Archive for children
Don’t let them get away with anything
Posted by: | CommentsA Sunday morning, planned as not doing much; hubby doing some gardeny type things, me doing some work, alternating care of the kids so we could both get done what needed.
Of course, a friend dropped by, the kids took the opportunity to ask if they could pay their DS/Wii/Computer and went to the other parent when one gave the answer they didn’t like.
I went off with friend for a while, Chippie sleeping and the older two set up on the Wii, to return 3 hours later to find them all in the same spots. Well, not Chippie, he had his hand down the toilet and Grumpy was pruning the pumpkin plant.
Requested they turn it off as we needed to go shopping for a birthday present (on of their friend’s, so no way was I going to do it on my own) and after several hundred of similar requests, I did the raised voice thing, causing Godzilla to cry and the mundane and repetitve “If you listened the first 86 times, I wouldn’t have to yell. I feel like I have to yell to make sure you heard me” and Monkey Boy to slip into lawyer mode.
Off we walk, up the street, two sheepish boys disappointed about having lost all access to DSes, Wiis, Computers and DVDs for the remainder of the day.
Monkey Boy couldn’t resist asking if he could finish watching a DVD he had on the night before, if he could finish a DS game, if he could jsut do some Wii Fit, which isn’t anything like “playing, Mum! It’s exercise!” and getting a firm “NO!”each time.
“How about a video?”
“NO!!!!!”
We shop, we walk home, we get in the door “So, can I watch that video?”"
I look at him in stunned silence and think “are you kidding me”"? which he obviously hears.
Because he replies “You never said ‘videos’. You only said DVDs, computers, the Wii and our DS. Don’t think you’re going to get away with that.”
So I sent him to his room, instead.
It most certainly is
Posted by: | CommentsThe usual Tuesday morning routine, where I am woken by Grumpy’s alarm.
Actually, slightly unusual awakening, as it’s usually Chippie crying an hour before the alarm where I am woken. Thankfully, he awakes just before Grumpy gets out of the shower, so they have breakfast together and I am reprieved of that particular fun-filled task.
Then its on to getting older kids up, yelling at them about various things such as breakfast, dishwashers, shoes, reader books and wearing pants to school.
Whereby Godzilla bounces around in various stages of dress and Monkey Boy heads to toy room to play with his Thomas set (brought out as Chippie has a harder time eating it than Lego and Monkey Boy loves it, even though he won’t admit it, because he’s far too old for that sort of thing now.)
And it is whilst the two of them – the oldest and the youngest – are in their playing that Monkey Boy informs me of something I already knew, but couldn’t quite place …
“Mu-uum! Chippie is acting all cutesie. It’s pure sign of evil!”
When it all falls into place
Posted by: | CommentsArgh!
My neat freak, clean freak cousin is coming to visit. With her family. For a week.
She managed to get all the “I like to clean” genes, and left me with none (even though I’m older- but that’s not the point!)
She brings with her her lovely husband and two boys. A teen and a pre-teen. Because our house needs more boys in it.
We had Monkey Boy tidying up the toyroom so they can have the sofa bed in there to sleep on. He started 3 weeks ago and has, so far, manage to put nothing away.
And so commences the sweeping, mopping, scrubbing, yelling frenzy. Contemplate tying cloths to Chippie’s knees, except that now he’s walking he prefers to run and not crawl.
Thankfully, he’s not that good at running and falls over a lot, so we drag him across floor instead. Much greater surface area for cleaning than just knees.
Wipe, wash and panic some more, make the beds, spray the house with some stuff so it smells like it’s just been cleaned and it’s off to the airport to get them.
Receive a text to say their flight is an hour and a half leaving Brisbane.
Thankfully before I leave home.
Ah, clean house, pristine toilet (well, it will be, hopefully, now the bleach has a bit longer to sit there and do it’s job) and I get time to have some quiet time before we need to get them.
Hurrah!
Children are more intuitive than we give them credit for
Posted by: | CommentsSunday morning and I’m completley out of coffee beans.
Managed to scrape together a plunger coffee this morning – not ideal, but better than nothing.
I had to break the bad news to the kids. “Kids? We have to go for a walk this morning. To the coffee shop to buy some more beans.”"
I really have no idea why I bothered to continue past walk as as soon as I said the word, the “I don’t want to walk, I hate walking blah blah blah” started up.
Thus the need to explain things clearly and succinctly.
