Charades

Sometimes all it takes is a good old-fashioned pastime from yesteryear to drive home the reminder that today’s kids don’t need modern technology as entertainment.

Whether it be knuckle bones, marbles, elastics or hop scotch, there’s nothing quite like the pleasant surprise in seeing your children take delight when grasping the concept of one of your childhood favourites.

This week it came in the form of charades. 

We were aiming to head out the door to dinner and the kids were chaffing at the bit. I wasn’t quite ready so, to stall them, I asked their brother to teach them the game I’d taught him earlier that week. At school this term they are studying film-making and part of his homework assignment was to choose a movie and act it out.

Although the twins were a little too young to understand it fully, they were all over it.

One would come and whisper to me their idea for a topic behind closed doors while the other two had their ears pressed firmly against it on the other side, before fleeing, giggling, back to their seats as the door opened.

Soon, they’d exhausted their collective, mental library of movies (one can only shake their butts like Gloria the hippo in Madagascar so many times) and we moved onto books.

Master Seven went into his sibling’s room to peer at their bookshelf, with them hot on his tail.

When he emerged we took our seats (I had now succumbed to the game).

He thought for a moment and then we watched perplexed as he threw himself on the floor, rolled onto his back, opened his legs for a nanosecond and squeaked out the word “Pop”, before continuing to roll over and stand up.

“What was that?” I asked.

“Do you give up? The book was “The New Baby”.

“Is that how you think you came into this world?!” I spluttered with laughter.

By now his siblings had cottoned onto the fact that he was onto a good thing and were keen to get in on the action. Silliness descended and they all began throwing themselves on the floor and popping out babies.

Game over.

Dreams

Why do people feel the need to share their dreams in every minute detail? The kids take great delight in sharing their nocturnal fictional adventures come sunup. 
“Mummy, I had a dream,” began Master Seven as he crawled into bed with me one morning. “I was driving along in my rocket car and those little yellow men off Despicable Me had turned into baddies and were shooting at me …” 
He was interrupted by a shriek from Miss Four upstairs in the kitchen. 
“Mum, Jai’s spilt the milk!” 
I never did find out if the baddies caught up with him and that was the end of my holiday lie-in as I went to deal with the carnage. 
But sharing one’s dream certainly isn’t just a childish indulgence – adults do too. 
It’s bad enough getting caught up by “a talker” when you’re in a rush - you know, the kind of people who just love holding the floor while they regale you with all the intimate details of another person’s life of which you have no interest. 
But at least that’s real life. Why would anybody have the time to listen to a great elaborate story that someone’s brain has conjured up during its REM phase while it, as one theory proposes, de-clutters their mind? (At least in print you have the option of turning the page.) 
I found myself on the receiving end of such a situation the other evening as I was recited with a fictional story of the after-math following the handbrake being let off in a car on a steep hill. 
Off they went while I faded out and came to, faded out and came to. Jaded from my busy day, I could all but blink mutely as the drawn-out tale continued. 
Perhaps I’m just envious. After-all, I can’t remember the last time I reached the stage of sleep where I could dream. 
So with that in mind I took myself off last week to a much-anticipated appointment at the sleep clinic. At $240 an hour, I was after some serious zzz’s. 
If I was expecting a magical cure I was wrong. Not only did I come away $240 poorer, but I had my work cut out. Basically, it’s all about re-training yourself, much like teaching an infant to sleep through the night (and I don’t mean ‘crying it out’). 
So far I haven’t began the sleep program as the thought of getting up in the cold every 15 minutes does not appeal but I’m determined to get my money’s worth (and some sleep) so will kick-start it one night soon. 
So I’ll see you out the other side of that one and, who knows, maybe I will be able to bore you to tears with my own dreams of Despicable Me goodies and baddies and runaway cars.

Royal Parenting

Did anybody else wonder how Prince William managed to secure the baby capsule in the back of the car so swiftly before he zoomed off?

He had to have been practicing beforehand right? Perhaps it was all for show and he simply drove around the corner into some high-walled, gated compound where he promptly hopped back out and had one of his minders do it. Yes, that’ll be it.

I’m sure we fumbled round in the car park with it for eons and that would’ve been after a fair amount of practicing at home.

It took a heck of a lot longer the second time. Trying to fit two newborn baby capsules into the backseat, along with a carseat for a two-year-old was no easy task.

And if I remember correctly, this was after the two-year-old decided it would be a great idea to take off down one of the dark, long, windy and seldom-used corridors on the way out.

I remember the fleeting moment of wondering whether to lug the car capsules down the maze-like corridors in pursuit or temporary ditch them and give chase.

Little did I know this was to be the first of many such situations.

But the prince and duchess have all that ahead of them. Actually, no they won’t. They’ll have a team of minders assigned to rein in each errant child.

I wonder if, after they zoomed off for show into the gated compound they had their driver drive at snail-pace all the way home for fear their new and precious cargo would come to harm enroute? How can any new parent forget that journey home?!

Like most around the globe, I watched transfixed as Wills and Kate stepped out and I tried to draw the kids’ attention to this momentous occasion. However, later Miss Four said:
”Mum, I don’t ever want to have a baby.”

“Oh, why not?”

“Because it will just cry and I’ll just have to keep fixing it.”

True dat.

“And it will always poo its nappy and I’ll just have to keep changing that too,” she went on.

“And it might be a boy!”

How awful.

I think it is admirable that the new parents emerged and spoke to the press with the world’s eyes upon them when poor, tired Catherine was probably just hoping like heck she didn’t spring a leak for all and sundry to see.

And it is absolutely fabulously brilliant that William had already changed a nappy before they left the hospital. I wonder if it was the lovely tar-like meconium one? I can’t imagine Charles would’ve done that in his day.

But if they thought the meconium nappy was bad – wait till they encounter their first power-poo. Wouldn’t it be funny if baby George happened to be sitting on Prince Charles when it happened. 

That image would be priceless.