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 …