The Dodgiest Mum On The Block

Miss 15’s boyfriend recently came to visit, and I was due to drop him home by 8 pm at the latest. The plan was to put the younger three to bed (hubby was already in bed, as he had an …

We won the battle but lost the war…

Well, it’s been a long time since I actually managed a post on this blog. Reading through my last post, my Mum had successfully made it through her first operation. Yes, that’s right.. Her first. After that operation, she spent …

Raising the white flag..

Well folks, it has been nearly a week since I last posted. And in that time I wish I could say I napped. But alas, ’twas not to be, as I have a mildly psychotic 3 year old.

Every morning this week, I have woken up to some sort of destruction.. One day I woke up to all of my photo frames on the floor, with the glass/cardboard stuffers and backs removed.. Another day, I woke up to a pair of scissors (which were out of his reach by about 18 inches, up high and up the back of the bench – still don’t know how he got them down), a packet of jellies (he must have climbed up the inside of the fridge to get to them) and the lignocaine teething gel (he had somehow managed to remove the childproof cap).. Yet another day (and, sadly, I was awake at this time) I discovered he had consumed the last half of a leftover strawberry milkshake, which made him go slightly insane from the sugar high and ruined a perfectly nice morning as we had been cuddling in front of a movie with our morning milos, up until the point that I had to go and do some dishes. This morning, however, for the second time this week.. I woke up to him eating his brother’s formula.. Straight.. Out.. Of.. The.. Tin.

I am at my wits end.

I have tried the bribery thing – on his day out with Mummy (each boy goes into day care on their own one day, and they go in one day together, so I get a day with each of them), we went for pancakes and had quite a lovely day.

I Googled it, as I do with pretty much everything I’m stuck on from recipes to child-rearing suggestions to pest extermination! … The general consensus appears to be that he is 3, it is a phase, and I need to suck it up and just wear it until he grows out of it. Yippee.

I have also spoken to his day care teacher, who said that he is essentially bored.

He is highly intelligent, I know this, but I have tried quite a few things with little or no success at all.

This is an area on which I have no answers at all yet, but I will definitely post if I do find something that works! .. In the meantime, if anyone else has any suggestions, please feel free to comment them below.. I’m at the point where I would consider trying almost anything! 🙂

Yummy Mummy? … Not so much…

Hmmm… So, it’s been a good long while since I posted.. Our little lady is now 8 weeks old, and I am slowly coming to terms with being  mother of 3, 3 and under!

Hubby is back working locally now, thank Heavens.. As much as the money is a lot better when he was working away, it was no trade off for missing our kids growing up. Plus, I ended up really very sick during this last pregnancy, and was placed on bed rest towards the end. Something I could not make my doctors understand was more or less impossible with 2 small boys! … Although I was forced to pay a little more attention when they threatened to hospitalise me for the last 2 and a half weeks before the caesarean. But, we survived, and had a very healthy little baby girl on December 30!

So now I’m trying to wrap my head around my new role. Something I’ll confess I’m having more than a little trouble with.. Being a mother all day long, and up to my elbows in dirty nappies (sometimes quite literally.. I won’t go into detail.. You’re welcome.), dirty dishes and dirty laundry, it can be quite difficult to switch back to wife, companion and lover when hubby gets home.. I’m not sure he quite understands just how hard it can be for me to flick between the roles, especially since the role of mother/domestic goddess doesn’t stop when he gets home..

Taking this morning for example, I tried to do my hair so it isn’t just air-dried and scraped back into a ponytail elastic with my fringe clipped into submission.. I got up at 5am to attempt this…. My 3 year old woke up and proceeded to stand next to me, questioning my every movement, and talking at me (no, not talking to me, I meant to say at me.). Not relaxing in the slightest, if I’m honest.

My hands are in such diabolical need of care, that I have peeling skin and have to be careful about how I stroke my 8 week old’s face, so I don’t scratch her with it, I only buy skin care products that work in the shower as I don’t have time for anything else in my daily routine, and I’ve used 3 different products in the last 4 days to try and repair my split ends, as I simply have not had the time to get a hair cut for months.

Add all of this together, and I’ll be honest.. I don’t feel even remotely sexy. I am not a yummy mummy.. But I still have to try to be in the mood, which is often interrupted by a little girl who seems to think that Daddy might be considering stealing her milk.. So I have to settle her, then come straight back to the role of lover a minute later.. It’s honestly one of the most confusing things I’ve ever had to try to do. I suppose my one saving grace is that mercifully I seem to have avoided PPD this time.. That would be harder.

