this past week.

We are both on exceedingly short fuses.

The carriage is full. Behind me, a young man is making a loud tutting noise, doubtless for my benefit. I silently cast an evil spell, which if it works, will ensure that he has many train journeys with tantrum riddled offspring in his future. Only then will he fully comprehend the answer to the question he is currently asking himself: “why can’t she keep that child under control?”

Finally the armrest bangs just one time too many, and I feel an over-taut nerve snapping.

“Right! Enough! No more banging! Play with your Dora stickers and leave the seat alone!”

Cue high pitched screechy crying.

The thing is, I know full well that I am not being a good parent right now. That what I should be doing, is finding some means of distracting my daughter, instead of growling “stop that horrible noise right now!”

But knowing what you should be doing and summoning the willpower to do so are two very different things.

I haul Tadpole to her feet and set off in the direction of the buffet car. Her face is covered in a mixture of felt tip pen and angry tears.

I don’t know about Tadpole, but I for one need chocolate.

TGV Angouleme-Paris, Sunday 2 July

The train is full, but I barely notice. A part of me is still lying by the pool, one leg and one arm grazing the cool water, wearing my favourite dark brown bikini, purchased in a Givenchy solde privée years ago, and now, miraculously, a perfect fit once more. I wonder, idly, if anyone else has ever inspected toddler stools for pebbles whilst wearing a Givenchy bikini.

Tadpole chatters excitedly about her weekend, which was mostly spent wearing Nemo armbands and shrieking “maman! regarde! ch’suis une petite sirène! I’m a mermaid!” and trotting about after her two little golden haired playmates.

I pull out my camera and we look back at the photographs of the weekend.

“ROAR!” growls Tadpole, as I show her a snap of her royal highness in full tiger facepaint. She gnaws my cheek, mock hungrily, and shouts “mummy, I’m going to eat you all up!”

I cower back in my seat, pulling a mock horrified face, which elicits the expected giggle.

“But… if you eat me all up, there’ll be no more mummy, and THEN what will you do?” I enquire, in a worried voice.

“When you are gone,” says Tadpole carefully, levelly, navigating her tenses expertly, “I won’t have to speak English. Any. More.”

I am lost for words.

I hastily apply eyeliner, as Tadpole and I are invited to a party tonight. It is one of those Parisian fêtes I have read so much about where the residents of an apartment building gather together in their communal courtyard with their guests for an evening of eating, drinking and merriment. In this case the apartments in question are in an über-trendy converted industrial laundry, with a huge cobbled courtyard.

It is the first time that Tadpole and I have gone to a party together, so something of an experiment. I am a little unsure as to how she will react when I decide that it is bedtime, or whether I will feel comfortable drinking in her company. Tadpole however is very excited, as she has been allowed to wear her fairy outfit. She is playing on the bed behind me, arranging the pebbles I brought back from Nice on the duvet so that the larger one forms a body, the smaller one a head.

“Maman! Regarde! J’ai fait un bonhomme!”

I glance over, mildly irritated that she is doing that thing where she refuses to speak to me in English.

“Yes, that’s lovely,” I say, and turn back to the mirror to dab on some lipgloss. We are almost good to go. I wonder whether there will be any eligible bachelors at the party.

“Maman! Where did the stone go?”

I whirl around immediately, hearing the urgency in her voice, and see Tadpole clutching at her mouth in a panic. There is nothing in her mouth, and no apparent obstruction in her throat, but the small pebble is most definitely missing.

She has swallowed it whole.

Once I have established that nothing is hurting, and Tadpole has simply given herself rather a shock, I grab the telephone. None of the SOS Doctors phonelines I call will give medical advice over the telephone, and it seems a little extreme to rush Tadpole down to casualty when she is happily singing songs by my side, so I call Mr Frog and ask him to phone his GP friend. I also make the mistake of calling my mum, which achieves nothing other than to make her worry needlessly.

In the meantime, phone cradled between my ear and shoulder, I look back at my previous post to see what the pebble actually looked like, as I can no longer picture it.

Next I google “swallowed object” and read that a small, smooth object such as a stone should pass through the intestines without incident, and it will simply be a matter of inspecting Tadpole’s stools for the next few days to ensure that the offending article has been expelled successfully.

I smile to myself, realising that as Mr Frog is taking Tadpole to stay with his parents for a few days, it is he who will be on stool duty.

I sit with Tadpole at her Lilliputian Ikea table. From across the room, an adult-sized dining table eyes me balefully. There are many pieces of furniture in our flat that I have tended to snub since Mr Frog moved out last summer. Having two sofas in the living room seems somewhat superfluous, given that I watch TV on my computer these days, from the comfort of my bed. I tell myself that as a result, moving to a smaller place is unlikely to cause me any great hardship, even if I will miss all the “original features” and the breathtaking view.

I am a little distracted, absorbed in trying to decipher Tadpole’s latest work of art, without letting the word “fisting” enter my mind, even for a moment.

“Can I have some melon now, and some raisins?” Tadpole enquires, reaching for the fruit salad with a tentative spoon.

“No,” I say firmly. “You can have melon and grapes if you eat FOUR pieces of cauliflower first.” As usual, Tadpole has polished off her carbs – in this instance some Kiri coated pasta – and pushed the vegetables disdainfully to the side of her plate. I should have learned my lesson by now: separate courses are the key, vegetables FIRST. It probably doesn’t help that I have made myself a bowl of pasta arrabiata, which conspicuously lacks any vegetable accompaniment.

Surprisingly, the toddler doth not protest. Instead, she deliberates at length about which cauliflower floret to select. Once she has identified the smallest, she takes it delicately between a thumb and forefinger and takes the tiniest of tiny bites.

“One…” she counts.

Another fairy-bite follows, from the same floret, even tinier than the first.

“Two…” she continues, giving me that look, the one that says “Clearly you know what my game is, and I know that you know, but wouldn’t it be funnier if you just played along until I reached number four?”

I can’t help but giggle at her ingenuity. She flashes me her trademark toothy grin in return, and on the count of “four”, a hopeful recidivist hand reaches grapeward.

An overwhelming urge to throw my arms around her mischievous little frame and hug her to me tightly nearly gets the better of me.

Instead, I relent and push the fruit salad closer.

I go back to examining the picture, hoping I will find it less disturbing.

Tadpole is sitting on my knee, stabbing at the keyboard, attempting to type her name. Her efforts are fairly impressive, when you take into account the fact that I am simultaneously tickling her ribs:

tttaaaaaaaadddddppmollllleeeeee

Master of shortcut key combinations of which I do not even suspect the existence (she toggled my keyboard into thinking it was English the other day and it took the longest time to figure out how to make it French again), she abruptly closes the word processor window. A backgrounded firefox window is unveiled, revealing a motley assortment of meetic members currently online.

Today we have:

• Monsieur Clope au Bec, puffing on his gaulloise, face obscured by a cloud of smoke, the mere sight of which makes me wrinkle my nose in distaste.
• Monsieur Pectoraux, who is probably too busy working out to have a love life, and looks like he is in need of a long shower. I am starting to feel relieved that scratch and sniff profiles have not yet seen the light of day.
• Mr Infidèle, who has opted for a badly cropped photograph of himself with his current wife/girlfriend, her cheek pressed against his, her arm draped across his shoulder.

Tadpole is looking intently at the screen, although it’s hard to say what has grabbed her attention. I suspect it may be the attractive fluffy dolphin posing alongside Mr Shiny Shellsuit.

“Mummy, how do you say chenille in English?” Tadpole asks, a little randomly.

“It’s caterpillar, darling,” I reply, “like in the book about the very hungry caterpillar.”

Tadpole nods, then points at the screen. “Why that man have a very hungry caterpillar crawling on his chin?”

I giggle. It does indeed look very much like a furry caterpillar has lost its way.

“Maybe it’s his pet caterpillar?” I suggest. I point at a Rod Stewart look-alike with an impressive mullet, hugging a labrador: “look, that man is in the picture with his pet animal too…”

Surfing once Tadpole is safely tucked up in bed, I realise that the unsightly facial caterpillar phenomenon is more widespread than I had initially realised. They are everywhere I click. The worst are those which steal upon me unawares, when I select the profile of an attractive looking gentleman, then note with dismay that all the other photos he has included are overrun with lepidoptera larvae.

<ew></ew>

As you may have gathered, meetic isn’t exactly working for me, thus far.

“I want to play with the patate modeler,” says Tadpole. I fetch the box of playdoh, somewhat relieved that she has actually expressed a preference, as opposed to her habitual “mummy, what can we do now?”

It has been a four day weekend of one-on-one quality petite and Tadpole time, and I am almost at my wits’ end.

Thursday: awake at 9.30, go for Chinese restaurant lunch with daddy, then purchase €15 garish pink scooter in a Chinese bazar, treasure trove of cheap tat which never fails to delight my daughter. Tadpole refuses to nap. Make oatmeal and raisin biscuits together. Find marzipan hiding at back of kitchen cupboard and make little apples, pears and bananas with clove stalks. Tadpole dresses as fairy, I spend many hours wearing both rabbit ears and tiara.

Evening: watch “Brokeback Mountain”. There follows very pleasant dream about (heterosexual) cowboys.

Friday: awake at 6.15, feel out of sorts and grumpy all day. Buy gift for friend’s newborn baby, and hair clips for Tadpole (which she leaves in supermarket mere moments later). Burn last two pieces of bread when making toast for own lunch as Tadpole naps. Hop on métro to visit Tadpole’s playmate (who, after five minutes, exclaims “mummy, I don’t like this girl”). Tadpole’s revenge: does a wee in playmate’s Wendy House.

Evening: watch season 2 finale of Lost. Say little prayer of thanks for Bittorrent.

Saturday: awake at 8.30. Realise at 10.30 with sinking feeling was supposed to be at meeting at Tadpole’s future school – half an hour ago. Blind panic! Tadpole senses note of urgency in my voice, and actually complies immediately, fetching coat and shoes. Arrive at school, meeting over, but instead have one-to-one chat with future headmistress, arguably preferable to missed meeting. Eat couscous royale and chocolate nice cream in local café. Mummy’s friend Elmer comes to “play”, bearing many flavours of melt in the mouth macarons. Tadpole does poo after bath!

Evening: Mummy surfs on meAtic and chats with seemingly wholesome young photographer, who proceeds to email portraits of himself a) covered in fake blood, and b) wearing ball gag and blindfold. Mummy decides against accepting to star in his next short film project.

Sunday: awake at 4.00 to sound of Tadpole shouting “mummy! I did a poopoo!” Change nappy, return to bed and, amazingly, Tadpole sleeps on until 10.00. Baby swimmers class however begins at 10.15. Dash to swimming baths, arrive, panting, at 10.25. Swimming baths closed, due to water temperature being few degrees too cold. Retire to Café Cheri(e) for coffee and juice. Visit adventure playground and picnic on pain au chocolat. Once home, comply with playdoh request. Tadpole goes surprisingly willingly to bed for her sieste, but can still be heard singing “Ride a Cock Horse” as I write.

Six hours ’til Tadpole’s bedtime…and celebratory Mother’s Day gin and tonic.

Tadpole makes a bee-line for the scales, and has to be hoisted forcibly into a chair by my side. She fiddles with a huge tome on the table in front of her. The doctor, visibly stressed, barks “don’t touch that!” with uncharacteristic sharpness.

I sigh, and begin explaining Tadpole’s little problem. I have barely finished my second sentence when Dr Freud interrupts me.

“… faudrait plutôt consulter un pédopsychiatre pour ça!”

I freeze, hackles rising. A child psychiatrist? She can’t be serious, surely?

The doctor notes my disbelief, but continues, regardless. “Well, you have been having problems of your own lately, and she could be picking up on them…”

Perfect.

Because what I really needed right now, apart from an anally retentive two year old who manages to hold everything in for ten whole days before I am obliged to resort to desperate measures involving suppositories, is a doctor who says that this is clearly my fault.

“I was thinking more along the lines of using a mild laxative medecine, and trying to talk to her about it myself,” I say firmly. “It’s really quite common at this age, isn’t it?”

This problem pre-dates any of mine, we simply didn’t realise how bad it had got. The point being that the nanny assumed she was going at home. Mr Frog and I assumed she was going at the nanny’s. Only when Tadpole stayed with mamie and papy for two whole weeks did the extent of Tadpole’s determination to withhold become apparent.

The doctor examines Tadpole’s tummy, seeming satisfied that she is not in any pain. She hands me a prescription for medecine, as requested, and then a second piece of paper, upon which she has scribbled the address of the child psychiatrist.

As we leave the building, I scrunch up the paper with my free hand, and drop it into the nearest dustbin.

“Right,” I say to Tadpole. “Mummy is going to buy some Smarties. And you can have three, next time you do a poo in the potty.”

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

“Look mummy, the trees are dancing,” cries Tadpole. Her curls, which I painstakingly combed only moments earlier, are blowing in all directions. Sometimes I wonder why I bother trying to make her look presentable. Her hair is always unruly; her sleeves inevitably covered with felt tip pen, or worse, if there are no tissues to hand.

“Yes, it’s very windy, isn’t it,” I reply, prosaically, wishing I had something with which to tie my own hair back. It whips across my face, gets tangled in my glasses.

“The wind is like music, it makes everything dance!”

To illustrate her point, Tadpole waves her arms, as though they were branches.

I smile to myself, thinking that if she can manage to conjure up poetic little similes every day, I’ll be able to sprinkle them liberally across my blog, and take all the credit.

Bad mummy.

After two whole weeks in the provinces with mamie and papy, Tadpole has returned, albeit in her French incarnation. Singing songs I have never heard before. Reciting the alphabet, in French. And, somewhat randomly, obsessed with camels.

Over dinner this evening, as I attempted to shovel a forkful of green beans (frozen, bad mummy) into her mouth, she nearly made me fall off my (ikea, child’s) chair when she said:

“Maman, comment on dit dromadaire en anglais?”

a rossignol, a princess and a tower

alphabet city

The air hostess motions us to a different seat, as our fellow passengers have unanimously ignored the allocations clearly marked on their tickets, with the result that mine and Tadpole’s have already been taken.

There is a ripple of laughter at my wake. Tadpole, whom I imagined to be trotting obediently behind me, has found a bearded surrogate grandad she likes the look of, seated herself by his side, much to his amusement, and is now engrossed in fastening her seatbelt.

I hasten to retrieve her, somewhat red-faced, and plonk her unceremoniously onto the window seat.

“Mummy?”

“Yees?”

“Can you hear my wee wee?”

I note her glassy eyed expression, one which I am familiar with, as our family bathroom had mirror tiles on the back of the bathroom door. Tadpole and I may not look alike, but sometimes, fleetingly, I see one of my own smirks or grimaces play across her face.

A shadow falls over us: a businessman is examining his ticket with a puzzled air. I look up, prepare to explain, wearily, that the entire aircraft has been subjected to an impromptu game of musical chairs.

I am, however, struck dumb by Tadpole’s next move.

“Mummy! Mummy!” she exclaims, painful, clamping fingers grabbing the front of my t-shirt. “Look! I found your nipples! They all pointy!”

I cast around for the button which will trigger my ejector seat.

In vain.

I am having another identity crisis. My tenth of the day so far. At various junctures I have been required to pretend to be Big Ears, Sly the Goblin, a Gruffalo, Mrs Goggins, Tinky Winky and Sleeping Beauty.

“No!” says Tadpole, firmly, “You’re Boots and I’m Dora l’exploratrice.”

“Okaay,” I reply, “well, if I’m Boots now, and not a fairy princess, maybe I should take off my tiara?”

We have been wearing our matching hers and hers plastic tiaras for quite some time. Mine is actually quite a useful device for keeping my hair out of my face whilst doing jigsaws.

“Yes, put this on now,” Tadpole concurs, handing me more suitable headgear.

We practice our high fives, apparently something which Dora and Boots do in every episode, and I try to muster up some enthusiasm and join in with her cries of “we did it! C’est gagné!” Only the initiated will understand the power of that godforsaken cartoon and its ability to brainwash our children. Quite frankly, it scares me.

Tadpole’s attention thankfully turns to her box of books, and I slink quietly off to the kitchen to do some washing up. It’s funny how attractive housework can become when the alternative is play doh. Or fuzzy felts.

There is a drriiiing at the doorbell. I grab my purse and peep through the spyhole. It is the pizza delivery boy bearing our nutritious dinner. And I note, to my satisfaction, that they have sent the tastiest one. Handsome, but a little on the young side.

Under the circumstances, I am very impressed with pizza delivery boy’s stoic professionalism. Attempting to seem unfazed, despite my extreme discomfiture when I catch sight of myself in the hallway mirror, I hand him an extra large tip to buy his silence.

Mr Frog and I sit in comfortable silence, devouring our Chinese takeaway. Tadpole lies sleeping in the next room. Finding myself at a loose end on my night off, I slipped across the road for a chat. Inevitably, he and I start comparing Tadpole anecdotes, as we are wont to do. We generally end up trying to outdo one another’s stories, which brings my naturally competitive streak out to play.

For my opening shot, I describe the picture Tadpole drew of a tortoise that morning on her magic drawing board. “It was fantastic – totally lifelike, with a patterned shell. Even if it did have six or seven legs…” I wish I had omitted the last part, but it’s too late now. Mr Frog silently reaches for his new camera, a victorious smile playing about his lips, and proceeds to show me a photo of Tadpole’s perfect rendition of Brian the snail from the Magic Roundabout, complete with antennae poking through hat at the required jaunty angle.

Mr Frog: un point
petite: nul points

I skip the yellow teeth anecdote, which still smarts a little, and instead recount how Tadpole reacted to the sight of blossom drifting down from the trees which line the park on Monday morning: “Mummy,” she cried, “it looks just like confetti!”

“Oh that, yes, she said it in French this morning too,” Mr Frog replies, “on dirait des confettis…” Then, with a faux casual air: “Did I tell you that my mum taught her how to recite the whole alphabet last week?”

I wince, knowing that there is no way I can top that one without inventing something. And even I wouldn’t stoop so low as to fabricate a Tadpole anecdote.

Mr Frog: deux points
petite: nul points

I opt for a change of tack. “It’s such a shame you couldn’t make it for lunch in Belleville on Sunday,” I lament, “she got sooo excited watching a Chinese boy – he must have been about her age – eating with chopsticks. She fiddled around with hers for ages – they were massive, and the slippery kind that even I have trouble with – and I couldn’t believe it when she actually managed to pick up some chicken holding them in one hand. Half the restaurant applauded…”

The only innocent little embellishment in that sentence was the applause. Honestly. I mean, I clapped, but I’m not sure whether anyone else actually noticed.

“Yeah, I was really sorry to miss that. The photo you sent me on my mobile was really cute,” he replies, bashfully, “…but I really was far too hanged over when you texted me on Sunday…”

Tadpole competition forgotten, I quiz Mr Frog about where he goes on these long nights out of his, and with whom. In the process of easing myself back into the Paris social scene after a prolonged absence, I am curious as to which bars and clubs he frequents with his friends. I felt so out of touch the other day when I realised that the Pariscope magazine no longer has a miniature “Time Out” section inside (and probably hasn’t for several years). My confidence as a seasoned Parisienne was severely dented and hasn’t yet recovered.

Mr Frog namedrops several places I have never heard of, and I grow wistful. Just in time, I manage to prevent myself from asking whether I couldn’t tag along one evening. We are so at ease in one another’s company, that sometimes I forget that it might actually be weird to witness the father of my child flirting and chatting up girls.

And even if he didn’t mind, imagine how it could cramp his style.

“Yeah, I have a two year old daughter. Her mum and I are separated. Actually, that’s my ex over there, chatting up the dark-haired guy…”

I hear the creak of a door, followed by a pattering of bare feet on the floorboards. Pulling the bedclothes up to my chin, I snap my eyes hastily closed, as per the usual morning ritual, to preserve Tadpole’s illusion that she is responsible for waking me.

