Author Archive
What He’ll Be When He Grows Up
Posted by: | CommentsThis morning started with an email from a parenting expert that was referring to toddlers as “terrific twos!” and “thriving threes!” or some such shit with much vomit inducing fluffiness.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for positive thinking and “looking on the bright side”, but no matter what spin you put on it, three year olds are still right little fuckers.
Today also brought with it the usual double round of swimming lessons (a.m. and p.m.), an open for inspection of the house, and a bonus, private inspection.
Hurrah!
Kill me now.
I opted to do the swimming lessons, as Grumpy Pants makes a much, much better housewife than me, and I think I’ll marry him one day because he is so awesome. Also, when the house needs tidying, he can be a rather grumpy fuck and I’d rather be elsewhere, preferably somewhere international, when he is in this mood.
Chippie, all happy and fun, turns, just like that. We’ve put most of his toys away. He wants his cardboard box full of rocks, to take to swimming. Because you need one of these for the pre-schooler swimming lessons. I have no idea where it is, and just want to leave.
So I do, cos I can’t be arsed waiting for the fucker. He comes running after me, crying, so I let him in. Then he needs his Arnah – the manky elephant – to keep him happy. Grumpy brings it out. Chippie has a screaming tantrum because he doesn’t want Arnah. I contemplate leaving him in the car and wandering off.
He screams some of the way to swimming, until I take a deep breath and calmly inform him that he needs to stop, and if he continues there is a good chance I will drive under a bus. I’m not sure if it was the calm voice, or the reference to a bus that stops him.
We find a park relatively close to the entrance of the swim centre. It is “the wrong car park” and he starts up again. I sigh. And calmly explain the need for him to get out of the car. I’m tempted, at this point, to just not bother with the process of swimming lessons, but I can’t go home, and don’t want to be in the car, cafe or anywhere with him in this mood, and me with my reslove shattered and tolerance levels at an all time low. Besides, at swimming lessons, the teacher has him.
So I shut the door and walk off. This is the only thing I am capable of doing at the time to get him to change his mind. He does. He’s not much happier as we reach the entrance.
A woman walks past us as she enters the building. She then makes the near fatal mistake of bending down and saying “hello” to the crying Chippie. This only has the effect of setting him off, again – still? – and I clench my fists and turn my back to her so I don’t kill her. I was able to tell myself she had the best of intentions, she just didn’t know. Also, I could have used the nice voice and the soothing stroke in the arm that he got.
Fucker.
I managed to get him changed, and carried him to his teacher.
It never ceases to amaze me how quickly the temper tides in a small child can turn so quickly. As I sat there, deeply breathing and trying to calm myself, and wanting to hit someone, or devour 18kg of chocolate, he was happily splashing about and laughing with his swimming friends.
I managed to smile after about 28 minutes, and had a giggle at the end when the teacher was readying the kids to jump into the pool. First up was a little girl who was more than a little anxious about the prospect. Chippie was last in line …
…. and sitting there, looking over at this little girl, big, big smile on his face and fists pumping as he yelled “Jump, jump, jump!”
I’m thinking a career in suicide counselling is off the list as a future job prospect …
I allowed him some more swimming, due to no point in going home just yet. Enough time for me to calm completely and enable myself to manage the Extraction Process.
The rest of the day went relatively smoothly. Mostly because Chippie fell asleep for a good portion of the afternoon, and I was out of the house at an appointment.
Collected big kids from school, put Monkey Boy’s change of clothes in the washing basket instead of the swimming bag, went swimming, told Monkey Boy, after the lesson, that “your clothes are in the swimming bag! For fuck’s sake, where did you put them?!” several times before he was able to get through to me that he’d given them to me to be responsible for … um … whoops?
A takeaway dinner, followed by some sitting and chilling.
We watched Heston’s Feasts, because it’s about food. Hubby watches from a professional, yet interested point of view. I watch because it is food. Yummy food. Very, very yummy food. Although, at times, a little dubious, but it is incredibly fascinating!
Tonight’s fare was a Roman Feast, and he replicated all manner of things from early Roman times. The main feature being Trojan Pig, whereby you eviscerate the pig, and replicate the intestines with a variety of sausages, then split the now cooked pig open in front of the guests. The ‘intestines’ fall out and the guests are horrified, but it is actually sausages, not real pig guts.
