Wrigglebot brought home some homework from kinder on Friday. They have a family storybook and each child needs to write about their family on a page of it and add some pictures. The stories then get read the next day during story time. It was like a red rag to a bull when I found out the teacher read them to the class. Wrigglebot can’t write so I knew who would really be doing this. I toyed with creating a kindergarten stand-up routine. You know talk about poo and farting, all those normal things that kids find so hilarious and his teacher would have to read it out. It gave me many minutes of amusement just thinking about the prospect but then I realised that Wrigglebot might not like the nicknames ‘Farty Fordy’ or ‘Poo head’ and kids can be cruel so I reigned myself in a bit. You probably all realise by now that I am also a little competitive and when I saw the pages other families had done I knew I, I mean we, could better them. In the end I did let Wrigglebot come up with all of the words and he helped Husband pick photos and then Husband did some photoshop of what we would look like as animals (that’s how we roll in this family, I do words and Husband does graphics). Now this wasn’t overkill at all, Wrigglebot could have done it himself with glue and magazines and photos we just circumvented all the mess by Wrigglebot ‘helping’ Husband on the computer.

Wrigglebot wrote, ‘If my family were animals I think my Dad would be a wolf, my Mum would be a zebra, Winsome would be an antelope, Willem would be a giraffe and I would be a wild dog. We would be very scary animals.’

And I think I agree.

Sometimes I feel like I have it all together. The kids are growing and aren’t killing each other, I have very high standards I know, my writing is going fairly well, I’m managing to get to just about everything I’ve committed to and I can still walk around rather than wade through the stuff on the ground in the house. And so I wonder, why is it that such a capable person struggles with the simple task of picking Wrigglebot up from kinder on time?

Yes I was late again today. All the other mothers had come and gone and my little boy was crying on the mat with his teacher. I felt pretty bad but he does need to learn resilience. No matter what time I leave, I usually allow 17 minutes for a 9 minute drive, I’m always late. Squirm suddenly decides she has to go to the toilet or has to take a certain toy with her or she doesn’t want to walk or The Little One runs off on me when he gets out of the car. Anything can happen with my little tribe and it will ensure we are late. And so Wrigglebot is just going to have to realise that Mummy may not always be there on time, but at least his Mummy can keep a house clean, can cook delicious and nutricious meals play with him.

I asked them what they did outside and they said, ‘Nothing,’ but they looked guilty as sin. Nail polish all over their hands but neither of them opened it. I asked them what happened and they both looked down  and didn’t say anything. Even Squirm who commentates everything and doesn’t even stop talking to sleep was silent. So magic things happen in our house, bottles of nail polish open themselves and paint themselves on hands and rocks. I think that’s why kids believe in magic and fairies it’s all just a convenient excuse. Needless to say the nail polish is now in the bin and the kids are going to bed straight after dinner without dessert. I guess I’m starting to realise, (okay the realisation has been coming for a while), that my kids aren’t the angelic exception to naughtiness, they lie and they paint with nail polish, they are bad, unless there really is such a thing as magic and then I’m the cold, ignorant parent in all those kids films.

I had dinner with girlfriends last week. Such a simple act but the greatest treat. I got to sit down and eat a meal uninterrupted and it was hot and didn’t need re-heating in the microwave! This excited me so much that I had to share with my girlfriends just how much of a pleasure it was. Being mothers they too laughed at how dining out was just something you did every weekend for social enjoyment pre-kids and now – ha!
That got us started on the ‘you know life has changed since having kids’ game. Some of the clean responses I will share with you.
You Know Life Has Changed Since Having Kids when…
- you announce to everyone that you’re going to do wees
- you don’t close the toilet door when u do go
- you look through catalogues not for shoes or clothes, but for cheap nappies and wipes
- you only have time to shave one leg
- you go to sleep with Wiggles songs running round and round your head
- you talk about your child’s bowel habits at the dinner table
- having a hot cuppa is such a reward
- you get ridiculously excited about a dinner date that doesn’t require a high chair
- you roll over in the night and feel a pain in your back and there is a tiny Ferrari or Lamborghini hidden in your bed
- you don’t make it to midnight New Years Eve and you don’t care because sleep is more important
- you no longer have any $$$
- everything suddenly becomes a song and you are singing all day long
- you walk around half the day with pumpkin on your bottom lip (unbeknown to you) from testing the temperature of your child’s lunch
- you get excited by a 7am ‘sleep in’
- having a shower in peace is a luxury rather than the norm
- you’re happy to drink a ‘luke warm’ or ‘cold’ cup of tea!
- you commentate your entire day (including what has just happened and what is going to happen)
- arriving on time for something means you are less than 15 late
- you are constantly washing clothes, drying clothes, folding clothes
- you don’t need an alarm clock cause you’re always woken beforehand anyway

This had us in fits of laughter, I think because if we didn’t laugh, we would cry – and again, as always, we would never change a thing.

