More than memories

I've been sorting out baby clothes to be stored in the loft just in case we are crazy enough to try for a third. The everyday vests and babygros and buy on a whim Primark outfits (made by children for children?) I'm happy to pass on to anyone but the posher John Lewis dresses bought via eBay I'm saving to bestow upon favoured friends after my family is definitely complete. 

I have however come across a couple of things that have tugged the heart strings and been put in the 'don't give away, ever' pile. 

One of those is a bunny rabbit vest a friend bought my daughter as a present when she went into hospital for an operation as a baby. It says I heart Mummy on it. I say she bought it for my daughter, we both knew it was for me. And though I am usually resistant to slogans, any slogans, this one was just the right message at just the right time. I am not sure I could ever put another child of mine in it, it's so bound up with that time for me, but I don't want to give it away either.

At the other end of the spectrum is a yellow cardigan I bought for my son, though it has the opposite emotional tug and as soon as I found it I just needed it out of the house. I bought it full price, something I rarely do, in Mothercare, in a fit of concern that he'd only ever have hand me downs and never know the thrill of new clothes. As if his three month old self cared. I was also thrilled to find something for boys so bright and cheerful without a lion, dinosaur or car on it. 

The first time he wore it he had a choking incident. It was over quickly, before I could ask my friend to call an ambulance I had held him upside down and was thwacking his back until he threw up monumentally and the colour drained back into his face, but all I can see now when I picture that cardigan is the bright yellow against a purple face struggling to breathe. 

I don't even want to see that cardigan again on a friend's child, let alone my own, lovely as it is, so it's gone to a charity shop far enough away that I shouldn't bump into it again. 

When my daughter was born my mum gave me a dress that had been my own as a baby. She had kept it in her box of special things. I took it out of the drawer one day to put it on my daughter and all the elastic had rotted in the intervening thirty-two years. 

There are people online who make 'memory quilts' out of baby clothes for sentimental saddos who can't let go. You send them your fifty favourite items and a three figure bank transfer and they send you a bedspread covered in teddies, ducks, Breton stripe and knock off Scandinavian prints. I'm so going to get one made in due course, I just know it, with fabric from the one my mum passed down to me at the centre. I know it's vomit inducing and a little pathetic and will take fifty good outfits out of the hand me down circuit (perhaps it's even funded by clothes shops keen you buy as much new as possible), but I know too that I'll love it. 

The bucket list

Say what you will about Louise Mensch and her politics, and much of the criticism of her smacks of misogyny to me (who cares about her roots being on show during Select Committee meetings?), I still think of her mostly as wildly successful chick lit author Louise Bagshawe. So I was thrilled when I tweeted last year about my summer holiday to have a response from her praising my tweet for its depiction of our holiday. 

My oldest child is still only two but we have an impressive collection of buckets, spades and other beach toys. My favourites are a castle shaped bucket with wall attached so you can build a sand fort (castles are so last millennium) bought that holiday from a beachside stall, and an amazing builders set from Great Little Trading Company which includes a brick mould and spirit level (£17).

Our sand sculptures are ephemeral of course, the first wall or brick usually being kicked down before the second has been built, but I hope the memories they create last forever. Many of my memories of childhood are of our holidays. Many others however are based on food. In fact I remember day trips by what sweets we were bought (Highland toffee on the Isle of Wight, strawberry Fruitellas by the river at Broxbourne etc). I thought of these sweetie memories when pregnant with my son as I had a near constant craving for the first five months for Tooty Fruity sweets which it turns out are remarkably hard to find in north London (though Skittles scratched the itch temporarily when necessary). Sweets and beaches, that is how I remember my second pregnancy, and my childhood.

All of which is a very long way of getting to the main point which is never mind my holidays, never mind the sweets I crave, never mind my tweets, but look look look at these amazing, memory forming, castle and sweet treat combining, sandcastle ice cream buckets available from The Handpicked Collection (£5.95). I want some.

The greatest show on earth - and we'll be there

I have a glut of posts that begin 'When we were trying to conceive...' for which I apologise. Here is another.