Chippie had joined us to watch. He was as fascinated as we were.
He talked about much of it as we watched, in his little three-year-old interpretation of events.
He scrunched his cute little nose up at one point, as the sausage-intestines fell onto the plate and the guests gobbled them up.
“What’s up the pig’s arse?” he asked.
I’m sure he’d make a fabulous chef with that kind of language … much to his father’s chagrin …
And tonight’s activities are …
Posted by: | CommentsI managed to muddle through the day, getting done some of those things I love to do, planning big and spending time trying to avoid being outmanipulated by three-year-old.
It was a challenge.
That took us up to school pickup time, so off we wandered, me pushing his bike up the hill, and trying to convince myself it is ‘exercise’. It would be much more enjoyable if he just rode in a straight line and didn’t spend much of twisting and turning and ‘experimenting’ with a variety of surfaces and non-surfaces on which he could traverse.
The bigger kids have some Home Projects to do for their Italian class. I hate home projects. They generally break me in one way or another. I read the information form; apparently, all the children have been discussing things they’d like to know about in Italian (or Italy). Things like art and architecture, cars and currency, animals, cooking, music, famous Italian women, the Roman empire … you get the gist.
Hmm, I thought to myself. This may not be as bad as it seems. Pretty straight forward actually.
The grade three kid (Godzilla) requires ‘parent help’. Monkey Boy is on his own. The project is to be displayed on a poster, with images, and written in both English and Italian. It has been explained clearly and we’ve been given a checklist.
Easy.
Until I notice there is a small bit at the bottom, where the teacher has written the topic of interest for my particular children.
Godzilla has chosen ‘Roman Mythology’. What the fuck?! I think.
Monkey Boy has chosen ‘Italian toys’. Repeat previous thought.
So … tonight, post-dinner, I had it planned that we could google some stuff, get a start on the projects, whilst I sat with my butchers paper and coloured textas and planned bigger.
I pulled the big laptop out, which is pretty much fucked and not working. So got the little netbook out, which has reset itself in another language. It still does everything in English, which is nice, but some of the keys on the keyboard don’t reflect the one I am actually using.
I could barely get my head around Roman Mythology, let alone the nine-year-old.
(Yes, I could barely get my head around him and his thought processes. I also think he struggled a bit with the topic of the day.)
At one point, I stopped to just take stock, and discovered my activities of choice for the evening were:
- working on Roman Mythology project for Italian with nine-year-old
- combing for nits
Decisions, decisions ….
Choosing a High School
Posted by: | CommentsThe last few weeks have been a smidge stressful.
I have had LOADS going on. Nothing major, just lots and lots and lots of minor stuff that has piled up on me. Not least of these was the pressing need to choose a high school for my eleven-year-old.
The “lots and lots” may also be adding to my thoughts about choosing a high school at this time of year. Or, perhaps not. Maybe this stuff is always there?
I did think about it last year, when he was in grade 5, but had lots more on, alongside a rogue teacher who created more unnecessary hell than was warranted. I make no apologies for not devoting 100% of my energies to my children. Besides, I have three, so that would require 300% of energies. There’s also a husband in there, whom I also happen to love immensely, and he requires some of my energies too. As do I, for me.
Whatever. I didn’t do much last year. Cos I didn’t.
I’d totally forgotten that applications or preferences or whatever have to be submitted by mid-May (i.e. last week). I did think it was April, honestly, then when I found out it wasn’t, I breathed a premature sigh of relief. Whoops.
We live in an area that doesn’t have it’s ‘own’ high school. The surrounding suburbs have loads. I lie, a little. Our area does have one. It’s had a bit of a reputation, and became an ESL high school due to demand, not desire. It is slowly coming out of itself and is becoming a great high school. I did check it out. It’s not for Monkey Boy. I’m not saying it’s a ‘bad’ high school. I’m saying it’s not for him.
Grumpy Pants and I took some time to research a few in surrounding areas. About two and a half minutes. We listened to other parents, made a bit of a mental list and determined to check them out. The school we are zoned for is the aforementioned one.
