petite anglaise

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.