A hand softly grazes my cheek, and I prepare myself for the habitual “WAKEYWAKEYMUMMY!”, the volume of which never ceases to amaze me. Such a loud voice from such a small pair of lungs surely goes against all the laws of physics.

Today however the ritual appears to have changed. Instead tiny fingers are exploring my face. My mouth twitches, involuntarily, but I keep my eyes firmly closed, hoping to prolong the moment for as long as I possibly can.

A finger traces the curve of my eyebrow.

“Mummy got lovely eyebrows,” a Tadpole voice mutters, softly.

There is a feather light touch on my lower lip.

“Mummy got beautiful lips,” she whispers.

I bask in the glow of her unconditional love. Even if I know she is only repeating things I say to her on a regular basis, because I simply can’t help myself and refer to her as my beautiful princess at least ten times a day, her flattery is still music to my ears.

My mouth is slightly ajar, and a digit ventures inside to probe my front teeth. I deliberate about whether to make Tadpole jump by gnawing on her finger, pretending to bite.

“Mummy have very pretty yellow teeth,” she continues.

“YELLOW?” I splutter, the spell irrevocably broken, all pretence of sleep brusquely abandoned. “NO! Mummy’s teeth are white!”

Tadpole is unconvinced. “Nooo. Not white, they yellow,” she maintains, stubbornly, “just like your hair.”

I resolve to give up tea and coffee and invest in some heavy duty whitening strips. The truth hurts. Especially, it seems, from the mouths of babes.

The teeth-grittingly cheerful chime of my mobile phone (Mr Frog laid claim to the alarm clock, and the coffee machine, and I haven’t got around to replacing either) awakes me from a deep, dreamless slumber and I groan theatrically, playing to an invisible audience.

Thankfully I didn’t overdo it the night before, limiting myself to a couple of sedately sipped cocktails with a new friend; heading home soon after the clock struck midnight. This morning sees the return of the Tadpole, after a week long holiday spent with her grandparents in Besançon. Moderation was a necessity: I will need my wits about me today.

A family of moths seems to have taken up residence in my stomach, and I realise to my own amazement that I am nervous about being reunited with my own daughter. Not only are my nerves jangling, but I am also aware of a unpleasant, needling sensation of guilt. The fact is, I pretty much forgot Tadpole’s very existence this past week, slipping effortlessly back into the skin of the girl I used to be, long before she came along. I became re-acquainted with this long lost me, a girl who followed her every selfish whim, who threw on her party clothes and headed out on the town with no fear of having to deal with both a toddler and a hangover the morning after.

How I cherished every second of my temporary freedom. First, there was Nice. Leisurely meals and long drawn out evening drinks, all the while shooting the breeze with my traveling companion, who I now consider a firm friend. Hours spent hypnotised by the gentle tapping sound of waves against the pebbly shore, the sun teasing my cheeks, as I searched patiently for the smoothest, most perfect pebble to take home in my pocket. Not glancing at my watch, living to no-one else’s agenda. Upon my return to Paris, outings to bars with friends, to the cinema, an evening at home with boy plus take-away sashimi, and all that it entailed.

I hadn’t telephoned Tadpole during all this time. Not once.

I justified this neglect to myself by saying that as she doesn’t really show much interest in phone conversations, it can be a somewhat frustrating, pointless exercise. Took shelter behind the excuse that it still feels rather awkward speaking to the ex-in-laws. But the truth of the matter was that I simply wasn’t missing my daughter, and feared that if I did call, that might change. Dared not risk tainting my enjoyment of the here and now.

So here I am, catapulted back from a carefree parallel universe into a weekend of full-time motherhood. On the menu: an Easter egg hunt in the gardens of the Musée Rodin, a baby swimmers session, lunch in a Chinese restaurant in Belleville en tête à tête (our new Sunday ritual, involving much hilarity with chopsticks). Possibly some finger painting, if the weather is inhospitable. Pleasures of a radically different kind.

It’s not that I prefer one state to the other. Simply that being petite the single girl one moment, then petite the mother the next takes some adjusting to. I now live two parallel lives, which rarely overlap.

The appointed hour is close, so hastily I wash the scent of bar smoke from my hair, remove the traces of last night’s makeup from around my eyes, take a deep breath and head out into the street.

As I thrust my keys into the pocket of my jeans, my fingers close around a smooth pebble.

The door to Mr Frog’s apartment is ajar, so I venture in. The cosy scene which greets me is of Tadpole, seated on the sofa, cheeks a fiery shade of crimson, watching her favourite “Oui Oui” DVD. In stark contrast, Mr Frog, slumped by her side, is an exhausted shade of grey.

Tadpole has been suffering from a particularly nasty cold and tummy upset virus (a French doctor would no doubt refer to this as “gastric flu”, making it sound emergency ward, code red serious) which has been doing the rounds in Paris of late. Mr Frog, due to unfortunate timing, has borne the brunt of the horrorshow nappies and sleepless nights, while I galavant around Paris, full of the joys of Spring.

I take a seat beside Tadpole, while Mr Frog pours me a glass of coffee flavoured coca cola (not bad, but not exactly good either, whatever will they dream up next?) to taste.

We chat, mostly swapping favourite Tadpole anecdotes, and recounting flat hunting experiences, until he recalls something she had told him the previous day which made a lasting impression.

They were looking at the letters of the alphabet depicted on her coloured jigsaw floor tiles, and Tadpole had seized upon the letter “J”.

“It’s a J for Jim,” she announced, proudly.

“Oh yes,” replied Mr Frog, uneasily, wondering what to say next.

“Maman, elle a perdu son ami Jim, et elle pleure,” added my daughter.

“When was she crying?” Mr Frog enquired, concerned.

“Yesterday,” came the reply.

I am amazed. She has not mentioned his name once, not since that first horrible day when she knocked on the door, expecting him to answer. I truly thought she had already forgotten him.

I hasten to reassure Mr Frog that by yesterday, Tadpole actually means two whole weeks ago. Because, actually, after shedding a thousand tears during that first weekend of disbelief, I haven’t cried since. Not once.

There are moments when I fall victim to feelings of overwhelming panic about the prospect of being alone. Moments when I experience little pangs of regret about the plans I have been forced to cast aside. But on the whole, I’m surprised to find that I feel little remorse about this aborted relationship.

The future beckons, pregnant with promise. And I walk slowly towards it, with only the slightest hesitation, and not so much as a backward glance.

Tadpole trotted ahead of me down the aisle, as I scanned the seat numbers for row number 20. We passed a motley assortment of pensioners, children in full Disney regalia, couples returning from a romantic weekend in Paris – although some looked as though they had fallen out, possibly over the amount of time Madame wanted to spend shopping – and a couple of pin-striped suits with laptops.

After much stopping and starting, whilst fellow passengers grappled clumsily with hand luggage and coats, seemingly in slow motion, we finally reached our destination. Tadpole clambered across to the window seat and started fiddling with her “strap-on”, while I removed my coat.

I turned and saw an attractive man standing behind me, patiently waiting. He must have been allocated the aisle seat, beside mine. Smiling good naturedly, he offered to stow our coats in the overhead locker, before taking his seat. I contemplated him surreptitiously through my eyelashes. He was roughly my age, at a guess, and dressed in well-cut jeans and casual clothes. Hair a little too carefully gelled for my taste. Carrying a laptop, but also a notepad and pencil.

I rarely strike up a conversation with fellow travellers, but today, maybe I would. At any rate, I was thankful to be seated with the only vaguely civilised person I had spied on the flight.

But as I located the Tadpole entertainment kit, consisting of crayons, drawing book, Dora sticker book and story books, I became aware of a certain restlessness in my travel companion. I sensed him casting around as the plane filled up, gauging whether there were likely to be any free seats left, poised to seize his chance as soon as the doors closed.

And sure enough, he suddenly stood, muttering “I’m just going to move and give you some space. No offence intended.”

“None taken,” I replied, head still bowed, rummaging through my rucksack for a wet wipe.

But I did feel a vague pang of disappointment. Try as I might to shrug it off, I couldn’t help seeing this inconsequential little exchange as portentious; the shape of things to come.

Not simply a woman in my own right, but a mother. Part of a package. This little person – the sum total of what is most precious, most valuable in my life – grounds for rejection.

Just when I was starting to wonder where on earth they had got to, I heard a persistent tapping at the front door, at toddler level. I dabbed frantically at my eyes and checked my face in the mirror, not wanting to alarm Tadpole with my blotchy, puffy face.

As the door swung open, I was overwhelmed to see that my daughter was triumphantly brandishing a small bunch of tulips, my favourite flower. For the first time that day, I shed happy tears, deeply touched by Mr Frog’s thoughtful gesture.

He brought my Tadpole back to me early, because he knows, from experience, that she is the best medicine.

“What’s matter mummy?” asked Tadpole, anxiously, when I released her from a long clingy embrace and she noticed my damp cheeks.

“Mummy’s crying because she’s very happy to see you,” I replied, managing a wobbly smile.

“I go get a mouchoir,” she said, maternally, heading for the tissue box in the bedroom and returning with a handful. “Look, I make it better!”

Later, I explained that mummy was feeling “a bit sad”, because her friend Jim had gone home, and we wouldn’t be seeing him, or his daughters, again. She may not have understood, but I wanted her to know that there was a real reason for my behaviour; that she was not the cause.

She listened, solemnly, and then picked up her pencil and continued her colouring, tongue stuck out in apparent fierce concentration. But as I left the room, she looked over her shoulder, said:

“Never mind mummy.”

Fat Tuesday:  a pretext to eat indecent amounts of nutella (the crèpes being pretty much incidental), caramelised apples and ice cream before not actually giving up anything at all for Lent, as I am rather selective in my observance of religious festivals. The general rule of thumb being if it allows for feasting, I’ll be there.

I have ten people coming over this evening for crèpes and cidre, and have visions of myself waking up tomorrow morning, face down on the living room parquet, with nutella in my hair.  Possibly without eyebrows, if anyone decides to partake of a crèpe flambée, god forbid.

Mardi Gras also means that Tadpole wil be attending her third Carnaval at the mairie with the childminder this evening.  Mr Frog is on collection duty tonight, so sadly I will be spared seeing the spectacle that is tata in her giant harlequin costume.

Of the three costumes Tadpole has donned so far for the Mardi Gras Carnival, today’s is without a doubt the most girly (although I did draw the line at pink). 

First, there was the peapod costume she was crammed into aged 9 months, which had no legs, and boasted large, 3D foam peas which she fiddled with constantly, until one, inevitably, fell off.  Apologies to the kind lady who loaned me that costume, but I did attempt to conceal repair the damage with superglue. One day I fear Tadpole will take me to task for inflicting ridicule on her when she was too young and helpless to protest.  But oh, how we laughed.

Last year’s déguisement was a cuddly leopard outfit, and the surreal park experience which ensued while she was wearing it is recounted here. 

For Tadpole’s last Mardi Gras in Paris we have a fantastic fairy costume, complete with wand and fluffy hairband, courtesy of Matalan (a snip, at £5).  The wearing of which is not solely limited to festivals, as it has already had an outing during our weekend grocery shop, when an overexcited Tadople pirouetted around the aisles, narrowly missing shoppers and artfully dodging trolleys, all the while brandishing her sequin-covered wand and shouting “ABACADABRA” at the top of her lungs. 

On that occasion we were given three complimentary Chupa Chup lollipops by the Franprix checkout staff, who were completely spellbound.

Not being one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I am weighing up the pros and cons of introducing fairy costume as compulsory attire for all future shopping trips.

We walk, leather glove in pink woolen mitten, up the rue de Belleville towards the Eglise St-Jean Baptiste. The narrow pavements are bustling with Saturday morning shoppers despite the biting chill in the air, and my stomach begins to growl as we pass first an appetising pâtisserie (whose boast is that they have twenty different flavours of macaron), then a tiny, pungently scented fromagerie, our noses alerted to its presence long before we reach it.

Tadpole is busy “blowing clouds” through her chapped lips.

I notice, quite by chance, that the SNCF boutique is unusually empty and seize this opportunity to renew Tadpole’s Enfant Plus travelcard. (A truly wonderful invention: thirteen hours of excruciating labour pain = a 50% discount on all train travel for me, plus a free seat for Tadpole). Soon to be expired travelcard is helpfully stowed in the pocket of my handbag, as a reminder, along with a set of passport photos which Mr Frog obligingly had taken last weekend.

We take our seat at the desk, and I adopt the saccharine tone I reserve for most French fonctionnaires, as it has just occurred to me that I do not have any form of Tadople ID about my person.

“Bonjour Madame, j’espère que vous allez pouvoir m’aider…”

I needn’t have worried, because Tadpole has already launched into a full charm offensive.

“Bonjour Madame,” she trills, smiling winsomely. “Je m’appelle [Tadpole Frog], et j’ai deux ans!”

I feel ever so slightly nervous about how much more information Tadpole intends to volunteer, as she can be somewhat random in what she chooses to share. The day that “mummy made some bubbles in the bath” being a case in point, which was recounted, with accompanying sound effects, to anyone who would listen.

Thankfully she stays on topic on this occasion, and starts telling the lady that it is her birthday tomorrow. (Tomorrow, in this instance, meaning June). We obtain the card, without incident, and I manage to persuade a reluctant Tadpole that it is time to leave. Not an easy feat, as she has taken off her mittens, obviously feeling quite at home, and is now enthusiastically exploring the possibilities of the swivelling chair.

When we finally get home, after lunching on couscous together, on a whim, in a local restaurant, I take out the travelcards and compare Tadpole’s photos. The difference takes my breath away. Casting my mind back to February 2005, I try to remember how many words she could say, or what she enjoyed doing back then, and cannot summon up an image of this smaller, rather hairless, toddler. There is something less definite about her facial features on the older picture, but it’s difficult to put my finger on exactly what has changed. Seeing her evolve a little every day, it is only when I am confronted with hard evidence that I realise just how far we have come.

Tadpole snatches the picture from my hand.

“Look, there’s baby [Tadpole]!”

“Yes, that’s a picture from when you were just one year old,” I explain.

“I a big girl now,” she replies, seriously. “I do all my wee wees in my potty. Just like mummy, but mummy does them in the big toilet!”

I am somewhat relieved that we didn’t have this particular conversation at the SNCF shop.

Just when the tips of the crocuses (or croci?) I planted in my windowbox at Christmas time had started to emerge, albeit tentatively, and spring seemed to be hovering tantalisingly just around the corner, Paris is now horribly cold again. Cold, and damp.

Tuesday was the nadir of this sorry week. First of all, in the mad dash to visit Tadpole’s other local maternelle with Mr Frog before work, I managed to forget my waterproofs and simply did not have time to go back for them. Instead I stoically pushed the buggy through driving sleet and rain, head bowed in resignation, all the way to the childminder’s house. Water dripped miserably from the end of my nose. My coat soaked up water like a sponge, growing steadily heavier.

“Poor mummy’s getting wet,” remarked Tadpole helpfully, from her vantage point on the dry side of the waterproof buggy cover. A puddle was forming on its top, so I tipped the pushchair over sideways, without warning, to drain the water off, much to Tadpole’s delight.

“You don’t say,” I muttered, wondering idly whether at the age of two and a half, it wasn’t about time Tadpole learned about the joys of sarcasm.

Swerving to miss a crotte, rendered liquid and even more treacherous by the rain, I wanted nothing more than to turn back towards home, languish in a hot bath and crawl back into my bed, where instead of sleeping the previous night, I had hovered in that frustrating limbo between slumber and wakefulness, unable to switch off my addled brain, too busy composing and re-composing ever more vitriolic lettres recommandées to my web hosts. In French.

Arriving at the childminder’s high rise block, our nostrils were greeted by the familiar tang of (human? canine?) urine in the lifts. The sliding doors firmly closed behind us, I pulled back the raincover and bent over the back of the pushchair to plant a kiss on Tadpole’s nose.

“Look mummy’s upside down. Like a bat!” exclaimed Tadpole, as my hair rained droplets all over her dry clothes.

I smiled a wry little smile, in spite of myself, thankful for the presence of this cheerful little person who always knows how to make everything bearable. I only have to make eye contact with Tadpole and my worries have a funny way of dissolving, instantly.

And because I’d like to end this post on a positive note, I won’t trouble you with how I skidded on the wet floor of the métro and twisted my ankle, landing unceremoniously on my buttocks.

No. Let’s stick with the first ending.

The progress Tadpole is making with the English language never ceases to astonish me.

Lately I have witnessed the sudden addition of the past tense to her delightful little sentences, which opens up a whole new world of possibilities. Sadly, while her grammar may be correct, the information she volunteers is at times a little sketchy, or, in some cases, just plain untrue.

For example, Tadpole arrives home from her weekend away with Mamie and Papy on Monday evening, and the first thing to cross the threshold of my apartment is a proudly brandished hand bearing a rather ragged, grubby-looking pink plaster. Just in case I have failed to notice, she exclaims “Look mummy! Look at my hand! I’ve got a plaster on!”

“Have you got a bobo? How did you get that?” I enquire. Not in an ohmygodyou’vehurt yourselfhowcoulddaddyletthathappenonhiswatch sort of way, you understand. I am simply curious to see whether she is able to explain how it happened.

“Yes. It was red and wet,” she elaborates, helpfully.

“Oh, I see, it was bleeding, was it?”

“Yes, my finger was bleeding.”

“How did you hurt it?”

“I did it on the floor,” she replies, vaguely.

Clearly I’m not going to get the specifics without putting words into her mouth, so I resign myself to just not knowing. As it happens, Mr Frog is none the wiser, as no-one actually saw how this mysterious (and so tiny it is barely visible to the human eye) bobo was inflicted.

For an illustration of how good my daughter is at lying in the past tense, I only have to ask her what she had for lunch at the childminder’s house on any given day of the week.

“I ate some Chocolate!”

“Chocolate? For lunch.”

“Yes!”

“Nothing else?”

“No, I had just chocolate.”

I doubt it, somehow.

So comfortable with the past tense is my Tadpole, that she is now using it masterfully as ammunition to get her own way. Again, with somewhat sparing use of truth.

“Right, I’m making pasta for dinner,” I say firmly, making sure that it sounds like a statement, and not at all like a question that could possibly be answered with the dreaded “no” word.

“I can’t have pasta. I had that yesterday,” comes the (total factually incorrect) reply.

This tactic can be used in a variety of situations, and I have now seen most of the possible permutations: “I wore/ate/did that/read that book/went there/saw daddy/went to see tata yesterday.

Grr.

But the thing that strikes fear into my heart this morning, as I leave the childminder’s house, is hearing Tadpole’s voice piping up behind her closed front door.

“Maman, elle a dit que…” At which point her voice fades away altogether as they move from the hallway into another room, and try as I might, ear shamelessly pressed to door, I can hear no more.

Given her apparent ability to fabricate monstrous lies with alarming ease, I dare not imagine what followed.

I have arranged to meet Mr Frog outside the front door of our my apartment building at 08.45 am, and Tadpole shrieks with delight as soon as she catches sight of the familiar figure striding towards us, Vespa helmet swinging from his left hand.

After one rapturous greeting (Mr Frog, Tadpole) and one slightly more awkward one (Mr Frog, me), we set off towards our common goal. Today we are meeting Madame D, directrice of one of the two local maternelles in our catchment area. Judging by the rasp of her voice on the telephone, I suspect Madame D has long nurtured a forty-a-day Gaulloise habit, and until she helpfully mentioned that her name was Brigitte, I wouldn’t have been able to assert with confidence whether I was conversing with a male or a female.