This left us with the option of booking Monkey Boy in to sit some exams. Specifically Select Entry exams, whereby he is selected to attend the school, based on the results of the exam, and spends his high school years with other children who were selected to attend the school on the same merit.
I’m not really one for these types of exams. I refused the option of him sitting Select Entry exams to two other high schools, because, on the one hand they feel a little ‘elitest’ to me. On another, he’s still an eleven-year-old boy, and behaves like it. His peers extend beyond just his academic ability and I’d like him to mix with more than just those who are ‘bright’, academically.
I’m also not that keen on the fact that so many more kids are sitting the exam due to social pressures on parents, who think their kids will ‘miss out’, and with kids who have been tutored to the point of obnoxiousness just to ‘do well’ in these exams so they get a place in these schools, and feel miserable because they cant keep up with the work load as issued in the Select Entry classes.
I rang one school the day before application to sit their exam … nice work, Me! I drove to the school, collected the info, spoke with Grumpy about it and we decided not to do it.
He’s a bright kid, certified well above average (we have the paperwork to prove it) and probably would have done well … maybe even got in.
The other school with the same entry criteria had an info night. We missed it due to Can’t Be Arsed. That’s not entirely fair, we had planned to go. The night it was on just proved to be overly obnoxious and revolting and when it came time to leave, we had wine and beer, respectively.
It did get me thinking though, about choosing a high school. Our preferred one, the one he likes and the one his best friend is going to, doesn’t have this criteria. We hoped he’d get in there, but we were hedging our bets, creating a safety net and soothing our “what if he doesn’t”s by considering the exams for the other two.
Of course, we want The Right High School For Him. But the process made me really think. How do I know which one will be ‘right’ for him?
I knew the one I mentioned early wouldn’t be. It didn’t offer the option of extension, didn’t seem to cater for above academically average kids, or have somewhere for them to ‘go’ should they be getting bored. Whatever … I just knew it wasn’t for him.
But the ‘right’ school? How do you know? They all offer all the stock standard stuff; English, Maths, Music etc etc, they have their ‘things’ (and why I ruled out two other schools, who, although fabulously academic wise, were sports focussed and I did not want him in a sporty environment – it does not bode well for his self esteem).
You think you can choose the right place and space for them, but you can’t control the learning environments, the other kids, the teachers, the personalities of others, the likes and dislikes, the behaviours … all of it is out of your control.
You think you’ve chose the ‘right’ school, but if one of those factors is out, it can turn into a terrible experience or environment. Of course, it may also turn out to be even better than you could ever have anticipated.
You think you have it sorted, but you’ve placed so much of your own ‘stuff’ in there, and what you determine is ‘right’ but your kids, no matter what and how you’ve raised them, don’t always think, feel or react the same way you do.
Until they’re there, in and amongst it, you just don’t know.
I had a week. agonising over making the ‘right’ decision. What if I put this school first and it’s wrong?
What if he we refuse the Select Entry exams and that school is the ‘right one’ and he misses out because we don’t ‘believe’ in the exams?
What if … what if … what if ???
I spent so much time wondering about ‘what if’ – in and amongst everything else – that I cried, yelled and was a grumpy arsed bitch.
For what? Something I had a small amount of control over … but not much more than a small amount?
I chose two schools for my first and second preference. Ones he, Grumpy and I liked the look and sound of. I handed the forms in a week early. I then got my first “Oh, you’re not thinking of sending him there are you?” disdainfully spat question.
Of course. It always happens like that.
Still, the choice is made, the forms are in and there’s not point thinking about it any more now.
I did the best I could with what I had at the time.
I still don’t know if I made the ‘right’ decision, and I won’t know until he comes out the other end of it.
And I’m ok with that.
Some Things That Happened These Last Three Days
Posted by: | CommentsI’ve been at a seminar for three days.
It’s been wonderful, inspring, mind-blowing and mind breaking!
It’s been loads of fun, too, and I’ve spent it with a bunch of awesome women.
It means I’ve missed a few things as well.
Friday morning, Monkey Boy sat an exam for a local high school. For their Smart Arse Kids, because he is a very smart kid.
