Category: parenting

Posted on in parenting

Where Does The Time Go

Turn back the clock to when I was working in the bank and I used to think my days were pretty full. My standard hours of business 9am to 6pm together with a 60 minute commute each way meant there was little time for activities especially if I wanted to see the kids, let alone try to carve-out a bit of quality time outside of weekends. Also there was the small matter of regular day-trips for business meetings in London, Paris, Frankfurt, etc. These generally involved flights at ungodly hours in the morning and returning home in the evenings close to bedtime (mine not the kids). So when I took the plunge and became a stay-at-home parent, I foolishly thought that, along with the many offspring related advantages, I might have a bit more time to myself to focus on long-term projects e.g. get that novel started / completed and /or abandoned in a fit of pique. Nine months later I can put my hand on heart and say that this has definitely not proven to be the case so I wonder to myself where does the time go.

Now I didn’t go into this new arrangement with my eyes closed, I knew all about the school runs and the after school activities, the food preparation requirements and the GAA sessions. Sure hadn’t I seen my wife undertake the full-time parent role on a number of occasions over the past 10 years. As our family has grown in size I have seen her zombie-like stare harden as I returned from work each day (and proceeded to sit down and have a cup of tea) but I thought how difficult could it be to sneak in a bit of reading time or god forbid TV time once I had eliminated the requirement to spend two hours in a car every day. However there were a number of factors that I didn’t take into account in my ignorant wage-earning state. Firstly, there is the volume of questions you get asked by inquisitive young minds in any given day. These can vary from a simple homework question such as, find five items in your house that contain more than a litre of liquid (I didn’t want to resort to the drinks’ cabinet straight away, I mean if Aaron came back to his class with 5 different alcoholic beverages on his list what message was it sending out, so this took a bit longer than expected) to the extremely repetitive, have we done enough to get our screen-time privileges back yet? To which the answer is invariably “it’s nice that you have behaved for 10 minutes but that does not outweigh the outbreak of Wrestlemania and /or scribbling on the chairs earlier on today”. I’m thinking of limiting questions (like wishes) to three a day (per child, I’m not an animal).

Another factor which I had failed to consider is that quality time with your children can actually be very time consuming so whether it’s reading fairy tales to Ella or bringing Oscar to the playground, kicking ball with Lochlan or discussing the intricacies of the offside rule with Aaron, before you know it an hour has passed and the next hard deadline of school pick-up / cooking / bringing to training is fast approaching. That doesn’t even take into account potentially playing a board game, do you know how long it takes to set one of those things up nowadays? I don’t seem to recall from my youth that a number of games (I’m looking at you Mousetrap, Hotel and Game of Life) seem to require longer to assemble than it actually takes to play the game!

By far the largest element of my miscalculation relating to timings has been housework and all that surrounds this broad and wonderful category! How can something so simple be so vast as to appear never-ending? Tidying up in itself is a task that just seems interminable, so like a modern day Sisyphus there is always at least a half an hour in my day dedicated to it. I write this in a room where unicorns, tank engines and various hard plastic toys are strewn all around me. In my mind I had believed that hoovering was a weekly task not a daily one, there are times when I look at our kitchen / dining room floor after meal times and wonder if more food has ended up on the ground than in my childrens’ collective stomachs! We have a dish washer yet I don’t understand how I seem to spend a lot of my time washing stuff in the kitchen sink, I’m thinking of binning items that aren’t dish-washer friendly, good-bye exotic butter knives (yes I know, notions). I was quickly relieved of clothes washing duty, I mean one small error with an overly delicate blouse and you’re in the laundry dog-house forever, but the folding and the subsequent sorting of clothes, particularly when you have 3 boys with very similar fashion tastes i.e. sports jerseys and track suits, seems to take an age. Why are labels always so small and hard to find?! That being said apparently my folding is excellent and I have really found my niche. It is the one area for which I consistently get praise, get in there!

So my plans for beginning that novel will have to wait until I can get the boys to start helping out with tasks around the house or maybe I’d be better off trying to invent a time machine, if only I had the time!

As I finish this blog I am also well aware that my wife is going to read this and say he doesn’t do half the amount that I did, but I also haven’t perfected the zombie-like stare. either!

Posted on in births, parenting, weddings

10 Years Ago Something Changed

My eldest turns 10 today so in honour of this momentous occasion I thought I’d recount the story of his birth and why we occasionally tease him about being from Louth. And besides, it is one of my favourite tales!

My wife Niki was due on 30th June 2009 so when we were invited to a friend’s wedding on 12th June I saw it as my last opportunity to let off some steam before my duties as maternity taxi driver kicked in. I knew that firstborns were usually late so I thought it would be probably at least 3 weeks without booze so I planned to make up for it on this joyous occasion. The location was Nuremore Hotel near Carrickmacross in Co Monaghan. I happened to be very familiar with the venue as I had been a country member at the golf club there when the exorbitant fees of clubs in the Dublin area sent me further afield for my fix of fairways and greens!