Of the two schools on the fiche de préinscription obtained at the town hall just before Christmas, I have opted to visit this school first, largely for the simple reason that the other school, a mere 100 m away, currently has a large poster stuck on its front door, proclaiming:

LES POUX SONT DE RETOUR!

Alongside a cartoon depiction of some head lice executing a merry dance. That, along with the fact that the building the other school is housed in is a rather less attractive brick structure dating from the 1970’s, was research enough for me.

We climb the stairs to the headmistress’s office, passing a row of pegs where a rainbow tangle of coats and scarves hang under pictures bearing the names of their owners. The most popular names would still appear to be Léa (for girls, pronounced like the Star Wars princess) and Lucas (for boys, with a silent ’s’). Through an open classroom door, I spy a group of children seated on the floor, listening intently to a story, remarkably well-behaved. In a larger room on the ground floor, children not much older than Tadpole teeter on makeshift stilts, fashioned from upturned buckets on strings.

Of course the ironic fact of the matter is that Tadpole will probably not be attending either of these schools come September. If all my plans come to fruition, my daughter and I will be living in the centre of Rennes by then, and her local school will be a stone’s throw from Lover’s house, and the local park. However, as schools in my arrondissement of Paris are notoriously over-subscribed, just in case anything goes wrong, bets must be hedged, and Parisian directrices must be courted. Better to be safe than sorry.

Mr Frog still wanted to come along, even though we were only going through the motions. I’m not sure why. The stated reason was that he wanted to feel involved, and have a point of comparison when I describe the school in Rennes at some time in the future. There may also be some denial involved. Either way, it transformed a visit which should have been vaguely exciting into a rather tense affair, both of us skirting hesitantly around the real issues for fear of igniting a row or unintentionally causing pain.

Happily, Tadpole remained blissfully unaware of the undercurrents, saucer eyes taking in every detail of the school.

Something tells me I will be spending this evening threading string through buckets and listening to the clattering of makeshift stilts on my parquet floor.

As I sat in the metro this morning, furtively prying strips of royal blue Play-Doh from under my fingernails to a soundtrack of LCD Soundsystem (“Tribulations” seemed apt), I felt an overwhelming wave of relief wash over me: the weekend was finally over.

Who would have thought that a couple of days of quality time with a two and a half year old could be so soul-destroying? But by five o’clock on Sunday afternoon, nerves pulled taut, head pounding, I found myself wondering whether I could use the excuse that it was already dark outside, in tandem with the fact that Tadpole has no grasp of the passage of time and cannot yet read a clock, to pretend it was bedtime and put us both out of our misery.

If I were to read one of the well-known books on the market about toddler taming, I imagine I would be told that this is a normal phase in the development of any child, one in which the toddler has become aware that she is a individual, and is experimenting with the level of control she can exert on her environment. Or in this case, over me. It is a battle that I have to win, if I am not to become one of those parents who is a slave to their own child, tyrannised in their own home. In short, prime Supernanny material.

The pattern of behaviour that Tadpole and I found ourselves locked into this weekend went something like this:

“Right, let’s get your shoes on, we are going for a walk,” I said brightly, looking forward to escaping out into the fresh air, as the white walls of my apartment were starting to close in on me.

“No!” whined Tadpole, stubbornly, her voice at that particular pitch which causes me to bristle, instantly.

“Okay then”, I forced myself to say in a soft, level voice, let’s stay in. “Never mind, I’m sure I’ve got something better to do than take you to play on the slide…”

I turn, start walking away.

“Noooo! I want to go!” she screams, at full volume, clawing at my legs. (Note to self: must cut her fingernails.)

“Well, let me put your shoes on then!” I say, slightly less calmly.

“Nooo!!!! Don’t want to put my shoes on!”

…

We had about twenty such futile “discussions” in the space of one weekend. Some ended in tears (hers, and mine). One with a smacked bottom (which I then spent the rest of the weekend beating myself up about). The same argument played out, over and over; ever decreasing circles of pointless conflict.

The lowest point of the weekend was Tadpole’s Sunday afternoon nap. We had just returned from a walk in the park and she was visibly tired when I zipped her into her sleeping bag and kissed her protesting cheek. I retreated to my room, pulling the door to, so as not to hear her inevitable whining, and watched a couple of episodes of The OC (current painkiller of choice) on my computer.

An hour and a half later, I heard the familiar woke-up call from Tadpole’s bedroom: “MummyMummyMummy! Mum-MY! MUMMY! I awake now!” I sighed, and pushed her door open. It seemed strangely heavy to my reluctant arms.

Once I had taken in the sorry sight before my eyes, I inadvertently whimpered.

In the dim light of the shuttered bedroom, I could make out Tadpole, cheeks flushed, eyes wild with self-induced sleep deprivation, kneeling on her bed, surrounded by the entire contents of her Mr Men boxed set. She must have pulled this down from its habitual home atop the fireplace by balancing precariously on the edge of her bed, swaying unsteadily in the confines of her sleeping bag, as I have repeatedly asked her not to do, for fear of injury. The books were strewn all around her on the bed, and spilled onto the floor in all directions.

But there was something else amiss here: a dusting of something white (snow? feathers?) covering Tadpole’s hair, clothes, bed and freshly hoovered rug, which I couldn’t, at first, identify. I took a couple of steps into the room, and saw exhibit A: one Miffy tissue box, discarded by the end of the bed. Empty.

So, instead of taking her nap, something had possessed my daughter to slowly, patiently, and very quietly shred an entire box of patterned tissues (a present from grandma) into a thousand tiny pink and white flakes. To sprinkle the resulting confetti all around her.

My shoulders slumped in defeat. I had no rage left in me, only despair. I fetched the waste paper basket from my bedroom, placed it quietly by her bed and staged a tactical withdrawal.

Some time later, I heard the pattering of little feet. Tadpole appeared, skinny legs protruding endearingly from her pull-up nappy. She was brandishing a favourite teddy.

“It’s for you mummy. Be smile!” she said, cautiously.

I managed a weak approximation of a smile, which doubtless looked more like a grimace, and went to fetch the hoover. Outmanoeuvred, once again.

A Tadpole is for life, not just for Christmas.

I lurch around the apartment impatiently, attempting to locate Tadpole’s striped woolly hat, one arm inside a coatsleeve, the other engaged in hastily ramming a piece of buttered toast into my mouth. The hat, a present from Tadpole’s aunt, is nowhere to be found.

“Do you remember where you put your noddy hat?” I enquire, in desperation. Just occasionally this tactic does work, and Tadpole will reply “in my bedroom” in a tone which somehow manages to convey both incredulity (at the fact I have managed to overlook something so patently obvious) and a world weary tone of resignation (can mummy really be that dim?) Not so this time. She looks at me blankly, then turns back to her jigsaw.

I try to picture the previous day’s homecoming, rewinding the images in my head until I arrive at the relevant chapter. Come to think of it, I distinctly remember standing in front of the lift holding two bags and a Christmas tree, yelling “No, I can’t hold your hat. If you want to take it off, you hold it! Mummy has all these things to carry already!”

And now it’s missing. So clearly it was dropped on the entrance hall floor in a fit of Tadpole pique, left inside the lift, or abandoned on the carpeted landing outside our front door. Which means that either some well-meaning soul has found it and stuffed it in our letterbox, or someone a little less charitable has thrown it in the communal dustbin. Being a pessimist by nature, I assume it has gone for good and act accordingly.

An alternative hat is sourced, which is was once white, and has built in ear flaps and a strip which fastens under the chin with velcro. Now rather a tight fit, it was Tadpole’s preferred garment of winter 2004.

I decide to use this opportunity to teach Tadpole Something Important. Even if the article I read on toddler taming yesterday did say that there is little or no point in chastising children of that age about events which happened more than ten minutes ago.

Adopting my most earnest tone, I begin my lecture. “Mummy doesn’t have your noddy hat any more, because you dropped it outside when we came home yesterday. You’ll have to wear this one instead. It’s a pity, because that hat was lovely, and it was a present from Auntie S.”

My daughter eyes me gravely and nods her head. “Yes, I did drop it mummy. Is gone now.” Disturbingly, however, she shows not a shred of remorse.

“Mummy’s a bit sad,” I continue, labouring my point in the hope of getting some sort of emotional response, “because mummy asked you to carry it and you were naughty. You left it on the floor.”

Tadpole nods again, unperturbed.

Taking the ersatz-hat from my hands, my daughter says calmly “never mind mummy. I wear this one. This one very nice.” She puts it on her head and giggles as I move to fasten the velcro under her chin. “Look mummy, the hat has a beard, just like Father Christmas!”

A smile twitches at the corner of my mouth, threatening to take over, but I manage to quell it and soldier on, regardless. “It’s still a shame about that stripey hat. Mummy liked the stripey hat.”

I am starting to sound like a broken record. As repetitive as a toddler.

“Not be sad mummy. It doesn’t matter. We can buy another one, in the shop,” Tadpole explains, patiently.

If I had a white flag, I’d be waving it right about now.

We take the lift down to the ground floor, where we are greeted by the sight of a striped hat, which someone has thoughfully stowed above the battery of letterboxes.

Saying nothing, I stuff it into my letterbox when Tadpole isn’t looking, and we set off for the childminder’s.

When we were about halfway home, pushing the Christmas tree in front of us in Tadpole’s Maclaren buggy, I realised that the girl at the florist’s hadn’t actually given me the type I’d asked for. Mine had fat, luxurious, bottle brush type foliage, whereas this one, admittedly partially hidden by a net body stocking, was thin and sparse looking. Yet again, my attention had been diverted by a toddler at a crucial juncture in the transaction. Shopkeepers must see me and Tadpole coming and rub their hands together in gleeful anticipation. There is more than one way to shortchange a distracted mother.

I sighed, genuinely disappointed, but it was too late now, we had already covered 500 m at a snail’s Tadpole’s pace, and it was too late, too cold and too dark to contemplate retracing our steps and argue about branch girth and foliage in French.

Once we had got ourselves and our needle-shedding friend up to the fifth floor apartment we call home, I clambered up the stepladder to retrieve the decorations from their lofty place of hibernation. Luckily they were still there, intact, aside from the fairy lights, of which, predictably, only half still worked. I have not so fond memories of that fateful Christmas when the bag of decorations could not be found, no matter where Mr Frog and I hunted. I had to concede, bashfully, that the bag must have been an accidental casualty of my passion for “decluttering”. Not a mistake you would want to make more than once. Christmas decorations are supposed to be amassed over a long period of time, not purchased all at once for a price equivalent to the GDP of a third world country.

The tree positioned on the wicker chest I use for the storage of spirits (of the alcoholic variety), after careful removal of a few choice bottles which I suspect I will be needing in the interim, I opened up the decoration bag and showed Tadpole the glittering bounty within.

I had imagined this scene in my head, ever since Tadpole’s first breathless exclamation of appreciation as we passed the mairie with its curtain of white lights and mammoth twin sapins. Tadpole and mummy, bathed in the soft light of a non-malfunctioning garland of Habitat lights, in fuzzy soft focus, with a soundtrack of carol singers warbling on the stereo. A candidate for Tadpole’s First Memory, perhaps?

What my shiny, feel good fantasy hadn’t quite accounted for were the hazards of the safety pins and bent paperclips I use to hang the various baubles and stars up. Nor had I actually thought through the implications of Tadpole using eggshell thin baubles as juggling balls, or squeezing them tightly in her little palms.

My best laid plans flew swiftly out of the window, as I shrieked anxiously “No! Not like that, careful!” and “Don’t touch that! It’s really sharp! You’ll get a bobo!”

Upon which Tadpole rapidly lost interest in the whole enterprise and started colouring her teletubbies’ magazine instead, tongue protruding in concentration.

I have to say that as I decorated the tree, alone, I wasn’t exactly assailed by a feeling of déjà vu.

We approach the mairie at top speed, then grind to an sudden halt in the middle of the cobbled square in front of the main entrance. I realise I am going to be late for work, again, but pausing to show Tadpole Something Interesting is much more important than accurate timekeeping, in my opinion. And my annual evaluation was last week.

“Look! Those men are putting some big Christmas trees up over there!”

Tadpole turns to stare in the wrong direction. She hasn’t yet grasped the concept of looking to see what my finger is actually pointing towards.

“Over there, near the clock,” I prompt, impatiently.

“Ooh! Is VERY BIG that Christmas tree!” she exclaims, suitably excited.

“Soon, the men will put lights on the trees, and decorations, and it will be really pretty,” I explain. “I think they’ll probably turn the lights on on Thursday.”

What a wonderful thing it is to live in a country where the run up to Christmas only starts on December 1st, I think to myself. Overpriced Christmas trees are only just going on sale in the local florist’s, and so far I haven’t been subjected to a single Christmas song while shopping in Monoprix.

“And Père Noël will put some presents there for [Tadpole],” my daughter continues, clearly having taken to heart the lesson I taught her only yesterday using our newly purchased Happyland Christmas Set, pictured above.

“Yes, but only if you’re a very good girl,” I clarify. “If you’re a naughty girl, you’ll get …” I pause, for dramatic effect, to let her finish my sentence.

“No presents!”

I think I’m starting to see the logic behind the whole Father Christmas myth, now that Tadpole is old enough to understand it. There is seemingly unlimited mileage to be had out of The Christmas Threat. I wonder how many times between now and December 25th I will catch myself saying “don’t be naughty, Father Christmas is watching you!”

The only flaw in my dastardly plan is my patent inability to actually purchase any presents without giving in to a sudden and overwhelming urge to let Tadpole have them immediately. So, not only will there be no presents under the Christmas tree come D-day if my irresponsible behaviour continues, but Tadpole won’t actually care about The Christmas threat because every single day of the past week has been Christmas as far as she is concerned.

Must try harder.

Buy Tadpole stuff!

When my Lover is not with me, I sleep fitfully, work worries flitting around my head, like moths around a lightbulb. When I do manage to sleep, I migrate onto his pillows, which are impregnated with the scent of his skin, unconsciously seeking the comfort of a warm shoulder.

I wake and the winter moonlight gives no clue as to the hour. It could be hours or minutes before the alarm sounds. Reluctant to rouse myself further to squint at my watch, I lie wide awake nevertheless, mildly paranoid, as always, that I’m going to be late, that the alarm will not work at all.

Familiar knots tighten in my stomach as my mind predictably turns to the office. Will it be a neutral day, or a stormy one? Weather map symbols swim before my eyes. Where once every day was dry with light cloud and sunny intervals, nowadays there are, at best, ominous grey clouds gathering; at worst, a violent storm.

After what seems like an eternity, electronic beeps signal 6.45 am. I switch on the bedside light, ease my glasses onto my nose, and try to will my body out from under the heavy, duck down duvet. Five minutes pass, then ten. Why, oh why does a bed always feel at least ten times more comfortable when it is time to leave it?

If I strain my ears, I can hear a gentle, regular snoring coming from Tadpole’s room along the hallway. She’s as reluctant as I to wake in the winter, and invariably turns to face the wall, her sleepy, plaintive voice protesting “No mummy! I can’t get up. I’m tired!”

Today is no different. Softly I repeat her name until she stirs; the pattern of her breathing subtly changes. Curling into a foetal ball, she emits a little moan. I begin to pull on my work clothes, knowing that she will come around, in time.

Sure enough, when my head emerges from a polo neck jumper, I see sparkling blue eyes looking at me mischievously over the top of a teddy bear.

“I peeping mummy!” she giggles, as she raises herself up on one elbow.

I smile, feeling one of the knots loosening, unravelling, in my stomach.

Gathering the sleeping bag sheathed Tadpole into my arms, I sink into the nearby sofa, my face buried in her neck. Small, soothing fingers caress my neck and run themselves through my dishevelled hair. She pulls herself upright, eyes close to mine, the tips of our noses touching. Suddenly animated, she exclaims:

“Go outside and make some clouds?”

I see us in my mind’s eye, yesterday morning, walking alongside the park, our warm breath visible in the frosty air. Tadpole’s eyes were wide with wonder, and she beseeched me “souffle mummy, souffle!” over and over again. Simple things which I take for granted take on new meaning when I can show them to Tadpole for the very first time.

Slowly, in the presence of my daughter, office stress recedes into insignificance. From our exchanges I draw the strength to face my day.

I had been dreading Tadpole’s appointment with the optician ever since the day I scheduled it, back in September.

Pyschologically scarred by our previous visit, during which I suggested to the optician that perhaps a kiddy straitjacket might be a worthwhile investment, I couldn’t help fearing the worst.

Has anyone out there ever tried administering eye drops to an energetic twelve month old? It wasn’t the first set of drops which posed a problem, although they did provoke an ear splitting squeal which was probably heard by every resident of the 20th arrondissement.

But the fun really started when I went back for a second attempt. And a third. And fourth. At the merest glimpse of the eyedropper, Tadpole screamed and clamped her eyes tightly shut. With one hand holding the pipette, the other attempting to pin her wildly gesticulating arms to her chest, a third hand was required to perform the prising open of Tadpole’s eyelids. But, being anatomically quite unadventurous, I sadly do not possess a third hand. In despearation, I called for backup, and left a frantic, expletive-riddled message on Mr Frog’s mobile phone messagerie. To no avail. Reinforcements were not forthcoming.

Forty minutes of toddler-wrestling later, one of Tadpole’s pupils was greatly enlarged (her eye not dissimilar to my own in a favourite photo entitled “petite outside the dance tent, Glastonbury Festival, 1995″ in which my irises do not appear to exist), whilst the other remained a stubborn little dot. Eyedrops, mingled with tears, ran into Tadpole’s ears and hair, and dribbled down her clothes. Her protesting face was the colour of a beetroot. At my wits’ end, I vowed never again to brave the optician’s alone.

Which brings us to Saturday morning, 8.50am. Petite and Tadpole alight from a number 26 bus at the junction of rue des Pyrénées and rue de Bagnolet, armed with an impressive artillery of bribes (madeleines with chocolate chips, colouring book and felt tip pens, favourite dolly). We scurry past the Flèche d’Or, which I glance at wistfully (petite’s social life – R.I.P.), and arrive at the cobbled rue St Blaise, home of the children’s ophtalmologue.

Tadpole fiddles dubiously with the various grubby looking, paleolithic toys which populate the waiting area; I wrestle with my own sense of foreboding. A door opens, and the ophtalmo appears.

“Tadpole Anglaise?”

“Oui, c’est ma fille.”

“Et quel âge a-t-elle?”

I hastily count on my fingers. “Er, … 29 months.”

“Right, come on in!”

My jaw drops. “We don’t have to do the eye drops first?”

“No, she’s old enough to do an eye test this time…”

Brimming over with gratitude, I resist an overwhelming urge to throw my arms around the optician lady.

Ten minutes later, we are free to go, as Tadpole has successfully “read” the test chart on the wall, with only two minor hesitations, and one rather perplexing moment where the optician points at a picture of a flower, and Tadpole cries:

“hélicoptère!”

In the bus on the way home, I discreetly finger the untouched chocolate chip madeleines in my bag, with a smile of anticipation.

“We’re going to see lights flying in the sky. Very noisy lights, that go whizz! and weee! and BANG!”

“BANG!” repeats Tadpole, waving her arms enthusiastically and managing to elbow me in the chin in the process.

I realise that it is not easy to describe fireworks to a two year old without performing a variety of sound effects, and regret the fact that I didn’t choose to do so in the privacy of my own home.

Painfully aware of the taxi driver eying me incredulously in the rear view mirror, I decide an explanation might be in order, for his benefit.

“Mummy calls the light fireworks, in English. And in French they are called feu d’artifice,” I say, in my best educator’s voice.

“Feu n’artifice! Feu n’artifice!” shrieks the resident parrott.

I thank my lucky stars that this year Tadpole is too young for an explanation of why the effigy of a man called Mr Fawkes is being burned, somewhat barbarically, on a bonfire.

