Spooky Toys 2

It’s one thing when your baby’s toys go off on their own accord in the night and play sweet lullaby’s but older kids’ toys is quite another thing.

I wrote some time ago about toy boxes coming alive at night. 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.

A friend and I had swapped stories of 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.

Or 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.

Then again, I couldn’t help taking this latest incident a little personally. As usual I was just drifting off when I heard: “Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy…”

I lay still for a while, trying to figure it out. Stumped, I got out of bed and followed the noise, which led me to Master Eight’s room. The sound was coming from his toy box. I lifted a few items and unearthed a Ninja Turtle, none other than Rafael.

“…..ya!” he finally finished what he’d been trying to say.

“This means war,” he declared as I removed him from the toy box and sat him next to Master Eight’s bed to remind myself to tell him in the morning.

But as I turned and left the room, Rafy, as Master Eight affectionately calls him, had the last word: “You’re going down!” he stated.

I couldn’t help it – I shot him a look before shuffling on back to bed but, nonetheless, since our ‘words’ that night, I’ve been watching my back.

Front Tooth

Miss Six’s front tooth has been hanging at a precarious angle for weeks and she’s had several offers of tying a piece of string to it and attaching the other end to the door handle before it slams.

You can imagine the reaction this gets.

The loss of her teeth at a rapid rate has totally transformed her face and, at times, it seems my little girl is falling to bits.

Her first tooth fell out while walking down the street and luckily her nana caught it for as she said: “I didn’t have my glasses with me so I would have been fumbling round on the street for hours.”

The next one likely ended up down the loo after she swallowed it – no one was keen to go hunting for it but the tooth fairy did still make an appearance.

This last one, hanging by a fine thread, has been bugging us all holidays but it was her twin brother who did the favour in the end. They were having a bit of a wrestle and he punched her in the mouth. The tooth went flying across the room.

“My tooth!” yelped Miss Six diving after it.

Then she thought she better have a cry for effect.

“Waaaaa!” she wailed running to the bathroom.

A mother knows when her child is crying in pain and, in this case, there was no pain.

There was the usual amount of blood which soon stopped but the commotion drew Master Eight into the bathroom.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Jai punched my tooth out.”

“Well that’s pay back,” shot back an unsympathetic Master Eight without missing a beat.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because last year she knocked my tooth out. With a car!”

Gosh I’d forgotten about the time Miss Six had thrown a toy car at her older brother and knocked his tooth out. All hell had broken lose that day and there was no end of blood.

Poor Master Six, the culprit, stayed in the lounge at the scene of the crime thinking he was in trouble. He wasn’t.

But I was. Who has money on them these days?! After scrounging around I came up with some coins and at bedtime Miss Six decided to leave her precious tooth on her drawers next to her bed for easier access.

“See Mummy, the tooth fairy will fly in here and see it straight away,” she said, giving me a demo by running from the door to the drawers while flapping her arms.

Righto then. It was sorted. Luckily the tooth fairy found it (or remembered) because the next morning, a beaming, toothless Miss Six appeared in the kitchen clasping her coins.

She propped herself up at the bar, placed her coins where her brothers could see them and proceeded to spend the entire breakfast lisping “sausages” and whistling through her new gap.

Holiday Fun

For once I am saddened that it’s the end of the school holidays. As a stay-at-home mum, one tends to dread the long days of entertaining bickering kids. But as a working mum, I welcome the time catching up on things at home and, more importantly, spending time with the children. As well as the good times, this means getting stuck into the nitty-gritty.

After completing most of my spring cleaning in the first week, we headed off on a holiday to Mount Maunganui.

During the five-hour drive, we only had one casualty on the vomiting front: While driving through Dome Valley with nowhere safe to stop, Miss Five, who against my advice, had decided to sit in the back of the seven-seater, informed me she had a sore tummy.

“Hang on, we’re nearly in Warkworth – it’s just around the cor-“

“Cough, cough – blarghh!”

Doh! Too late.

The boys were unimpressed and let their poor sister know it.

I pulled into what I thought was a deserted side road and we leapt out while an upset Miss Five slowly clambered out.

She’d managed to miss herself but the back of the car, in the furthest-reaching corner had copped it.

Once again, it was wet wipes to the rescue and I used nearly a whole packet cleaning up the mess, on the side of the road while a steady stream of traffic went past, its occupants rubber-necking.

I’m sure they knew what had happened – we see it all the time. What I hadn’t noticed, was that I was on the road to Sheep World – hence the volume of cars and the lack of privacy I’d hoped for.

With most of the carnage cleaned up but the aroma certainly lingering, we continued on. If we drove with all the windows down, it went away, but we could only last so long like this in the cold weather.

It came with us all the way down to the Mount and Miss Five copped a fair amount of flak from her brothers for it.

The Mount had a somber feeling and, if not for the dodgy weather (hailing one minute, brilliant, hot sunshine the next) I would have kept the kids and their noise away from that end of the beach as a mark of respect. But they’ve seen it on the news and, as it happened, when we ended up there on Sunday waiting to meet friends, they made wee Jack their own creation to add to the teddies and candles awaiting him.

Back home (the vomit smell had almost completely disappeared by now), it was a quick bath and straight into bed ready for the twin’s birthday.

Being their sixth and having done the big party thing last year, this time I decided to keep it simple: they were each allowed one friend to play for the day and they were stoked with this.

In keeping with the simple theme, the cake was a huge box of ice cream, tipped out onto a chopping board, which the kids had a ball decorating with lollies and sprinkles. The idea was to slice it into rectangles before sticking an ice block stick in it and there they’d have their own decorated ice blocks. However, the kids had so much fun decorating the ‘cake’, it began melting rather rapidly so they were shuffled off outside with their ‘íceblocks’ in a bowl.