I overcame a small amount of Oh deary me, I’m a terrible mother, I won’t be there for him on the morning of his exam!, made slightly worse by the fact that Grumpy Pants wouldn’t be there either. Grumpy organised the parents of one of Monkey Boy’s best friends, also sitting the exam, to take him.
Grumpy is chilled like that. It’s nice.
I rang home when I knew Monkey Boy would be there, excited about his exam, and dying to know how he went.
“How’d you go?” I gasped into the phone.
“Yeah, good,” was his response. And that was the end of that.
Hmmmm.
I arrived home later to find Chippie sitting on the floor, propped up against Monkey Boy, asleep. Put him to bed.
Saturday, I had to leave early again. Grumpy had an insanely busy day ahead of him, commencing with the 8.00a.m Under 10s basketball game with Godzilla. Another house inspection was planned, parkour for Monkey Boy, then a trek to his brother’s house 40km away to drop the kids off so he could go to work.
During this time, I was having my brain overwhelmed and inviting another attendee to stay at our house, overnight, so she did not have too far to travel home and back again the next day.
We arrived to an empty house and I opted for dinner and a chat with my awesome friend before collecting the kids. I located a container of something in the freezer, determined it was a curry of some sort that Grumpy had made at some point, heat it up, cooked some rice, serve and eat … then off I went to collect offspring.
Look at Chippie and am pretty sure he’s wearing the same clothes he woke up in (because he slept in them, due to falling asleep sitting on the floor etc …)
Chippie falls asleep in car on way home, Grumpy Pants asks what I’d actually eaten – and served friend – for dinner. I point to the saucepan and he laughs. Loudly. A lot.
It transpires that what I had heat up was, indeed, a curry. Just the sauce. The intention was that it had some sort of meat and/or vegetable added before it was heated and consumed.
I’m an awesome host like that. You should come for dinner one night! 
Up early again on Sunday. Grumpy Pants drives us in. Chippie is still wearing the clothes he slept in last night.
Yes, they also happen to be the clothes he slept in the night before. Indeed, they are the very clothes that Grumpy put on him on Friday morning, before he went to childcare.
We’re coping well, it seems.
I attend my final day at this seminar. I cry, of course. I do that sort of thing. Especially when pushed out of my comfort zone.
I like to do a little bit of a You Can’t Make Me tantrum before actually embarking on the desire and passion bursting within me. It’s loads of fun. It’s also very pointless, as I’m a great one for ignoring tantrums.
Including the ones in my own head.
Arrive home, after a Post Seminar Session At A Local Pub.
It’s nice to see Chippie, showered and in his pyjamas. Nice.
40% Off Mix Apparel
Posted by: | CommentsARGH!
I have just discovered that Mix Apparel (whom I adore) are having a 40% off thingy for friends and family (and readers of Diary) … and I’m not gonna be about [insert pouty face].
Bugger it.
Anyhoo, it’s on tomorrow – Saturday the 19th of May at all Mix stores, and offers 40% off all full priced and sale items.
You’ll need this voucher to get your discount.
And if anyone can grab me a pair of Mix bootleg jeans or two in a size 10, that’d be awesome!
Can I send you a list of what else I need want?
Enjoy – and let me know what you pick up!
(In terms of Mix apparel, not hot, stray men that may be nearby …. or that as well …)
You can find your nearest Mix store here
Of poo and sand and tipping points
Posted by: | CommentsA few moments of quite at home to catch up on my To Do List, then I am left alone with Smallest Boy Child for many, many hours.
During this time, I am to ensure the house is ready for an Open For Inspection this evening, swimming bags organised for this afternoon and my sanity to remain intact in order that we may all survive it all with minal physical and psychological damage.
I was doing ok. I’d accepted that Time In My Office was a mere fantatsy, and I did what I could to tidy the house and clean bathrooms before Chippie discovered I’d put all his toys away, neatly, and entered the realm of the Toy Room, located the toys he was playing with yesterday, and a multitude of others he probably can’t remember we ever owned. The only place that can go is Toys Scattered Everywhere And Mummy Losing The Plot Completely.