We alight at the British Embassy and make our way to the garden, where the fun and festivities are to take place; I put down my mulled wine and busy myself sending a text message to the very kind reader/embassy employee who invited Tadpole and I to the annual bonfire party, to announce our arrival.

Small children race across the lawn in the semi-darkness, squealing with excitement at being allowed to stay up after bedtime. Tadpole, almost invisible in her black coat, proves almost impossible to keep track of. My insistent pleas to “stay near mummy” fall on deaf ears, and every few minutes I am forced to interrupt my conversation and set off in search of my errant daughter. To think that I used to take for granted the fact that I could look someone in the eye while having a conversation and actually finish my sentences. Those days are, sadly, long gone.

Only bribery in the form of unhealthy foodstuffs provides Tadpole with an incentive to spend a little time with mummy, and I am pathetically grateful to the kind ladies on the barbecue stall for their array of toddler taming quavers, hot dogs and curly wurlies.

When the firework display begins, Tadpole darts over to the mesh fence which has been used to section off the onlookers from the bonfire, and throws her head back, roaring with delighted, slightly deranged sounding laughter. The child is most definitely not afraid. I drop to her level and we make the obligatory “ooh” and “aah” sounds in unison.

For the remainder of the weekend, whenever my daughter talks about the fireworks (approximately once every hour), there is a frightening glint in her eyes, which I have only seen once before (when my mother in law evoked her weekly trips to the town casino).

I try to convince myself that by attending the display, I have not unwittingly sown the seeds of pyromania.

At first, I agonised over how Tadpole would react to the fact that not only did daddy now live across the road, but that there was also a new man in my life.

I was adamant that he couldn’t come to stay in the flat I used to share with Mr Frog, sleep on what had, until recently, been his side of the the bed, on what my daughter still refers to as “daddy’s pillow”. (Although the pillows, mattress and all of the bedding is, in fact, symbolically new.) So, for the first few months we visited Rennes, Tadpole and I, and much as I wanted to, I didn’t invite Lover to visit me in Paris unless Tadpole was away.

I have a vivid memory of our first journey to Rennes together, Tadpole giggling at her reflection in my powder compact, while I hastily applied a little make up, anxious to look my best when we stepped off the train. My daughter, desperate to wear some lip gloss “just like mummy”, had to be fobbed off with lip salve, and was allowed to “help mummy” by dragging a brush, somewhat painfully, through my hair.

Later that weekend, glancing back at my daughter, who was walking hand in hand with one of Lover’s girls and chattering happily, I realised that although this new relationship might seem complicated on paper, it didn’t have to be in practice. And when Tadpole shrieked with delight, seated high above me on Lover’s broad shoulders, I knew that although he would never replace her daddy, she had found a new friend.

Yesterday I reflected on how much things have changed, since that weekend in June. Nowadays, Lover comes to stay in Paris for a week or two at a time, and is a semi-permanent fixture in the anglaise household. When we arrive home in the evenings, Tadpole knocks insistently on the front door, calling his name over and over, until he opens it just a chink, and peeps through the gap. Every day the same routine; every day the same delighted giggles from Tadpole. He is entitled to a kiss and a cuddle at bedtime once the stories have been read. Futile attempts have been made by Tadpole to enlist his support against me when my daughter and I are in conflict over a plate of untouched dinner. Luckily, he is wise enough to take a step back in situations like these, refusing to take sides or to allow the resident manipulator to get her own way by playing us off against each other.

Occasionally Tadpole shows her possessive streak and becomes annoyed at the fact that she is not receiving my undiluted attention every single second of the day. “That’s MY mummy!” she shouted petulantly, eyebrows furrowed, when she arrived home after a weekend with Mr Frog and the In Laws, indignant at being asked to share.

Tonight Tadpole and I will return to an empty flat, the lights out, the laptop conspicuously absent from my dining table. Tadpole will finally have me all to herself, and yet I know that the first thing she will say to me when I pick her up from the childminder’s will be:

“Go see Jim?”

I pace the apartment impatiently, already wearing my shoes and coat, noting that having adjusted the clocks on Sunday, not a single one displays the correct time, or agrees with any of the others.

Regardless of which one I choose to believe, Mr Frog is still, undeniably, late.

Finally, I hear the lift jerk to a juddering halt, and the voice of a chattering Tadpole within. Opening the front door, I crouch down to Tadpole-level, my heart catching in my throat.

I haven’t seen my daughter since Saturday morning.

Mr Frog pushes open the door of the lift, and a golden haired bundle hurtles into my outstretched arms, shouting “Maman MaMAN MAMAN!” I bury my nose in her curls, inhaling her scent, and hold her to me a little too tightly, reluctant to set her free.

So overjoyed am I to see her that I am willing to overlook the fact that she has come back all French. I resist the usual impulse to repeat her French words in English. Just this once.

There are new clothes in her bag, from mamie and papy, explains a slightly sheepish Mr Frog, and he launches into an anecdote from the weekend, but sadly there is no time to linger and chat, as I am now running late for the childminder’s.

So, in the absence of Mr Frog’s report, I try to extract some information from Tadpole on the way, as I strain to push the buggy through the soggy leaves strewn several centimetres deep across the pavement.

“So, what have you been doing at mamie and papy’s house?” I enquire.

Tadpole turns and replies, somewhat cryptically, “Babouche! Nicolas! Noddy!”

“Nicolas? Who’s Nicholas” I wonder, as I happen to know that Babouche is a stuffed monkey and Noddy undoubtedly refers to her DVD of the new, inferior, animated version.

“It’s a baby!” Tadpole replies. I am none the wiser, as I don’t know of anyone with a son called Nicolas. I suspect it may be a doll, but can’t be certain.

I try a change of tack. “Did you ride your bike?”

“Oui!”

“Did you draw some pictures?”

“Oui!”

“What did you draw?”

“Tadpole… and mummy. And a car.” Sounds plausible. As long as I wasn’t driving the car.

“What did you have for your dinner?”

“Pasta!” Either Tadpole never eats anything else, or this is her stock response when she can’t remember. It’s difficult to tell.

I decide that an email to Mr Frog will probably be more effective, as my daughter is clearly still rather hazy about what the word “yesterday” means, and has the memory of a goldfish. Either that or my interrogation techniques are woefully inadequate.

So, instead, we turn our attention to spotting spiders’ webs on the park railings and singing “Incey Wincey ‘Pider”.

We are back in our little routine, where we belong, the weekend apart already forgotten.

I arrive at the park, the stresses of the office and rush hour metro suddenly falling away as I catch sight of Tadpole sitting with her playmates on the grass. I cut across the lawn, my kitten heels sinking deep into the damp soil. The childminder points, “regarde qui est là !”, and Tadpole turns around with an expectant smile. I am already grinning from ear to ear. When I see her after spending a day or more apart, my heart never fails to skip a beat.

Suddenly, Tadpole’s face falls.

“No! I want papa!” she cries, stubbornly. And turns her back to me, arms folded.

I bite my lip but continue smiling, determined not to take her reaction to heart, even if it does smart, like a slap in the face.

Mr Frog had picked Tadpole up the previous evening, and dropped her off this morning. That she might have got her wires crossed about who was coming to collect her this evening is perfectly understandable.

I manage to coax Tadpole into the pushchair, using the effective combination of the sternest voice I can muster and the promise of chocolate at some unspecified time in the future if she complies, and we make our way home.

Half an hour later, I am pottering in the kitchen, making fish finger sandwiches with tomato ketchup (for myself) and soft cheese sandwiches (for Tadpole), when I hear footsteps in the hallway. My daughter appears. She has managed to put her shoes back on, albeit on the wrong feet, and has slung her miffy bag (containing a book, her water cup, two cars and a plastic harmonica) over her shoulder.

“Bye bye mummy, I ready to go to daddy’s house,” she says, with a wave. She motions to the locked front door: “ouvre mummy! Faut ouvrir maintenant!”

I sigh and shake my head, reaching for the telephone. After recounting the evening’s events to Mr Frog, who is tickled pink to be so popular with his little daddy’s girl, I pass Tadpole the receiver. A short, stilted conversation ensues, in which she describes the contents of her bag (still convinced, apparently, that the person at the other end of the line can see as well as hear), then she hands the phone back with a cheerful “à demain, daddy!”

An acrid smell assails my nostrils and I realise that in the process of placating my daughter, I have burnt my dinner.

The sacrifices one must make for one’s children are seemingly boundless.

As we crossed the park, Tadpole singing “Bla Bla Black Sheep” at the top of her lungs, I brought the pushchair to an abrupt halt, struck with the sudden realisation that my keys were in the pocket of my jacket. The very same jacket which was hanging in the cupboard at work, blissfully unaware of my predicament.

Merde.

For once, my little-used mobile phone was charged. I hastily called Mr Frog, who is in possession of a spare set of keys to our former home. He answered on the first ring.

“J’ai fait une énorme connerie,” I wailed. “My boss was stressing me out when I left work, and I’ve gone and left my jacket at the office with my keys in. Is there any way you could come and let us in with your set?”

The alternative would have been a forty minute round trip to where I work on the métro, or in a taxi, with Tadpole, the pushchair, and the bulky bags of shopping I was carrying. Possible in theory, but braving rush hour with a child is not for the faint hearted.

Thankfully, Mr Frog was able to ride valiantly to our rescue on his gleaming white Vespa. I thanked him profusely, and cast around for ideas. How best to entertain Tadpole for the forty minutes prior to his arrival? It was a mild evening, so we could have idled in the park for a while, but we had already left the play area far behind us, and I was mindful of the fact that it would be awkward to keep an eye on both Tadpole and my bags.

Plus, all I really wanted at that precise moment was a nice cold beer and a sit down.

Bad mummy.

Half an hour later, when Mr Frog arrived, Tadpole and I were seated outside our local café in a leafy, cobbled square. I was draining the dregs of my pression, while Tadpole applied herself to positioning stickers on the pages of a hastily purchased kiddy magazine, tongue protruding from between her milk teeth in concentration.

She looked up, and her expression changed from absorbed to overjoyed in the blink of an eye. The sticker book fell to the floor, forgotten.

“Daddy DA-ddy DADDY DADDY!” she cried, breaking into a fit of ecstatic giggles.

I looked from Tadpole to Mr Frog and back again, tears threatening to well up. For a moment I felt overwhelming remorse. What a cruel, heartless, selfish bitch I was to have left him, separating father and daughter. The feeling lasted only a second, because I know that Tadpole and Mr Frog are closer now than they ever were before, the result of long evenings and weekends spent en tête à tête since our separation.

Mr Frog chaperoned us home, explaining to Tadpole that he would pick her up on Wednesday from the childminder’s and take her back to “daddy’s house”. Tadpole nodded, apparently satisfied with this arrangement, and waved goodbye. Mr Frog kissed me gently on the cheek and went on his way.

Our family unit may have splintered apart, but I can’t help thinking we are in pretty good shape.

I feel my hackles rising. Having paid € 21 in entrance fees for the bioparents and I to take Tadpole to the mini-zoo in the Jardin des Plantes, my ungrateful child is not paying the animals any attention whatsoever. And this after chanting “go see the animals!” at least seventy four times during the métro journey to Gare d’Austerlitz.

Granted, the antelopes and wallabies are not very inspiring, lolling listlessly in the grass, not even twitching so much as an ear in our direction. And there are only so many different breeds of owl that one can look at, silently roosting in their cages, without having to stifle a yawn.

Nonetheless it is galling to see that Tadpole is more interested in giving dolly (Tico l’Ecureuil) a ride in her pushchair.

“Look over there!” I cry, in the patronising, over enthusiastic tones of a children’s television presenter, attempting vainly to draw her gaze towards a couple of stampeding ostriches who have just been let back into their enclosure, after being mucked out. “What big birds! Aren’t they funny?”

“Non mummy! I pushing the pushchair!”

My shoulders sag. I decide it is futile to try and show or teach Tadpole anything, and instead we just stroll around the menagerie, enjoying the warm sunshine.

The reptile house is more entertaining, not least because we have to leave the pushchair outside the front door. Tadpole, Tico and I marvel at the snakes, baby lizards, crocodiles, turtles and tortoises. The giant tortoises are a resounding success, reminding Tadpole of the Miffy postcard on her bedroom door. I explain, patiently, that it won’t be possible to ride on the tortoise’s back, regardless of what Miffy gets up to in “Miffy at the zoo”, and I manage to head off a tearful temper tantrum by pulling a banana out of my bag to divert her attention.

Fed up of the animal kingdom, we head up to rue Mouffetard to grab some lunch. The sky is a unlikely shade of azure for the month of October, and as I push Tadpole along the cobbled street lined with stalls selling ripe cheeses and all manner of rustic looking farm produce, manoeuvering past a man and woman who are doing a slow dance in the street accompanied by guitar music outside the café where Juliette Binoche was filmed by Kieslowski in Three Colours Blue, I feel a little stirring of my long dormant love for this city I live in.

That night, I manage to cajole Tadpole into eating a few leaves of iceberg lettuce, “just like the tortoises”.

All in all, it wasn’t such a bad day.

The journey to the airport had been stressful enough, but apparently the gods were not smiling on me last Saturday.

Tadpole, Lover and I were heading to England to visit my best friend and her family. I had been looking forward to this trip for months, my enthusiasm only slightly dampened by the fact that I had woken up that morning only to find that I had almost entirely lost my voice. When I opened my mouth, either a whisper or a squawk came forth. Thankfully, even if I did sound like a cross between Frank Butcher and Dot Cotton, I wasn’t in any pain. But it was hardly an ideal state of affairs, neither for catching up with a friend over a few beers, nor for keeping a willful two year old in check.

First, the bus which would ferry us to Gare du Nord was a long time coming. Second, the ticket vending machines at the station were all either out of order, or preceded by lengthy queues of tourists, many of whom didn’t seem to be able to get them to function, or who went through the whole transaction, only to find that their foreign credit card would not be accepted. Last, but not least, the airport bound RER train which we leapt into just as the doors slammed closed turned out to be a slow train, stopping at every single suburban town between Paris and Charles de Gaulle airport. I started to fear that we wouldn’t be going anywhere, wondering how I would break the news to my friend.

I had an epiphany on that train: on balance, a € 40 taxi fare is a small price to pay for the preservation of my sanity. Austerity budget or no.

We finally checked in just in the nick of time, cleared customs and joined the queue for the baggage scanners and metal detectors.

Now, I know that the people scanning luggage have an important job to do. What I don’t understand is why the French security staff are so much more difficult and unpleasant to deal with than their English counterparts.

I have not-so-fond memories of setting off the metal detector in France while heavily pregnant and being asked to remove my shoes.

“My shoes? I can’t even reach my shoes! It’s my belt buckle which set it off, can’t I just take the belt off?” I said, smiling persuasively. When it became apparent that I was now expected to remove both: “I don’t suppose you have a chair I could sit on?”

“Non.”

Not even a, “Non, je suis désolée Madame”. Just “no”.

Luckily, Mr Frog was on hand to perform the unzipping of the boots, whilst I leaned against a wall, indignantly.

When travelling with a small child and a pushchair, I have encountered similar unhelpfulness on French soil. In England, a member of staff pushes Tadpole through the detector, still wearing her coat and securely strapped in. My permission is sought to search the buggy, and someone half heartedly rummages around, while Tadpole chatters away, turning on the charm.

In France, on the other hand, a slightly less helpful policy is in operation. Tadpole must be released from the pushchair, her coat removed, and the pushchair folded and fed through the scanner along with my bag and coat. On those occasions where I have travelled alone with her, this has been horribly problematic. When Tadpole was too young to walk, I had to enlist the help of a surly and reluctant looking member of staff to hold my baby while I folded the pushchair. Since she learned how to walk (and indeed run), the challenge has always been to stop her absconding. Two hands is never enough.

Sure enough, on Saturday we got the works. No smiles, no help. Tadpole trotted gaily through the metal detector on her own, ahead of me, as instructed. No beep. Mummy and Lover went through immediately after her, and both beeped. I was asked to remove my belt (but thankfully not my trainers) and with a weary “ah là là “, I retraced my steps and went through again. Without beeping, this time. Assuming that a member of staff had been keeping an eye on my daughter.

I looked around.

BLIND PANIC.

WHERE WAS MY CHILD?

Tadpole’s life flashed before my eyes as a block of ice slid down my spine. I tried to call her name, but only managed a pathetic squeak. My eyes scanned the busy terminal building, not really processing what I saw, too panicked to be of any use to me. This was every mother’s worst nightmare. What had I done? How could I have taken my eyes off her, even for a second?

“Oh my god, where is my daughter?” I yelled. Unfortunately, the words came out as a stage whisper. Not even one head was turned.

Lover, who is considerably taller and more level-headed than I, scanned the building and pointed to tiny figure, receding into the distance, far away in the duty free shop.

That’s my daughter. Whenever she sees a window of opportunity, she takes it. And disappears. The lure of the gaudy colours in the brightly lit shop? Of cigarettes and alcohol? Who knows what goes through her tiny little head.

We bellowed her name (or rather Lover did, while I bleated) and Tadpole turned and started running towards me. He fetched our belongings as I dropped to my knees and held her close to me in a vice like grip.

As we made our way over to the gate, tears rolled down my cheeks. Just for a second, I had glimpsed what life without Tadpole would be like.

And it was indescribably bleak.

Despite the fact that I am experiencing an unpleasantly busy Friday afternoon at work, I still find time to type a hasty reply to Mr Frog’s innocent sounding email about arrangements for the weekend. I let him know where Tadpole’s overnight bag is, and add that yes, I will indeed be in Paris myself.

It doesn’t occur to me that something is amiss, and that his second question is, in fact, a loaded one.

A couple of hours later, the penny drops when I read his next email, in which he tells me that due to a meeting being rescheduled at the last minute, he will not be able to pick up Tadpole at 6.30pm at the childminder’s house. Can I please do it? He is not able to say at this stage what time he will be able to come by and pick her up. Or indeed whether he will make it before bedtime. He may even have to collect Tadpole the following morning instead.

I groan out loud, then look furtively around the office to see if anyone heard me. My first lie in since September 4th is in hanging in the balance. And instead of being able to adjourn to the bar with my colleagues for a beer, or do a spot of impromptu shopping, I will now have to race home, just as I do every other night of the week and collect our disappointed daughter. Field her questions about where daddy is. Cook her dinner. Bath her. Read stories and put her to bed. All the while looking at the clock and cursing Mr Frog under my breath, wondering whether at some point he will deign to phone, or to show up and take over.

We may not be together any more, but he still has the ability to back me into a corner and make me shake with that familiar mixture of anger and resentment.

I call him at work. What, I ask, would he have done had I been away? An embarrassed silence. I tell him that whether I am in Paris this weekend or not should be irrelevant: Tadpole is his responsibility on the days we have agreed. She is more important than any meeting. And I am not some sort of glorified babysitter who can take over at a moment’s notice whenever it suits him.

He won’t budge: “I can’t pick her up. I’m sorry. I need you to do this for me. We’ll talk about it later…”

I swear in a low voice, conscious that my boss’s door is ajar. “J’avais des projets pour ce soir. Tu es en train de chier dessus. Ton boulot passe avant tout. Rien n’a changé. Tu me deçois, mais pire encore, notre fille t’attends. Je lui dirai quoi?”

I’m so upset now that I can barely string two coherent words together. But the fact of the matter is, I don’t feel able to refuse him outright. How can I turn my back on my daughter and let Mr Frog trample all over our good relationship with the childminder (who doesn’t do overtime). He knows I’ll give in. What choice do I have?

“Next time, the answer will be no. And I don’t care what the question is,” I say, then slam down the receiver, noticing for the first time the rain falling heavily outside my window.

