Kids, cats, and breakfast

Family Friday...


Lolly Cat - "Wake me up again and I'll have to scratch you"














Below: Harmonie at her school's Healthy Breakfast


















Tucking in....














Dadda Time

Happy gardeners...







Hope your week was as good as ours!

The week that was

Family Friday

Chase joines Harmonie in her My Little Pony games. More grounds for blackmail - one day!

Harmonie's Prep class does assembly

Our pampered puppies. BTW Daisy loves to sleep with her precious bowls - just in case food magically appears!
Zack

Our friendly neighbourhood kangaroos

Absolutely embarrassing!

Left: Who would have thought such innocent faces could be behind so much trouble?


So there I was, innocently paying for my groceries. Grabbing my purse out of my handbag, it accidentally caught on a pair of handcuffs and they landed onto the counter for all to see.
“It’s not what you’re thinking!” I wanted to say to the open-mouthed checkout chick, and snickering teenager behind me. “I am not having kinky sex!” (Let’s be honest: I’m a working mother. I’m lucky if I have the energy to have any sex at all!)
Instead, red-faced, I stuffed the offending items back into my bag and tried to look dignified.
Of course, the handcuffs were not mine. They belonged to the police-loving seven-year-old, who has a penchant for dressing up as a cop. I’d had to confiscate them earlier, because he was trying to handcuff his sister to the trampoline.
I’d shoved them into the nearest hiding place – my bag – and promptly forgotten all about them.
As the mother of two mischievous monkeys, I should be used to being embarrassed by their antics by now.
Like the day I answered a phone call in the middle of Big W. As shoppers crowded past me, hunting for bargains, I fumbled in my bag for a pen to write down an important phone number I needed.
“Fuuuuuuurp,” went my bag. Or more correctly, the fart pen inside it.
“It wasn’t me,” I wanted to say, as shoppers looked at me in a mixture of disgust, amusement, and quite possibly, admiration. “It’s a bloody pen”!
But before I got the chance, the fart pen trumpeted again, this time longer and louder.
If you didn’t know fart pens existed, you obviously don’t have a son like mine. They’re shaped like a finger (the pens, not my son), and you pull the end of the finger to make it let rip with a variety of disgusting sounds. Get it? That way the kids can say: Pull my finger!
Oh, it’s hilarious! I don’t think.
I made a point of flourishing the finger as I wrote, but I’m not sure how many onlookers realised I wasn’t really the source of the sounds.
Then there was the day I took my five-year-old Harmonie to the family doctor, who sees all of us regularly.
“So Harmonie,” he asked, as he checked her ears and took her temperature. “How’s Daddy?”
“Good,” she replied casually. “He farts all night.”
As I cringed, our bemused GP admitted: “I think that’s a little more information than I needed to know.”
I guess that’s nothing compared to the days when we were toilet-training Harmonie, and she insisted on telling everybody she met that she had finally graduated from nappies.
“Guess what?” she’d ask – neighbours, friends, strangers, it didn’t matter. “I can poo in the toilet!”
Helpfully, she also went through a stage of describing her most recent achievements, just so others wouldn’t miss out by not having been there at the time.
“It was a snowman one,” she’d say. Or, proudly, “It was green!”
Then there was a time, my husband Kyle needed surgery to remove a lump on his breast. “Doctor pinched Daddy’s napple,” she’d tell whoever would listen. “Now Daddy only got one napple.”
Of course, bodily functions and medical dramas are always of interest to kids. Recently, I had a colonoscopy, thanks to a family history of bowel disease and as another delightful consequence of reaching 40. Not.
“Mum’s going to have a camera stuck up her butt,” Chase announced gleefully when friends dropped around. Is nothing sacred?
But it’s not so bad. I know in a few years time, when the kids won’t want to be seen in public with their mother, let alone acknowledge my presence, it will be my turn to embarrass them. And I’ll certainly be ready to make up for lost time!

Photolicious

Chase and Harmonie show-off their yoga skills. Photographed for free, by me ....

Our kids are just too darn photogenic.

A few months ago, one of those photo places targeted me in the shopping centre. Usually, having been caught before, I avoid them like the plague. But this time, something in me weakened.

It's been ages since we had professional photos taken of the kids, and the roving salesperson - who after all, was only trying to make a commission - was offering me a coupon for $10 for a sitting, including photo.

We all know how this works. You get a cheap or free sitting plus pic, but end up loving all the photos so much you buy a whole collection. For hundreds of dollars you can't afford.

But I really wanted an updated photo of the kids to add to the collection on our walls.

I ran it past Kyle.

"Okay," he said. "But we'll just get the free one. We don't need the rest."

I agreed.

So after three failed attempts to get to the portrait place, we finally made it this morning. Kids in their hair-brushed, just-dressed, good-enough-to-eat best.
The photos were taken, and we were given about an hour to wander around the shopping centre while they got a slideshow of our session together.
"Okay," I said. "We're just going to take the free photo, right?"

"That's right," Kyle agreed.

But of course, in we go, and all the photos are so gorgeous, we immediately weaken.

Sensing victory, the salesperson suggests we take out any pics we don't like, to reduce the cost.

How can you take out pics of your own kids? But there are a few that look stiff, or not quite 'them'.

Once that's done, I tentatively ask the cost. $600.

"Are you kidding me?" I think, but say nothing. The pics are gorgeous, but $600 for digital photos? (Last time we did it, they were the old-fashioned version, so you'd think they would have come down in price.)

