Summer Nights

It was with a twinge of sadness that I noted the plunging temperature this week.

But there are some perks to the onset of winter and the darkness that comes with it.

Parents and caregivers know the frustration of trying in vain to get little monkeys to sleep when it’s just so darn light outside.

Although I get my two youngest to bed at 7pm – mainly so I can watch Shortland Street in peace with my seven-year-old (who is being educated on all kinds of worldly PC goings-on this week!) they are still bouncing around their room more than an hour later.

In the ad breaks I might go down to their room, if I can be bothered.

“Mum’s coming!” I will hear before a scrambling of feet and rustling of the bedding.

By the time I get there all is calm, however, the carnage in their room tells another story.

Last summer our neighbour, a fan of hosting late summer night dinner parties, provided many hours of entertainment for the twins, whose room backs onto her deck.

On one such ad break I headed down to their room and caught them both standing tip-toe at the heads of their beds and peering out the open window.

“Are you spying on the neighbour?!” I asked, before they guiltily swung round and dived under their duvets.

This became a regular occurance to the point that they used it as their excuse for not being able to sleep.

“What are you doing?!” I demanded one other time when I caught Master Five trying to open his window.

“I just want to tell Christine (name changed) to shut up!” he replied.

I stopped him just in time, although I was sure it would provide some amusement for Christine and her guests. And she took it in good humour when I mentioned it the next time we bumped into one another.

It turned out they weren’t so discreet. She and her guests were fully aware they had two little spies.

This summer, all was quiet on the dinner-party front and the twins could no longer use it as their excuse not to sleep.

However, one night was an exception.

I went down to their room to sort them out and got the full report:

“Christine’s having a dinner party again,” moaned Master Five.

“And we heard someone say ‘Holy crab!’ piped up Miss Five from her bed.

It seems that, while Master Seven was being educated upstairs with me, the twins were also learning a whole new language downstairs from their beds, via their eavesdropping.

I decided not to correct them on that one.

Foiled Pans

You think you have your week mapped out before you and then the smallest occurrence can foil your plans.

This came in the form of a rather impressive-looking teenage pimple sported by one Master Seven when he emerged last Friday morning.

“I don’t want to go to school,” he whimpered. “All the kids will laugh at me.”

My god, this wasn’t supposed to start yet was it?

I sent him to school and sure enough he was teased.

By the time the weekend finished it was obvious this was not some random teenage pimple - the spot had spread into impetigo, AKA “school sores” and my normally handsome little man was not looking pretty.

Fortunately I have a lovely, understanding boss who let me work from home in order to keep Master Seven off school and get him to the doctors.

While there, he didn’t think to mention he felt sick. It wasn’t till we were heading out the doors, prescription in hand, that I heard him make a funny sound, hand covering mouth.

“Are you going to be sick?” I asked. 

He nodded and I swung him round and got him to the toilets in the nick of time.

Well, not quite – he power-chucked and got most of it in the bowl but I spent the next 15 minutes on my hands and knees cleaning up the remainder.

Next came the problem of waiting for the prescription with a green-looking son. There was nothing for it (that I could think of anyway) but to sit him next to the rubbish bin outside while we waited. I didn’t think the pubic would appreciate their gardens being fertilized in that manner.

I still had another few errands to run – including an overdue WOF and going up to my work to email myself some work - so we stopped off at home to have the first intake of medicine.

The doctor had warned us it was foul.

I had a little sip and immediately regretted it. That stuff was vile. I poured Master Seven’s into a full glass of orange juice but even this did not dilute the potent taste.

He sat on that one glass for an hour, moaning in agony with every sip while I empathetically encouraged him on. Even the line-up of six jellybeans to follow was not enough enticement.

Finally we were done (although I noted there were three doses a day) and, grabbing a sick bowl, we headed back out the door. The poor thing got dragged around the city for most of the day. The spew bowl was certainly a blessing whilst stuck in an hour-long traffic jam.

The highlight for him was turning up at my workplace and discovering it looked “just like Shortland Street”, before meeting my friendly co-workers and discovering that “Mummy has highlighter pens at her desk”, as he reported back to his brother and sister later that day.

The next day dawned my birthday and I was a tad tired. You see, the night before, the kids had declared themselves too excited to sleep. God knows why – I certainly wasn’t. Anyone would think it was Christmas.

However, I was relieved from the planned (and no doubt sloppy) breakfast in bed by a daughter under the weather with croup and her twin brother wanting to get in on the action by claiming to have a sore tummy. The jury’s still out on the latter but it completely threw my day.

Three “sick” kids amidst a whole lot of work piled up was not how I planned to spent my day.

The idea is to make it as boring as possible so they think twice about pulling a sickie again - the next day the twins happily trotted off to school and it was just me and a still-spotty Master Seven at home.

But now here I find myself working all weekend - plans to take the kids away abandoned - as I make up the extra hours lost.

And it all began with that one “teenage pimple”.

Spring Chickens

There comes a time in our lives when we’re awakened by the startling reality that we are no longer spring chickens.

This depressing moment came for me some years ago when I realised the All Blacks – who I’d always looked up to – were all younger than me.

For a friend, it came 25,000ft up in the air when she caught sight of her pilot, who looked all of 15-years-old.

It occurred again at the Eminem concert at Western Springs last weekend.

Present, were those like myself - fans since his first hit “My Name Is” broke out in 1999, which sparked the closely-followed Slim Shady phenomenon - who looked vaguely blank for most of the duration of the show as rap after unfamiliar rap played out.

And then there were the clued-up teenage homie g’s.

As an estimate, from where I was standing, I would guess around 80 per cent of the 55,000 swarming the hillside amphitheatre were in their teens or early 20s, which would mean they were practically still in their diapers when these earlier songs were hits.

This means that, either they’ve grown up listening to their parents’ CD’s or, sometime over the last decade Eminem had gone on to release more albums.

Where have I been?!

Last I heard he was taking a break and saying goodbye to Hollywood, still spitting venom at his mum every chance he got, his daughter Hailie was seven and he’d broken up with Kim for the umpteenth time.

“Oh no, his daughter Hailie is now in her late teens and a beautiful cheerleader,” some teenage girls informed me whilst waiting in the port-a-loo queue which spiralled up the hill into infinity.

I felt the need to explain my ignorance was due to being snowed under with babies and pre-schoolers over the past almost-decade and, therefore any extra noise, like the radio, had not factored in. However, despite the big gap, I had finally come up for air and had the latest new releases on my ipod, I proudly informed them.

Such was the wait, that they brought me up to speed on the whole lowdown of Marshall Mathers’ life over the past ten years-plus so I thanked them before we departed and re-joined my “geriatric” buddies to share my learnings.

It didn’t matter, the songs were catchy and, at times, he blew the crowd away busting out rhyme that defied the speed of sound. He pleased all by, not only playing his latest hits but belting out a remix of the original Slim Shady series, followed by his movie hit as an encore.

Many, including myself, agreed it was the best concert they’d been to and it says a lot about an artist to satisfy multiple generations.

This was evident the next time I jumped the queue at the port-a-loos and be-friended the lovely teenage girl who let me in.

She had travelled up from Wellington with her 50-year-old father – they were both fans.

And as I followed the mass exodus of teenage homie g’s towards the gates, I wondered if one day I’d see myself back here as a parent-pushing-50, accompanying my own teenagers.

That could be seen as tragic, but, actually I think it would be pretty cool.