With a sinking feeling I remember that my waterproof poncho is at home, and not stashed in the basket under the pushchair as it usually is. I took it out this morning. I wasn’t supposed to need it.

I groan again, and this time, I don’t care who hears me.

Tadpole and I get a simultaneous attack of the giggles, strands of spaghetti drooping perilously from our mouths, some sticking to our chins. I like the French phrase for this a lot: un fou rire. Mad laughter.

Catching Tadpole’s eye, I have to suppress a sudden, overwhelming urge to sweep her out of the high chair and into my arms, raining kisses down on her reluctant, curly head. Being a mother sometimes means experiencing such ferocious urges; they literally take my breath away.

Unfortunately Tadpole is not a very demonstratively affectionate child, and doesn’t take kindly to being grabbed and forcibly hugged. It is wiser to wait until she comes to me of her own accord. Especially this close to bedtime, when my toddler appears to suffer from some form of schizophrenia. One minute all is well with the world, the next she is crying theatrical tears and not even she really knows the reason why.

A few minutes later, she zooms into the kitchen on her plastic car, an unbuttered piece of scone in her hand.

“What you doing mummy?” she asks with a frown, craning her neck to look up at the worktop, where I have been caught in the act, liberally spreading butter, raspberry jam and crème fraîche onto my piece of scone with the back of a teaspoon, while waiting for the kettle to boil.

“Mummy’s putting some jam on her scone,” I reply, waving it under her nose, knowing full well that Tadpole will add this to her list of falsely composed compound nouns: strap-on, shoes-on, socks-on, jam-on.

And no, I’m not sure why I talk in the third person to Tadpole either.

“I want jam-on on my scone” she says, eyeing the jar.

“You want some jam?” I repeat, knowing full well that she doesn’t really. She refused to have anything on it the day before, and didn’t even deign to taste mine.

“Jam-on!”

Wearily: “OK, give it to me, and I’ll put some on for you,”

“No!”

Petulantly: “Well don’t have any then!”

“Jam-on!”

I am getting a bit cross. It is 8.00 pm. I have been at work all day. I arrived home with Tadpole at 7.00pm and the preservation of my sanity depends on her being in bed in half an hour. Clearly she has just crossed that invisible line and gone over to the dark side where logic no longer applies and high pitched screaming can erupt at any moment, without due cause or prior warning.

I snatch the scone from her grasp and dab some jam on it, offering it back to her with a triumphant “There!”

“NNNOOOOOOOO!” she screams.

The neighbours probably think I am torturing Tico the dolly.

She makes as if to drop the scone face down on the kitchen floor, so I grab it, scrape off the jam, hold it out to her again.

“NNNNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

The neighbours probably think I am torturing Tadpole. I wonder idly what the equivalent of Childline is in France.

Something inside me snaps. It’s official: Mummy has now crossed over to the dark side to join her daughter.

I eat the scone.

The screaming starts in earnest.

Only eight months until she turns three. I think I may need medication if I’m to make it that far.

I’m afraid I haven’t got around to posting today, so instead I leave you to guess which of the “people” depicted on this delightful drawing by Tadpole (aged 2 yrs and 3 months) is supposed to be yours truly.

“GOT TO FIND SOME CAKE!” shouts Tadpole, at the top of her lungs, to no-one in particular. She has got into the habit of repeating everything I say, turning the words over in her mouth so see how they sound.

As a result, I have to exercise extreme caution when we are out and about. No more thinking aloud along the lines of “I must remember to pack some seriously negligent pants for the weekend”.

I am feeling rather desperate. Mr Frog is due to appear to whisk off Tadpole for the evening in just under half an hour, and I promised Tadpole we would have surprise cake and candles for his birthday. Forgetting a key piece of information when I did so: our local bakery is closed on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

I peer half-heartedly through the window of the Chinese takeaway, with its unappetising looking boules de coco and almond tarts. Not really Mr Frog’s thing, and definitely not Tadpole’s. How about a brownie from the kosher sushi and bagel emporium across the road? No go. The metal shutters are pulled firmly closed. With a sigh, I retrace my steps towards the garage, which harbours a huit à huit minimarket. Cake out of a packet will have to do. Sacrilegious in a country where the pâtisserie fare is so unbelievable, and the packaged cakes so dire, but it can’t be helped.

Intentions: good. Execution: room for improvement.

The minimarket has a predictably poor selection. Some tired looking madeleines, a cake anglais (which generally refers to a rather pale and wan fruit cake containing glacé cherries, the likes of which I have yet to actually eat in England), and a bag of individually wrapped fondants au chocolat. I settle for the chocolate cakes, and dash home.

Mr Frog appears, shortly after the appointed hour, and I ask him to stay for a beer, to give me an excuse to repair to the kitchen. I have arranged three cakes on a plate, a striped blue candle lolling at a drunken angle in the centre of each. Tadpole, the soul of discretion, says “happy birthday cake mummy” in a stage whisper as I am leaving the room, but I don’t think Mr Frog notices.

As I bring my masterpiece through to the living room, Tadpole starts singing “happy birthday” right on cue. Mr Frog looks up, startled, and I can see he is genuinely touched.

For a fleeting moment, I catch myself wishing that we were still living together as a little family, sharing moments like this every day.

My birthday weekend was a resounding success.

In spite of the fact that we had to take a late train to Rennes, after a day on which I would rather not have been at work, with a Tadpole who was visibly wilting more every second and had lost what little grasp of logic and reason she normally possesses, but who was hell bent on fighting the urge to sleep. Suffice to say that there were moments where complimentary earplugs would have been welcome. For everyone in the carriage.

In spite of the fact that Tadpole swallowed several cherry tomatoes without first biting or chewing, which resulted in her thoughtfully redecorating my Lover’s apartment (with special attention paid to the sofa) in warm cherry tones the following morning.

In spite of the fact that once I had left Paris, and finally began to let go of the stresses of the past week, I then spent most of the weekend in a comatose, horizontal state, unable to venture out from between my cool, white sheets for any extended period of time, lulled by the mutterings of cricket commentators in the next room (or the slightly less soothing sound of Grand Prix). Not the most dynamic weekend I have spent in recent times.

But my ipod now boasts a lovely, baby blue leather cover which fits ever so snugly. I had to amend one of my 33 things when I opened my other birthday gifts. I am also the proud owner of a very fetching pair of “I’ll never get laid in these” Miffy pyjamas.

The highlight of my weekend was being treated to a divine meal where I feasted on foie gras poêlé and magret de canard à la fleur d’oranger and other such delights.

So, on balance, this birthday girl is not complaining. (For once.)

I found myself missing Tadpole this weekend.

For the first time, I spent a child-free weekend in Paris while my daughter was only a mere 200 metres down the road, at “daddy’s house”. I found myself wondering, whenever I ventured out on some errand, whether I might bump into her by chance in the street, or catch sight of Mr Frog pushing her buggy in the distance. I eyed his block of flats wistfully, and pictured her there, drawing Noddy with her felt tip pens or reading her library books.

Since Mr Frog moved out in early July, I have been away on the weekends when Tadpole was not with me, making the most of my freedom to visit my Lover in Rennes. On those rare occasions when I was in Paris, Tadpole happened to be staying with the In Laws. It is only now, with the holiday period behind us, that we will begin to adjust to the new status quo, and face up to what sharing Tadpole’s time really feels like. And whereas when I knew we were not even in the same town I was able to switch off my ‘mummy side’ altogether, knowing that she was so tantalisingly close this weekend made her absence achingly tangible.

As I lazed about in the stuffy, airless apartment on Sunday, reading a thorougly depressing novel, my mind persistently wandered. If I closed my eyes, silent, super 8-like images of Tadpole in the park with Mr Frog played across my eyelids. When the temperature finally dropped to a more bearable level, the Lover and I took a stroll through the Parc de Bercy, en route for the cinema, and my thoughts turned once more to Tadpole. I mused idly on what she would be having for her dinner, or whether she would behave herself at bath time. Was her nose still running? Did she have any new scrapes or bruises on her chubby little knees?

The most poignant reminder that Tadpole was close, yet just out of my reach, came in the supermarket on Saturday. Joining the queue, I smiled at the checkout lady, who has always made a fuss of Tadpole on our weekly visits. I can’t be sure whether I imagined her look of disapproval at seeing me doing the grocery shopping with an unknown man who is not Tadpole’s father. It was probably paranoia on my part, but I could feel the outline of a scarlet letter branded on my forehead. When my turn finally came, I felt some words of explanation might be in order, but managed to prevent myself from sharing my private life with what amounts to a friendly stranger.

As I packed away my shopping, the checkout lady remarked cheerfully that she had seen la petite puce earlier that day shopping with her daddy. Her words, however innocent, stung.

Did I feel jealousy, that Tadpole had been there without me? Or remorse, that I have divided our little family into two units, who shop apart?

I’m not sure what it was, only that I smarted as though I had been slapped in the face.

A loud, repetitive sound, not unlike rapid machine gun fire, echoes around the almost empty plane, which is basking in the late afternoon sunlight on the tarmac of Leeds Bradford airport.

I hope to goodness that Tadpole won’t choose this precise moment to fill her nappy, as I won’t be able to remedy the situation until the plane is airborne, and the fasten seatbelt signs have been switched off. I am relieved that no-one seems to have noticed this little outburst, however.

Until, that is, Tadpole yells “Mummy! Did a prout!” at the top of her lungs, collapsing into a mirthful little mass of giggles.

Unfortunately, I fear I am the only person on the plane who heard that all important punctuation. Tadpole doesn’t do personal pronouns yet, which can give rise to a certain ambiguity.

Cheeks blazing, I reach for my magazine. Tadpole promptly grabs it, giving me her reading material in exchange. I sigh, and leaf through her brand new colouring book, while Tadpole pores over photos of British C-list celebs in Heat, seemingly fascinated. As she hasn’t had a nap today, and is therefore a volatile little element, I decide against challenging her.

Instead, I unveil my secret weapon. A little unwise, at this early stage in the journey, but needs must.

I pull a pair of gingerbread men out of my bag.

She may be old enough to have her own seat, wear her own seatbelt, and have her own drink and snacks from the air hostesses’ trolley, but she’s not yet old enough to eat a gingerbread man and read a magazine simultaneously.

Mummy: 1, Tadpole 0.

Only one and a half hours to go…

Bonjour!

Ive grown!!!

My trousers and my old jeans are too small and my new jeans slip down a bit.

On Wednesday Grandma washed my hair – I didnt mind at all!

Do you remember the sponge balls that I used to bite? Now I know what they are for! They are fun! Grandma says I can Bend it like Beckham – what does she mean?

I think I’ve convinced Grandma that potties are just for fun. Anyway she says it’s too cold to play in the garden with a bare bottom. She has something she says is a toilet seat but I know its a picture frame as my face just fits in it. She says you can borrow it but I don’t think you’ve got any pictures that size.

Grandad and Auntie R took me to the swing park again. There’s a slide (a “super-toboggan”, just like in Dora), an elephant and a great roundabout. When I got back to the car I couldn’t get in my seat. I said in my best tired voice “Auntie R do it – je suis fatiguée.”

I’ve drawn some really amazing pictures. Tell Daddy I drew Mamie and Papy in their car. And Noddy. With a bell on his hat.

I gave my dolly with the blonde plaits a name – Michael, like Auntie S’s boyfriend – but after a day I decided it didn’t really suit her.

I’d better go. Grandad needs me to help him with his vegetables for the Gardeners Guild show tomorrow and the sun has come out at last!

See you in the morning.

Lots of love,

Tadpole xxxxxx

Two weeks with the French ex-in-laws sufficed. Tadpole has gone all French on me again. French and a little more square eyed than I would like.

“On va regarder Dora [the explorer], oui, d’accord?” she says earnestly, nodding her milky little chin for extra emphasis and widening her eyes. My daughter, the hypnotist.

“Mmmm I’m not sure. Why don’t you draw mummy some pictures of Noddy instead?” I reply, endeavouring to be a good mother who doesn’t allow herself to resort to CBeebies and the other delights on offer on Lover’s Sky TV until the going gets really tough.

“Si! On va regarder Dora, quand même!” Tadpole counters, seemingly very sure of herself. Her intonation is not indicative of a question. I wonder how used to getting her own way she has grown of late.

I capitulate, eventually, and enjoy Tadpole’s look of utter disbelief when Dora opens her cartoon mouth and (American) English words trip off her tongue, along with a smattering of Spanish phrases. Because the Dora whom Tadpole has grown to love speaks French, with a few token English words thrown in.

All manner of phrases with which she wow us with this week appear to have Dora-related explanations. “Tico l’ecureuil” turns out to be a character from the same. It is somewhat galling to see that my daughter can already pronounce the notoriously difficult French word for squirrel far better than I can.

At mealtimes, Tadpole repeats a previously unheard phrase over and over again. “It’s delicious!”, she exclaims. Even when it isn’t. Mr Frog confirms my suspicions, rather bashfully: this is indeed yet another Dora phrase. He then goes on to list all the activities Tadpole took part in over the past fortnight, in a feeble attempt to convince me that she didn’t just watch videos all day long.

I notice that whereas the French Dora has a pet monkey called “Babouche”, in the American version, the very same monkey is called “Boots”. How very confusing.

However, in true toddler style, Tadpole decides only to hear what she wants to hear, successfully filtering everything else out. Rather like when I mention key words like “bedtime” and “nappy”, which are generally greeted with temporary deafness and a vacant stare.

So, when I try, helpfully, to explain why the monkey has two names, she looks at me scornfully, flatly refusing to believe a single word, despite the fact that she has just watched an entire episode.

“Non. Il s’appelle Babouche, le monkey, mummy, pas Boots. Quand même!”

That’s me told.

Odd things have been afoot in my kitchen.

Over the past two weeks, while my Lover was in town, I changed beyond all recognition. First, I started cooking proper meals (on the nights when Lover didn’t cook for me, I hasten to add, although I never managed to persuade him to cook only wearing an apron, despite much pleading), as opposed to scoffing Tadpole’s spurned fish fingers and sweetcorn, followed by a few crisps or other unhealthy snacks, and washed down with a glass of wine in front of the computer, which is what my diet habitually consists of.

Mr Frog and I didn’t tend to eat together, so I had abandoned my non-wifely kitchen duties long, long ago. Largely because I ate hours earlier, unable to stave off the hunger pangs until he arrived home from work around 10 pm.

But, not only did I cook proper dinners for the past fortnight, but I also found myself baking. Custart tart. Scones. A rather tasty quiche. Carrot cake with cream cheese topping. All very English. In keeping with the extraordinary volume of tea which I was drinking.

Now, I’ve always been a firm believer in the old adage that the surest route to a man’s heart is through his trousers, and emphatically not via his stomach, so I simply don’t know where all of this domestic goddesshood has welled up from.

The bakefest will have to cease, as my waistline is already suffering, but before I turn the page on this worrying episode, I just wanted to share the fruits of my labour with the internet.

I made shortbread biscuits, in honour of Tadpole’s return. We decorated them together.

Do be careful not to drool on your keyboards.

There is a Tadpole shaped hole in my life at the moment.

She has now been staying with her French grandparents for ten whole days and I’m starting to ache a little. I miss waking her up in the morning, watching her stretch and pout and roll over to face the wall, murmuring, in protest, “[Tadpole] elle fait dodo!” I miss burying my face in her neck and inhaling her soft, warm scent. I miss brushing her tight, golden curls. I even miss holding her down with my knee as she squirms and objects to having her nappy changed.

Last week I had to bite the bullet and call the ex-in-laws, so that I could hear Tadpole’s voice for a few precious moments.

It was my first contact with belle mère since I took on my new role of homewrecker and adulteress, so I felt a little awkward and had to prepare myself psychologically for the ordeal by doing lots of pacing around the apartment prior to the appointed hour.

Tadpole answered the phone. Except she didn’t sound like Tadpole. She sounds like a little French stranger, somewhere far, far away.

“Allô! [Tadpole] elle a un bobo!” she announced proudly.

I wasn’t sure she even knew it was me she was talking to.

Mother-In-Law hastily grabbed the phone, anxious to explain that the bobo in question was just a minor scrape on her knee, and that I was not to be alarmed. As an afterthought, she said hello, and asked how I was.

“Very well thank you,” I replied, gaily, and then cursed myself for not dampening down the happiness in my voice. I have no idea if she knows about my Lover, or indeed that he is keeping me company in Paris while Tadpole is away, but it seemed indecent somehow to sound too happy, when her own son clearly isn’t right now. Which is, of course, my fault.

“Right. Well. I’ll put [Tadpole] back on…” she said, her voice taut with embarrassment. Or indignation. I couldn’t tell. Telephones are not good for conveying mood accurately, I find.

I resumed my conversation with Tadpole.

“So, what have you been doing darling?” I enquired.

The garbled reply included the word “piscine” so I presumed the paddling pool was involved. The only other words I could decipher were “les cloches”.

Tadpole has an inexplicable obsession with bells. Whenever we stay within earshot of a church and hear bells ringing, Tadpole invariably gets very excited and shouts: “T’entends les cloches? Ecoute! ” while running to the nearest window and attempting to see where the noise is actually coming from.

It’s endearing the first time you hear it. Less so when the bells in question chime four times every hour.

“Can you sing mummy a song?” I venture, desperate to hear more of her distant little French voice.

I am treated to a very accurate rendition of “une souris verte”, in which a green mouse, when caught by the tail and dipped in oil and water, miraculously turns into a hot snail.

Tadpole loses interest in the telephone after that and MIL and I say our rather tepid goodbyes.

I miss Tadpole even more after that.

I hang up, reluctantly, after another long conversation with my absent lover, and feel around on the bed for my glasses.

Odd. I thought I had put them down on the pillow beside me.

I scrabble around pointlessly on the bedside table, then the computer desk, narrowly avoiding a calamity involving a large glass of tonic water and some vital electronic equipment, not reputed for its fondness for fizzy drinks.

Nothing.

I slide off the bed and try the bookcase, the fireplace, the chest of drawers.

Patience is not a virtue I possess in large quantities, so I begin cursing under my breath, not exactly seeing the funny side of the ridiculous catch 22 situation in which I find myself: need glasses, in order to find glasses.

I feel something yield under my bare foot.

First rule of living alone: if you have soft-focus eyes, never place your dark brown Gucci glasses on a dark brown hardwood floor.

**************

Tadpole and I bundle ourselves into the lift. We are late. Again. She is carrying her Miffy bag, which accompanies her to the childminder’s every day, and I am carrying a weekend bag, a handbag and two bags of rubbish. It’s a tight squeeze in our minute lift, and I can’t even see Tadplole, as she is below the bag horizon.

“Mind your fingers!” I caution, as the lift doors strain closed around our luggage.

I empty the recycling rubbish into the yellow bin, wondering who will have the job of separating papers from cans and plastic. I suspect no-one does. I have a rather pessimistic theory that all the rubbish all gets taken to the same place, and that the yellow bin is just there to lull us into feeling like we have done our environmental duty. The bin in question is almost empty, and comes up to my chest.

Rubbish bag duly emptied, I grope for keys in my handbag.

Nothing.

I try the front pocket.

Still nothing.

A long, thin icicle slides down my spine as I realise that no-one in Paris has a spare set of keys to my flat, the letter box or the pushchair room. Taking a deep breath, I mentally retrace my steps and can almost feel the cold keyring dangling loosely from my index finger, just seconds before I started to empty the rubbish into the bin. I peer downwards, gloomily, looking for a glint of metal and the hair bobble attached to the keyring.

“What has mummy done now?” I wail at Tadpole, who looks rather puzzled as the top half of mummy disappears into a stinking dustbin.

