Spring Fever

Ask any teacher if spring fever affects their children and they will most likely roll their eyes to the heavens and shake their head knowingly.

Along with other symptoms, kids become more restless, disruptive, rowdy and generally silly.

Spring fever is said to be driven by the body’s reaction to its changing environment; the increased amount of sunlight. Along with improved moods this brings a better climate for romance in mammals, including humans.

And it would seem my children are no exception.

Not that they would ever admit this. The hot topic in our household at the moment is boyfriends, girlfriends, getting dumped and marriage. But they’re in denial: as far as the boys are concerned, girls are disgusting and vice-versa.  According to Master Six, his siblings have a string of boyfriends and girlfriends which change on a daily basis. In amongst dumpings, his four-year-old brother is going to marry Polly, Ava and Rudy (names changed) from kindy and his four-year-old sister will marry Jack, Harley and Trey (names changed), also from kindy. Heck, sometimes they will even marry each other. This is, of course, followed by uproarious laughing on his part.

If the tables are turned and one of the twins dare utter the name of a female in Master Six’ class, along with the word ‘marry’, all hell breaks loose.

According to my lot getting married is disgusting and, this being the ultimate sin, if ever I’ve done wrong by them (in their eyes), the response is: “You’re going to marry daddy!”

Oops, too late.

This revelation is met by a chorus of “Ewwwwws!”

“But Jayla,” I said one day as I unpacked a box of photographs and stumbled upon a wedding one, only to be met with the above response, “I’ve kept my wedding dress for you to wear one day.”

“Ew, no way,” she said running away.

Her brothers may have corrupted her for now but, one day I’ll win her back.

I remember the days when their older brother – the instigator of it all – was innocently oblivious to all this nonsense. I had read his four-year-old self a book about a frog who seemed to be having a problem with something inside his chest going “thump-thump”. After seeking advice from his animal friends, frog was finally diagnosed as being in love with a duck. He decided to impress duck by breaking the world high jump record but he landed on his head and made a fool of himself.

Never fear, it ended well. Duck nursed frog back to health and they went on to marry and live happily ever after.

But I digress. The next day we were walking up the hill to kindy. I was pushing the stroller while Master Four ran ahead. When he got to the top he stopped and turned round, his hand on his chest, brow furrowed in bewilderment.

“Mum,” he declared puffing. “I think I must be in love.”

“Why is that?” I asked.

“Because my heart won’t stop going “thump-thump.”

Halloween

Whether we like it or loathe it, Halloween appears to be here to stay.

The youngest generations have grown up with it being the norm but, for the older ones, it’s baffling, annoying and just plain frightening. The trouble with Halloween in our country is we’re just in the wrong hemisphere.

After sitting on the fence, leaning more towards thinking those against it were being party poopers, after Wednesday night – experiencing it from both sides of the door - I’m now in the ‘Leave Halloween to the Americans’ camp.

In previous years trick or treaters have always caught me by surprise, probably resulting in our house being black-listed after I could only come up with a few measly packets of raisons. The kids looked seriously ripped off. So this year I bought a family pack of Macintosh’s Toffee and, forgot all about it as I set off on an evening walk.

Along the way we encountered numerous trick or treaters who looked to be having a successful time with bulging loot bags.

Returning home I found my lot bouncing on the trampoline happily oblivious to the tradition. It turned out I’d way over-catered - when I asked if they’d been handing out lollies at the door they looked curiously bewildered before asking if they could go trick or treating too.

What the heck, I thought and helped them don costumes from the dress up box. Before setting off I filled my pockets with Macintoshs’ for the kids to hand out in the hope of getting rid of them while simultaneously not coming across as being demanding.

“Trick or treat,” they chorused proffering a McIntosh to the home owner.

Luckily they didn’t know any different because, apart from a bag of nuts each, they came away empty-handed. But they didn’t mind – they were just stoked to be out in their costumes handing out lollies.

We only went to a handful of houses but the reactions we encountered ranged from pleasant surprise, sending the home owner into a flurry at not having anything to give back, to a curt “No, I don’t subscribe to Halloween,” with a blunt refusal of the lollies kindly offered from three little outstretched hands. Their crestfallen faces prompted me to tell them they could eat the lollies themselves.

But despite striking that particular person off my neighbourhood Christmas baking list, I had to later admit that I no longer “subscribe” to Halloween either.

Once the kids were in bed a loud rapping on the door alerted me to a mob of about ten kids on the back deck who, apart from the oldest one pulling his sweatshirt over his mouth and a bandana over his eyes to look like a bandit, had made no effort to dress up.

“Give us some lollies,” he demanded in what he hoped was a badit’s voice.

“Where’s your manners?” I demanded back reluctantly giving them a lolly each before they raced off round to the front door and rang the doorbell there. Nice try.

It’s ones like that who give trick or treaters the bad rap and I don’t blame residents for not taking kindly to strangers, who could possibly scare the living daylights out of them, approaching their private property after hours and demanding sweets.

So what if residents, as one Advocate reader suggested, signal they are playing the trick or treat game by leaving an outside light on? This is a good idea in theory but, with daylight savings, school kids would have to wait until late for this to be effective.

Which brings me back to my first point: we are simply in the wrong hemisphere for Halloween to work here.

Next year I’m being a party pooper – we’ll be staying at home where I’ll lock all the doors, disconnect the doorbell and hide.

Disastrous Holidays

Holidays – they can be adventure-filled, relaxing or plain disastrous. Sometimes it’s just easier to stay at home isn’t it?

I wrote earlier in the year of the misfortunate and so-called ‘summer’ vacation up at the bach which involved kids’ spew and cats’ poo. Well Labour weekend we didn’t have any of the latter – we left the cats at home. But the former? There was bucket-loads.

Actually I wished we’d had some buckets. They would’ve come in handy when one twin spewed all the way there, and the other twin spewed all the way home.

Our car reeked.

Mind you, we’ve had worse. A couple of years back we took our young family to Auckland. Everyone’s health was fine when we left but, all of a sudden, in the posh suburb of Ponsonby, I heard what I thought was water gushing. Believing the car to be overheating, I looked around for smoke. No smoke but the gushing continued with vigor until I was alerted to its origins from a protesting sibling who’d had the misfortune of being in its firing line.

We pulled over and stripped the car and kids on the upper-class sidewalk before continuing on with naked children in bare bucket seats.

The upheaval continued throughout the weekend until it was all the family, bar me with the stomach bug. My brother and sister-in-law - childless at the time - looked at the carnage we’d created in their home with thinly-disguised horror while their washing machine whirred in the background on an eternal cycle.

Finally we made the call to go home with me designated driver. It was the worst journey of my life.

Not only was it pitch-black, the other four occupants were barfing all the way home, calling for constant pull-overs on the side of the motorway. In the end there was nothing for it but to continue driving and the kids eventually fell asleep covered in vomit.

Back at home, it miraculously stopped. But it took a good two years before we were game enough (or felt welcome for that matter) to return to the Big Smoke.