Parklife

This is why last minute park trips pre school run are ill advised...

I don't think he actually went on anything properly come to think of it... oh no wait, he went on the slide because there was a big puddle at the bottom of it.

We obviously then had the tantrum over getting back into his pram where he actually managed to get himself arched backwards so much in that rigid way that they do, that I thought he probably managed to pass gymnastics level 6 right there and then. Monkey.

(Sorry about my annoying voice!)

This morning

I don't even know where to begin. I got cocky, I went to Tesco to grab a couple of bits thinking I could trap him in the pram. Arrived, opened the boot, no pram. I had a bowl of dry cereal in my bag so I bribed him into the seat of the trolley with it and started rushing around the shop. He started to get cross so I got him an Ellas kitchen fruit pouch to eat in the trolley, he finished it super quickly so I gave him another one, this is where it all started to go wrong. He squirted the whole pouch all over himself, the trolley, the floor and me. As this was unfolding the shop tannoy went with the staff member saying 'Staff announcement, this is a code 6!' Staff started walking quickly towards me saying 'ooh code 6!!' (At this point I assumed Code 6 meant small ginger terrorist on aisle 7 needs to be ejected from the store immediately! It didn't, they walked past us with disgusted looks on their faces when they saw the state of us.) I baby wiped everything as much as I could then carried on rushing as quickly as I could.  

Got to the tills and passed all the rubbish over to the cashier sheepishly, as I was unloading the trolley he climbed out and got on the conveyer belt and started jumping up and down, I whisked him off, plonked him back in the trolley and went to start packing the bags, he then climbed out again on to the bit where you pack your bags, at this point the cashier stood up and helped me pack 'ooh you've got your hands full with him haven't you!'... She has no idea. 

Get home, settled him down with a film and some snacks, decided to make some cupcakes and cookies, he was quiet which he normally is when he is watching a film so I thought I'd gotten away with it. How wrong I was. I nipped my head round the corner to check on him and was faced with this...

You can't see the full extent of it here but it's basically pear juice, apple juice and squashed pear all over him, the bench, table and floor and he started dipping Woody's boots in it and crushing the pear with them. 

I grabbed the kitchen roll, dettol wipes and cloth and started cleaning it up (whilst possibly shouting a few profanities) and he wandered off laughing and treading sticky pear fit throughout the house, I stripped him down to his nappy and ran upstairs to get him more clothes then came down to this...

No he didn't have a monkey on his bum, I've added that to try and save some of his dignity, but he had whipped his nappy off and was looking very pleased with himself about it. I put another one on him, got him dressed, mopped the floor which was now ridiculously sticky and then went to find him again, he had opened the boxes under the stairs with his birthday presents in and thrown the clean pile of clothes that was on the stairs waiting to go up all over the hallway. At this point I gave up, we have now come to sit down in the lounge and watch Tangled. My days of attempting to be a domestic goddess are over before the had even begun.

The good news is it's nearly nap time for him! Hurrah! 

The even better news is the cupcakes I made are amazing and paleo which basically means I can eat them all in one go whilst he sleeps! 

Can you believe it's only sodding Tuesday. 

Evil steps

The step. A common object in most homes with children, it helps them reach the sink to wash their hands, helps them reach the worksurfaces to help in the kitchen etc. In my house it is known as a bad behaviour enabler. I spend my days swearing at the step every time I find that the chimp baby has carried it somewhere to do something naughty. This can be to the toilet sink to flood the bathroom, to the kitchen sink to chuck all the clean dishes into the water with the dirty dishes, to help him climb onto something else to reach something that has been put up high out of his reach, to get to his brothers Lego starwars sets, to turn the oven on (yes really) and to get into the chocolate cupboard. The step is the spawn of the devil in my eyes. The bad behaviour enabler. The bane of my life. I end up having to hide it if I'm going to the loo so that he can't create havoc in the 30 seconds I'm gone. It's currently living on my toaster although it's only a matter of time before he finds something else to step on to be able to reach the sodding step. Incase you haven't yet guessed, I'm not a fan of the step. 

Playing games

I am quite competitive. Okay I'm fiercely competitive. My husband and the majority of my friends refuse to play games with me because I turn into a psycho bitch from hell the second the lid comes off the box. In fact my husband won't even hear the word 'Monopoly' mentioned since we had a game about 9 years ago and when I realised I wasn't going to win I flipped the board (accidentally on purpose) when I stood up. We've had screaming rows when playing Win, Lose or Draw and on the same team because he's so bloody slow at it, it frustrates the hell out of me (although I do think he's purposefully slow to annoy me).

Anyway, my 6 year old seems to have taken after me and is a terrible loser, tantrums and tears if he loses in most things and has now managed to finely tune which games he'll play with people based on whether he thinks his chances are good of winning or not. Last night he wanted to play Dobble, now I don't know if you've played it before but it can get a bit fraught. My nieces and nephews made me play it with them for the first time at Christmas and I lost my voice through shouting so much. I had words with myself before we played last night to be good, let him win, he's only 6, he's never played it before etc, and then dealt out the cards. My husband was standing next to me as we were playing (probably to make sure I didn't cheat or get crazy) and whilst trying to let my son win I felt the need to show him that I could win if I wanted to. The aim of the game is to find a matching picture on each card to put it down and the person who gets rid of their cards first wins, I was finding the matching picture but not putting it down to give my son a chance to get used to it, but pointed repeatedly to the picture I'd found so that my husband could see that I wasn't actually losing 😂. Anyway by the third game of letting him win he started to get a bit smug so I thrashed him, he had a strop, I had a strop, my husband played with him instead, let him win twice, he got smug again, husband clearly decided he couldn't cope with the smugness and thrashed him. My son dealt out the cards to play one last game with me, he started without telling me he had and I said 'It's fine, I'll give you a head start but I'll still win!!' My husband then started helping him, I tried my hardest, got a bit shouty, it got very tense, he won. He did exactly what I would've done had I won, he jumped up and shouted 'yes!!!! I won, you lost, HA HA!!' At this point I'd normally have stropped off muttering something about the fact it was two against one and he cheated etc but something in me made me start laughing at the likeness between us and give him a big hug. He has got a lot of bad traits from me (the game thing being one) but has somehow also managed to get a few good things from me thank goodness or he'd be a right arse! Anyway I feel like it was a good lesson to him that you have to learn to deal with losing every now and then! (I'm totally going to make him play again tonight obviously as can't bear the fact that I had to go to bed a loser, I'll just play until he loses then send him to bed... Just to help him become a more balanced individual of course!!) 

Lets try this again...

9 Months since my last blog, I'm doing pretty well at this aren't I?!

I mentioned my youngest in my last blog, he is now 23 months old and still terrorising me. We call him the hybrid baby, he's part human, part chimp and part arse. He is however, hilarious! He can't yet talk, he's no where near being potty trained or any of that nonsense that we had already done by this point with our 6 year old, however as my husband says 'by God he can climb!!' He can get to anything and everything. I've had to start hiding kids steps from him, I even balanced one on the top of the door the other day whilst I ran to the toilet to try and minimise the damage he could do to the house in that 30 seconds. I went to visit a friend in hospital the other day, we went to the cantine for lunch, I turned my back on him to pick which drink I was having, turned back around and he was up on that  ledge thing that you slide your tray across as you move through the queue. I've still no idea how he got up there. Here is a picture of him making sure the Calpol on the kidsafe, high shelf was still accessible to him...

More naughty baby antics to follow x