Arms flailing, I stir the junk mail and packaging around a bit, straining to hear the muffled jangle of keys. My hair is falling unhelpfully across my eyes and my glasses have slid to the very end of my nose, where they threaten to fall off – a fact not unrelated to the earlier incident which saw them bent rather out of shape.

I withdraw my head for a moment, surfacing for air, only to see the sun glinting off something metallic in Tadpole’s tiny palm.

I have no recollection whatsoever of giving them to her. Sometimes I fear for my sanity.

Second rule of living alone: give spare set of keys to nearby friend (Mr Frog) to avoid repeated coronary incidents.

I know I probably shouldn’t write this out loud, but I’m rather enjoying the prospect of becoming a part-time mummy.

Since Tadpole was born, two years ago, my life has been a relentless whirlwind of activity: caring for baby/toddler, delivering her to childminder’s flat, dashing to work, working, and then the same drill, in reverse, at the end of the day. My evenings began at 8.30pm, when Tadpole went to bed, but these were spent caged in our apartment, resentfully waiting for Mr Frog to put in an appearance. Hence my rich virtual life, which filled the gaping void in my offline world.

I can count the number of evenings where Mr Frog was able to relieve me of my duties, allowing me to go out and meet friends for dinner, or attend a blogmeet or whatever it might be, on the fingers of two hands. On those occasions where I did manage to escape for a few hours, I invariably arrived late and frazzled, in a hastily ordered taxi, because Mr Babysitter rarely arrived at the appointed hour.

So, castigate me for being a bad mummy if you will, but I confess I am looking forward to having a social life on the evenings when Mr Frog will pick up Tadpole from the childminder’s and she will spend the whole night at daddy’s house. The very idea of being able to go out for a drink after work, on a whim, meet friends, or even just do a spot of improvised late night shopping, once a week thrills me. Separation, it would seem, has its advantages.

Then there are the alternate weekends… Not only will I no longer have to wend my reluctant way to pay a duty visit to the in-laws every couple of months, but I will now have entire child-free weekends at my disposal. Weekends where I won’t have to get out of bed at all until I’m good and ready. Weekends where I can hop on a train, with an overnight bag, and fall into my lover’s waiting arms. Space to breathe, the luxury of time to recharge my batteries. Time off, during which I sometimes allow myself to forget, albeit briefly, that I ever became a mother. An illicit pleasure, only slightly diluted by vague pangs of guilt that I shouldn’t really feel this way. But I do, and I’m not afraid to admit it.

Secure in the knowledge that she is in the safest hands after my own, and confident that she is happy spending one on one time with her daddy, my conscience is clear. I miss Tadpole, when we are apart, but I appreciate her tenfold when we are reunited.

I’m tempted to speculate that as a part-timer, I may even make a better mummy.

Tadpole’s second birthday was a bittersweet celebration for Mr Frog and me.

I fetched him some lemsip, early this morning, as he was suffering with from a slightly sore throat (and was consequently at death’s door, as most men generally are when they catch a common cold). He had met a friend for dinner last night, so I enquired cautiously as to how that had gone.

I find myself permanently on edge when he goes out, paranoid that some well meaning soul will say something that will turn Mr Frog against me, shattering our cosy, friendly little bubble with a few harsh home truths. It hasn’t happened yet, probably because I am not being portrayed as the villain of the piece, and my extra-non-marital affair (if you can even call it that) is not common knowledge among his friends. He chooses not to mention it. It’s probably a matter of male pride, but whatever, the happy end result is that my good name is not tarnished as a result.

In fact, the friend was suitably floored by how calm and rational Mr Frog was – on the surface, at least – and remarked that hearing our story was like watching a slow-paced, intellectual French film. Like “La Séparation”, which Mr Frog watched on cable earlier this week. I didn’t. I couldn’t. The little I did half overhear, while in earshot of the television, was far too close to the bone. Thankfully, as Mr Frog is wont to do, he fell asleep on the sofa long before the final credits rolled. I was rather relieved, because the film mirrored our own situation a little too closely for comfort, and I really, really did not want to be told that it had all ended with the couple being tearfully reunited and admitting that the whole thing had been a mistake.

Back to this morning. We went to Tadpole’s bedroom to wake her. I stroked her cheek with the back of my finger (I wish I had skin like that) and started to sing Happy Birthday.

“Happy birthday to you”

Tadpole screwed up her face, pursed her lips and rolled over to hide her face against the bedroom wall. I noticed the beginnings of a smile playing on her lips. She was teasing.

“Happy birthday to you”

“Non!” She said, emphatically, “[Tadpole] sleeping!”

“Happy birthday dear [Tadpole], happy birthday to you”

As if by magic, she sat bolt upright and said: “Birthday presents?”

I shouldn’t be suprised, after all, this is the second of her four birthday celebrations, and she is getting used to the drill.

The living room was filled with coloured balloons, just like on her first birthday, and a blanket covered her main present, a tricycle. Later, when Mr Frog and I get home, there will be Noddy cake, candles to be blown out, wishes to be wished, and probably much enthusiastic popping of balloons.

It was lovely. But it was also Tadpole’s last birthday with mummy and daddy living under the same roof.

She has no idea. But I haven’t been able to lose that thought all day.

Tadpole opens her mouth, showing her near complete set of milk teeth, and beautiful, effortless, grammatically perfect sentences fall out.

Admittedly these are mostly in French, but so awestruck am I by her new found ability to string together up a dozen words at a time that I forget that I am supposed to be disappointed that French appears to be dominating at the moment.

“Tu vois, il est là bas, dans la chambre, sur le lit, le biberon de dolly,” she says earnestly, her tiny hand seeking out mine, because she wants to us to fetch it together.

“Non, je n’ai pas fait caca dans la couche, je ne l’ai pas fait!” she cries over her shoulder, having wriggled out of my grasp and rapidly distancing herself from the changing mat. I wonder what on earth she has eaten which could be responsible for such an unpleasant, lingering odour, if what she is saying is true.

Barely a week ago, Mr Frog and I both remarked upon the fact that Tadpole’s language skills seemed to have reached a plateau: we hadn’t heard any new words or seen much evidence of her attempting to string those she did already know into phrases for some time. Now, with hindsight, I realise that she was simply biding her time, quietly soaking up every last word, assimilating, processing and digesting until she was ready to take the plunge and dazzle us with her new abilities.

As a non-native speaker of French, who had to endure many a tedious grammar lesson over the years to learn how to manipulate preceding direct objects and indefinite articles, I marvel at Tadpole’s flawless grammar. I’m insanely jealous of the way in which, as a native speaker, she remains blissfully unaware of how these complex phrases break down into their component parts, or why the words behave as they do in different contexts. The individual pieces of the jigsaw – which she has memorised as sensible, meaningful chunks of completed puzzle – slot gracefully into small and perfectly formed sentences. She makes it look so easy.

I’m willing to bet that the day she corrects one of my infamous gender blunders is only just around the corner.

I can’t wait.

Tadpole has started mothering Mr Frog and I.

“Mon petit canard,” she says tenderly, while pinching both my cheeks until my eyes water. I gather that this is meant to be an affectionate gesture. Note to self: must cut her fingernails tonight after her bath.

“Allez, mange!” she orders, as I try to work up some enthusiasm for my breakfast cereal, despite it having the consistency of cardboard in my dry mouth.

“Assieds-toi là , ma puce,” she instructs in a bossy tone, before proceeding to show me the picture she has been busily scribbling on. It’s actually quite a disturbing sight, when I examine it more closely. The drawing she had begged for yesterday, with a mummy, a daddy, two little girls, a pig, a spider and an octopus, now has all the faces blackened out. I decide not to let myself dwell on any possible pseudo-psycho explanations for this and instead concentrate on complimenting the neatness of her colouring in.

I know this is just a phase that she is going through, where she is showing Mr Frog and I the same sollicitude and affection that she showers on her favourite dolly. I am told she also takes great delight in mothering the childminder’s youngest charge at the moment, helping out at bottle time, asking her what the matter is when she cries. All seemingly perfectly natural.

But at the same time, I wonder whether, despite all our efforts to put on a happy, friendly front during this awkward time while we carry on living together, until Mr Frog finds a place to live nearby, she is still picking up on the fact that something is going on. Sensing that we both need a few extra cuddes and kisses. Attuned to the emotions we are taking care to rein in when in her presence.

This morning was downright spooky. As I was about to leave for work, Mr Frog being on Tadpole dropping off duty, I bent down low to receive my goodbye kiss. Mr Frog was on his knees in the hallway, cramming things into his bag.

Tadpole grabbed both of us firmly by the arm and pulled us together.

“Donne bisou à Daddy,” she commanded, her eyes very large and serious.

I kissed him lightly on the cheek, noting that I was not the only one with tears in my eyes.

I withdraw my foot from my left shoe with a sharp intake of breath and massage my big toe, before tipping up the shoe to see what the culprit was this time. A sharp, triangular building block falls out.

I slowly pull the washing out of the machine, looking for the offending item which has rattled and clanged insistently for the entire duration of the hot cycle. Behold, a spoon, placed in the drum, or the washing basket, by tiny hands when I wasn’t looking.

I ease my tired limbs between the bedsheets, and then sit up, startled. After the removal of one plastic toy telephone, one TV remote control and one rag doll, the coast is clear. Except for the Miffy book lurking under my pillow, which I only discover the following morning.

When Mr Frog and I decided to have Tadpole, I knew that this meant kissing my pristine, adult apartment goodbye. I’m not sure, however, that I was prepared for the extent of the proliferation of child-related items, or indeed the damage that one child can inflict.

Toys overflow from a box in the living room and lurk under chairs and tables. A ducks, a (toy) frog and an octupus line the bathtub, eyeing me suspiciously whenever I take a soak. Soft toys are regularly to be found hidden in amongst the pots, pans and tupperware in the kitchen cupboards. Magnetic shapes adorn the metal stove in the living room fireplace (oh yes, we have original features which would drive Kirstie and Phil wild), and are stuck randomly on radiators and domestic appliances in ever changing configurations. Every time I race to record something on the video, first of all I must extract a pingu or postman pat cassette.

In addition to toys, we also have a plethora of Tadpole-proofing paraphernalia. A gate across the entrance to the kitchen, so that access can be denied if necessary, a measure taken upon discovering an over-ripe goats cheese in my underwear drawer, after a weekend away. Plastic covers, to prevent moist, enquiring fingers from entering the two-pin, no-earth electric sockets which abound in our apartment. We stopped short of putting locks on every cupboard door, however, and refused to be bullied into purchasing the foam helmet advocated by our puériculture catalogue. Oh, they’re clever alright, these marketing people, playing on your inevitable insecurities as a new parent to sell you expensive and completely unnecessary safety gear.

Being of a houseproud, obsessively tidy nature – which may or may not be related to being born when the sun was in Virgo – I have also had a hard time coming to terms with the damage inflicted on our existing possessions. The Ikea standing lamp with its tall, white paper lampshade, which now dangles bedraggled and forlorn in a corner of the room, because, guess what, Ikea don’t sell those lampshades separately. The deep purple sofa cover, washed to within an inch of its life, now shrunk and faded, and despite my best efforts still bearing traces of some of Tadpole’s first puréed meals. Aside from the furniture, the apartment itself has not escaped unscathed. The wood floors, which show every single drop of spilled liquid as a pale stain, are looking far from their best, as I rarely have the time or inclination to wax. Greasy fingermarks abound on the white painted walls.

Now, I can learn to live with all of these things. I have, in fact. I am even mellowing to the point where I actually like all of Tadpole’s colourful clutter.

But, Mr Frog, putting Tadpole’s music on my Ipod – even if, in your defence, you claim it might come in useful when we are trapped in a car with a fractious toddler someday – is taking things ONE STEP TOO FAR.

When I am “shuffling” in the metro of a morning, I do not expect The Killers to be followed hot on the heels by “une souris verte” at full volume. Some things, some precious little things, are SACRED, and as such, need to be declared TADPOLE FREE ZONES.

Is that clear?

**************************

Which leads me neatly on to a shameless plug. If you go down to the Fnac Digitale tomorrow, fellow ipod owners, you will see a range of products called i-doll, the brainchild of two good friends of mine. Can I suggest you take a look at the gorgeous array of Ipod garments on offer and maybe even purchase one or three?

The children’s library on the rue Fessart is accessible only via a steep flight of stairs. Predictably there is no sign of a lift. The adult’s library is, I note, located in an identical room on the ground floor. Sighing, I free the Tadpole from her pushchair harness (which she insists on calling a “strap-on”). By the time I have got the pushchair folded, she is already half-way up the stairs and my heart is in my mouth as she turns to laugh at me, teetering precariously on the edge of a step. I race to catch her up, wishing that simple canine commands like “sit” or “stay” or “heel” would have some effect on my wilfully independent daughter. As it is, I say “stand still” and she hears “run for the hills!”

The children’s library is not vast, but there is a well-stocked and thoughtfully enclosed toddler’s section, furnished with chairs for little people and slightly grubby looking animal cushions strewn about the floor.

I approach the young man seated at the front desk, who has his nose in a book, and takes far too long to actually look up and say hello, without the merest hint of a smile. He has a something unsightly dangling from his left nostril, and his long hair, which looks as though he combed olive oil through it this morning, is gathered into a ragged pony tail.

I explain that I would like to enrol Tadpole in the library, and he sullenly hands me a form. How I hate myself for smiling back at him. Regardless of whether or not my naturalisation application is successful, I know that I will never manage the unsmiling, aloof attitude that most Parisians seem to affect in such situations. My inane grinning and eagerness to chat with complete strangers in shops will forever betray my foreignness and put me at a cultural disadvantage, however French I might manage to sound.

I suppose I should be thankful for small mercies: at least obtaining a library card for Tadpole does not require me to produce my birth certificate, backed with an apostille and accompanied by a certified translation. Or a copy of my criminal record. Tadpole’s ID card suffices, just as the lady had told me over the phone. (I had still brought utility bills and the livret de famille though, just in case. I couldn’t quite bring myself to believe that anything involving the French administration could really be that simple.)

Library card in hand, I plonk myself down on a dusty ladybird cushion and set to examining the books in the ‘foreign’ section, while Tadpole rearranges the furniture energetically, seemingly having missed the point of why we are here and showing no interest whatsoever in the books which surround her. Of the 120 foreign tomes of which the municipal libraries’ internet site boasted, I note that three quarters are in Hanzi or Kanji or some other Asian language, with the covers on back to front. We live a stone’s throw from the Belleville Chinatown, and this library caters to its residents, so I suppose that was only to be expected.

As we are running a little late for our lunchtime rendez-vous with Negrito and his friends, I hastily choose a couple of Maisy books (in French: Mimi la souris) and a book about a busy spider, by the author of ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’. If Mr Frog isn’t home for story time, I will read them in English, which will be useful for practising my off the cuff translation skills, if nothing else.

For the rest of the weekend I am disproportionately pleased with myself for having enrolled Tadpole in the library. I think it is because I have such fond memories of library visits as a child. My mother maintains that she taught me to read before my first sister was born (i.e. shortly before my third birthday) and from that moment on I was unstoppable. I started school a year early, and raced through the reading scheme at breakneck speed.

As there was no way my parents could have financed my fifteen-a-week habit, we came to frequent many libraries over the years. Once I had exhausted the possibilities of the children’s section in our village library, staffed by elderly ladies in cashmere twin sets and irreproachable nasal hygiene, I was allowed to borrow books from the adult section using my mothers library card, even though I was underage. I used my father’s card too. Then we graduated to a bigger library in York itself. At any one time, there would be no less than a dozen library books stacked up next to my bed.

One of the reasons my eyesight is now so poor is that from a very early age (four or five years old I reckon) I used to read in secret after lights out, straining to decipher the words in the orange glow of the streetlamp outside my bedroom window, or leaving my door ajar to catch a sliver of light from the bathroom. If I was under the spell of a favourite book, there was no question of stopping before I had reached the end.

I do hope Tadpole will grow up to be a bookworm too, and not a philistine like Mr Frog.

I feel as though I should, by rights, be hankering after Tadpole #2 by now. The childminder certainly seems to think so: she never misses an opportunity to tell me how wonderful Tadpole is with baby Valentina, her six-month old playmate. Evidently Tadpole enjoys playing ‘mummy’, helping to administer bottles and stroking the baby’s face gently whenever she cries, cooing “qu’est-ce qui va pas, Ballon Tina?”

Very cute, I’m sure. But, for whatever reason, and despite the fact that I’ve always wanted two children, I find that I’m simply not ready.

I adored being pregnant, once the first three nauseous months were behind me. The happy hormones kicked in, and I floated through the next six on my own private MDMA cloud. Nothing could bring me down. Nobody could stress me out. Frogspawn and I were cocooned inside a cosy little bubble, insulated from the outside world, which could cease to turn, for all I cared, whenever he/she wriggled or kicked inside me.

It was a welcome change from my usual, bi-polar state, where the pendulum can swing without warning from one extreme to another, never giving Mr Frog time to run for cover.

As one of three daughters, even if I did fight tooth and nail with the sister who was closest to me in age, I do feel strongly about wanting to give Tadpole a brother or sister. Mr Frog, an only child, will never fully understand how much he has missed. Many of our recurring arguments stem from his inability to share, to put other people before himself. I don’t want Tadpole to grow up with that innate selfishness that comes of having no siblings.

But, although I am nostalgic for that blissed-out pregnant state, and do want Tadpole to have a brother or sister, I am putting it off. I can’t seem to make the leap from a vague ‘one day’ to a ‘soon’ or a ‘now’.

I can, when pressed, come up with a million convincing reasons to justify my hesitation. There’s the fact that we have to wait until next year when Tadpole starts pre-school, because we simply cannot afford full-time childcare for two children simultaneously. Giving up my job is not an option, financially speaking. Asking to work four-day weeks will already put a serious strain on our budget, if I exercise my right to do so when our second child is born.

I tell myself that I want to bide my time until Mr Frog has changed jobs (which is now hovering tantalisingly close on the horizon, due to a combination of fortuitous events) to see whether he will be on hand to help out more (or less). I cannot conceive of a life where I work full-time and also shoulder the full burden of responsibility for bringing up not one but two children. I have, unwisely, threatened Mr Frog in the past, saying that I flatly refuse to have another child until things change and I get more support from him. A pointless exercise in blackmail as it happens, as he’s in even less of a hurry than I am.

I think reasons like those could probably be more accurately described as excuses. The crux of the matter is actually that a selfish, self-centred part of me desperately wants to cling to what shreds of freedom and independence I still have left for a little longer.

I love Tadpole fiercely. But I also love the way that she can be ‘switched off’ at 8pm, leaving me time for myself, to read a book, write, surf the internet or watch a film. Even if going out is rarely an option. If I had a second, terrifyingly needy little being to tend to, that would all change for the foreseeable future. I imagine myself, exhausted, unwashed and cranky, collapsing in bed at 9pm, before Mr Frog has even shown his face, the apartment littered with dirty nappies, clothes and unwashed crockery. It’s not a very appealing scenario. It scares me. I don’t know if I can devote myself so selflessly to being a mother first, and a person, second.

What really doesn’t help, is that there is a hormonal time bomb ticking inside of me, muddling my thoughts even further, crying out that I can’t afford to wait too long. The risks to me and my hypothetical baby grow with every year that I procrastinate. But, while I would hate to look back one day, filled with regret that I did not conceive another child before it was too late, I don’t think that I should let this argument tip the balance either.

The only thing I know for certain right now is that I want Tadpole #2 to be just as desired as Tadpole #1 was. If that means biding my time, then the childminder and anyone else who has mentioned it to me will just have to hold their impatience in check.

It will happen if and when I’m good and ready.

I am struggling to chase images of this out of my head. It has haunted me ever since I first read about it. When I told Mr Frog last night, I was fighting back tears as I spoke.

