Redemption

It’s probably just as well I had no takers for last week’s Wanted Ad.

In between my monster-like rants at the kids’ misbehaviour while I was trying to work, there shone a few heart-warming moments that brought about a major case of the guilts.

My poor three have basically been fending for themselves these past two weeks while I have tried to turn out some work from home.

In amongst the fisticuffs (them, not me) they’ve had to use their imaginations and come up with their own entertainment day after day.

This involved picking up the other phone and making rude noises while I was on an important work-related call.

But despite my occasional “psyche-outs”, it just goes to show that a child’s love for their parents is unconditional for, after yet another period of neglect, I found a surprise waiting for me.

The twins had decided (perhaps in an attempt to improve my mood) that I needed an afternoon snack. So they set about picking tomatoes from the garden and squeezing them into a wine glass full of water. To add flourish, one of them had even sliced an extra piece of tomato and draped it over the edge of the glass. This was sitting next to a bowlful of yet more crudely cut up tomatoes and a spoon, all ready to eat.

It was tomato-central and they’d made one heck of a mess making it.

“Ohhh how lovely,” I exclaimed truly touched, yet a little horrified.

“Drink it Mummy!” they ordered excitedly while I dubiously eyed the floating pulp in the murky water.

I feigned a sip, which they seemed satisfied with before they, proud as punch, offered the bowlful of chunky tomato bits.

“Umm I think I might save that for pudding,” I said putting it in the fridge, thanking them, then walking back to my work station.

“Mummy, don’t forget your drink!” called out Master Five chasing me with the increasingly-cloudy tomato water.

“Oh that will be lovely to sip on while I do my work,” I replied taking it off him and sitting it on the desk.

But they weren’t going to let me forget it. In fact, every time I left the room, Master Five would follow me with the concoction.

“Oh look Mum! I’ve found some more tomato to go in your drink!” he cried picking off the floor one of the many pieces of pulp left over from the carnage and dropping it into my glass.

I watched it sink its way through the murk to the bottom with the rest and then looked up at his hopeful face. I felt like I’d been a right cow to my children all week so I would do this for a shot at redemption.

I took a sip and tried not to barf.

But I must’ve done a good job of hiding my distaste for the next day I vaguely remember one of the twins asking me a question.

“Mmmhmm,” I replied completely distracted.

They shot off on a mission and half an hour later I was summonsed to the kitchen.

What greeted me was the same scene from the day before – ‘cept this time they’d added a fancy straw.

“And we’ve put the bowl of tomatoes in the fridge for your pudding,” they declared.

I’d made my bed with this one. I picked up the glass for round two and, catching sight of their eager little faces, made a mental note to withdraw the Wanted Ad.

Wanted Ad

WANTED: Good home for three lovable but rumbustious kids driving their mother round the bend.

It’s just for the duration of the holidays and then you can give them back – I’m sure I will have missed the ruckus by then.

I bet I’m not the only one who has plotted a wanted ad in my head. What prompted it was a rather painful morning that went something like this:

Master Five teases older brother – check, older brother belts him one – check, Master Five cries – check, Miss Five tells tales – check, times that by ten – check.

Oh but it doesn’t end there – add: “I’m bored” times ten, “I’m hungry” times ten, a mother who’s lost the plot and resorts to putting on a dvd, and all this before 9am – check.

Are you feeling my pain or are you sitting there thinking “Tut-tut – one day they will have grown up and flown the nest and you’ll be wishing for all that back”?

I try this forward-thinking – I really do - but it’s hard to not live in the moment when you’re trying to work from home during school holidays with all that going on around you. Let’s just say, my work days have not been very productive.

But my imagination has been working overtime trying to come up with effective punishments. The kids have been rather lucky this summer with their holidays away and leisure activities. But it’s common knowledge that the more they are entertained in this way the harder they find it to entertain themselves - hence the boredom-induced teasing and lashing out at home.

Because this was getting out of hand I decided every time Master Five teased and Master Seven used his physical force (and vice-versa) they could go into each other’s rooms and choose one toy to play with for the day. This would be greatly upsetting to Master Seven – a hoarder who is very protective of his possessions.

While Master Five, who has no problem with sharing, got a gleam in his eyes, his older brother didn’t like the idea at all: “But all Jai’s toys are dumb – I don’t even want to play with them.”

Then, after some thought: “I know, I’ll just get one of his toys and beat it up all day!”

I could see this punishment was not going to work so it was back to the drawing board.

The fighting was starting up again and I decided to calm everyone down by putting on another dvd. This was when I discovered someone had jammed a dvd in the player, thereby rendering it useless.

It was about this time I began plotting the wanted ad.

New Years Resolutions

Master Five’s New Year’s resolution (that I made for him) was to stop hitting, blowing raspberries and calling me “stupid mummy” before storming off. He’d broken all of these by the end of day one.

