Momentos

“Now I understand all the posts from mums wishing for school holidays to end, and it’s only kindy we’re on break from – Arrrrggghhhh! - :( Feeling frustrated,” read a friend’s Facebook post this week.

This was followed by a series of both empathetic posts – “Haha, I know, patience is my new mantra at the moment”, along with the number of times their child has been in time out, to the opposite reaction from those enjoying being in holiday-mode.

It’s always a challenge entertaining the troops during the rainy season holidays. In a bid at killing two birds with one stone – a form of entertainment, whilst achieving something the kids could help with - I decided to clean out their rooms these holidays.

Help out? Yeah right, and it was entertaining to them for all of one minute. Instead I found myself regrettably standing in the middle of a room that was knee-deep in toys and, err … paper.

How I got myself in this predicament was by pulling out the twins’ beds and unearthing all manner of material. I won’t go into detail here, although expecting to come across a dead mouse in Master Eight’s room the following day made for slow and tentative progress.

Although there were no dead animals or even decaying food matter (bar the standard raison), it turns out, underneath the beds is where they shove everything and anything they don’t want seen. This applies to contraband – (yes there were some ‘aha’ moments), long-forgotten home made cards which never made their way to the intended recipients, and all the items which they were too lazy to put away when I’ve told them to clean their rooms.

But most of all were all the stacks of paper – I’d say about half a forest’s-worth – and this, I realised, was my fault.

You see, at least two of my three are budding artists and it is not uncommon for one of them to produce up to 20 pictures a day. But what does one do with all this artwork?

Every night when they’ve gone to bed I edit their work and filter out the best ones, placing the more effortless ones in the recycling. (It is not uncommon for someone to pull a poorly-hidden picture from the recycling the next day and ask: “Mum, why have you thrown (insert name) picture away?!”)

More often than not they are too special to throw away (how can one bin a picture covered in love hearts and the word ‘Mum’?) So, already with my ‘special drawer’ crammed full of such momentos, I shove the others under their beds aiming for the pile I once started which has subsequently spilled out the length and height of their beds.

So while I was standing in amongst this mess, my friend came around. She gave a knowing look and said: “Ah, I did the same thing last week and it stayed tidy for half a day.”

It turns out the mere sight of all their unearthed and long-forgotten toys all lined up neatly where they should go is high-excitement and the kids go to town. Mine were no exception.

The next day I must’ve been a bit grumpy about the state of their upturned rooms because the twins, who’d clearly helped themselves to my stationary, produced a card printed: “With deepest sympathy. May the sympathy and love of family and friends comfort you at this sad time.” And scrawled in childish handwriting: “To Mum. Get better soon. I love you Mum.” This was surrounded in red love hearts.

Another one to add to the drawer.