Not even Madonna could distract us from our foul mood.

Dear Z

Last night, it took you an hour to gather strength to say sorry to me.

Madonna had just sashayed into the arms of Parkinson when you woke up crying and couldn’t be comforted. I was irritated—of your crying and of Madonna’s nerve to display her svelte figure amid the dangling mass of skin under her arm when she waved to the audience. For a second there, I hoped you saw her did it. You would have been comforted instantly, but no, you were too preoccupied saying I CAN’T to everything we offered you.

I decided to be firm with you, to stick to my guns, to let you learn in a hard and tearful way that you can’t just wake up in the night crying simply because the results of X-Factor had been announced and it was Parkinson’s next.

When Daddy laughed because you were screaming and throwing away teddy Graham and monkey-lion Mick and you looked funny in your nightshirt dribbled with snot and tears, I blew up. How could he laugh at you? How could he be inconsistent with me? I was trying to discipline you by ignoring your tantrums because I wanted to listen to Madonna. So I turned off the television and the lights and declared to both of you to stay in the lounge the rest of the night because you ruined my communion with the pop star. I went back to my crocheting fuming because Daddy finally comforted you.

When you were finally tucked up in bed, you started crying again. I had to ignore you because I had been annoyed for the past three nights when you kept on waking up in the night to be soothed with Vicks vapour. I didn’t mind it at all because you had cough and colds but you had recovered and I didn’t want to continue soothing you for no apparent reason except that you just wanted to disturb my nighttime chat with daddy, or my reading, or my programs on tele. It’s just unacceptable.

I rushed you to Daddy because it is also unacceptable for him to deposit you to me simply because he got fed up as well. What? After giving in to you despite my admonitions not to? After negotiating with you despite the advice of Super nanny that it’s a no-no? When he kept on telling you to go back to me to apologise and you kept on insisting I CAN’T, I understood you. I knew you couldn’t think of any reason why you should say sorry to me. I wasn’t surprised when after an hour of coming in and out of our bedroom you finally got exhausted. It was almost midnight and you just wanted to be cuddled to sleep but you had to apologise first for crying and you couldn’t because it was your only way of saying to me and daddy, “will you bloody make up your minds how to handle me in my night time distress?” Or was it your only way of teaching us a lesson that we can’t reason with a three-year-old in the middle of the night?

I am sorry but you will understand in time what it's like for a parent to have her bad moods played back to her by her own son. I assure you it's not at all funny.

Mummy