The day was a very pleasant one and from what I can remember the ceremony, food, company and in particular the red wine were very agreeable. Once the meal was over Niki and I hit the dancefloor hard and in hindsight, the excessive gyrations to Valerie by Amy Winehouse and various other tunes probably had something to do with events in the early hours of the following morning. Not that we went completely overboard I mean we gave “Rock the Boat” a miss! Also given the late stage of Niki’s pregnancy we did retire at a fairly reasonable hour, so I drifted into a happy slumber of the well imbibed. Then the real “fun” began!

Niki woke me at c. 2.30am complaining that she had some form of food poisoning which was causing severe stomach cramps. Knowing how particular Niki had been about her food intake during pregnancy and the quality of the fare on offer in Nuremore I knew this was highly unlikely but in my addled state I wasn’t overly sure of anything. To my shame I initially tried to convince her to sleep it off but when that didn’t work we settled on ringing the Rotunda for advice. It was only when Niki had to hand over the phone to me while speaking to a mid-wife because the pain was so severe that we realised that something was really amiss. The mid-wife stated quite clearly that it sounded like my wife was having contractions and was in fact in labour and that we should make as swift progress as possible to the nearest maternity hospital. So not the Rotunda in Dublin I bleated, no Drogheda I was informed, but what about our costly consultant, tough luck was the response! Then of course we had the issue of getting to Drogheda which was about 40 km away. We were having an argument about whether I (very inebriated) or Niki (in labour with contractions every couple of minutes) should drive, when luckily one of us (take a guess who) had some sense and sought out advice on the matter. As we made our way back downstairs the wedding was still in full swing but luckily we knew that one of the guests at our table happened to be a mid-wife. She had also retired to bed but thankfully was easily woken from her sleep when we came banging on her door. She confirmed what we already suspected about our situation and most importantly ordered us a taxi (thanks Deirdre).

I do remember that the taxi driver was more than a little anxious when he saw his passengers and was told that our destination was Drogheda maternity hospital. Perhaps this encouraged him to drive in a manner that Lewis Hamilton would have been proud of. He was certainly motivated by Niki’s heavy breathing routine in the back-seat. Less than half an hour later we were at our destination. The staff at Drogheda hospital were very nice to Niki, they were less so to her drunk husband. Every nurse / mid-wife / doctor was sent to observe the sozzled, eejit, husband from Dublin who had just been to a wedding. The rest of the labour is a bit of a blur, but I do remember a bath (not for me) and I do remember a gym ball (also not for me) and not much else. At this point I should point out the Niki was using a birthing technique called hypno-birthing which involves focusing on the contractions and working with them rather than against them. It did involve watching some pretty graphic DVDs at a lady’s house in Castleknock but that’s another story. It also meant that Niki wouldn’t be using any form of unnatural pain relief which again brought huge admiration from the assemble mid-wives and seemed to increase the level of scorn for yours truly! Well the hypno-birthing worked pretty damn well because shortly after 10am (after only 8 hours of labour) Aaron John Doyle arrived into the world. Well he didn’t have a name initially because we were still in our name deciding phase but nothing like the arrival of a baby to focus minds. Our world changed forever thereafter.

As an epilogue to this tale when I dragged my very sorry body back home via a very excited Nuremore Hotel I found that my father-in-law had removed the blinds from our bedroom at home, making it almost impossible to catch up on some much needed sleep that afternoon and thus prolonging my hangover that little bit longer. He claimed it was something to do with re-fitting our bedroom but I had my doubts!!

 

Posted on in parenting, paris, travel

Paris Je T’Aime!

I have recently returned from a lovely long weekend in Paris with my wife and two year old daughter and it moved me to try and express my affinity for that great city. Having spent a year on Erasmus studying in Paris, it is the place on this planet, apart from my home town of Dublin, that I am most familiar with. Furthermore on the fateful night that I first met my beloved I had been struggling to find my mojo in the chat-up department when I mentioned the special place in my heart for Paris, suddenly her eyes lit up and the rest as they say is history.

Although I must say that Paris has not always been so good to me. My first trip there was as a teenager on a camping holiday with my parents (already I can hear warning bells). Camping in Paris is not something that has much of a following (unless you are down and out along the quays of the Seine) but I can confirm that there is a camp-site in Maisons Lafitte which is about six RER / train stops from the Arc de Triomphe. I can also confirm that there was a dog in the local camp-site bar who liked nothing more than to nip /bite Irish teenagers when a goal was scored during the Euro football tournament but the less said about that the better!