So I took him for a walk to purchase coffee and milk instead. We wandered past a Kikki-K, which has the file organiser racks I wanted in order to safely house each of the projects I’m working on and keep them within easy reach on my desk. I was offered a ‘buy three get one free’ deal and found myself wandering the store, trying to locate post-it type notes that I could actually use and leaving, dumbfounded as to what the point of Kikki-K even is, aside from being “pretty, but useless”.
(And also explains why I created my own range of organisers …)
Arrive home, get the house in as tip-top shape as possible, leaving only the kids to put their clothes away and clear any and all surfaces in their rooms of any item that may or may not be (mis)construed as mess/clutter/personal/fun/enjoyable or that renders the impression that people actually live in this house that potential buyers, tire kickers and sticky beaks are wandering through later on.
Chippie, having been sent outside to eat his lunch of strawberry jam on toast, brings his plate, complete with uneaten crusts, inside. He yells, from the kitchen, that he would like more toast, please. He then wanders up the hall, towards the bedroom I’m tidying, and promptly tips the crumbs and crusts on his platein onto the Just Vacuumed Floor.
Yay.
Leaving plenty of time to do all that, I wander up to the school to collect said children, only to receive a phone call from the Vice Principal when we’re a block away, asking if I will be at school so we may discuss an incident Monkey Boy was involved in today.
“Sure,” I sigh. “Why the hell not?”
And sigh again.
The discussion not only cuts into the kids tidying time (although it does significantly reduce the amount of time we will be at home between school and swimming, thereby leaving almost no time for them to make any mess whatsoever) and leaves me feeling extraordinarily guitly, as I have been drumming into him for years about being compassionate and understanding of other kids, and not to take so much personally.
He’s like this naturally, so it’s not been hard. Except, clearly he’s been holding it all in and trying, as best an eleven-year-old boy can be, understanding. Today, he was pushed too far, trodden on once too often, and treated like shit to a point where he and a kid twice his size got into fisticuffs. The VP encouraged me to encourage him to “speak openly about how he was feeling”.
Excellent point, and I can’t help but feel I’ve totally fucked up.
I nearly cried.
Then I walked away and did. That was partly due to my calling for Chippie, who came racing over. What with my being all distracted, he’d had plenty of time to play. He’d chosen the sandpit. He was head-to-toe sand.
Even more Yay.
Home we go, where I stumble on a dog poo the size of a small chihuahua. What fucking arsehole lets their dog shit in the middle of a footpath across from a school?
I’m now fuming.
We arrive home, where I shout instructions from the front door as I strip Chippie of his sand-covered clothes before he enters, and hose my shoes off.
Fuckers.
“Put your clothesaway! Tidy your rooms! Get everything off everything! DO NOT EAT anything! Do not make a mess! No, do not use the toilet! Do not wash your hands! Put that away! Do NOT touch that! Hurry UP!”
And I cannot wait to leave. Am feeling like Nazi Bitch Face From Hell right now and wonder how long before anyone snaps.
We are now running minutes late for swimming lessons, so I encourage the kids to run in whilst I find a park.
Normally, I can’t wait to get home, but as the inspection time is at a stupid hour, I am forced to delay it all. I tell the kids we’ll get hot chips and chicken for dinner and attempt to time it so that we can be home as early as we are allowed, without crashing the inspecton.
Monkey Boy has neglected to bring a change of clothes, so wanders to the car, wrapped in a beach towel. There goes my plan to send him in to purchase chips and chicken. Leave them all sitting in the car whilst I do so, and my order is taken by a man who had ordered the same thing, but he decided his need was greater than mine, and said “I was here first”.
Had it not been for my need to have quiet time, away from the kids, albeit standing in a brightly lit chicken takeaway place, he may have been tackled to the ground and had his meal forcefully removed.
I may also have sworn loudly at him. As it was, I was using all my energy to just breath, so he was in luck.
Make it home again, eat, have wine and feel slightly better.
Remember Monkey Boy has a test for a high school tomorrow, and he is being a right little arsehead.
My best of intentions aimed at having a calm, loving and empowering evening are shattered by his smart arsedness, my distress over the incident at school and the compounding stress of life as we know it right now … a screaming match ensues and I find myself on the kitchen floor in tears.
The only saving grace is that Monkey Boy is nowhere near as affected by my behaviour as I am, and he’s happily in bed. Reading.