When we were trying to conceive I often thought about the London Olympics, now just weeks away. I would work out how old my baby would be in July 2012, if we conceived in any given month, and whether they would be old enough to understand the magnitude of the event, to recognise athletes, to play with a toy medal, to wonder at the nature of a competition that includes swirling ribbons around in rhythmic gymnastics and so on.

Turns out we were a bit late for that. Our daughter will be 19 months when it starts. We got her a pay your age ticket for the hockey so she'll be there, but whether she'll be engaged (whether we'll be engaged - it is hockey after all) who knows.

But I am thrilled that she will experience the London Olympics, that we will get photographs of her at the Olympic Park and have some souvenirs in her toy box. Because I am not one of the naysayers who is cynical about the event. You only have to look at the Olympic Park and its magnificent buildings, and walk around the adjacent shopping centre, to think wow, this used to be Stratford, the kind of place you had to suffix with the words 'East London' less anyone think you meant 'upon Avon', and now it's Stratford, the kind of place you can just say by itself and it can hold its head up high and say yes, look at me with my velodrome and aquatic centre and stadium, my destination shopping centre and comfortable cinema and casino for those that way inclined. Look at all the jobs I have created in building and retail. Look at the feats I will host, the speed, the agility, the strength. Look at the tears and beads of sweat. Oh, I'm getting carried away... but you would too if you had grown up a stone's throw away, if you associated Stratford with the 69 bus, if your school theatre trips were to the Theatre Royal Stratford East.

I love that Stratford no longer hides away in East London, letting its 'cooler' neighbours of Mile End and Stepney take the limelight. Now Stratford proudly says 'I am here'. And my daughter, though she may not remember it, will be able to look back on London 2012 and say 'I was there'. I'm so pleased we managed to make her in time.

(Not) remembering my first day at school

I've been reading lots of blogs and tweets and Facebook updates about people's children starting school and the pride and the worry and the changes to routine and it struck me, I don't remember my first day at school. 

I remember things that happened at nursery - song circles and the willow tree in the garden and my mum helping hide chocolate eggs for an Easter Egg Hunt and the accident that led to me being hospitalised for dehydration after refusing to drink with my battered mouth, and the nursery nurse I thought was a witch (because she had a wart on her face not because she was mean) and I remember a few details of my early school days such as where the classroom was and the blue maths workbook with an owl on the front and the teacher's name but as much as I try I just can't summon up the first day. 

Which means it must have either been a complete non event or so traumatic I have buried it. I suspect the former. Which should be somewhat comforting to parents of this month's newbies shouldn't it?

I remember, I remember

I remember it so clearly. Sitting in the car outside a pub, the window open to give us some air, being brought lemonade and crisps to occupy us while our parents were inside. I can taste the lemonade, the strong distinctive taste of R Whites, the fake cheese and onion flavour of the crisps back when cheese and onion was green, salt and vinegar was blue and prawn cocktail was exotic. 

This is the memory of a million 1980 childhoods and I can transport myself there so easily, back into that memory. We were wearing bodywarmers before they were called gillets, our gloves were attached to our duffel coats with strings up each arm and across the back, my earmuffs had pandas on them. 

Except, except... this image might be true for everyone else who writes about them, but though I remember them so well I am pretty sure they are all false. My parents never went to pubs. If they did we wouldn't have been left outside in the car. For many years we didn't even have a car. I never had a duffel coat. My gloves always just got lost. 

I've been wondering about memories of childhood because it seems to me that so much of parenting is about creating memories, be it the perfect day at the zoo or the ideal birthday party, a wonderful summer holiday or a special treat trip. Yet we never really know which are the images that will stick, which will define a generation, and which will be true. 

For now though, even though everything we do no doubt has an impact on the baby's development and her understanding of the world, the memories we make each day are for me, be it a sleepy cuddle before bed or a morning of giggles and wonder at the world. And though I am a grown-up, I suspect these memories will be just as riddled with false realities and rewritten history as my memories of childhood, not least because I seem to have already forgotten the detail of events of even a few months ago, as evidenced by having no idea of the answer to questions from parents a few months behind me asking about sleep patterns and weaning.  

But though no doubt different from what really happened, the memories I am making now will be wonderfully glorious, of that I am sure, and some details will even be true. For I did have panda bear earmuffs. I did.