I know it makes universally distressing reading. But, quite apart from feeling sick to the pit of my stomach whenever I think about Abigail Witchalls’ ordeal, my brain insists on replaying images of how I imagine the attack, based on her own harrowing description. I strain to imagine how she must have felt. And what she is feeling now.

…I am pushing Tadpole along one of the more secluded country lanes near where my parents live. I hear the hum of an engine, and the crunch of wheels on loose road chippings as it passes me by slowly, time enough to make chilling eye contact with the driver. I know, instinctively, that this person means me harm…

I think of Abigail’s children. The unborn child that may or may not have survived, and her son, Joseph, just two months younger than Tadpole. I shudder to think what effect witnessing these events may have on this fledgling person. Feeling a strangers hands grabbing him from behind, holding a knife to his throat. Sensing his mother’s terror as she walked towards him, wide-eyed. Seeing the stranger hit his mummy with the knife, making her crumple to the floor. Tipped over, still strapped into his pushchair, left helpless by her side. The blood. Wondering why she was sleeping. Knowing that something must be badly wrong.

The articles I have read so far don’t tell me how they were found. I only hope that help wasn’t long in coming.

Joseph may be, mercifully, too young to actually remember the events of that day in years to come, but how can they fail to cast a long shadow over his life?

My powers of empathy fall short of imagining the anguish of waking up in a hospital bed with no feeling in my limbs. Robbed of the power of speech. Unable to hold my child to me and hug him fiercely, to sob noisily with relief that he is unharmed. Carrying a child in my belly that I may now never be able to hold. Whose name I may never be able to pronounce out loud.

I am at a loss to understand such a random act of cruelty. But I’m sure that no mother who has read about Abigail Witchalls will feel entirely safe taking their child along a quiet country road ever again.

I bring Tadpole’s gourmet dinner – sweetcorn (canned), green beans (frozen), mini pasta shapes and a slice of cheese – through to the living room and set it down on her little table. Pulling out her chair, I swiftly flip over the flower seat cushion with its week old yoghurt stain. Ni vu, ni connu. Anything to reduce the lengthening list of Things Which Need Doing around the apartment. I am also pathetically grateful to whoever took it upon themselves to invent reversible clothing for small children.

Tadople is sitting on the sofa, her magic drawing pad laid across her knees. This toy is another life-saving invention, as a toddler left unchaperoned with coloured crayons can, and will, wreak untold havoc. And I fear our white walls might prove to be a very inviting canvas.

Magic pen poised in the air, Tadpole’s head is cocked to one side. She appears to be listening to something, fierce concentration etched into her wrinkled brow. I know that expression. It’s my thinking face. The one which Mr Frog always tries to smooth flat with his forefinger.

“What’s the matter, baby girl? What is it?” I enquire, noting that she is dribbling again. Which means she probably won’t eat her painstakingly prepared meal, because she never does when she’s teething. Only biscuits, fruit and chocolat will do.

“Noises.”

I listen. I can hear traffic in the street, five stories below. The hum of the video recording Eastenders for later. A dog barking in the park, as its owner takes it for a bowel-relieving walk. Nothing else.

“What noises? Mummy can’t hear anything.”

“Noman, ” she says earnestly, turning towards me, motioning towards the ceiling with her free hand. “Up dere. Noman. Shoes on. Noisy!”

A noman, in Tadpolese, is what you and I would refer to as a snowman. Similarly a snake is a ‘nake, a snail is a ‘nail (or sometimes a ‘cargot tout chaud’). But quite what Tadpole thinks a snowman would be doing in a sixth floor apartment on a mild April day, I cannot imagine.

“There’s no snowman upstairs. What are you talking about, silly?” I venture cautiously, somewhat perplexed.

I recall my well-intentioned explanations of the sounds we hear every day from the surrounding apartments, which Tadpole has recently become ultra sensitive to, not to say a little afraid of. I did explain that a man lived upstairs (we even went upstairs and I showed her his front door to help get my point across), and I told Tadpole that when the man walked on his wooden floor with shoes on, it made a “TAP TAP TAP” noise. Just like her own shoes when she sprints giddy lengths of our corridor, or when she tries on mummy’s shoes and clatters periously across the parquet. (Sincerest apologies to our downstairs neighbour, whose patience must be wearing thin.)

The following day, she had talked about the noisy man. He wasn’t actually home at the time – he keeps very unsociable hours indeed, not heard for days, only to arrive with what sounds like an entire harem of stiletto clad females at 5am on a weekday. He even caused me to knock on our ceiling with a spare curtain rail (stashed under our bed), in the manner of a cantakerous old maid, on one occasion.

“There’s no man up there right now. I can’t hear anything.” I must have replied.

So despite my best intentions, Tadpole evidently now thinks the abominable snowman lives upstairs. And listens out for him, fearfully. So much for my powers of explanation.

“It’s not a snowman, sweetie, it’s just a man. A MAN. Like daddy.”

“NO! ‘NOMAN, ” Tadpole replies stubbornly.

I know better than to argue when my daughter adopts that tone. I pick up her magic pen and we draw a picture of a very friendly and approachable snowman. With big shoes on (artistic licence). Walking on a wooden floor.

Artist’s note: snail, butterfly and bumblebee added under duress. Parisian apartments do not, in my experience, harbour a variety of insects and molluscs.

The first thing Tadpole has said to me every morning for the past two weeks – because she is nothing if not predictable – is:

“Bébé cats?”

It’s my own stupid fault. One Sunday morning, at the appointed hour for Maisy Mouse, a ritual whereby Mr Frog and I transfer our pyjama clad, half-slumbering bodies from bed to sofa, drifting in and out of a rodent-infested sleep while Tadpole squawks with delight at her video.

One of the episodes is entitled ‘cats’, and tells the story of a stray cat which makes itself at home in Maisy’s laundry basket. Maisy wakes up to a chorus of miaowing in the morning, only to find a litter of kittens in among her undergarments.

I don’t know quite what possessed me to mention to Tadpole a whole two weeks ago that one of mummy’s friends has a cat, which has baby cats, just like in Maisy. And that we would be going to see them. Soon.

Because of course Tadpole has not yet developed any notion of time. In Tadpole-time, everything is happening right now, in the present. Our conversations are limited to the subject of what she is in the process of doing, or what she wants to do, right now. There is no point whatsoever enquiring what she has been up to with the childminder on any given day (a pity, as I would like to know more), or what she ate for lunch. Words like ‘yesterday’, ‘tomorrow’ and ‘weekend’ hold no meaning.

So imagine the mess I have got myself into by mentioning the cats, when they were bald, blind and not very interesting at all, and would remain that way for at least a fortnight. At that stage, to all intents and purposes, they were unvisitable.

Hence our daily discussion along the following lines:

Tadpole, hesitantly: “Va voir bébé cats?”

Me, patiently: “Soon, darling, they are still too small”

Tadpole, more forcefully: “Go see BÉBÉCATS?”

Me, calmly but firmly : “Not yet. We’ll go at the weekend.”

Tadpole, stamping her feet and seemingly convinced that if she shouts it loud enough, it WILL happen: “VA. VOIR. BÉBÉ. CATS!”

Bidding my patience farewell and resorting to similar tactics in the (vain) hope of making myself understood “NOT. YET. NO. BABY. CATS.”

Silence.

Tadpole frowns. I can almost see her thinking. Then,

“BABY CATS!”

Desperate measures are called for.

“Hey, shall we go in the kitchen and see if we can find some biscuits?”

I think it may be time for me to invest in the book ‘Toddler Taming: A Survival Guide for parents’, because my last line of resistance, although effective, is likely to contribute to rising levels of obesity in France.

Thankfully, baby cats are go for tomorrow. What worries me now, is that one visit will never be enough. Am I doomed never to hear the end of this?

With the benefit of hindsight, I realise I should have just gone to visit them in secret, unaccompanied. To be honest, I was only using Tadpole as a rather transparent pretext to go cuddle some cute little fluffy kitties myself.

Serves me right.

update:

We went, we stroked, we managed to come home empty handed. But guess what Tadpole’s first words were the morning after?

I tiptoe into Tadpole’s room and kneel by her new bed, where she is sleeping peacefully, surrounded by her favourite teddies. I can hear her slow, regular breathing (with a hint of snoring, caused by her blocked nose), and bend to smell the baby shampoo on her honey-coloured curls, noticing a flicker behind her eyelids, which I take to mean she is dreaming. Tears stream silently down my face.

I go back into the living room, where Mr Frog is in his habitual evening position, lying on the chaise longue in front of the window watching TV.

“She looks too grown up!” I wail. “I feel like we’re forcing her to grow up too quickly. She’s not even two yet, and we’re already dismantling her cot…”

“Mais non, n’importe quoi, bien sûr qu’elle est prête, elle s’est endormie ravie de son nouveau lit. We’re not forcing her into anything. And anyway, it was your idea, n’est-ce pas?”

I blow my nose loudly and start clearing up the toys and remnants of Tadpole’s dinner from her new mini table and chairs, which she is now using instead of her highchair. Provided, that is, that I sit on the other chair opposite her, which I suspect will not prolong the life of that particular piece of furniture, given I weigh five or six times more than your average infant.

One of the things I find hardest to judge as a parent is when Tadpole is ready for something new. So I end up measuring her against other children, which I know you are not really supposed to do. People I know with slightly older toddlers have bought beds, so I thought we should. Keeping up with the Jones’s. The fact that Tadpole could almost get her leg over the barrier, ballerina style, seemed to suggest that she was outgrowing her cot, but as she goes to bed wearing a straitjacket sleeping bag anyhow, once that is firmly fastened, she’d have to pull a Houdini-like stunt in order to make her escape. The sleeping bag, and the safety barrier on the side of the new bed, are cunningly designed to prevent her from deciding that she would rather play with her train set, or pay mummy and daddy a visit in the middle of the night. Nevertheless I don’t doubt it is only a matter of time before I am awoken by an almighty crash, whereupon I will find Tadpole standing on her head, cocooned legs in the air.

When I pause to think how far we’ve come, I simply cannot get my head around how quickly Tadpole is learning and changing. The progress is so gradual; it is only when I conjure up an image of her crawling in reverse gear this time last year, that I feel overwhelmed by the speed of it all. Back then, she babbled cheerful nonsense, devoid of any actual English or French words, but now she can recite ‘Mary Mary quite contrary’ (glossing over some of the words, like a French speaker doing an approximate rendition of an English pop song, parrot fashion, not fully understanding the meaning of the lyrics). This progress is bittersweet, like the joys and constraints of motherhood itself: on the one hand I look forward impatiently to the day when she will be potty trained, but on the other, I am nostalgic for the snuffly, terrifyingly needy baby animal she was, not so long ago.

And, if I’m honest, I feel slightly guilty for spending weekdays apart from her, unable to savour every minute to the full.

I am lying on my tummy on the living room floor, making a picture with my fuzzy felts. The scratchy carpet tiles make my bare legs itch.

I like playing games on the khaki green and beige squares: it’s a bit like a giant game of snakes and ladders. I sometimes hop across the room, trying to land only on the green squares. If I land on a beige one by accident, the monster which lives in the dark, shadowy space behind the sofa will come out and get me. So I’m very careful.

My face is bent close to the sticky fuzzy felts’ board so that I can see what I am doing. I am four years old and no-one has realised that I need to wear glasses yet.

The telephone trills and mummy steps into the hall to answer it. I can see her through the doorway. She has her back to me and she is playing with the spiral cord with her free hand. It sounds like she is talking to daddy.

I am sorting through the pieces of felt for long yellow bits to use as sunbeams, when I am suddenly aware of a movement in the corner of the room, down by the skirting board behind the standard lamp.

It’s the plug. It’s moving on its own again.

I want to cry out and make mummy turn around, but I don’t seem to be able to make any noise at all. Not even a little squeak. I want to get up and run away, but I am like fuzzy felt, firmly stuck to a velcro board.

The plug silently detaches itself from the socket in the wall, and turns its three-pronged face towards me, its prey. It slithers forward, head raised, pulling the wire taut in its wake, until the prongs are very close to my face. Rearing up like a snake, it is poised to strike…

As a child, I had a rather overactive imagination. The plug and socket scenario, and the shape on the end of the radiator next to my bed, which I thought looked like a face, were recurring themes. Short-sightedness didn’t help matters. In the darkness, objects always seem more sinister, but when your eyes make all the edges vague and fuzzy, it is ten times worse. The dressing gown dangling from a hook on the back of my bedroom door, harmless by day, by night became a sentinel standing guard in the doorway so I couldn’t get out.

Tadpole is just starting to feel afraid of things, I think. Every time she walks into her bedroom, the first thing she does is close the double doors to the walk-in wardrobe where all our clothes hang, and where the hoover lurks in the shadows, if someone has left it ajar. She used to play inside that cupboard, but not any more. Whenever she hears a noise from another apartment, like footfalls on the parquet floors above us, or workmen sanding the walls next door, she stops what she’s doing and looks at me, eyes wide with fear. And yet a couple of weeks ago she would have been oblivious to these sounds.

At night, I hear her whimper in her sleep or cry out, occasionally waking herself up. My mummy radar, tuned in to every little sound she makes whether I like it or not, wakes me instantly.

I know I can’t really protect her from her own, fledgling imagination. I know that a vivid imagination is a wonderful thing, and I dare to hope she will lose herself in books, like I did as a child, and write fantastical stories when she is at school.

But despite knowing all these things, I creep into her room, anxious not to rouse her if she is still sleeping, and murmur noises of reassurance, wishing I had the power to keep the monsters at bay and make her dream of shiny, happy things.

And definitely not plugs and sockets.

The rasping, abrasive noise of coffee beans grinding in the machine sets my teeth on edge. I yawn and stretch, glad to have the kitchen to myself, and begin inspecting my shoulders. There is nothing worse than arriving at work and realising half way through the day that what I thought were clean clothes actually have toothpaste, snot and/or dribble on the right shoulder – Tadpole’s favourite nestling spot. I dab at the offending white marks with a moistened tea towel and then bend to examine my trouser legs and wipe off some breakfast milk which Tadpole has deposited at mid-thigh level.

After a quick application of Mac foundation in the ladies room, I’m just about ready to enter the world of grown ups again.

Unfortunately I have an French comptines playing in a continuous loop in my head, as Tadpole was on energetic form, complete with dancing and chanting this morning.

Along with her perpetual favourites, ‘Blaa blaa Black Sheep and ‘La capucine’ (if anyone can explain to me the meaning of the non-French exclamation of “YOU!!!” at the end of this rhyme, I would be grateful), she was singing the following little ditty (caps show her emphasis):

Les petits poissons DANS L’EAU
nagent, nagent, NAGENT, nagent, NAGENT
les petits poissions DANS L’EAU
nagent aussi bien QUE LES GROS

Little fish swim just as well as big fish. Mmm. Something tells me this verse was written by a man, attempting to convince himself/the world that size doesn’t matter.

Tadpole is nestling in my arms, limp, warm, soft and still half slumbering. I want to bury my nose in her neck and just breathe in her scent for a few minutes. But she has other ideas. She spies daddy through the slits of her bleary eyes. They snap open as if a switch has been flipped, her face becomes instantly animated, chubby little arms reach longingly in his direction.

I surrender the Tadpole, reluctantly.

On the way home from the childminders’, singing songs. Tadpole chants: “va voir daddy, va voir dadDY, va voir DADDY, VA VOIR DADDY!”

“Daddy’s not home yet, he’s at the office,” I explain.

“NON! Pas office! Va voir DADDY!”

There’s no reasoning with some people. “Okay, whatever, let’s go home and see whether daddy is there, shall we?”

Daddy is special.

Who gets up bright and early every morning and proceeds to zip around the apartment hurriedly cramming flailing limbs into sleeves and trouser legs, braving dangerous windmill legs to change soiled nappies, brushing unruly locks, cleaning teeth and supervising the slurping of leftover milk from the cereal bowl (a hazardous manoeuvre which, if badly executed, can necessitate the cramming of small flailing limbs into fresh clothing)?

I do.

Where is Mr Frog while this is all going on?

Cocooned away in a steaming bath listening to his floating radio (with hindsight, probably the most ill thought out gift I ever gave him) with eyes closed.

Who races home from work every evening, cursing metro delays and pelting up and down escalators at full speed, checking the time every other minute hoping that the nanny will not be kept waiting or need overtime pay? Who then prepares a healthy, nutritious (but ready in two minutes in the microwave) meal for the ravenous Tadpole, bathes her, reads several stories and finally sits down to put feet up and savour a much needed cup of tea at approximately 8pm?

I do.

When does Mr Frog show up? At best, in time for one last story. At worst, much later than that. Possibly after even my bedtime.

What do I get in return for my daily labours of love? I’m taken for granted.

Daddy, on the other hand, who has wisely marketed himself as a scarce and therefore greatly prized commodity, is deluged with affection.

It’s a man’s world and no mistake.

I put on my powder blue mac, because spring has well and truly sprung. I find it hard to believe that not two weeks ago there was snow on the ground and the park was closed altogether. Now the trees are covered in delicate white blossom, the birds are singing in a cheerful chorus and I am woken up every morning by sunlight filtering through the shutters.

I stop the pushchair to reach up and pick a blossom for Tadpole to study. She sniffs it cautiously and then sneezes. (Atishoo – an English sneeze. France: nul points, Angleterre: dix points.)

“Knees and toes!” she pleads. Meaning that I’m supposed to sing ‘Heads, shoulders, knees and toes’, her new favourite song. I sing, a little out of breath from pushing uphill. I don’t really care who can hear me, because this exchange takes place inside the little bubble where only Tadpole and I exist, and I see no further than the sparkle in her grey-blue eyes. But I doubt any of the passers by understood the words in any case. Except maybe when I stopped the pushchair and did the actions.

“Encore un! Encore un!” (Tadpole’s way of saying “do it again!”)

I sing it one more time, and then cast around for some other means of entertainment. Deflecting her attention seems to be the only way to get around her stubborn streak and love of repetition. It’s the only solution I’ve found anyhow. I stopped reading books about child rearing the day Tadpole was born and my brand of parenting can best be described as the “instinctive hit and miss technique”. Whatever works, goes.

“I know, let’s do some counting, [Tadpole].” This is something we’ve been working on for the last few days. We count apples in the fruitbowl, toys in the bath, fingers and toes. Most of the time she just smiles while I count. Then, out of the blue, when I’m only listening with half an ear, she will suddenly count all the way to ten on her own. The only sticking point tends to be the number four, which she always says twice for good measure.

“One,” I begin, pointing at a parked car, as we have now exited the park and are on the pavement approaching the town hall.

“Toe, free, four….” continues Tadpole, pointing downwards, I’m not entirely sure at what.

“Four,” she repeats, “five, six, sefen…” She pauses, as though she’s run out of things to count.

There is no shortage of parked cars, so I decide that maybe she’s got stuck, and I prompt: “Eight..”

“Et, nine, ten!” she finishes, triumphantly. I stop the pushchair so I can clap my hands and show my appreciation of her counting prowess. Her finger is still pointing downwards, at something on the floor.

It dawns on me that it was not the cars that she was counting, but the dog poos I was swerving to miss along the way.

The joys of city living.

postscript: Jim from Rennes, who seems like a nice sort of chap, asked me to plug the new single by his chums ‘I am Kloot’ today, Over My Shoulder. Jim, I am flattered that you think I have the power to influence people and make them buy records. Personally I haven’t bought a record since I got cable broadband access in 2000 (apologies to struggling artists!) But I don’t see any harm in recommending that you follow the link above and give it a listen… Oh my goodness! Spot the cute little Tadpole clone in the video!

When I visited our apartment a couple of years ago, arching my back so the agent immobilier would notice the fact that I would shortly be spawning a little Frog and move our dossier to the top of the pile, I was very taken with the hairdresser’s next door.

