4 posts tagged “kiddos”

Huh.  Who am I kidding?  My life has been in a constant state of disarray for the past 37 years.  At the moment it's slightly worse than usual.

This is partly because we are currently in the second week of school holidays and it has been raining pretty much every day, meaning that we have been trapped indoors (apart from the odd 30-minute spell of dryness during which I make the kids get out and run around the yard like crazy persons).  As a result of being trapped indoors, the house is an absolute pigsty.  The mess, dirt and debris seems to reappear the moment I clean it away and I'm starting to wonder if it's all some kind of sick joke or that there really is a God, he's Catholic, and I'm in purgatory.  The boys have a touch of cabin fever and are prone to sudden attacks of wrestling and are bickering all.the.time.  I am sick of the sound of my own voice whining "Stop that.  Stop that." so that I sound exactly like those ineffective parents you come across when out and about and think to yourself, "No, YOU stop that!"

We haven't even been able to go to the park.  Yesterday I promised them we'd go to the pool today, but they've politely declined, because it's boring when it's just me as I'm unable to take them through the swirly-river pool with the baby.  They'd rather wait until dad is available on the weekend.  I suppose I could take them to an indoor play centre, but I have an abhorrence of those places.  They are hell on earth under normal circumstances - I can't even imagine what it would be like on a rainy day in the second rainy week of the school holidays.  Something out of Lord of the Flies, I should think.  And my eldest is not good at fighting.  As in, he just doesn't.  Even though I've given him permission to punch kids back as hard as he can if he's ever hit by anyone (because the last time we went to an indoor play centre there was a kid following him around punching the crap out of him until I realised and stopped him.  When I approached his mother about it she just said "Oh is he?  Sorry." in one of those aforementioned whiny "Stop that.  Stop that" voices.)

But enough about those hell holes.

Yeah, so everything is a major schemozzle at the moment.  I guess I'm one of those people who is affected by their physical environment because it has left my brain in a bit of a fog.  Mind you, Facebook has helped a bit with that too.  I joined Facebook a few months back and haven't ever really done anything on it until last week, when another couple of friends of mine joined and are sending me eggs, challenging me to quizzes and messaging me quite frequently. So it's been my time-waster of choice lately because, let's face it, how can you turn down an egg??  And now all of a sudden I have 5 times as many friends as I had before.  Which still isn't many - some people have 600 friends.  I don't think I've even met that many people in my entire life that I liked but then I am kind of grumpy.

*Sigh*  I don't think I'll even tell you that it's nearly 10 am and I'm still in my pyjamas.  I should just get off my lardy arse and go and tidy the place up, huh?

Clearly all that was needed was for her brain to be stimulated by 3 quick knocks to the head by wooden blocks!

This afternoon, Baby A finally demonstrated (after threatening to do so for at least 2 months now) that she can, in fact, crawl.

The boys and I were cheering her on with applause and whoops and hoorays and she's looking at us as if to say "WTF are you going on about?  I've been doing this for months!"

Today was yet another Red Letter Day in the Gibbon household, centred around the littlie.  No, she didn't finally crawl (although she's close, and yes I know that at 11 1/2 months many kids have already takien their first ballet lesson but give her a break - she's a big girl, okay??).  No, she didn't utter her first sentence, or complete her first jigsaw or compose her first etude or anything of that sort.

Today she was willfully injured by another kid.  And no, it was not one of my older boys, who wouldn't dream of deliberately hurting her (mind you, they have no qualms about hurting one another).

A couple of mornings a week I help out with the reading programme at school with a bunch of other mums, and all our preschoolders play with the big box of toys in the corner.  One little boy saw fit to hurl a wooden block at Baby A, clocking her on the head, causing her to bellow and me to come swooping in to her rescue.  After she had calmed down I put her back down to play again and she was playing happily for all of one minute when the little boy decided to up the ante and this time hurled two wooden blocks, again clocking her on the head.

This time the boy was given a slap on the hand and told to sit by his mother until we were all finished, which lasted a whole minute before he was allowed to go back and play again (which annoyed me, I admit - both the slap and the half-arsed attempt at discipline), and was clearly a very effective method of discipline because as soon as I placed Baby A down again (so I could gather up our things to go) he was getting ready for a third attempt.

Poor bub was distraught, not just at being hurt, but I think also at the shock of realising that someone was doing something to hurt her, as she's never experienced that before.  I don't consider myself an overly protective mother, and I am aware that kids will be kids etc, but I did feel a little pang when I realised that this is just the first of many times that some kid will come up and do something mean to her.

But this is life, I guess.

A very important day in the Gibbon household today.

Not only did we successfully host our fussy cousins for a sleepover (last night), hit the pool for hours on end, teach the baby to say "cheese" (not for the camera but for real cheese) and actually turn our scruffy backyard into the vague semblance of a pleasant place to be, but the not-quite-5-year-old read his first book on his very own today, with only very occasional assistance (for example a hint to get the word "grasshopper" and the name "Rosie"). 

He sounded out every word himself, without prompting from either his father or me.

I'm so proud!  For real, this time!