In contrast, Miss Five’s (self-made) resolution, after giving it some thought, was “to help people cross the road”.

This was amusing considering I’m still debating letting her walk the short distance to school, and cross the street, without me.

Master Seven wasn’t in the room when we made these resolutions as he was too busy playing his new Play Station games - perhaps tearing himself away from these would be a good start – but I can think of a few: Not ganging up on a sibling with the other is one.

Last week Miss Five emerged from her room and came running upstairs with her Barbie doll in two pieces.

“Mum, the boys pulled my Barbie doll’s head off!” 

It turns out it was her twin brother’s doing – but only because he was following an order from his older brother.

“Right, you can put the head back on and apologise to your sister or I’m going to let her go into your rooms and break something of yours,” I said.

Master Five made a feeble attempt at sticking the head back on, before handing it to his brother who also tried unsuccessfully. It got passed backwards and forwards several times and seemed to be becoming a bit of a joke between them before I had a turn.

Indeed, Barbie had been permanently be-headed.

Because they found this amusing I decided some follow-up action was required. This particular Barbie doll had once belonged to their Aunty Paula so I decided Master Seven – the instigator – could phone her and explain what he had done to her doll.

Not that she would have cared but this knocked the wind out of his sails.

“Mum,” he whimpered, “Please don’t make me ring Aunty Paula.”

He scarpered downstairs while I sent her a message explaining the situation and asking if she could just go along with it.

“Are you emailing Aunty Paula?” asked Miss Five, hovering over my shoulder, eager to see her brothers punished.

“Yes, I’m just sending her a message and asking if it’s alright if the boys ring her,” I explained. “But don’t tell them I’ve told her,” I added.

As it turned out, Aunty Paula was at the tennis and didn’t get the message in time so the moment was lost but Miss Five wasn’t going to let it drop; the following day she came and found me:

“Mummy, I didn’t tell the boys that you sent Aunty Paula a message but I just held my Barbie doll up to the sky to show the elves so they can put them on Santa’s naughty list.”

That was that sorted then. Now to work on the hitting, blowing raspberries, calling me “stupid mummy” and storming off …

New Years with Kids

Who would’ve thought New Year’s Eve could be so (in the words of one of the male guests) “epic” with kids? Especially when the ratio of kids outweighed the adults.

This year – my first spent in Whangarei in about 15 years - I decided to throw a family-friendly barbecue for my friends who didn’t have babysitters.

I started off saying the more the merrier but then realised with every adult or two usually comes multiple children which could quickly get out of hand so I called it quits at just a few families.

We also agreed that we weren’t fazed at seeing in the New Year so we’d have a faux countdown at around 10pm. Yes, I know, very sad – long gone are the teens of the 90s who spent the night repeatedly walking between Waitangi and Paihia and back seeing how many pashes they’d get along the way. (I’m not owning up to that – I’m merely talking generically!)

And who wants to start the New Year off tired and hungover anyway? Every year you can pretty much guarantee it will rain on Christmas Day but the sun will beat down on your pounding head on New Year’s Day. That’s rather torturous when you’ve got a bunch of hyper kids itching to go to the beach.

So back to my epic New Year’s. The idea was to put the kids downstairs in the “kids lounge” with a dvd leaving us adults to get on with drinks and nibbles upstairs. Instead, everyone spread themselves throughout the house – two boys parked themselves in front of Play Station in the kids lounge, two girls played school teachers in the bedroom, one played Ninja Turtles in another bedroom, others bounced on the tramp and the rest discovered the skateboard, bikes and scooters in the garage. Next, out came the go-cart which needed fixing. So down to the workshop went the men and soon they were sitting on the drive with spanners while the kids waited in eager anticipation.

Finally it was good to go and this proved so popular, the men took over and were soon putting on a real show for us up above on the deck. They got more and more courageous and started coming down from higher points up my steep, windy drive causing us no end of alarm.

Miraculously everyone came away unscathed from that one and it was time for the barbi. After this, someone decided to crank up the Sing Star. As I haven’t busted this out for years the kids thought it was great fun and it proved some entertainment until everyone got sick of one of the dads hogging the microphone so eventually we drifted back upstairs and left him to it.

By the time we checked the clock it was 10.30pm so we did our countdown at top volume. The neighbours must’ve been checking their own clocks and wondering if we’d gone slightly balmy. After that it was crazy disco time in the lounge, complete with strobe lights, thanks to one of the kids flashing a torch at the roof. Even the men couldn’t help but join in.

Eventually one of the non-dancing kids got her way and managed to convince her parents it was home time. By then it was 11.30pm so we all bid each other farewell and happy New Year and the families set off in different directions for the short walks home.

“That was epic!” called back one of the dads through the darkness.

It truly was – and I’m not even being sarcastic.