A more significant and entirely more satisfying trip to Paris occurred in the summer of 1994 when I travelled “sans parents” but “avec beaucoup d’amis” to the city of light in search of part-time work, adventure, enlightenment, and a certain je ne sais quoi! The stories from those six weeks could probably fill an entire novel (think of a coming of age tale involving the destruction of a pretty apartment with a lot of Bob Dylan vinyl LPs) so I will keep it to the bare bones. What impressed me first was the sheer scale of the place, from provincial Dublin I had arrived in a true capital of the world. Then there was the uniformity of everything, Baron Haussman did a great job when he designed all those boulevards back in the day and it is a great legacy. Into this grandeur and heat we arrived as doe-eyed innocents but left as hommes (or at least slightly wiser youths). Paris welcomed us with open arms and we consumed it all, from the noxious smells of Chatelet Les Halles on a sweltering summer day to the idyllic calm of the fountains in Palais Royal, from singing Beatles songs to an assorted crowd on the Champs de Mars to being maced by a vagrant on the Quai d’Orleans (even the vagrants in Paris have weaponry). We took in the full experience and lapped it up. Even when things were bad and they did occasionally get a bit too real like when a friend was questioned by the gendarmes for selling sandwiches without a license to taxi drivers (hey somebody had to pay our rent while the rest of us were having adventures, thanks Barry), or when the locals ran us off their territory for trying to sell water to the other tourists (that’s one cooler box we never got back). We just endured it because we were living life and besides, we were doing it in the most beautiful city in the world. Also we were at that stage of our life when sleep was an afterthought so quite often we would be found wandering the arrondissements in the early hours of the morning almost always with some cheap French wine or 1664 beer in our hands and almost always ending up at Pere Lachaise cemetery, which was right beside our accommodation (10 people in a one bed apartment). Exchanging tales near Moliere, Jim Morrison, Edith Piaff and Oscar Wilde, there’s your fantasy dinner party guests right there!

Two years later I returned to study, improve my French and re-acquaint myself with pastis du vin (think the French equivalent of Buckfast). While I wasn’t actually studying in the centre of Paris, every spare moment would be spent taking the half hour train ride into the Champs Elysees. I loved walking (and still do) or cycling along its entire length, from the majesty of the Arc at one end through the glitz of the high-end shopping and eateries (and the obligatory McDonalds), through the greener section by the Grand Palais down to the traffic chaos of the Place de la Concorde. In more recent times I was fortunate enough to visit Paris on the one day of the year when the Champs is pedestrianised and that was even more fun. This was a less intense time than my previous visit, mainly because I had more cash and therefore I didn’t have to deny myself food for a few days in order to afford a value meal in Quick! I also managed to find myself a girlfriend and really enjoyed walking hand in hand around the Quartier Latin or Place des Vosges (although not as much as I enjoyed doing it with my wife more recently!).

And what about the Parisians you may ask and their notorious arrogance. Well apart from the odd outburst on the metro or occasional incorrect directions, I have to say that Parisians are a pretty pleasant bunch (particularly once they realise you are not English). I have even found that this bonhommie has only increased on the more recent occasions when I have brought my kids with me. Indeed on my most recent trip, a Parisian gentleman at the table beside us in our restaurant made an elaborate crane (the bird not the building facilitator) for Ella (my two year old). It even flapped its wings when you pulled its tale.

Of course Paris has been further cemented in my good books by the fact that I witnessed both of Ireland’s recent rugby Grand Slams while in Paris purely by coincidence. This almost wipes from my memory the sad and sorry tale of the 2007 rugby world cup which I also took in at first hand at the Parc des Princes and Stade de France.

So now I try to get an excursion to Paris at least once a year whether it’s with kids (and the inevitable trip to EuroDisney) or just with Niki and the potential to experience Paris after dark (if you can live with the sky high price of drink in the bars).

There have been a few lowlights in Paris over the years but these mainly relate to work and trying to recover debts from French businesses with huge trade union involvement, as our legal advisor once said “This is the last communist country in Europe. If you insist on enforcing your rights the trade unions will hold a barbecue at your head office!!”

But overall I have to say that I will forever love Paris and I wholeheartedly endorse the words of Audrey Hepburn “Paris is always a good idea”.

