Royal Parenting

Did anybody else wonder how Prince William managed to secure the baby capsule in the back of the car so swiftly before he zoomed off?

He had to have been practicing beforehand right? Perhaps it was all for show and he simply drove around the corner into some high-walled, gated compound where he promptly hopped back out and had one of his minders do it. Yes, that’ll be it.

I’m sure we fumbled round in the car park with it for eons and that would’ve been after a fair amount of practicing at home.

It took a heck of a lot longer the second time. Trying to fit two newborn baby capsules into the backseat, along with a carseat for a two-year-old was no easy task.

And if I remember correctly, this was after the two-year-old decided it would be a great idea to take off down one of the dark, long, windy and seldom-used corridors on the way out.

I remember the fleeting moment of wondering whether to lug the car capsules down the maze-like corridors in pursuit or temporary ditch them and give chase.

Little did I know this was to be the first of many such situations.

But the prince and duchess have all that ahead of them. Actually, no they won’t. They’ll have a team of minders assigned to rein in each errant child.

I wonder if, after they zoomed off for show into the gated compound they had their driver drive at snail-pace all the way home for fear their new and precious cargo would come to harm enroute? How can any new parent forget that journey home?!

Like most around the globe, I watched transfixed as Wills and Kate stepped out and I tried to draw the kids’ attention to this momentous occasion. However, later Miss Four said:
”Mum, I don’t ever want to have a baby.”

“Oh, why not?”

“Because it will just cry and I’ll just have to keep fixing it.”

True dat.

“And it will always poo its nappy and I’ll just have to keep changing that too,” she went on.

“And it might be a boy!”

How awful.

I think it is admirable that the new parents emerged and spoke to the press with the world’s eyes upon them when poor, tired Catherine was probably just hoping like heck she didn’t spring a leak for all and sundry to see.

And it is absolutely fabulously brilliant that William had already changed a nappy before they left the hospital. I wonder if it was the lovely tar-like meconium one? I can’t imagine Charles would’ve done that in his day.

But if they thought the meconium nappy was bad – wait till they encounter their first power-poo. Wouldn’t it be funny if baby George happened to be sitting on Prince Charles when it happened. 

That image would be priceless.

Dinner Hits

How hard is it to get a unanimous dinner-time hit with the whole whanau?

I can’t even win with hamburgers and pizza anymore as one of the kids has decided these items are no longer suited to their taste buds.

The menu features big on the day’s agenda for my three - 8am and the conversation goes like this:

“Mum, what’s for dinner?”

“Meatballs.”

“Ew!” “Yum!” “Ew!” (said simultaneously.) 

That’s one hit.

Then the following morning:

“Mum, what’s for dinner?”

“Chicken stirfry.”

“Yum!” “Ew!” “Yum!”

Two hits but one’s not happy.

This causes the “victim” to fret all day about what’s going to be on their plate that evening which seems like a waste of energy but, if I’m honest, I can kind of relate. I remember, as a child, if I found out sausages and/or peas were on the menu I’d work myself up to the point of almost crying as the dinnertime deadline loomed.

So come tea-time, every night I either have one or two sets of disgusted eyes glaring at me across the table, like I’ve cooked it as a personal vendetta, whilst they painstakingly slide the offending contents around their plate.

Oh I’ve tried the starving-kids-in-Africa tales, to which some bright spark replies: “Well, why don’t we just send them this dinner?”

Perhaps I’m cooking the wrong meals. Yet, I am convinced my children have got the strangest taste buds: they don’t even like macaroni cheese and isn’t that supposed to be a sure-fire winner?

Last week we had a houseful of family come to stay and one lot brought up that week’s ingredients from their My Food Bag delivery. After they left we had a vege bin full of items the kids have never been exposed to such as brussels sprouts, leeks and cabbage.

Determined to utilize these ingredients, I Googled the best ways to cook brussels sprouts and decided to sauté with garlic and butter.

That evening they eyed their plates suspiciously and looked impressed with the interesting round green things and Miss Four liked the look of the bright purple cabbage.

“Yum!” they declared before trying it and I actually felt guilty about what was to come.

But, instead, they surprised me. They wolfed it down while I painstakingly slid the contents around on my plate unimpressed with my own culinary results.

But like I said, they’re strange.

So who would’ve thought brussels sprouts would be a unanimous hit (excluding me)? Maybe I should harden up and try them on sausages and peas.