Yay.
No Guns in This House!
Posted by: | CommentsVery early on in this Mothering Gig, I was the World’s Best Mother.
I followed a considerable amount of the ‘advice’ that was the loudest at the time … until my head broke and I ventured into ‘suicidal’, but that’s a different story.
For those early years, I was very Anti Gun without actually knowing why, just following along in whatever the latest fad was. What I quickly learnt was that it is near impossible to prevent children – mostly boy-type children (yes, I’m generalising, fuck off – I said “mostly”) – from turning all manner of thing into a gun of some sort.
Sticks, LEGO, textas, fingers etc etc etc. Name something and they’ll use it as a gun. If not a gun then a Light Sabre (saber? I can never remember the spelling of that one) or other implement of pain, torture, death or extreme annoying of others.
What I’ve come to realise is I, personally, don’t like the pretend gun play because I really, really hate having shit waved in my face and pointed at me at almost point blank range. I hate that my three-year-old talks about slaying and killing his brothers (although it is sometimes very cute, and other times I feel very much the same) and I hate the screaming and upset it often results in because, inevitably, someone gets hurt or someone “dies” and then they can’t play the game any more and gets upset, or because I end up with a bruise across my nose because someone can’t control his Light Sabre urges and accidentally thwacks me across the face on Christmas Day.
(I was also a witness to a shooting murder some years back, so whilst I appreciate it is ‘fun’ play for the kids, there’s a trigger there for me, ok?)
So, whatever … I have my reasons for not liking them and some of you will have other reasons and some of you will think “pfft, get over it” and some of you will be horrified that I have even ‘let’ my kids contemplate ‘gun’ play … whatever your take that’s all very ok.
The guns are becoming more and more frequent in our house and I do not like it. After letting go of my “Oh god you have a finger gun, I’m the worst mother in the world!!!” crisis and threatening to cut the kids fingers off if they used them as guns again, I was a little less anal and verging on blase when I said “no guns!” … but it’s really annoying me, so I’ve been a bit more firm. You know, like biting the fingers of the latest ‘gun’ shoved in my face and then being all innocent and saying “Well, it’s your fault! If you didn’t put them in my face, I wouldn’t have bitten them. So, ner.”
(To give you an idea of how bad it was when Monkey Boy was 3, he would run around the house, ‘shooting’ me and saying “pew, pew, pew” and I would verge on hysteria that ‘my little boy is playing guns, oh my lord, what have I done???!!!” and react in an equally hysterical manner and tell him off. He approached me one day, with a mandarin and I said “would you like me to peel it for you?” He looked at me, horrified, and said “you said ‘pew’!” It was bad. I’m way more relaxed now … o.O)
I’ve also been way more strict on them; in proportion to my pissed offedness and annoyance at their almost constant presence.
Sadly, I also have somewhat intelligent children. I have no idea where they get it from.
So, there we are, walking home from school, Monkey Boy with his arm outstretched, first two fingers pointed at Godzilla’s face and yelling some kind of “kill you” or some ramble and Godzilla retaliating with equal ‘in your facedness with gun-fingers’ and I said “NO GUNS! I’m frigging sick of it. Stop It. What is the rule?”
They glance at each other, clearly deciding who is going to be the one to set me straight.
“They’re not guns, Mum. Sheesh. They’re hair driers! Don’t you know anything? And stop jumping to conclusions.”
Mother’s Day Wrapped Down
Posted by: | CommentsMonkey Boy has been busting to make this day special for me. He’s awesome like that.
He was only telling me yesterday how he was going to pack my bag and send me out of the house so I can have a few days to myself, and to recuperate, and if I come home in that time, he will call the police and tell them I am an intruder and don’t live there.
He’s awesome like that.
Really, I just desperately needed a good sleep. The ‘not well’ icky cough and snotty head, and the weeks of stress have built up and, honestly, a day of sleeping and doing not much is just what I need.
This morning, Godzilla wandered into our room just after 7.00a.m. and climbed into bed beside Grumpy Pants, who immediately whispere “Let’s get up and let your mother have a sleep in.”
I have the best family.