Posted on in Food, parenting

Food Inglorious Food Part 2

As most parents will know, a lot of time is spent trying to get the right amount and the right kind of food into your children. For me there are probably three main criteria for my kids’ food. It should be filling, healthy (or relatively so) and not overly burdensome to make (preferably can be done in batches). With dinners, I have taken the use it or lose it approach, i.e. eat it because you’re not getting anything else and things have been going rather well on that front. Packed lunches were a different matter and I was really struggling to get combinations that worked for the three boys. I made numerous attempts at different combinations of cheeses, mozzarella, pate, bread, rice, crackers, rice crackers, pasta, grapes, peppers, strawberries, hams, salami, etc. There was always something that just wasn’t quite right, not enough butter, too much pate on one-side, pasta too soggy, rice not at the correct temperature. This is all before taking into account the sudden changes in taste which frequently occurs in the palates of young boys. It can be very frustrating and it led to the implementation of a rule whereby all leftover food from the lunchbox had to be consumed before the boys were allowed do anything fun post school. This initially resulted in much grumbling but then in the period leading up to Easter I noticed that less and less reject food was coming home in the lunchboxes. Eureka, but just when I thought I had it cracked something comes out of left field to show me how wrong I was. In this case it was a blocked toilet!

Now this is not the first time we have had a blocked toilet and usually a bit of vigorous flushing and some good spray work with the garden-hose in the outside drains was enough to get flow levels back to normal, except this time it was different. When the blockage was dislodged we (or rather I should say Niki who was wielding the hose at the time) couldn’t help but notice something rather unusual. Along with the usual “stuff” going through the pipes, there were an awful lot of whole vegetables! Now, either the boys have very mild digestive systems or the luscious cherry tomatoes, olives, etc., which had been acquired at the local organic farmers market were somehow making their way into our sewage by nefarious methods!

A quick bit of AC-12 style interrogation (a couple of questions for non Line of Duty fans) brought about a full confession from Lochlan, our second child. It became clear that rather than eat the vegetables his doting father had lovingly acquired and prepared for him, Lochlan preferred to sneak them into his pockets when he was removing his lunchbox from his schoolbag on returning from school. He would then take a short trip to the downstairs toilet, wrap the aforementioned items in copious amounts of toilet paper and flush away to his heart’s content. And he would have gotten away with it if he hadn’t blocked up our entire sewerage system. This does make me wonder what other ingenious schemes the boys have gotten up to in order to get around my house rules. Maybe random friskings will become a feature going forward!

On a related matter, I rediscovered last week how horrible sour milk actually smells. Oscar had left a milk carton in the normally unused front pocket of his bag before the Easter holidays and it had obviously slipped through my intensive screening system! Now it would have been fine if the milk carton had remained intact, but somehow a significant quantity of liquid had managed to seep out of it. It still amazes me that he was able to scoot into school with the bag on his back and spend the whole day in class without anyone noticing the stench. It was only after Oscar’s bag had spent 10 minutes in the confined space of our car on the way home from school that it became clear to my senses that something was seriously wrong. It is to my eternal shame that Ella was my first suspect when it came to finding the putrid smell but after she was given the all clear we quickly identified the culprit and it has been rehabilitating with some bicarbonate of soda ever since. Safe to say it has not been a good week but hey, the weather is getting better so that’s something!

Posted on in easter, parenting, zoo

Surviving Easter (Part 2)

I had now reached week 2 of my Easter challenge. Bloodied but not beaten by my torn quad muscle, I knew that I required a different approach to successfully navigate the second half. I am a proud man but it was abundantly clear that I needed help, so on the Tuesday after Easter Monday I did what any good Irish son does in his hour of need, I headed to my parents’ house (the place that is still called Home on my mobile phone). As a family, we are very lucky to have both sets of grandparents nearby in Dublin, I still argue the toss with my in-laws about whether Shankill really is in Dublin but they are reachable by travelling on the M50 so that is all that really matters! Anyway the kids love seeing their grandparents and vice versa, or at least the grandparents do a good enough job of faking it! As an added bonus, the garden in my folks’ house is sufficiently long for the boys to happily while away a couple of hours taking pot-shots at each other with footballs, tennis balls, rugby balls or when things get testy, pretty much any object that comes to hand. My dad has a never ending supply of gadgets which he regularly replenishes in Flying Tiger, now that Hector Grey’s is no more (feel free to google search Hector Grey’s if required but in short, think of Flying Tiger but organised in a much more scattered and much less commercial way). These amuse and amaze the kids in equal measure. Tuesday’s visit to my parents followed a familiar pattern. As soon as the boys’ energy levels began to drop in the back garden (normally signalled by one of them trying to take the head off another one) and Ella started to get a bit grumpy, my mum produced her party-piece, crackers and cheese. It is a strange thing that crackers at home are only moderately sought-after but as soon as we enter my parents’ house, they become some kind of food of the gods, a modern day ambrosia. I must say, all of us were refreshed and replenished by the experience and I could now see a path through to the end of the week.