“Mummy has no coffee beans left. If Mummy gets up tomorrow morning and has no coffee, and has to function while she is decaffienated, what do you think will happen? You know what will happen don’t you?
“Ummmm,” Monkey Boy replied politely. Only because he knows what will happen and is too scared to say it out loud for fear it may come true.
“Yes, that’s right,” I continue. “Mummy will go off her nut tomorrow morning and it won’t be fun for anyone, will it?”
He concedes. And repeats it back to me, to be sure we are all clear on what will occur.
“So, you’ll be decaffietated?”
I determine that his is a condition inflicted upon families across Australian (and quite possibly the world) when Mummy wakes up to a house with no coffee – she loses her head at the lack of caffiene.
Ah, relaxed and refreshed … and ready for a holiday
Posted by: | CommentsI hate that moment you realise you are no longer on holiday.
For me, it usally hits me when I look at the two suitcases sitting just outside the laundry – usually the two largest ones, the ones that can hold a small African elephant and an adolescent rhino respectively.
They’re sitting outside the laundry because they are full, and I’m mean stuffed full, of dirty clothes. Clothes which appear to have bred overnight while you took a well earned rest after your holiday.
And you always need a rest after a holiday!
You sort the washing and put a load on, and when you go back to hang it out the clothes appear to have multiplied again and taken over the laundry.
Sit down to do some work … ah, so much less stressful and much more relaxing than a long car trip wtih 3 children and a grumpy husband …
A relaxing, holiday sort of day
Posted by: | CommentsDecide to do something holiday-y today and off we head to the river for a spot of bbq lunch and fishing.
Within minutes – actually, I think it was seconds – of us setting up, Chippie throws a tantrum because his grandfather removed a cigarette butt from his mouth and Godzilla gets the fishing hook caught on some rocks and gives up.
Calming Chippie, locating somewhere cigarette butt free for him to sit (not hard, give there was 1 cigarette butt in the vacinity, which he managed to find in amongst multitude fallen leaves and twigs) and retreive the rod before it slid down the bank to join its snagged hook, I ask Monkey Boy to hold the rod so I can climb down to untangle the line and commence what we came to do. Monkey Boy, in all his boyness, kicks off his shoes and scrambles down the bank, releasing the line and scaling back up to have a fling of the rod.
Bored after 13 seconds of not catching anything, he hands it back to me in a way that catches the hook again, so back down the bank he heads. The hook is much harder to retrieve this time, particularly as a boat zooms past, causing a wash that covers Monkey Boy’s feet and causes him to slip.
And draws blood.
Great.
The pain then kicks in and I get to do that Calming From a Distance Whilst Child Is Racing To Get To You From A Precarious And Potentially More Dangerous Spot whilst trying to recall what first aid supplies I may or may not have in the nappy bag (first aid supplies, along with baby panadol, and kids panadol and grown ups panadol for that matter, also left at home).
Locate mostly clean tissue (only minisculy snotty) to stop flow of blood and try to get good look at cut whilst Monkey Boy screams – in pain or because he can, I’m not quite sure. Thankfully the cuts aren’t deep, except perhaps for the small chunk taken out just above his ankle, but appear to be packed with black gunk. I really don’t want to think about consequences, nor do I want another trip to hospital these particular holidays. Squirt some water on it, whack several bandaids on, spend some minutes letting him know it’s ok to get off the seat and stop reading book and it’s unlikely he will experience any dire, life threatening situations given the activities we have planned for the rest of the day.
Go home after eating all food, catching no fish and Godzilla goes for a swim. If you consider stepping into river water up to your mid-calves a “swim”. Convince Monkey Boy to sit whilst I have a good look at his cuts, and the bits of oyster shell and grit in them. Icky. Get hands on antispetic and a decent pair of tweezers, argue for some minutes with Grumpy over who gets to pull the icky bits out, I pull the “mum” card, along with innate desire to care for child that is way beyond any comprehension and trump him.
He gets to hold Monkey Boy down, though, and watch.
Delicately, as delicately as possible given the screaming and writhing from Monkey Boy, I remove several pieces of grit and shell from the cuts, add some more bandaids and experience a relief that I have, singlehandedly reduced the potential for infection and trips to doctors and hospitals.
And a sense of satisfaction that is inevitable when removing foreign objects from body parts.
Or perhaps that sense of satisfaction was a subconscious reaction brought on by payback after the “squish”iness and public pregnancy comments of yesterday … who knows …
And the “holiday” continues …
Posted by: | CommentsChippie still not great, although the fever has gone.
