I was thinking this whole Christmas thing had gone far too well this year, despite altercations on the doorstep with some deluded people....but that's pretty much the norm round here and a whole other story!
My darling daughter not long ago presented herself downstairs looking pale and a bit scared....I thought "she's still awake and I think she's broken something because she looks like she knows she's in trouble, what has she done and why is she awake at 1am, what?!?"....instead of shouting out the normal response of "why are you awake, why are you out of bed?!", I asked gently and kindly, like any good Mummy, what was up Sweetie? She shuffled closer and it was then I noticed her Christmas onesie was wet, and next the waft of piles of undigested cheesy Wotsits assailed my nostrils. From this I was able to deduce that she'd vomited all over herself and now stunk of the very same foodstuff that I'D just been stuffing down my neck only 5 minutes previously, causing my stomach to start roiling around (yes, roiling, not rolling, roiling...its the perfect word to describe that hitching and swaying movement of everything liquid in your stomach threatening to eject at a moments notice). I also deduced by the fact that she'd started saying "sorry Mummy" over and over that there was one hell of a mess up there to clean up. When she said she'd been in my bed, and middle child was also in my bed, along with 2 iPads that I just thought "do I really want to go up there? Can't we just set the house on fire and live in the car?! Please?". Still, I peeled her soggy stinky onesie off, wiped her down, cuddled her and told her to stay put and then raced up the stairs (OK, dragged my fat arse and breathless shrivelled lung slowly up the stairs, gasping for air) as I started to think of my luxury memory foam mattress and whether or not it was taking a soaking. It WAS taking a soaking. She'd done a right job on my bed. She'd not only managed to vomit all over herself, but pulled the duvet right back to vomit straight onto my bottom sheet - and my God there was a LOT - had managed to hit the duvet cover heavily, and the duvet inside, 3 of my pillows, an ipad, and had just about managed to miss her brother who was lying in deep sleep next to the biggest pile of spew I'd ever witnessed, snoring happily. Obviously I had to remove middle child, except he didnt understand when I tried to gently awaken him, and proceeded to roll straight into the big pile of huey before I managed to walk him out of the room and plonk him on the hallway floor while I undertook emergency cleaning duties. I came so very close to simply binning all the sicky sheets and duvets, but the fact they were my hotel grade Egyptian cotton sets and cost a fortune made me chuck them in the washing machine instead. I am now sat in my bed, with my cheap bedding set from Studio Catalogue on, which is which SHOULD have been on (but no, I couldn't be arsed to change my sheets on Christmas Eve could I?), with towels and disposable bedmats under the entire bottom sheet to soak up the freshly scrubbed soggy mattress juice (ew, mattress juice?! Wtf?! I sicken myself, I'm so sorry if your stomach is now roiling too!), aswell as protecting against further projectile vomiting directly into my £700 mattress.... As I put middle son back in my bed afterwards and tucked her Ladyship up with a sick bucket, ready for me to move into action at the slightest cough, he briefly woke up, smiled at me and said "no one ever said being a mum was easy Mummy" which is rather deep (and also correct) for a 7 year old who's just woken up and rolled straight into vomit. I smiled sweetly and replied "but I always knew it was worth it Son", and tucked him in. It was a touching scene. I didnt want to spoil the moment so I waited til he was asleep before muttering "bollocking, fucking bastards! My bloody bed, you little sod, why MY bed?!" under my breath whilst accidentally kicking the open door of the sheet cupboard with the back of my heel and swearing rather more heavily. So, pretty normal Christmas here then, how about you?? 😁 X
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I wish I had a downstairs loo. For those moments when you need a wee but know if you go upstairs there will be chaos and carnage, and then there will be shouting, and arguments, and "tidy this craphole up right this minute young man!"'s! Not to mention the "do you think I'm your slave?", "do you think my life's work is picking up Lego men before I stand on them when I get up for a wee at night" and the occasional "you treat this house like a doss house".