On Wednesday I went for an old reliable, the zoo! Well at least I thought it was an old reliable until Aaron went on over his ankle running down the mound surrounding the zoo car park within 60 seconds of arrival. I just about managed to coax him to his feet and despite the howls coming out of him I was pretty sure he was going to live. I can confirm that he certainly is not blessed with his mother’s high pain threshold (4 natural births without any pain relieving medication). Then as we ambled towards the main entrance, I noticed that Oscar’s tracksuit bottoms were on back-to-front, I mean did he not notice the dubs crest on his backside! I tried to get him to do a quick change at the side of the path but he was having none of it so it was back to the car. I could feel a Roy Keane tinged red-mist starting to descend upon me and the thought of packing up and heading back to Glasnevin did cross my mind, but Ella’s plaintive little voice asking “Daddy will we see animals?” pulled me back from the brink. The zoo is great and has improved immeasurably over the years. One of the benefits of having 4 kids is that I continuously get to see it afresh through a new set of young and wondrous eyes. Also, now that the boys are a bit older they can help push Ella around in her buggy so it’s win-win!

That was Wednesday successfully negotiated and on Thursday, I received a welcome wild card, the offer of a play-date for all three boys at the same time, jackpot! In my slightly frazzled state I was more than happy to depend on the kindness of strangers / parents from St Pats BNS, thank you Gillian! Again it was a win-win situation as the boys could sense that my mindset had changed from one of expansive new ideas (or my Leinster rugby frame of mind) to one of keep everything on a tight leash and hopefully we’ll get through it (my Munster rugby frame of mind). With the sound of nerf bullets flying past my ears as I dropped the boys off, I knew that I was another step closer to the weekend.

Friday was swimming with Ella day. Ella has weekly water babies classes and has been going since she was a couple of months old (as did all the kids thanks to the foresight of their mother). I now get to enjoy being in the water with her as she splashes to her heart’s content. The boys got to come and see her which was nice for them too, cue lots of waving from the viewing area and applause whenever Ella stuck her head in the water.

I had survived, I had made it through the fortnight and now all I had to do was start researching summer camps and fast (as I type I can see Niki doing up one of here dreaded To-Do lists). Was there any real secret to my survival, I don’t think so, a few new things, a few old things and plenty of help from friends and family. In the end I’ll certainly remember it fondly (mostly). Oh and we may have played quite a bit of minecraft!

 

Posted on in easter, parenting, sport

Surviving Easter (Part I)

So here it was, my first really big challenge, the Easter holidays, two weeks with just me and the kids. Sure my wife (Niki) would be around for the 4 day Easter weekend but that was just a minor breather in a fortnight of white-knuckle, hold on to your hats, let’s make sure they don’t break me, adventures. I was determined not to rely on the dreaded screen-time as an easy way out, I mean what kind of father would I be if I had to turn to external distractions every time there was a bump in the road. My opening tactic was to smother them with kindness so our first breakfast was pancakes, pancakes and more pancakes with a healthy / unhealthy dose of nutella, sugar and honey. I started making batter from our never ending supply of eggs, unsheathed my trusty copperstone pan (an unusually prescient Christmas present), and turned up the heat. This worked exceptionally well (even if I must say so myself) and I was complimented on my “restaurant standard” (their words not mine) pancakes. I was off to a great start but unfortunately the only way from here was down. The next day it was the cinema and McDonalds, the cinema went down well but I soon realised that the only reason my kids like McDs is because of the easy access to tablets which enables them to circumvent the “no screen-time” rule. I think they ate 2 portions of french fries between the 4 of them leaving yours truly to hoover up the remnants of their unhappy meals. The kids also became obsessed with the current monopoly promotion and spent a good part of our time in McDs scanning discarded food, the floor, the bins and pretty much everywhere else for leftover tokens. Never again I swore, not for the first or last time.