Then, as I was drifting off into oblivion, seconds later, the door opens and Monkey Boy presents me with a MUG of cold coffee, and Chippie and Godzilla come and dump stuff on me. I can’t sit up because a) I’m in that baffled state of ‘nearly got to sleep but was disturbed’ and b) because I had a box sitting on my head, and a bag sitting on my belly.
Chippie is banging on the box, resting precariously on my face, and saying “Wrap it down, Mummy, wrap it down!”
(Clearly, he has heard us discussing ‘wrapping presents up’ so the obvious reversal of that is to ‘wrap presents down’.)
He gives up, proceeds to pull stuff out of the bag and say “Look, pants!” It’s actually a bag from Two Old Bags, who make bags out of jeans (and my pyjama pants on one occasion when they made a bag just for ME!, given to me be an adorale friend for my birthday last year ). Chippie commences the banging on box and “WRAP IT DOWN, MUMMY!” once the bag is emptied, and Monkey Boy and Godzilla fight over who gives me their school-made card first, then demand to know which one is “better”.
“But I love them both, equally!” I say, whilst thinking and wish you would both shut up and stop yelling, equally, because I’m about to shove you both off the bed. Equally!
Eventually, I’m able to position myself upright, and attempt to ‘wrap down’ my present, as Chippie looks at me seriously and says “It wrap in purple” then “I wrap it down for you” and he does.
An ipod dock and clock radio so I may listen to good songs and sing loudly and dance whilst I make dinner – hooray!
(And drown out the noise of children braining each other at the other end of the house, and the pre-schooler tugging on my pants and yelling at me for marshmallows – just saying.)
The Mother’s Day festivities at an end – and Mother’s Day in and of itself, it seems – I’m still exhausted and would really just like some peace and quiet, and some more sleep.
The chilly, rainy Melbourne weather is encouraging of this sort of activity. Ideally, I’d like to pull the sofa bed out, and snuggle up with some Lindor Gourmet Truffles and my new Chicago DVD (they were all out of Sound of Music) but children and husbands and the rest of it thwarted this brilliant plan.
Instead, I pulled the sofa bed out, grabbed a blanket and a few pillows, put Chippie into some kind of straight-jacket-like Mum-Hug and watched Toy Story 2.
I was treated to a few more moments of Almost Asleep, and jerked out of it several times by Chippie demanding I push Buzz Lightyears wings back in (he’s unable to do it himself, and appears to thoroughly enjoy pressing the button to pop them out again, and pressing my buttons by demanding I push them back in again seconds later, on repeat, until we are yelling at each other).
Buzz is shoved down the pack of the couch so I can no longer be pissed off by him and hopefully get some sleep, when, just as I’m at the Almost stage again, Monkey Boy, he of the Must Speak For Sake Of Making Noise Disorder, joins us and gives a running commentary of the movie I am trying not to watch as I want to go do sleep!
Grumpy Pants asks if I want to go out, in the cold and rain, for coffee with his mother. So fatigued am I, I can’t even give him the finger. I feel bad, as it is her day, too, but I’m sooooo exhausted I just can’t do it.
The last few times, with the kids present, haven’t been terribly fun for anyone, either, and I’m torn between suggesting he take the kids, and spending just some time with her, alone and enjoy it for everyone.
Toy Story starts its second run through, I still don’t get sleep, and nor does Chippie, who so desperately needs it, given he’s as snotty and coughy as me and just a little flat.
So we are just content with lazing around and watching Toy Story for the third time …
Then I got to cook dinner. With the aid of Lady Gaga – which made it much more pleasant.
How was your day?
The New Hat
Posted by: | CommentsArrived at school to collect Godzilla.
He was wearing a new hat. An Essendon Bombers cap to be precise. Because, despite our family being terribly un-Melbourneish and not ‘barracking’ for any team, he likes the Bombers.
I still don’t know where this hat came from.
Grumpy Pants asked.
“Where did you get that hat?”
“I won it,” Godzilla replies.
And that was the end of that. Except, I have to know everything, so I commenced the questioning process.
“Cool hat. Where did you get it?” I enquire.
“I won it,” he repeats.
“What for?” I ask.
“I dunno.”
Which is pretty much as I expected.
“So, did you maybe do something at school today that resulted in you winning a hat?”