So, I guess I’ll work it out in the end.. I’ll keep you updated, but if anyone else is going through this, or has done so.. Feel free to contact me.. It’s always easier to talk with someone who understands where you’re coming from 🙂

Oh well.. I’d best get the littlest man up, he’s talking to himself quite loudly now! Of course, as soon as I get him up, the little lady will want a feed.. Aaaand now the eldest wants to get out of his PJs… *sigh* … Enjoy your day folks 🙂

Et tu, Brute..?

This morning, I suspected that my 2 year old may have been dead.

I wrestled him into bed at his usual time of around 10 last night – following a rather spectacular tantrum at our local Baby Bunting store earlier in the evening. As someone who subscribes to the ‘don’t pay attention to their tantrums, you’ll only encourage more of them’ school of thought, I must confess, even I was impressed. And – Lord love him – my husband just walked our midget outside, explained to him that we don’t behave like that and walked him back into the store. Whereupon Rhys apologised to me whilst doing the hammed up sobs that children get after a tantrum, complete with gasping, sniffing and runny nose. Oh, and don’t forget the black smears all over his face from having dirty hands and rubbing his eyes during the course of the tantrum. At this point, I will also add that he had a shower with my husband about 10 minutes before we left for the store. So he was clean.. When we left.

But I digress.

He went to bed around 10 last night, and at around 10 this morning, I unlatched his bedroom door — Yes, we have a hook latch on his door. I am aware of the fire safety issues, etc.. But trust me, my sanity vs the off chance that there might be some sort of catastrophe? … The kid got a latch. His bedroom door doesn’t shut properly and, even though the handle is at my eye level, he can open his door. At the previous house we used a rope to tie his door shut. Pretty sure the latch is a step up in the world. Back to the story. — so that he could come out when he woke up. At 10:55, after I had briefly entertained the notion that someone may have abducted him through his bedroom window before realising that his roller shutter was completely down and daylight couldn’t get in, let alone someone old enough to abduct him, he finally emerged from his bedroom. As a bonus, he just assumed he couldn’t get out of the door, so he didn’t try.. A small win.. I’ll take it..

Despite this enormous sleep in, however, he has been incredibly irritable and naughty all day. Same goes for my normally extremely cheerful youngest, interestingly enough.

Having had the massive sleep, he had overfilled his nappy. Oh joy of joys. So I was faced with a 2 year old that smelled like a homeless man. Such fun. I stripped him down, put him in the bath, scrubbed him down, dried him off, and dressed him in nice warm clothes.

Then I made a fatal mistake — I took 6 whole minutes to get myself ready to leave.

As I finished tying my hair up, I heard a funny clipping sound, accompanied by a jingle. I thought to myself, ‘gosh, that’s strange, it sounds like one of the dogs is inside’. One of the dogs was. My son, however, was outside. I walked out to see him – soaking wet, as it was pouring with rain at the time, of course – riding around on his trike. He saw me, hopped off his bike and came over to me, but not undercover and said ‘Mummy I in rain, I play in rain’. Hmm.. Indeed.

When I took his jacket off, I discovered that his shirt was more or less dry, and since his pants were only damp, I figured he could learn his lesson and I threw him in the car anyway. As I drove down the road, I rang my mother. When she picked up, I said,
“Quick! Remind me how much I love my 2 year old again!”
Being the thoroughly supportive parent that she is, she simply burst out laughing. She did manage to get out “very much”, before she went into fits of laughter again. She eventually composed herself enough to enquire as to what he had done this time, but for some reason, she seems to find it all very funny when he does strange, inexplicable things that leave me on the verge of a nervous breakdown. For someone who was so incredibly uptight when I was growing up, ‘Nan’ now takes a very casual – if not slightly one-eyed – approach to my eldest. He can do no wrong. Even when he finger painted on their glass sliding door.
With house paint.

My mother always used to say that when I had children she was going to teach them to take all of the CDs out of their cases whilst I was on the phone, as payback for my habit as a child, of sitting just out of arm’s reach and removing all of the dust jackets from the entire contents of the book shelf while she was on the phone. But as Rhys has gotten older, she has admitted that she doesn’t need to do so.. He is far more creative than my mother could ever have been!