Tactic number 2 was to tire them out. Luckily the weather over the last fortnight has for the large part been exceptional for this time of year, so I was able to bring them to the local park without having to load up on rain gear. The two-on-two football matches are getting more and more competitive and soon the rule where I can only score with my weaker left foot will have to go out the window! Frisbee has also made a welcome entry into our outdoor games repertoire and with a bit of work the boys were soon making regulation 10 foot passes to each other albeit there was still the occasional moment when fear of frisbee finger (the smacking of a knuckle with hard plastic) would cause an elementary drop. Interestingly, while we were playing our games, an outdoor boot-camp was taking place within earshot. At one point Oscar (age 6) edged towards me and whispered in a secretive tone “that lady said a bad word”, I glanced over as she did another 10 burpees and gave her an understanding nod. The trip to the park was an unqualified success, so much so that I decided to take it up a level and try out something completely new, footgolf. For those of you not aware of footgolf, it is as the name suggests a cross between football and golf. It basically involves trying to kick a ball into a hole in as few attempts as possible. Following a bit of online research I decided to bring the gang to Deer Park in Howth which has an 18 hole footgolf course. Deer Park has many fond memories for me as it was the place where I learnt to play full blown golf, having honed my short game on the pitch and putt course at St Anne’s. Back in those days, a round of golf involved a dart trip to Howth station and then carrying my bag of overly heavy clubs up the exceptionally steep hill to the Deer Park ticket office. Getting to the first tee was already an achievement worthy of an army cadet, so no wonder my first tee shot back in the day ended up skewing off the toe of my wooden driver (remember those) and scattering bodies on the nearby putting green. Back to the present and the 9 hole golf course in Deer Park has been converted into 18 holes of very enjoyable footgolf. Well mainly enjoyable, though there were three negatives to the experience. First of all our footwear (runners / trainers) was nowhere near sufficiently water-proof to deal with the moisture on the course (particularly in the rough). Secondly Ella (age 2) got pretty fed up after about 9 holes when we had reached the lowest part of the course and had to be carried around the back 9 (coincidentally she’s probably a similar weight to my old golf clubs). And last but not least I managed to pull my quad muscle on the 14th hole trying to knock it onto the green of a par 4 in one!! I had been playing pretty well up until that point and may have even gone up in my kids estimations with a display of strength and accuracy from my trusty right foot. There was even talk that I could have been a professional footgolfer at one point before the high-pitched scream of anguish on the 14th hold brought me back down to earth!

It’s amazing how you only realise how often you use a particular muscle when you have injured it. The drive back from Howth to Glasnevin was a painful one with every switch from accelerator to break and vice versa causing a sharp intake of breath. So I ended up  back home feeling tired and upset while the gang were all wondering what Daddy had planned for them next. Despondently I threw them the remote control. We had reached Thursday of the first week!

Posted on in gaa, parenting, rugby, sport

They Don’t Know They Have It So Good

In the true spirit of the grumpy old man that I have become, I am constantly comparing my kids’ experiences with those of my own childhood. In particular I look back at the performances of the sports teams I supported in the 80s and 90s and compare it (enviously) to the very same teams in the present day who are now supported by my sons. Let’s start with the most obvious candidates for improvement, “The Dubs”. Now I have many great memories from my time supporting the Dubs in the 80s and 90s, and I still have a certain nostalgia for the old wooden benches in the Cusack Stand where you would be crunched up against god knows whoever. But the boys have never known what it is like for Dublin to lose a Leinster Football championship match, well technically Aaron was alive when Dublin last lost in 2010 but given he was just a year old I don’t think it has scarred him too severely. They recoil in horror when I recount year after year of defeat to Meath (and occasionally Kildare or even Westmeath) and the whoops that used to emanate from the Hogan Stand. Six All-Irelands in the last eight years compares to five in my previous thirty-six years (with three of those sandwiched into my first four years on the planet). They laugh when I say that the Jacks used to have “problems” defeating Kerry and that they had issues around taking penalties (I used to fear Dublin being awarded a penalty as it would inevitably lead to a switch of momentum in favour of the opposition) and generally closing games out. Since I started having kids, Dublin have gone from being a team that finds ways to lose when playing well to a team that finds ways to win when playing badly (maybe I should have started having kids earlier). Take last September’s All Ireland Final as an example, I spent the entire match fidgeting and fussing, a big bag of nerves, particularly at the start and the end (post the sending off) while the boys were calm as you like, sure Dublin always win Dad. Oh to be blessed with such a blase attitude towards winning Sam!

In relation to our other team in blue, Leinster, the contrast is even more pronounced. The inter-provincial rugby scene was very different back in the 80s, in fact you would be hard pressed to see a game involving Leinster from one end of the season to the next. The only footage to be seen would be on the BBC Norn Iron results show as part of the dregs of Final Score. Every year we would be treated to overly long highlights from a dull and dreary Ravenhill of Ulster triumphing as Nigel Carr, David Irwin and the boys laid down another marker showing who wanted it more. Quite often there would be a drop-goal scored by somebody I had never heard. But then the unbiased and indignant commentator would inform us that it was a travesty that the player in question had only received one Irish cap as a replacement on a tour to Canada the previous Summer. Ulster won or shared every Irish inter-provincial championship from 1985 to 1994 and boy were they proud of it. Fast forward to 2009 and the arrival of Aaron, Leinster win their first Heineken Cup and they are now the ones who invariably win trophies year in, year out. Add on to that fact, that they play a great brand of rugby in top quality facilities. No wonder I set an extra alarm for 12pm last Friday to get tickets for the semi-final vs. Toulouse!