It has been replaced with a disgustingly snotty nose and the dry cough substituted for a disgusting mucousy one. Nice.
Step mother offered the washing machine for our dirty laundry. What the heck? I’m no holidays. And despite having packed enough (ok, more than enough, but it’s a disorder, I can’t help it) for our trip, I do some anyway, and drag in the “washing” suitcase that we’d intended to leave in the car.
Now well and truly into holiday mode, ie Grumpy happy to explore or sit doing very little, and I’m busting to go shopping, I talk Monkey Boy into coming for a walk with me for a latte and to check out the local book shop. I convinced him by saying that I wanted to spend time with him which I haven’t done since before Godzilla was born.
The book shop had none of the books he liked or wanted, and his open-to-trying-new-things demeanour meant he flat our refused all suggestions for similarly themed books about bums and underpants. So we left.
By passed several cafes until we settled on one that looked like it was run from the old people’s home or the elderly ladies auxillary, perhaps. Served up old lady version of a latte and iced chocolate, whilst Monkey Boy complained about lack of kids and that everyone in the town either had “bits of grey in their hair, had no hair at all or their hair is all grey all over”. He had a point. At least there was a primary school in the are. There was no one my age!
Popped into the supermarket to grab some provisions for lunch before heading home, when, standing amongst elderly men, Monkey Boy, bored stupid – it’s the only reason I can think of why he then said what he did; that he was stupid! – says “are you pregnant?”
“No!” I replied, horrified.
“You are! You’re pregnant!”
“I’m not pregnant.”
He puts a hand on my belly, and one on my back, and bounces around excitedly and yells “You are pregnant! Yes you are you are!”
“I’m not bloody pregnant ok! I’m just really FAT!” and was only thwarted in my attempts to stomp off in a sulk by slow old men and zimmer frames in my way.
Monkey Boy then proceeded to alleviate his boredom by pinching bits of flesh around my abdomen and saying “squish squish” then following me around the supermarket doing same to my bum.
Vow to never have children again as long as I have lives.
Make it home, have lunch (despite, or because of, my now depressed state) and Monkey Boy talks Grumpy into heading back to the bookshop to purchase some books.
I bet he didn’t “squished” or loudly accused of being pregnant. And he looks it! Humph.
I want to go on holiday with a nice family!
On the road again
Posted by: | CommentsAfter two days in Canberra doing all the fun and exciting things we can, catching up with friends, somehow managing not to go insane due to the crying, snotty, coughing growth I now have permanently attached to my body, and repacking the bags so all the clothes requiring washing are located in the one spot, we all hop back in the car and head off to the next part of our “holiday” … further north.
It was with great rejoicing that we noticed the temperature hit double figures the further we moved from Canberra.
Chippie still not well slept a majority of the journey, thankfully, and Godzilla started on the “I need to go to the toilet” thing ten minutes after a decent length stop somewhere for refuelling and meals.
The further north we went, the greater the temperature and the diminishing of child-friendly facilities, such as, oh, playgrounds and the like. We stopped for lunch in Gosford and set about locating somewhere to sit and eat, and where the kids could race around and burn of some energy. Took the turnoff to a memorial “park”, did consider the possibilty that it was going to be a pet cemetary, which would have been preferable to the vast expanse of dried up grass and lack of any sort of amenity or play equipment.
Found another park, agian, much grass, no facilities for climbing, lots of old people, and an art exhibition located where the toilets were, forcing us in all our long car tripped dishevelled state to enter the neat, clean and stylish building , complete with extremely expensive works adorning the walls, to go to the loo.
Not a place for energy packed kids who haven’t had any opportunity to run, climb or jump … except for that thing out the front that they ran to, climbed on and jumped off and turned out to be a sculpture on display. How were we to know? It looked like a lump of something! Even Monkey Boy, who hates art, can do something more artisitic and aesthetic!
After managing to relieve ourselves of bladder pressure without being asked to leave due to wearing tracksuit pants (suitable for long car trips) or the police being called, because 6 hours of travelling in a car will make you look a bit like a crim, we went on our way, attempting to explain to Godzilla that the middle of a very busy highway is not the place to stop so he can wee on a tree, and eventually made it to our terminus and accommodation for the next two days.
Mad Cow writes a very funny blog that all parents can relate to. I know that whenever I drop in to catch up I will end up in stitches (of laughter!) and head off to my day with a smile on my face. Thankfully, here is someone who tells it like it is. 
Fuck you make me laugh (via Twitter @woogsworld)