And mine aren't even teens yet! I mean, if they're like this NOW, what hope do I have?! My 5 year old is going to be EVIL! I'm petrified! I think I may have to consider boarding school. Just from 13-25 when she should have started acting like a fairly rational human being. My eldest is on the verge of packing for "the children's home" every other day depending on his hormones...or if I'm breathing the wrong way, you know, the usual... Therefore I have decided to throw away everything in my house! If there's nothing here then I can't stand on it, right?! And I won't have to pick it up either! Although it's taken me about 5 hours today just to empty, clean and refill one bookcase and my TV area from the 5,000 video cases, little bits of Lego, little bits of other toys or random springs (why?! Where from?!) that were put high up to stop the cats and dog eating them. Unfortunately cats can climb... So I reckon to empty the rest of my house would take at least 4 weeks at this rate, and my complete ruthlessness would mean Id have to take out a small mortgage to pay someone to take my rubbish away - when the urge to declutter appears, I just bag it, sling it down the side of the house, and think about a way to get wet, dirty bin bags taken away that don't involve the interior of my incredibly small car (with white interior!). Which means it stays there until my dad can't cope with it anymore when he comes to visit and offers to stump up the removal costs! Hi Dad! 😁Love you!! 😁😁 👋 Not the most responsible way to approach it BUT if I start thinking of things like that, it will give me reasons not to do it, and I must strike while the irons hot!! Oh, well, actually, I don't iron (maybe one day I'll share my "self-ironing" technique!), so maybe strike when the kettles hot (I love coffee. Coffee loves me. I have to have two heaped teaspoons of coffee in my cup in the morning. This should give you an idea of what a completely miserable bitch I am first thing. Am thinking of upgrading to 3 teaspoons as I no longer get a caffeine rush, just slightly less droopy eyelids). Except now I've tidied only one bookcase and the other ones waiting. Firstly, because I've only done one, the "tidied" one is currently holding every ornament, candle, Christmas ornament and Christmas candle I own, so it looks like it's a display in a Christmas shop, and secondly because I just didnt have the strength or energy left to be ruthless again yet. I needed to sit and eat mint Matchmakers instead. So essentially, so far it seems I spent 5 hours of my life today, to make my bookshelf look cluttered. Still. And yet I threw out 3 bin liners of stuff from that one bookcase. I mean, surely there's no room on that bookshelf for 3 bin liners of crap?! By the time I finish, Christmas will be over and we'll probably be well on our way to another one! Anyway, must dash, I'm getting desperate now....maybe if I hold my hands at the outside of my eyes like blinkers, maybe I can make it upstairs and back relatively unscathed?? Because finding it when I crawl to bed at 2am is much better...at least they don't hear me swearing when I've stood on a fireman Sam board book with steering wheel on, a Guess Who board, and 3 Lego men with accompanying swords and rifles. These items were what I stood on last night. I said many B words. You know, Bastards, Bugger and Bollocking hell. We all have a certain word we use when we unexpectedly hurt ourselves. Mines the B words. It just seems right. When I expectedly hurt myself on the other hand, I just say "waaaah!" Its like my brain has accepted that pain is shortly inevitable and refuses to let you swear, so makes you make stupid noises instead. The unexpected pain is always characterised by the sharp intake of air through the feet, hopping and the use of the B words. Its instinct. I'm not proud. Oh god, it's getting to a state of emergency now! The bladder is feeling suspiciously close to bursting, and, you know, I've had 3 kids now, its not young and fit like it used to be. It was good to talk to you but now, now I'm going in. If I'm not back in 20 minutes send in a search party. I wish I had a downstairs loo.... X Hi my Slummy Chummies!