Despite the simplicity, they claimed it the ‘best day of my life!’ Admittedly they say this on a regular basis but it was still humbling.

In fact, the whole slower pace of the holidays was humbling. But alas, all good things must come to an end and it’s now back to the rush, rush, rush of getting kids and myself out the door.

Until next time. In a strange reversal: ten weeks and counting.

Goodbye Trixie

Last month our household decreased by two members.

The rather arrogant stray cat that made himself at home with us three years ago and then proceeded to attack all the female members on a regular basis – me, Miss Five and Trixie – our cat of 13 years – contracted his third urinary tract infection. This causes them to pee blood all through the house and, last year, after regaining his health, which rendered me broke in the process, and returning to his arrogant self, I vowed that, should he get sick again, I’d have him put down.

He did and I did.

I was upset for about a day but then, seeing Trixie come out of the shell she’d been hiding in for the last three years, not to mention the lack of mutilated mice and birds being delivered inside, soon put an end to any misgivings.

No longer in fear of being attacked in her sleep or from around every corner where Jesse would lie in wait, she, returned to her joyful, playful self.

The next three weeks were bliss.

Trixie went back to sleeping in my bed and curling up on my lap at night. When the kids and I walked home from school, she would run up the drive to meet us, throwing her tail up in greeting.

And then one night an almighty fight erupted from my room.

I went downstairs to find a random fluffy ginger and white cat bailed up on my window seat, throwing itself, legs splayed, at all the surrounding windows in a desperate attempt to escape from an upper-level floor.

Trixie wasn’t having a bar of another male taking over her patch and stood her ground.

Meanwhile I went back to the phone to say I’d have to hang up. The person on the other end understood – apparently it sounded like a war zone my end.

On the way back I opened the garage door for it to escape but when I got back to my room, there was no sign of both cats.

Growling lead me to the twin’s room, where I found Trixie keeping guard by Miss Five’s bed where its scared and now wide-awake occupant sat bolt upright. I shut Trixie upstairs and closed all the other doors so there was only one way out, went back and lifted up the valence.

A pair of eyes glowed back at me.

“Shoo,” I attempted.

The eyes continued staring and the cat didn’t budge.

Now I was faced with a dilemma. This was obviously going to take some effort to get the cat out from under the bed which was pushed up against a wall and I’d need the light on. I looked at Master Five, who was miraculously still sleeping blissfully, and decided to pull the sheet up over his head so he’d miss the drama.

After placing Miss Five in my bed and shutting the door, I pulled her bed out from the wall, unearthing all manner of rubble.

The cat simply moved to the other end. This went on until I had the bed in the centre of the room and piles of crap now where the bed had been. I went around the back of the bed.

“Rarrr!” This time he obeyed and shot out, down the stairs and out the garage door.
After closing it behind him, I re-assembled the house, popped Miss Five back in her bed, unveiled the still sleeping Master Five, let Trixie out and spent the next few days trying to get rid of the smell of cat spray.

Work that week was hectic in the lead-up to the school holidays, and it took me a few days to realise that Trixie wasn’t herself. She was barely leaving the couch and her food was untouched.

Thinking she must have an abscess from the fight, I decided over the weekend I’d take her to the vet on Monday.

Meanwhile we had a houseful of visitors and Trixie would always go into hiding when we had people over so I didn’t think too much of it.

Sunday morning, the twins said she was sleeping in their room when they woke up but ran away. That day and the next were icy cold and I lit the fire, which I’d just cleaned out for the summer. But Trixie was out there in the storm.

In amongst the chaos of kids and visitors, we made a few attempts at finding her, as well as before and after work the next day.

It was while walking back from school that Master Five spotted her in our garden, barely breathing.

She was dehydrated and probably hypothermic.

I didn’t waste any more time – I gave her a few pats and soothing words and shot inside to call the vets, while the kids tucked her in with a blanket and put some crackers in front of her nose, which, of course, she had no interest in.

On the way in, we sung her songs, relieved that we had found her in time as, at this point, I was still convinced it was an abscess.

Master Five suggested Twinkle, Twinkle.

“How about My Favourite Things?” I said before proceeding to sing: “Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens …”

After I’d finished Master Five looked at me with admiration before telling me I should be on The Voice.

I’ve heard myself sing and know this isn’t true.

We got to the vets and it wasn’t good news. X-Rays showed major internal injuries, the cause unknown. She was one sick little cat, said the veterinarian.

With heavy hearts, we said our goodbyes and she was put down that night.

The house is lonely without her and full of reminders. I keep seeing her in my peripheral, only to find the dark shape curled up at the end of the couch is just my washing pile.

This week I picked up her ashes. When I carried the little box back out to the car, the kids exclaimed that Trixie couldn’t fit in there. I had some explaining to do about cremation and they took it in turns to nurse Trixie on their laps on the way home. Master Five insisted she was purring.

Back home, I dug a hole next to her special place and we each took turns at saying a memory we had of Trixie, before sprinkling some soil over the box. Finally we placed a cross and planted some pansies around it and the kids went back to their ipad games and drawing. They’re funny like that.

That evening, after I’d dropped them off at their dad’s it was lonelier than usual. As I pottered in the gardens, a scruffy dog ran up from nowhere. This was unusual - I live down a long drive and there are no dogs in the neighbourhood. The friendly dog kept me company while I went about my outdoor tasks and then watched me through the sliding door when I went in to cook dinner.

He didn’t seem to want to go anywhere so I gave him some left-over cat food and put a towel on the deck which he lay down on.

Intending to call Animal Control in the morning, I said good night and pulled the curtains. In the morning he had vanished.

Someone pointed out that this might have been Trixie coming back to say goodbye. That’s a nice thought.