Last but not least is the Irish rugby team. Now at least the 1980s had a couple of Triple Crowns to sustain the ardent Irish rugby fan, but by golly the 1990s were a grim time for the men in green and those who followed them. The main highlight of this period was the five minutes between Gordon Hamilton scoring his try vs Australia in the 1991 world cup and Michael Lynagh scoring at the opposite end at the death to defeat us. Five minutes of joy in an unrelenting period of dire results plagued by dire rugby. I was actually at the 1996 France vs Ireland match in Paris due to being on Erasmus at the time. It was our last game played at Parc des Princes and we got a thorough hammering, the only bright spot was Ed Morrison (the English referee) giving us a consolation penalty try at the end (mainly because he took pity on us at 45-3 down) thus becoming the first Irish / Englishman to score a try in Paris since year dot! The turnaround in fortunes since Aaron’s arrival is even more astounding. Now technically Aaron had yet to make his appearance into the world when we won the grand slam in 2009 but he was certainly kicking hard in his mum’s belly. The fact that in the 2009-19 period we have won four Six Nations championships including two grand slams is remarkable, not to mentions two victories over the All Blacks. I do however wonder if the fact that my boys expect Ireland to win means they don’t value success as much as somebody like yours truly. Take the grand slam match versus England last year as an example. I was a bundle of nerves throughout and was almost in tears by the end, the boys were just “ah sure we were never going to lose to England Dad”, no memories of Chris Oti to haunt them!

I suppose on the opposite end of the spectrum there is the Irish football team, I had a team full of talent from Liverpool, Man Utd, Arsenal, etc. McGrath, Whelan and Keane spring to mind. They have, well they have, hmm let’s leave it at that then.

Posted on in music, parenting

The Sound of Music

Those of you who know me well will be aware that I love listening to music, so much so that I get anxious if there isn’t a song playing somewhere in the background pretty much at all times whether that be in the car, in the kitchen or just reading a book. I even used to listen to music while studying or doing my homework which I’m not sure is best practice but seemed to work at the time. I know that I can trace this positive association with music back to my early childhood where my dad was constantly singing (badly) as he made his way around the house. Mellow Yellow by Donovan was a consistent favourite and he would try to use it to diffuse contentious situations, although his constantly repeating “they call me mellow yellow” probably had the opposite effect than what was intended. My mum also had a strong affinity for music and managed to brainwash me with Jolene by Dolly Parton in my formative years. To this day I can’t stop a bit of toe-tapping whenever it comes on the radio which thankfully is seldom enough (why did she take her man?) Thankfully she kept her Leonard Cohen sessions until past my bedtime or I might not be the cheerful chap I am today!

Now that I am the parent I have made it my own personal crusade to similarly influence my own children with my incredibly distinguished musical tastes. There is nothing that gives me greater satisfaction than having a massive family dance-off (normally when Niki isn’t around) to a mega-mix of Cotton-Eye Joe, Rhythm is a Dancer and Mr Vain or any other 90s dance classic. This is always great fun until the boys decide to turn the dancing into a massive mosh (usually after Lochlan has given his younger brother a sly elbow) which leads to me reprimanding them severely, “no moshing in the kitchen, well at least until the House of Pain has started on my playlist!”

The odd bit of mild physical violence aside, I have found music to be a great way to bond with the kids. Aaron likes to have a weekly rundown of the Spotify “Top 50 in Ireland” chart to see what the latest tunes are, in the same way that I used to spend Thursday evenings watching Top of the Pops with my parents. Although as an unforeseen spin-off of my censorship policy, Aaron also likes to count the number of songs that are blocked off / prohibited due to explicit language which these days seems to be about 50% of the hits. He also gets quite annoyed if I continuously play my “Big in the 80s” or “Absolutely 90s” playlists which just goes to show that the old adage that “we all eventually turn into our parents” is completely true.

Lochlan, to my amazement (and delight) given his rugged approach to life, is a big fan of show-tunes and in particular The Greatest Showman. He would quite happily have the soundtrack on repeat for hours on end or at least until he is told he can have some screen-time at which point he is gone like a shot! Oscar has yet to find his niche but I feel Nine Inch Nails or some form of death metal could be his sweet spot given his tendency towards teenage-like mood swings at the tender age of six! Ella is probably the most fun member of the brunch (as usual) and just loves any type of music particularly if she is dancing in her daddy’s arms. Particular favourites are “Shallow” (or Gaga as she calls it), “Nina Cries Power” (Nina Power) and the Connacht Gold Milk jingle (fresh cold milk everyday). Although I have noticed that my ability to bounce for more than 30 seconds with child in arms has consistently diminished over the years. I used to be able to keep going for all of Cafe del Mar with Aaron, now I just about get to the first chorus.