The Little One has turned into a bit of a copy cat. If we could be selective about what he copied that would be great. We would choose toilet training from Wrigglebot and independent play from Squirm but alas whatever he copies seems to involve danger. He has been walking for about two months now and he thinks he can do everything his brother and sister do and more. He climbs onto the coffee table, we take him off, he climbs onto the coffee table, we take him off, we leave the room for a second he climbs onto the coffee table and begins jumping. Did I mention that he only just learnt to walk? So he jumps, falls and there’s blood everywhere. His tooth, he doesn’t have many, went through his tongue. He screamed and screamed so we called over a nurse-aunt who said he’d be fine and he is, he just has a bit of an odd shaped tongue now and he still climbs on the coffee table. He never seems to copy me sitting sedately or reading, only if I’m eating will he want to copy me, I guess I’m just Mum and mums no matter how old you are are never cool.

When Husband and I first had Wrigglebot we spoke wistfully about The Era of Laughter. In today’s standards I was young (24) when I had Wrigglebot, though not as young (16) as people thought, and not many of our friends were having kids. They were focussing on career or travel and we were enjoying sleepless nights, tantrums and learning to cope with a whole new life. It was at this time, and again whenever we had a newborn and things got difficult and exhaustion was at its peak, that we spoke of The Era of Laughter, when we would see our friends starting to have children and we could laugh because it wasn’t us.

I feel now as if we are on the cusp of that era. The Little One isn’t so little anymore, I get full nights of sleep and in maybe a year (that’s perhaps a little optimistic) I won’t have to change a nappy again. Yes, the laughter is rising up within me. So if you tell me that you are about to have a baby, I will smile and smile some more, I may even giggle as I congratulate you because I am so glad it’s you and not me. Don’t get me wrong I love my children but I don’t love sleepless nights and pregnancy and sore nipples and teething and tantrums and toilet training. I love that my children are getting older and so I will sit back and laugh with a knowing look in my eyes as my dear friends embark on this next adventure.

Some things are hard to explain to children, like death, it’s difficult to find the balance between explaining life to them and making them scared. They can fixate on the slightest detail. The father of a friend (my age) of ours recently died and we were trying to tell Wrigglebot about it. Here’s how some of the conversation went.

Me: Do you know our friend ####, her Dad died and so we can pray for her so that she won’t be so sad.

W: Will she get a new Dad?

M: No, probably not.

W: Well then who will look after her and take her to the market and do sword fights with her?

M: Miss #### is big so she can look after herself.

W: Okay, and her Dad’s bones will go into the museum with the dinosaurs?

M: No, he’ll probably be buried in the ground in a cemetary but the thinking part of him will go up to heaven to be with God and Jesus.

And so it went on. We were honest but at the same time we don’t want him to think that every time somebody is sick or old or is in hospital that they are going to die. I think it’s important for kids to understand death but that doesn’t make it easy trying to predict what their minds will come up with.

My life is so completely different now to when I was starting uni ten years ago it’s hard to think that any of the skills would be transferable, but some of the things I learned have set me up for this stage of my life. No I’m not talking about the influence of Nietzsche on modern literature, strangely enough I don’t even think about that in my everyday life, but I do have mad scheduling skills that came to the fore in my uni days.

There were days when you would have to go and sign up for tutes (I’m old, nowadays I think it’s all online but in my day it was lists on walls). I would analyse which would be the most popular classes and get there first and have backups planned. Every semester I managed to get full time uni crammed into two days while my friends in the same course were there for four. It was a gift. And now I find myself scheduling once again. My calendar fills up quickly. I have kinder three days a week, activity group, mother’s group, playgroup, dancing and now I’m thinking about adding swimming lessons. It gets complicated and all I can say is that I’m glad I have mad scheduling skills, it’s more useful that Nietzsche.

There is no better sound in the world than your child’s laughter and now I have two children that play and laugh and laugh together.
I have no idea what they are laughing about and it almost seems like they have no idea either. Or maybe they do…I’m starting to suspect that these two cheeky minx children of mine are already in cahoots, secretly conspiring against the two that slave over them day and night.
They really do have the power over us already. Finn only has to cry to get feed, changed, his toys rotated, or put to bed. Milla has greater vocabulary abilities and has quickly learnt the easiest lesson of using manners to get what you want – or sneakily asking one parent then asking the other when the first says ‘no’ – at two and a half!
Overlooking all forms of collusion, when they laugh it is pure and golden and our natural instinct is to laugh along – just like them, with no care that you actually have no idea why.

I don’t know when kids start dreaming, or maybe they do all along, but I think they get to a stage where they remember their dreams and dream more vividly. Wrigglebot started waking up probably at about two and a half with stories of dinosaur monsters that were strangely similar to the ones Husband let him watch on Jurassic Park one day when I was out. He grew out of the waking but still tells tales of odd dreams occasionally.

Squirm for the first time woke up screaming the other night. I rushed in, ready to hear about a monster in her room, but instead when she stopped screaming she looked at me, got her hand out from underneath her so she could shake her finger at me and say, ‘No, it is mine icing-pole.’ Then she rolled over and went back to sleep. All I’m saying is I think it is odd that my boy’s nightmares have been about monsters and my daughter’s about food being taken away from her, we will see what ‘The Little One’ comes up with when his time comes.