Dummy Run

Never let it be said that the life of a young mother lacks glamour.

Yesterday was Dummy Day: an entire day devoted to the quest to 1/locate, 2/ buy and 3/ learn to love two new dummies (the old ones being - well - old and, in the case of LB, broken).
Such a mission will undoubtedly seem like a total non-event to anyone who has never confronted the Dummy Problem: the rest of you will empathise.

As it turned out, points 1/ and 2/ (above) were easy enough (though they took up a decent chunk of the morning): point 3, on the other hand, sparked off a terrifying series of events that led to:

- two brand new, very expensive (fully organic, physiologically perfect, blah blah blah...) dummies being flung across the living room in outrage,
- an attempt to explain calmly to a 13-month old baby that his preferred brand of dummy is no longer manufactured (explanation aborted when hit in the face by a projectile dummy),
- one frantic phone call to the very expensive organic baby shop to negotiate the buying back of one out of two rejected dummies,
- an additional shopping trip and an additional dummy purchase,
- a parenting "lesson" from a bolshy salesgirl who scolds me IN FRONT OF BOTH MY KIDS for being weak in the face of adversity,
- a scramble (me) to retrieve the old dummies dramatically thrown in the bin (bolshy salesgirl),
- two solid hours of hysterical crying (LB),
- firmness (me), followed by harsh words (me), followed by loss of resolve (me) followed by capitulation (me),
- two boys peacefully tucked into bed with... their old and broken dummies firmly lodged in their mouths.

Total amount of money spent on dummies in one day: 30 euros
Success rate: 0

I'm not sure of much in this murky world of parenting, but I sense that my parenting approach hovers somewhere in the vast space in between FIRM & NO-NONSENSE and WEAK & INDULGENT.

And when I figure out exactly where I stand... well, er, then I'll get them to love the new dummies.
Yes I will.
Won't I?

I told you: some days it really is glamour, glamour, glamour all the way.