Kyle and I eye each other, warily, each silently willing the other to be the tough guy.

"You can take a few more photos out to reduce the cost," the sales lady says.

So we take a few more out.
"How much now?" I ask.

"Well, you're not actually buying a collection now, so the price actually goes up. To $649," the sales lady says.

Give me a break.

The next cheapest collection is $400 for half a dozen pics. I'm about to capitulate, when I catch Kyle's eye and remember our promise. Suddenly, sanity kicks in.
Yes, the pics are great. But we have a zillion great pics of our kids at home, and most of these aren't any better than we can do ourselves. Truly.

And the kids are playing up a treat, attacking each other with the free balloons they've been given while we're trying to decide how much to spend on perfect images of them behaving.

"It's so confusing, I can't possibly decide right now," I say honestly. "We'll just take the free one, and we'll think about the rest."

In the car, our decision makes perfect sense, and I realise we didn't really need a whole collection of photos anyway.

I hate these companies that prey on parents' love of their children.
"This is absolutely the last time we go there," Kyle says as we drive home.

I agree.

Until next time at least ...

Bedtime blues

Pic: If only they were always like this...



I hate bedtime.
Not mine – the kids'.
I especially hate it when their father is away, and the responsibility for getting them to bed on time – and having a crack at a decent day at school/prep the next morning – is all mine.
I am a crap mother when it comes to bedtime.
When Kyle is here, it’s easier to be tough. To ignore them longer, put on a TV show, or tell Kyle: ‘It’s your turn’ to soothe/placate/chastise/discipline or whatever.
But when he’s not … well, I’m afraid I turn into Girly Mumma.
How I let two little kids wind me around their fingers, I don’t know. But often I end up letting them slip into bed with me. Anything for a quiet life!
Part of it is that I’m always so damn tired.
Arthritis, plus the daily routine of a working Mum, really takes it out of me. Half the time, I’m falling asleep on the couch, waiting for THEM to fall asleep.
Sometimes, when hubby is away, it’s just easy to limp upstairs, climb into bed, and invite the rugrats to do the same.
They do tend to sleep well then. And I love that special cuddle time.
But my quality of sleep? That’s another matter.
My little girl Harmonie, loves nothing more than cuddling my feet as she goes to sleep. She slips into the bottom of the bed, grabs a foot, hugs it, and is out for hours. But that’s fine, because once she’s asleep, she barely moves.
Chase, on the other hand, is a real male. That’s because he sighs, farts, snores, burps, talks and wiggles – all night! I’m usually exhausted by morning. That's if I haven't gotten up in the middle of the night, insomnia-induced, and caught up on work!
So here I am, guiltily blogging, while I try to ignore the activity upstairs as I wait for them to finally sleep.
Who will win? Them or me?
Well, that depends.
I’m sure I have a bottle of wine here somewhere…

Letting sleeping girls lie

Am I a bad mother?

I found myself thinking that last night, as I lay in bed. Beside me was my husband Kyle, and at my feet and curled along the other side of my body, was my five-year-old Harmonie.

Harmonie often sleeps with us. It started when Kyle began working away from home.

I found bedtime went much easier if I let the kids sneak into bed with me.

Which was fine every now and then, but not so good when Kyle began working home more often. See, my plan was to get out bed once the kids were asleep – but often I’d end up falling asleep before they did!

Whenever Kyle came home, Chase would grudgingly return to his room, but the Little Princess refused.

“I want to sleep with Mumma,” she’d pout.

These days, Harmonie happily sleeps in her own bed quite often, but there are times – when she’s sick, had a bad dream, or particularly fretful – that we let her join us.

To be honest, we’re not too concerned about it. Okay, it does kind of rule out the occasional middle-of-the-night fumble, but after all, there other times (and places) for that!

And I like the feel of that warm little body snuggled up around my feet. Yes, my feet!

Harmonie likes to pop her pillow at the bottom of the bed, and hang on to my leg at night. Often she’ll cuddle my foot as she goes to sleep, or reach for it in the middle of the night. Sometimes, she lays with her legs on mine. Other times, she sleeps with one hand on my foot, and another curled around Kyle’s big toe.

I think it’s sweet. There’s something so innocent and wonderful as the love of a child. And I know that this feeling won’t last forever – that one day, Harmonie will turn into a rebellious teen who won’t want to be anywhere near me, let alone at my feet!

And though he complains, Kyle quite likes it too – otherwise he’d turf her out himself.

Anyway, I wrote about our ‘bedtime problems’ for Brisbane newspaper The Courier Mail recently, and was astounded at the response I got.

While a few readers were nice, there were those who called us ‘pathetic’ and accused us of raising cosseted children who would grow up to be bullied and picked on. We were told to ‘grow a backbone’ and stand up to the whining of a small child.

But I don’t know, last night as I crept back into bed after tending to my son - growing pains, but that’s another story – Harmonie contentedly grabbed my foot in her sleep and cuddled it against her. And I couldn’t help but wonder: Is this really so wrong?

Am I really spoiling my child and putting my marriage second by loving being so close to her? Could I be responsible for her getting a foot fetish in later life?

What’s worse is that it’s not just Harmonie who likes sleeping with us, it’s our cats too.

Sometimes there are five of us in this marital bed – so it’s a bit crowded.

Is it time to get a bigger bed? Or should we accept that we’ve made our bed, and now have to lie in it?