Water

Chicken was twenty two months when Tuna was born. (They are so called because chicken and tuna are the only foods they will jointly eat now, sparing me the chore of providing two meals or alternating starvation.) Chicken had shown only mild curiosity at the hospital, (having not yet recognised Tuna as the new play thing I had so selflessly provided her with.) however, once back at home, her mild curiosity turned instantly to disdain when she said, "Why that here?"
"She's your new baby sister, remember? You visited her in the hospital," Bob clarified.
"Don't want it."

Suddenly an image, clear as day flashed into my mind. It was of me, my face a rippling undulation of wrinkles accentuated by a thick smear of red lipstick as though applied with my feet. I was trapped in a room full of dolls all clamouring for tea.

"Back in a minute," I announced and ran out of the door, into the car and straight to Toys R Us. I returned shortly after with a brand new Baby Born complete with car seat, feeding apparatus and more changes of outfit than Sue Ellen Ewing.
"Here Chicken, look what your baby sister's bought you, isn't she generous?" I said enthusiastically pulling the bribe with its many accessories out of the bag. Her eyes stood on stalks and immediately rushed for the doll in a state of apoplectic excitement exclaiming, "Have it, have it!" as she ran, arms outstretched. However, I wasn't willing to hand over the goods until I had achieved the desired result. I tightened my grip on the doll's arm and said, "You know it's from Tuna don't you?"
She looked to Tuna cradled in her grannie's arms sleeping peacefully for a change, before looking back to the doll and repeating, "Have it!"
I persisted in basic but loud vocabulary, "Present from Tuna - not daddy - not me - Tuna. You understand, yes?"
She eyed me suspiciously before eventually conceding, "Yes."
"So now you like Tuna, yes?" I prompted. (I presume that's what you would call, 'leading the witness'.)
"No!"
"Then you can't have it!" I said lifting the entire bag above my head like a petulant child. (The image of me as a mad, wizened old woman was a compelling force!)
"Martha!" Bob and my mum snapped in unison.
Of course I knew my behaviour was irrational, so I begrudgingly handed over the present, but not before I said, "Here, it's yours, but you do like Tuna now don't you?"
"Martha!"
"Okay, okay," I resigned. I watched Chicken toddle off to play with her hard earned toys and shouted one last attempt, "Remember, Tuna bought it for you!" but her ears were already deaf.

Looking back at the photos now, there are a number of Chicken cuddling Tuna and even one of her kissing the top of Tuna's head, either the camera really does lie or my memory is somewhat fuzzy, because days filled with screaming and petulance seem to prevail in my memory banks. Tuna would scream if not in my arms and Chicken would respond to my seemingly single focus by belligerently refusing to do anything I asked of her. My demands were not unreasonable; I wasn't asking her to prepare a family roast dinner.
"Don't unscrew the cap of that two litre bottle of water, you can see I'm feeding Tuna and completely powerless to stop you. I said don't! No! - Don't tip it upside down and allow the contents to pour all over the floor. I said don......Why you little ****!" I mumbled under my breath as she stood splashing in the lake she had created. "No, no, don't take off your nappy! I said don..........." As I was pinned to the sofa with Tuna guzzling happily, I had to sit back and watch the show as Chicken now splashed in her own wee as well as Evian. The drama continued when Heather decided the indoor paddling pool looked like her sort of fun and joined Chicken in splashing it up the walls and furniture, before drying her wee soaked paws on the sofa where she leaped on her retirement from the game. In the meantime, my mouth had dried up like a lizard's eye ball (the norm with the onset of breast feeding, hence the water) intensified by the vision of my precious water supply seeping between the floorboards.

With delirium brought on by dehydration, I thought I heard a knock at the door. Sadly, it was not my imagination as Heather quickly confirmed by leaping from the sofa and barking manically. I slunk into the cushions hoping that my silence would send them on their way.
"Mama, mama, door, mama!" Chicken began shouting as she toddled, bare arsed between the front door and the sofa, skilfully avoiding Heather as she too felt the need to alert me to the knocking door which I could only have missed if I'd been dead!

I was now faced with a decision. Do I allow whoever it is at the door to believe I have left a toddler home alone with a manic dog or, do I get up and answer the door? I chose the former; until that is, I was greeted with the peering face of the health visitor squinting through a gap in the curtain, at which point, I waved cheerily as though I had been expecting her all along.

I laboriously pulled myself up from the sofa with the hungry Tuna (who didn't share Chicken's picky eating habits) still nestled in the crook of my arm unperturbed by the chaos ensuing around her. I opened the door, "Hi Martha, you were expecting me weren't you?"
Shit! Was I? "Yes of course, come in; ignore the mess, it's not usually like this, we've just had a little accident." Chicken was now naked, sprawled flat on her tummy and splashing in the remnants of her paddling pool like Jacques Cousteau laughing as her splashes made Heather sneeze.

The health visitor gazed upon the scene with undisguised concern before turning to me and saying in a tone reserved for the recently bereaved, "We're here to help you know? Anything, anything at all." Really? I thought, Could you clear up this mess then? She continued, "And there are people you can talk to - about anything. We understand it can all get a bit much at times and we don't want you to suffer in silence."
I suddenly grasped her inference; if the kids and dog were tipping me over the edge, they were there to take them off my hands - NO! "Thanks, thanks," I spluttered, keen to reassure her before she called in the SS. "It really isn't usually like this, it's just that Chicken got hold of the water you see, it's a funny story when you think about it." Her countenance turned from concern to pity in one slick movement forcing my words to halt in my throat. There was little left to say except, "Thanks, I'll bear that in mind."

Once she'd gone, I convinced myself she was racing back to base to write a damming report on my state of mind and it would only be a matter of days before the ominous knock would come to take my children away. I called Bob who thankfully talked sense into me as I sobbed, "Why didn't I stick to dogs?"