As part of my daddy duties I have tried to provide a bit of musical education to my offspring. So when the boys listen to Ariana Grande singing “7 rings” I follow up by playing the song that it samples “Favourite Things” from The Sound of Music and I try to play some Neneh Cherry after a song by Mabel (her daughter) to which the boys normally reply “why does that sound so old?” I even ventured to play some Beatles at one point while trying to explain that basically all modern music can be traced back through these four Liverpudlians, however Aaron and Lochlan just seemed to take this as an affront to their allegiance to Chelsea!

I’ve always been a fan of the saying “dance like nobody’s watching” or with my spin on it “dance with only your kids watching as it would be a bit weird doing dad dancing in a nightclub these days and it’s only a matter of time until your knees give out anyway!” So while the kids will still tolerate me and I reckon I’ve got a good decade left until Ella starts to disown me, I’ll keep my dancing shoes polished and ready for action. I still can’t floss though!

Posted on in gaa, parenting, sport

Absolutely GAA GAA

As I have become more involved in the regimes and routines of my childrens’ lives I have had a chance to compare and contrast them with my own formative years. One of the things that really stands out for me is the huge jump in standards when it comes to underage GAA.

I was part of a fairly decent underage team in Clontarf back in the day. We didn’t produce any Dubs but we were always close to the top of the North Dublin league at under-10, under-11 and under-12 level. I can remember some epic battles on the pitches of St Anne’s against St Vincent’s and Fingallians, who were our main rivals at the time. But the thing is I didn’t start training until I was in third class, I can specifically remember the excitement of signing up to play in the prefab classroom in Belgrove (probably while shivering). And that was just gaelic football, I didn’t start hurling for another year or two. My eldest, Aaron, is now in third class and he already has well over a hundred training sessions under his belt in both codes. I can only wonder what type of player I could have been with that amount of tutelage, probably swinging points over with my weaker left boot from underneath the Hogan Stand, bringing success after success to the Dubs in those barren years between 1995 and 2011 (my peak athletic years) instead of trundling out playing substandard rugby at a substandard level on substandard pitches across the southside of Dublin. But hey I’m not bitter!

Anyway back to the kids, Aaron currently  has training twice a week and a match at the weekend, a routine which Lochlan (age 7) has now also begun. Oscar (6) is still at the “nursery” so it’s just Saturday mornings for him, although with a 9.30am start this can often be the biggest chore of the weekend. As for Ella (2) for the moment she can only chase after many of the spare footballs which seem to inhabit our house and are constantly spawning new offspring! Goodness knows how Niki and I will manage when all four of them are into the matches and training sequence. Even now we are often faced with a “2 into 3 doesn’t go” situation on Saturday mornings particularly as some Na Fianna home matches are played at Collinstown out by the airport which is c. 6km away and involves crossing the M50 which isn’t really appropriate by scooter (and I’m sorry for even suggesting it!)

I must of course say that I have nothing but admiration for the Na Fianna club and the countless mentors that make all the training and matches possible. Everything is organised with precision, from the fixture list right down to the countless training routines aimed at developing skills in a fun and enjoyable way. The sight of 200-300 kids down at Mobhi Road every Saturday morning is a wonder and it will never fail to impress me (even if occasionally I have to sneak back to the warmth of my car to allow me to regain some feeling in my fingers and toes). I have so far managed to evade the lure of the mentor siren song purely because I have always had a younger child hanging on to my ankles when the call for new blood has gone out. That’s not to say that I don’t give advice or the odd piece of constructive criticism when I am on the sideline. This generally gets aimed at Aaron who I try to control like one of my PS4 minions on FIFA or Madden. I’m not sure he appreciates my strategic know-how as I encourage him to make another dummy run to the right before spinning back to the centre. I can remember one windy day down at the pitches by Malahide Castle where he told me in no uncertain terms to keep quiet so that he could concentrate on his own game. This seemed to cause much merriment not only on the opposing sidelines but also on our own! Who can blame me for being enthusiastic!

I get my exuberance for such matters from my Dad who was never afraid to voice his opinion on the rights and / or wrongs of a situation in any of the many matches we attended over the years (mainly in Croke Park). Occasionally this good natured banter on the topic of why it was unfair for a Meathman (for it was usually a Meathman) to attempt to clothes-line the nearest Dub would spill over into something more heated but it never got out of hand. Well at least that was until we went to the 1984 FAI cup final replay in Tolka Park between Shamrock Rovers and UCD. I can remember sensing that the atmosphere was a little more edgy than anything I was used to and my Dad being an alumni of UCD was proudly showing his colours much to the annoyance of most of those in attendance in the old ground. My abiding memory is of me tugging at my Dad’s sleeve, pleading with him to sit down as he celebrated UCD scoring the winner. I was very aware that we weren’t in the Cusack Stand anymore!