So today I went to watch the youngest's Christmas play at school. They did a play involving various animals, and Satan played a lion, which is apt as she's a little roaring Leo. When she came home with the note, it said she needed either a Lion outfit or onesie, or a pair of yellow leggings and top. But would my sweet-faced angelic looking cutie pie settle for a pair of leggings and a top? No, of course she wouldn't, how dare I even suggest it?! So I set about looking for a onesie, figuring at least I'd get value for money, as she could wear it in bed. But again, nope. Oh you can find monkey onesies by the bucketload, and the occasional zebra or even leopard onesie, but a lion onesie?! Not a bloody snifter of one. Well, not any that would arrive in time off Ebay from China, or that I could afford without pawning one of my other children. So after thinking "there is no way Im going to one of those online fancy dress shops again because it will cost a fortune and she'll never wear it after", I gave in and trotted over to the online fancy dress websites. There were a few cheapish lion costumes but of course, none were in her size or even close to her size. Only toddler sized or teenaged children size, none even vaguely close to a size for a 5 year old. So in the end I bought a really expensive outfit from the online fancy dress shop and we had to live on beans for the rest of that week. Which made the atmosphere somewhat unpleasant to breathe... So anyway, the school play was fab as usual, funny, energetic, cute, emotional, all the things an infant play should be! But the best bit, well, for me it was the best bit, was watching my poor child, after her energetic lion songs and dances, slowly start to rubber neck on the floor mat afterwards. I watched her for a while, thinking along with everyone else, that she was bopping along to the music. Then I noticed her eyes were shut. She was dozing off! She swayed too and fro crossed legged, occasionally woke up and sang half a sentence of a song before flopping forward again, and she rocked closer and closer to the floor until she was almost folded in half on the floor. At this point, and after mild amusement in the first half, watching her picking her nose (with both hands!), this to-ing and fro-ing was just too much for me, and I ended up watching her instead of the play and tried my hardest not to snort with laughter! This is at the same time as thinking "Shit! The teachers are going to think she's tired because I kept her up all night engaged in child labour"....I then realised that was actually Cinderella and went back to trying not to wet myself laughing! One of her teachers eventually sussed that she wasn't doing some form of funky dancing and picked her up and put her on her knee where she dozed for another 10 minutes, before waking up in the foulest mood ever and refusing to join in the rest of the school play! Us guys in the front row had a good laugh at her expense though, I like to think that the plus side to all my sleepless nights and sacrificing everything, ever, is free entertainment! So that makes it ok to laugh at my children! Sorry, WITH my children....ahem.... When we got home Satan proceeded to tell me we were having a "Colour off"! When I asked what on earth she was on about, she told me I had to colour Christmas pictures in and she had to colour pictures in, and then we'd see who'd done the best. I tried to tell her that I'd had 40 years, I mean, 30 years of practice and she'd had 5 so it was hardly a fair competition, she wouldn't listen. I told her we didn't have to have a competition, and that colouring in was all about enjoying ourselves and doing exactly what we wanted, because what was the point in art if you have to follow rules? She wouldn't listen. When she came over to "check up" on my neatly coloured little reindeer, she lost the plot completely because mine was neat and hers wasn't! What was I supposed to do, scribble across everything?! No way, I LOVE colouring in and I'm not making a mess of it just to let my kids think they can illegitimately win colouring competitions! Besides which, I've deliberately lost SO many games just to avoid her wrath that I kinda enjoyed winning for once..... So, time to bath a tired, ratty lion, a tired, ratty mum, chuck the other two in for a quick rinse and snuggle up and put the Christmas films on, while I continue to watch my 4 cats destroy everything Christmassy in sight! This is what Christmas is all about! Not the bit about my cats destroying my tree and decorations, that's just plain annoying.... X Hi there my fellow Slummies!