The psychedelic, rainbow coloured, curvy shop front looks rather like it has been fashioned out of papier mâché. The sign on the door reads “Paris – Ouagadougou – Gif sur Yvette”. The name: Les Intondables, which literally translated means something like the ‘unshavables’ or the ‘unshearables’. Tondre is a verb of which I am rather fond, given that it can mean to ‘mow (the lawn)’ or to ’shear’ (a sheep) as well as to shave your head. A tondeuse can therefore refer to either a small electric razor or a lawnmower.

But the best thing about the funky hairdressers’ is the music that booms out of their shop day in and day out. An eclectic mix which means that you never know quite what to expect, but are almost always pleasantly surprised. I often find myself humming along with a long forgotten track whilst poking around looking for post in amongst the junk mail and other unwelcome debris lurking in my letterbox. (‘Fools Gold’ by the Stone Roses was one of last week’s favourites, and I actually sang out loud to ‘Temptation’ by New Order. Do I sound old yet?)

Until last Saturday I had never crossed over the line and danced in the lobby however. As Mr Frog, Tadpole and I emerged from the lift on our way to the supermarket, our ears were greeted with the opening bars of ‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’ by The Smiths and Tadpole’s enthusiasm proved infectious. We are having something of a Smiths revival in our household, as Mr Frog brought his old CD’s back from the Evil’s so that I could put them on my Ipod. Tadpole seems to have taken a shine to Morrissey and enjoys ‘dancing’ (if it can be called that, being essentially arm waving at this stage) to ‘Vicar in a Tutu’ almost as much as to her other current favourite, ‘Head, Shoulders, knees and toes’.

Tadpole span round and round, waving her arms above her head and shrieking her appreciation, wobbling a little as she started to get rather dizzy. Mr Frog valiantly tried to encourage her to move her legs, executing the sort of moves that would make you howl with shame if you saw your dad doing something similar at a pub disco. Meanwhile yours truly was shaking her booty with reckloss abandon and yelling ‘wiggle wiggle? Go on [Tadpole], wiggle your bottom!’ Tadpole collapsed in a fit of giggles. I winked suggestively at Mr Frog (who was now doing his very best John Travolta impression, despite the fact that it did not match the music at all) and slapped my rear. Thank goodness we had the place to ourselves.

Except we didn’t.

Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye I spied a shadowy figure in the stairwell, his silhouette outlined against the sunlight pouring in through the window. The bellowing music and the fact that the stairs are lined with carpet had allowed someone to creep up on us unnoticed.

I gestured to Mr Frog, who stopped mid-pose, looking rather like he was halfway through a spirited rendition of ‘I’m a little teapot’. There was an eery lull in the music – someone in the shop must be fumbling around for a new CD – and even Tadpole went silent, sensing that something was amiss. The man, a grumpy looking gentleman in his fifties with very bushy eyebrows, sidled past, maintaining a buffer zone between the dangerous whirling dervish people and himself, with not even the ghost of a smile. Perhaps he was worried that he might actually catch a sense of humour if he got too close?

When the door had swung safely shut behind him I collapsed in a quivering giggling mass.

It is at times like these that I am glad I remembered to do my pelvic floor exercises.

I had such surreal, cocktail-induced dreams on Friday night, that by Saturday morning I was no longer sure which conversations had actually taken place at the blogmeet and which were the warped inventions of my pickled brain.

Sadly I think I really did quiz La Coquette about the virtues of Colgate whitening strips for about ten minutes (my apologies). And for your information, we two were the last standing – but, to be fair, this had more to do with many people having to dash off to catch the last train home to the ‘burbs, and should not be construed as a reflection of their staying power in general.

I arrived at the bar – Klein Holland in the Marais – a little after the appointed hour and was afflicted with a severe case of rabbit in the headlights syndrome as I walked hesitantly over to the large table around which (what I supposed was) our group had congregated. “You’re petite right?” someone guessed, (I wonder why?). I nodded affirmatively. Introductions followed but I remained in a state of shellshock for several minutes and I don’t think I managed to form a grammatically viable sentence until I’d had a few sips of my first cocktail. There’s something very surreal about meeting people in the flesh who are privy to your innermost thoughts, yet have no idea what you look like, or sound like in person (awfully British apparently).

Inevitably, because of the fantastic turnout, I didn’t manage to have a proper chat with everyone present, and for this reason alone we will have to do it again. Iain deserves a special mention for daring to join us at all – although thankfully a couple of bloggers did bring their other halves, so he wasn’t the only male for long. One thing I did notice is that I found it easier to continue calling people by their blog pseudoynms, as the labels seem to have well and truly stuck.

As for me, I felt absurdly comfortable being ‘petite’ and, after referring to Mr Frog and Tadpole by their real names a couple of times, I soon reverted back to using their blognames as well. I think blogging takes place in a sort of Donnie Darko-esque parallel universe, and the blogmeet definitely took place in that other place.

Saturday morning can best be summed up using the term ‘tired and emotional’. Or as the French sometimes say, “j’avais mal au cheveux” (my hair hurt). Mr Frog phoned from the TGV to say that his train would be delayed. I decided to press on to Gare de Lyon regardless and settled myself in a café opposite the station to people watch and eat the closest thing to an English breakfast on the menu: a croque madame. (It doesn’t really come close, but I found it helpful all the same.)

I was impatient to see my daughter again after our longest separation, but it wasn’t until a girl only a little older than Tadpole, with similar curly blond hair, stopped in front of the café window and stared in my direction that the desire to see her started to feel like a physical craving. I waved and smiled at the little girl, and then headed into the station to stake out the platform and start my waiting vigil. When the train finally pulled in, I ran (people who know me well will realise how out of character this is) to voiture 13 and immediately caught sight of Mr Frog. I leapt up the steps and a little warm bundle hurled itself into my arms. Suddenly the floodgates opened.

Granny p (see Friday’s comments) was right. Motherhood and schizophrenia have a lot in common. Some people had commented the previous night that they couldn’t quite imagine me as a mum. And I had been secretly feeling rather guilty that I hadn’t spent the whole week pining. Was it normal to feel gleeful that I could get up a little later, and run errands after work? Was I totally selfish and un-maternal? But as soon as I laid eyes on her, the shockwave hit and it was like being punched in the ribcage.

Last night, vegetating on the sofa in front of a DVD (Paycheck: I like Philip Dick’s novels but I hate plastic ‘Ken’ Affleck so verdict is not good I’m afraid), I felt such a sense of relief and comfort to know that my little girl was sleeping right there in the next room. I could go and peek any time I wanted to, and listen to her gently snoring.

That has to be my current definition of happiness.

Her telephone manner leaves something to be desired.

Tadpole: “Allô? Allô? Allô Allô!”

*beepy sound of buttons being pressed on keypad*

*dial tone*

Okay. That. Didn’t. Work.

The phone rings again.

“Allô? C’est daddy!”

(Tadpole has a habit of talking about what she can see when on the telephone, which can be somewhat confusing for the listener, who doesn’t have a clue why she is saying “car! book! teddy!” in response to “how are you baby?”)

“Hello sweetie, are you with your daddy?”

“Mummy” (or mamie, but I choose to hear “mummy”)

“Yes darling it’s your mummy. Did you have a nice time with daddy on the train?”

“Daddy… mummy”

“Can you hear mummy giving you a kiss? Listen …” *smacky kiss noise*

“Kiss!” *smacky kiss noise* “dabulakibaba lima pussy cat”

“…? Er, can I speak to daddy now? Say bye bye to mummy?”

“NO! Pas daddy!”

*beepy sound of dialing on keypad*

*dial tone*

I give up. Clearly this is one long distance love affair that cannot be conducted by telephone.

I rang in sick this morning.

It was a toss up between calling to say that I would be late, because I needed to help dispatch off Mr Frog and Tadpole to the Evils’, and making one of those phone calls where I try to sound off-colour enough not to work, without overdoing it to the point where I sound like I’m about to expire. In the end I mumbled something pathetic about womens’ problems and having a hot water bottle welded to my midriff. And a headache, for good measure.

Due to the current snowbound status of the French capital, no taxi company was willing to commit to sending us a cab this morning. And I couldn’t really see Mr Frog, Tadpole, a big heavy bag and a pushchair making it to Gare de Lyon without my help. The change of metros at Chatelêt alone, with its kilometres of corridors and flights of wet, slippery steps, would have defeated them. As it happened however, after a brainwave of mine, Mr Frog’s agency were instructed to book a G7 Classe Affaires posh businessman’s taxi, complete with Financial magazines and squeaky leather seats. The Agency switchboard called back while Mr Frog was (still) in the bath, and I was surfing the internet wearing only a towel, trying to find out if the trains were actually running or not.

“Ze good news eez zat zere eez a taxi,” shouted Mr Frog from the bathroom. “But ze bad news eez zat it weel be ‘ere in six minutes.”

Panic.

Five and a half minutes later, I am dressed, coated and ready to go, and I have managed to get Tadpole’s shoes, coat, scarf and hat on. All the while she is watching ‘Dora the Explorer’ and puts up zero resistance. Television is, in my opinion, something which should be used very sparingly on toddlers. But sometimes it can save your life. On a normal day I have to chase Tadpole round and round the apartment – her in floods of giggles, me growing quietly frantic about my lateness for work – before I can get so much as a wriggly little arm into a coatsleeve. Praise be to Dora.

I chaperoned Frog and Tadpole to the station to see them off, so as to be on hand to help keep Tadpole entertained in case of lengthy train delays. Naturally it had been impossible to find out any useful information from the SNCF website, and the phone number that I was given to call just sent me in ever decreasing circles listening to a pre-recorded disembodied lady’s voice which never actually told me anything useful, and finally delivered her coup de grace by telling me that the train number I had entered did not exist.

The TGV was on time, although when it will reach its destination is anyone’s guess. I explained to Tadpole for the twentieth time that daddy was taking her to see mamie and papy so she could play in the garden and build a ‘noman’, but she just smiled at me and held out a crayon for me to draw a picture. I got off the train, and blew her kisses through the window. Her little face fell as realisation finally dawned that mummy was staying behind. I left abruptly, not wanting to see if there would be any tears.

The irony of this whole separation scenario is that Mr Frog and I were supposed to be going to Madrid for four days, sans Tadpole, to chill out, order hot chocolate and churros and spend a bit of time remembering what it was like to be a couple. But as I hear that Orly airport is well and truly closed today, and snow is forecast all weekend, I’m feeling somewhat pessimistic about the whole thing.

Please excuse me while I just go and bang my head against the wall repeatedly.

The main reason for my erratic posting this week is that I have been busy ‘negotiating’ with the childminder. A fraught process which has left me a couple of kilos lighter (a not unwelcome but sadly temporary state of affairs) and cheated me of many hours of beauty sleep.

It all began when we learned that a new Convention Collective (collective bargaining agreement?) covering Assistantes Maternelles had been brought into force on 1st January 2005: a booklet outlining the childminder’s rights, our rights, what should be in our contract and on her payslips. It was supposed to simplify our relationship and bring employment law for childminders into line with the rest of the French workforce.

This was not intended to change how much we actually pay her for her services, as she earns far in excess of the minimum wage as it is, but it does alter, on paper, the calculations used to reach this amount. She is now to be paid over twelve equal months, for example, whereas before she got a bit extra every month and was not paid during her holidays. We also have to come up with an hourly rate for a nine hour day, as opposed to paying her a daily flat rate under the previous system. On paper this all looked fine.

Of course two people can read the same document in many different ways, and human nature being what it is, the childminder sought to inflate her salary as much as possible by interpreting the document in bizarre and illogical ways. Tata (short for tante or auntie, which is what most children call their childminder) demonstrated once again that she can be a formidably tough negotiator. Her tactics are very simple: talk at the same time as your opponent until they get flustered and lose their thread, pretend not to understand any reasoned argument, and use a smattering of meaningless phrases like “but everyone else does that” and “at the meeting last Friday they definitely said that was right”. She also brandished various bits of paper (of obscure origin) at me showing ever increasing “recommended hourly rates”, when ultimately the rate was supposed to be something we agreed upon, based on what we paid her under her old contract.

On Monday she presented me with an amended version of our contract, which she had drafted, using the highest rate I’d seen to date. I went home and did the maths. And realised that she had managed to find an hourly rate which gave her exactly the same monthly salary as before, but paid over twelve months. A whopping € 700 per annum rise, equivalent to a month’s salary.

The panic attacks started again (and I’d only just thrown off the computer-related ones). You see, it’s a very delicate situation when you have to negotiate with the person who looks after the apple of your eye, in a city where demand for childminders far outweighs supply. On the one hand, she loves Tadpole and has been looking after her for almost a year and a half. Of the childminders we interviewed she was the only one we warmed to, the only one who seemed to genuinely love the children she helping to bring up. So we can’t afford to lose her. But, if we refuse to pay what she demands, there are ten children queuing up to fill Tadpole’s shoes. On the other hand, I do not want to be held hostage by this woman, who is seriously pushing her luck and, deep down, knows it. There are times when you have to stand firm, stay calm, and try to beat her at her own game.

On Tuesday I spent hours crafting the mother of all spreadsheets to demonstrate in the simplest possible terms (because she plays dumb, even if she isn’t) that what I was proposing to pay her was fair, that she wasn’t going to lose anything, but she wouldn’t be getting a huge pay rise out of us either. I also cast some doubt on her odd interpretation of the clause stating that her daily allowance (for food and equipment) was payable for each day the child was present. She had decided that this was payable for each day the child should theoretically be present. I had to spend a great deal of time hanging out on French nanny internet forums asking questions and sifting through reponses littered with an indecent number of smilies (there should be a legal limit in my opinion) and signed with hideous animated signature gifs to do battle with her assertion that “in the meeting that was what they told us to do”. A painful process, but one which eventually bore fruit as a member of the nannies’ union replied that what we were being asked to do was both wrong and illegal. I printed it out.

I took my sheaf of papers, asked her to look over my sums and played the role of ‘concerned mummy who is worried about putting something illegal in the contract’ . She promised to call her local representative to clarify a few points.

The next morning she backed down.

I still can’t believe I’ve managed to out-barter a North African nanny. But I’m left wondering what is the point of the unions thrashing out a collective bargaining agreement if the result is that we then have to go through a new round of bargaining of our own?

A text message arrives from the babysitter in response to my grovelling apology for not having been in touch since December 2004. It is written in barely comprehensible teenage misspellt abbreviated stroppy French texto language. And all in shouty caps.

“JE ME SUIS BEAUCOUP INKIETÉ PASKE VS M AVÉ PA DONE 2 NOUVELES DEPUI LONGTEMP C PA TRÉ SIMPA KAN MEME JPENSé KE J AVÉ FÉ KELKE CHOSE BREF C OK PR SAM C KEL HEU”

High maintenance doesn’t even begin to cover it. I think I’d rather stay in than nurse her wounded little ego back to health via a series of 10 word text messages.

And all because the lady probably has her sights set on a new handbag and we haven’t been providing her with the means to purchase it…

The text message on my mobile reads:

“Bonne Année. Je voulais juste avoir des nouvelles de [Tadpole] – Myriam”.

It is dated January 4th. Oh dear. I do dimly recall having read this some time ago and making a sarcastic comment to Mr Frog about how the babysitter was touting for business again, but then I promptly forgot all about it. I haven’t the faintest idea whether I replied. The post-partum brain is a fickle creature.

Tadpole has somehow unearthed this message while tappety-tapping on the keypad. It’s really quite impressive the way she holds the phone to her ear and strolls out of the room as if she is having a private conversation I cannot be privy to (“Allô? Allô? Allô Gram ma!”).

So now I’m feeling guilty. Both about the dose of radiation Tadpole may be self-administrating (justification: the mobile is the only ‘toy’ I have to hand here in the doctor’s waiting room) and also about my lack of courtesy to the babysitter. She is not someone we can afford to offend. Our very social lives depend on her goodwill.

When you live in a big city, many hundreds of miles/kilometres from the nearest relative, finding a reliable babysitter is a big deal. There being no teenage girls conveniently located in our apartment building, we asked the childminder if she could recommend someone. She came up with a friend’s daughter who lived a half hour walk from our flat and required chaperoning home at the end of the evening. On foot, as opposed to on the back of Mr Frog’s Vespa.

In desperation I put an advert in our local boulangerie asking for a student with childcare references – one of those little ads you see everywhere in France with tear-off strips bearing our phone number. I was prepared to take the the risk of receiving a few heavy breathing perv-calls from mac-wearing stalkers who happened to buy a baguette that day. It was for a good cause.

The advert disappeared, I suspect removed by our soon-to-be babysitter, anxious to eliminate the opposition. She was perfect: nicely spoken, lived close by and had been picking up a toddler from school and minding her every evening for three years. Her references were duly checked.

And she is reliable. But I can’t help feeling that we are not the ones who call the shots here. She charges € 7 per hour – equal to the minimum wage in this country, but non-declared and therefore tax-free. That’s pretty good television watching/internet surfing/cupboard exploring money, by anyone’s standards. As we never seem to have any change when it comes to the crucial moment of paying her, the amounts inevitably get rounded up in her favour. Just to rub it in, she shows up carrying a different genuine-looking Chanel/Dior/Gucci handbag every time, her hair styled as if she has just come from a salon, her clothes pristine. I leave the flat feeling dowdy, in spite of my glad rags and make-up.

And then there is the guilt factor. Our ad said we would require someone about once a week. This was in the optimistic, naïve days before the reality of paying someone and then also paying to go out had really sunk in. You have to read really good reviews of a film before you want to spend €100 paying the sitter/seeing the film/buying Mr Frog the obligatory bucket of salty popcorn/having a bite to eat before/after the film. As opposed to renting the DVD for € 3. But occasionally Myriam adopts a petulant tone in her texts and implies she had hoped to work more regularly, so like the mugs we are we end up booking her just to keep her sweet, so that she will be there for us when we really do need her.

I suppose we should count our blessings though. A friend of mine uses an Orthodox Jewish girl whose family live in her apartment building. She has a bizarre set of rules about babysitting on the Sabbath. She can’t be paid on that day, nor can she do anything which constitutes ‘work’. The mother in question returned from a night out to find her children still wide awake and bouncing off the walls at midnight. Their bedroom light was still on, as the babysitter wasn’t ‘allowed’ to turn it off.

I try not to dwell on what our young lady gets up to when we go out. I know that when I babysat in my early teens I pretty much cased the joint for films with ‘rude’ scenes or mildly titillating literature (Women in Love, Tropic of Cancer). God only knows what I’d have got up to if I had broadband internet access.

I only hope she never stumbles across Mr Frog’s fluffy baaing sheep thong.

In a novel I read recently, ‘Notes on a Scandal‘ by Zoë Heller, there was a passage that leapt out of the page and struck me forcefully. It has come back to haunt me many times since. Usually when I am reaching for the Teletubbies video. Again.

One of the protagonists expressed an unpalatable truth that I know I was already aware of on some level, but prior to actually seeing it in writing, I would never have dared admit it, even to myself.

“It was so much easier being a parent when one was performing for another adult… Dealing with her daughter is never easy, but it’s pretty much impossible without the motivation of an audience. If there’s no one about to witness her patience and kindness, she finds herself too weary to tackle Polly’s sullen mystery.”

I don’t think I’m a bad parent. But I know for a fact that I am a better one when someone I seek to impress is within earshot. If Mr Frog is in the next room, regardless of whether he’s actually paying attention, I am much more engaged with Tadpole, far more likely to try to teach her a new word, or invest some energy in eliciting a giggle. So that Mr Frog can hear what a good mummy I’m being. It’s a form of showing off: ‘Hey, look what a wonderful parent I am!’ O