IKEA madness

27 th August 2006


It was one of the rare times we have all 6 of us gone out to a shop, and IKEA should have been ideal with its crèche. However due to its size and the fact they put the restaurant right at the back so we have to trudge through the whole shop to satisfy the young hunger pangs, we had an escapee (again). M. decided jogging to the restaurant was a good idea but we could not keep up and hence got lost. DH had to get them to announce his disappearance over the tannoy, and eventually he was brought back by a Swedish couple to the information desk. I wasn’t in quite such a panic as in earlier years when this has happened (London, went for a stroll up the road aged 2 by himself – major worry, police called, and Bauhaus, age 3 (slightly less worries as in Sweden and a little older). Anyhow the crèche time is never enough to decide what you want, find the shelf its located and stand in the lengthy queues to pay. This is esp relevant when you are called on the tannoy to pick your child up early due to excessive ballpool ball-throwing (as has happened on previous occasions).
As Ikea did not have exactly what we wanted, the day after we tried Bauhaus, with a much smaller play area with no staffing, so fairly pointless as you have to stay with the kids. After approx 5-10 minutes we gave up, as at least 2 children at a time were crying and this is not conducive tio decision-making, made harder by the fact the stuff they had was useless. In the end our builder could not keep his appointment so it was of no matter we didn’t have everything he needed to do the work, it’s just put off until a lter date, hopefully when all young bodies are being supervised elsewhere. Moral of story, only fo shopping with kids when you know what you want and where in the stor eits located, and get in and out as quick as possible. This had to be ignored when we had to do shoes shopping which requires said children’s feet to be present for fitting. I shall not go into this as pulse will probably start to race, sweaty palms etc.
On a more positive note, M is enjoying his Quran and Arabic classes, and is happily reciting surahs to himself which I must say is better than the usual cartoon dialogues he manges to memorise. Driving back and forth to Rosengård (the muslim/ immigrant area) for school, and classes makes the children a captive audience where they are happy to listen to quran cds etc. At home its more difficult as there are other activities which raise the noise level and nothing would really go in.
Hafsah’s now enjoying playing with her feet. Weight gain again is not quite up to scratch so was recommended to start solids. I thought I’d got away with this till 6 months due to new guidelines, but no ,Skåne (the region we live in) still recommends 4 months. I hate all this pureeeing and mashing etc, all to be regurgitated and spat out, and it doesn’t even make them sleep better. In fact the honeymoon is well and truly over. I love the first couple of months where there is no choice but to feed them, and no silly meals to prepare. You also still have a small reserve of stamina for sleepless nights left. Now is the time when ‘sleeping through’ and ‘controlled crying’ is looming, when you are so tired you have to go to bed before your 3 year old. You know you don’t have the stamina to let your child ‘cry it out’. Anyhow was woken this morning by M tickling my feet, and hence a v grumpy mummy ensued.