Spooky Toys

Is it just me or does your toy box come alive at night?

Admittedly I’m talking about the not-so-distant past when the toy box took centre stage in the living area. It was down a level but that didn’t stop me hearing toys going off randomly. It usually happened as I was just drifting off after a night-time feed (the babies – not me) and served as a form of torture to my poor sleep-deprived brain.

The main culprit came in the form of a shape sorting snail, which played out a happy little tune at the push of a button. When it played repeatedly, I assumed the button had got stuck so I got up and removed it from the toy box.

What do you know, just as I was drifting off again, away it started.

I got back up with the intention of ripping out the batteries, only to discover it didn’t have any. The snail was subsequently thrown down yet another level to the garage with the door slammed and where it could play its gay old tune all night long.

I have no idea what the next culprit was but it put me off the song “Oh Susanna” for life.

This was all forgotten until the other day I received a text from a friend saying: “The house is dead quiet, Mayson’s at care, Sasha asleep, when one of Mayson’s teddy’s pipes up and says “Sing with me hahaha” without it having any buttons pressed. Creepy!!”

A year or so earlier we’d swapped our own spooky encounters with kids’ toys. A tune had started up from her three-month-old’s play gym mat one night. She assumed the cat had walked over it but it went off again. After a while she walked downstairs to investigate but there was no cat in sight. Deciding the cat had gone outside, she went back upstairs and, as she did, the music started playing a third time. The tune was a haunting piece from Mozart and she fled back to bed.

Because we’d both recently lost a close family member we did wonder if they were messages from beyond.

Then again, it could be like the Toy Story where all the toys come alive at night time. They just hadn’t factored in an insomniac catching them out.

Since then other stories have come to light: There’s the mother who, as a child, had a Barney the Dinosaur toy which would start up each night saying “Hahaha, I’m a magic dinosaur.” She can still clearly hear those words today and they have the ability to make her shudder. Barney ended up being thrown out the window.

Then there’s the bath toy that freaked out both the mum and dad. “… one night, for several hours it insisted on randomly going off. We kept turning it off, it would seemingly wait till we were about to drift off, then start up again. We ended up opening the front door and hiffing it into the dark!”

So is it spooky or are they just faulty toys? One thing’s for sure, it’s annoying and most of them end up on the lawn.

And as for the snail? I imagine I gave it away to a charity shop and it will now be wrecking havoc on some other poor person’s sleep.

Joys of Parenthood

When my kids grow up, I’m going to their house to break their stuff, eat all their food, make a huge mess, say I’m bored and then just leave, said the post on my Facebook page this week.

Don’t forget to squabble and bicker, talk all the way through their favourite tv programmes and tell them their dinner is disgusting, particularly if they’ve laboured over it for most of the day.

If you really wanted payback, you could take it a step further and sidle up for a cuddle, then discreetly wipe your snotty nose on their sleeve. Or, flip, why not smear sh*t all over the bathroom walls too. (Is it just me or do other parents discover this?)

But now I’m just getting carried away.

For those of you who are child-free, this wasn’t an intentional form of verbal contraception. Look at it this way, when you share a home with little ones, you never need an alarm clock. Oh and the honesty! You really know where you stand with them on a day-to-day basis. If you p*ss them off, you’re de-friended just like that. And then when they want something, it’s all back on. So you can throw predictability in there too.

You get better at handling public embarrassment – like Master Four booming out at kindy pick-up in front of all the other parents that I – oh wait, I’m not going to embarrass myself further by re-living that one. It was all lies anyway.

He seems to have mastered the art of getting a laugh - whether it’s the truth or not - and I really felt like opening up a can of whoop-ass over that one but, instead, smiled serenely, then deducted a sticker from his chart when we returned home.

That’s a big deal to them. They’re now onto about their tenth snail chart (I’ve become a pro at drawing snails) and the sibling rivalry is game on! 

Now where was I? Oh yes, waxing lyrical about the joys of parenthood. There’s those golden moments of silence like I’m experiencing right now, which ultimately means your children are drawing on, (wiping poo up the walls), cutting, destroying or eating something they’re not supposed to. Probably better referred to as “borrowed time” because you know you’re going to have to pick up the pieces later on.
Actually, this silence has drawn out too long – something’s up. I’m outta here.

One of the twins favourite past-times
when they were younger was looking
at their photo albums ... and tearing
them up!