“I dunno. A fell off the monkey bars today.”
“Right. So … anything else, anything that you might have won something for?”
“I dunno.”
“Ok. Um … so, how was school today?”
“I dunno,” is his now anticipated response. He often replies like this, and I often wonder if he was actually there, give he often ‘doesn’t know’ what he did at school that day.
I’m told this is common. It is still no less annoying.
“We did reading,” he tells me. They do this every day.
“And we did cross country today,” he continues.
Ah ha! We may be onto something.
“So, did you win the hat for cross country, maybe?”
“I dunno,” he replies.
ARGH! I think to myself.
“C came first. I just came third.”
“You came third in cross country?”
“Yep.”
“Did you win the hat for coming third?”
“I dunno.”
“Also, do you think coming third in the cross country is pretty awesome? I think that’s pretty awesome. Like, really well done,” I tell him.
“I dunno. I think I came third because I didn’t stop to get a drink. I don’t know why I got the hat. Are we going home now?”
My head hurts.
Necessary Life Skills
Posted by: | CommentsDay 3 of Not Being Able To Work In Effective Chunks and Week I’ve Lost Count of feeling crap. My head is now full of snot, the cough, whilst relenting slightly and not playing quite so much havoc on my chest and pelvic floor, is still there and my Levels Of Tolerance have all but vanished in a screaming tantrum.
I’m doing my best to hold it together, but fail miserably as Chippie, whom only 13 minutes earlier had insisted – insisted – he put clothes on instead of his bathers, as he usually does Thursday mornings before swimming, decided he could not possibly leave the house in clothes, and insisted, via screaming at me, that he wanted his bathers on.
However, he could not appreciate the need to remove his shoes in order to remove his pants in order to don his bather bottoms and insisites, via more yelling, that his shoes remain on.
As the experts suggest, I got down to his level. And I screamed at him, just like he was doing to me. Clearly, by being all calm and rational I just wasn’t speaking in a manner with which he could relate. I threw in the odd “fucking little shit” and “stop fucking around and make a decision” and he calmly replaced the shoe I had so horribly removed and went out to the car.
I pondered why I even bother with “calm and rational” at any time, and don’t just got for Screaming Swearing Fishwife first up, as it seems to get things happening.
Then I cried at swimming lessons.
In order to do something useful, I rang a local high school to find out some information, and was advised the information and forms I needed were to be completed and returned to the school tomorrow.
Ah, well, I thought, this will kill some time – phew! And we drove up, collected the forms, and I killed even more time by heading to Kmart to purchase some long pants for Chippie that would actually reach his ankles and, therefore, technically be considered long.
I was feeling much better, having achieved something I probably needed to do weeks ago, but with Melbourne weather being so fickle and inconsistent, it was hard to decide whether a few weeks ago was actually a good time for it. Still, it is now done and I can check that off my list.
My Feeling Much Better was shortlived, as the older two arrived home and proceeded to chip away at my resolve by niggling and picking on each other, until my Already Barely Existent Tolerance shattered and I told them if they didn’t frigigng stop I would either walk out the door and never come back, or, if they even contemplated touching each other again, I would bang their heads together so fucking hard they’d be rendered unconscious and if tha’ts what it took to get a moment of peace then I would fucking do it.
Then I asked them nicely to get ready for swimming.
And took several deep breaths.
They were now remotely tolerable and swimming lessons could ensue. Chippie went in for a play during lesson time and all was well. I had the added bonus of a friend there to talk to. So that was nice.
As the lessons finished and all the boys got dressed as quickly and efficiently as possible (Godzilla with the entire back of his shirt soaking wet, Monkey Boy without shoes etc) we were standing out the front, two families, five boys in total, as we mums discussed some catch up dates.
Chippie was running around with his similarly aged compartriot discussing bums and penises.
“Pull your pants down,” Godzilla tells Chippie.
“Leave your pants on!” I intervene. “And stop telling your brother to do shit like that. Seriously!?”
“That’s a necessary life skill,” says Monkey Boy.
“Isn’t it?” he asks, when we look at him, incredulous. “Knowing how to pull your pants down is necessary to get you through life.”
And, although by this point I really didn’t want to, I took them home … with a smile.