Well I don't know about you, but in this run up to Christmas, the amount of chores and "To Do's" become so long & time consuming that you end up going to bed just before you get up - which is pants in anyone's world, and I really REALLY need my beauty sleep! I need a crap load of plastic surgery to be honest, but lets be realistic - if I can't afford the mortgage I need just to pay my Gas & Electricity (£170 a month! A MONTH!! Its not like we live in a mansion either!), plastic surgery is looking increasingly unlikely. So, I really NEED my beauty sleep, oh and cake. Nothing reverses ageing like cake. Its true. It makes you fat, admittedly, but that's how it reverses ageing - my little wrinkles are all plumped out now! You can roll me down the street mind, but I can look younger while I'm rolling!! Anyway, the point I was getting to (eventually) is just how crazy home life becomes, there is just NO time! Its like people expect you to have had 12 months in which to prepare for the sudden unexpectedness of Christmas! Ahem..... So tonight, I was flagging just thinking about what I had to do, so I thought, ok, I need to take some shortcuts here. One simple one was thinking what a good plan it would be to shower the kids instead of bathing them! Now bathing them can be fairly quick, unless its a hair wash night. My youngest acts like you're trying to disembowel her instead of washing her hair, she flips right out. I have no idea why, but its the bane of my life. So tonight was hair wash night and I thought, stuff it, a shower will be quicker and easier and much less stress on my completely knackered back! I told the kids this, to be met with a tantrum from Satan who proceeded to cry like I'd asked her to burn all her My Little Ponies & feed Barbie to the dog. I told her she could have a girly bath with Mummy's expensive bath bomb on Friday, followed by christmas films in cuddly robes and she gave in. I'm so not happy that she's stealing my bath bomb though, I'm on rations here! So I proceeded to chuck the kids in the shower, but having not been fond of showers & therefore tending to stick only to baths, they didn't quite seem to know what to do and spent the whole time trying to avoid the water, which makes showering pretty difficult....they just didn't GET it ("But Mummy, the waters getting on me!"). They have had showers before, mainly at the swimming pool, they know how it works! But apparently what was a great adventure at Butlins, was child torture at home. Which reminds me of the stupidest thing I ever heard - once on a holiday abroad, I jumped (stepped in slowly & was a right old woman before that freezing chest dunk which makes you gasp like a fish) into the outside swimming pool. All the others who came with us were about to do the same, all standing there in their swimming cozzies, when it started to rain. As they grabbed towels and legged it indoors, I shouted out to them "Where are you going? Aren't you going to come in?", I received the reply "Oh, no chance, its raining! We don't want to get wet!" And they all ran inside! Now, forgive me for being a bit thick, but surely, when you get in a swimming pool, you GET WET!!?? Or am I missing the point? I stayed in, it was lovely, but how daft do you have to be?! Don't see them anymore, holding a conversation was like talking to a brick wall! Except I got more intelligent answers from the wall...😉 By Satans turn, I was dripping from head to toe, sweating profusely, with severely frizzy humid hair. Satan proceeded to freak out when any water touched her, and stood sobbing while I felt like the worst mother in the world, rather than a Mum just trying to get her kids clean and shiny! I admit to probably leaving a fair bit of conditioner on her hair because the whole concept of putting her head under the shower head just completely bypassed her & led to actual screams. I mean, I wasn't trying to force them into child labour or anything, it was just a shower! How can a shower be so traumatic?! For me I mean, I'm mentally scarred from the whole episode, Satan just pretty much hates everything randomly. At least she's not prejudiced though, she hates equally and indiscriminately! Finally dragged her kicking and screaming OUT of the shower and as I was stood there with a small child, who was sobbing and giving me evil looks with snot dripping down her face onto my best towel (the others are in the washing queue...), wiping my sweaty, red, tomato-like face with the snotty towel, feeling sweat trickle down my back and poorly muscles hurting, with a soaking wet T-shirt and a bathroom covered in water, I concurred that perhaps, just maybe, I might just stick to baths in the future! Although, to be fair, as much as I now needed my own shower to recover from the hot, steamy, sweaty, sauna-like bathroom struggle, technically, the showers did take less time than bathing! Technically. I don't have the energy now for a shower so think I'll go for a long soak in the bath, the chores can wait! Oh, the irony.... X P.S. don't forget to enter my Big Christmas Giveaway! It's pretty fab even if I do say so myself! |
AuthorI'm just a Mum with an abnormal family, here to make everyone else feel normal Archives
January 2018
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