Joyful Chaos in the Morning

(I have to apologise for the fact that my rather lovely background has disappeared from my blog. I don't have time to sort it out now... I also have to apologise for the fact that the font size and things are all messed up. Again, I have no idea and no time.)


Today we are preparing to go away on holiday. When I say ‘holiday’ I mean staying at my parents’ house a few miles away and pretending we’re on holiday. We do live in a beautiful part of the world, after all. (Donations towards a real holiday can be sent to my paypal account.)

We do live in a beautiful area.

I can't really disguise the fact that I don't have photos for this post.

I don’t feel very well. Because it’s the start of August I have a cold. The house looks like a bomb’s hit it, and I need to pack. (For anyone inclined to break into our house while we’re away, tough luck – my parents will be here.) This is a fun time when the three children play downstairs on Lego Batman 2 while I run around upstairs looking for clothes. (Why does Oscar unaccountably have no t-shirts or underpants? Why does George never have trousers? Why have all of Ben’s trousers disappeared too?) I discover Oscar’s lunchbox stuffed into the front pocket of his school bag, and an apple so rotten it’s almost liquid at the bottom of the bag pocket. Luckily this mess isn’t in the main part of the bag, where I’m packing his clothes.

Let’s see what goes on while I’m upstairs.

Occasionally I hear noises as of glass being broken.

Sometimes there are screams.

While I’m downstairs ensuring there is no broken glass, Ben is upstairs looking for my water (I always have a bottle of water to hand.) He comes down to tell me ‘Mummy, me split your water.’ Upstairs there’s a lake on the bed. Luckily there’s a towel strewn on the floor ready to deal with this. It’s better than the vomit/urine/faeces that usually adorns the sheets, since Ben sleeps in there with us.

Back upstairs to sort out more clothes (Where has my summer dress gone? Why do I have no underwear? Why are there no pairs of socks in the world, only odd ones, ad infinitum?)

From downstairs Oscar shouts helpfully, ‘I emptied all the ginger nuts into the tin for you.’ (These children can go through biscuits like locusts through a good crop. Thank god for value ranges.) Later George yells up to me through the floor, because children believe that wherever you are in the house you can still hear them. The sad truth is, you can.

‘Mummy, Ben has got so many biscuits I can't count how many. He’s got more than two!’ George shouts, ‘Because I’ve got two and he’s got more than me, and it might be four or five or six or seven or eight or nine or ten.’

When I come downstairs Ben is holding five ginger nuts in one hand like a layer cake and is biting through all of them. For good measure he has a spare one in the other hand, and Oscar has just eaten George’s last biscuit that he inadvertently put down on the settee. Oscar is stick thin, and something like the aforementioned locusts. No amount of calories will satisfy him or make him fat – but they have to be calories from chips, sausages, cake, white bread, and other such food. Nothing will persuade him to experiment with new tastes. After all, he knows the old ones work. (George and Ben love nothing more than a buffet of tortilla chips, houmous, olives, and taramasalata.)

Then I discover it. On the carpet. Something suspiciously brown, covered in a layer of tissue that’s been embedded into the substance beneath. The brown stuff is embedded in turn into the carpet.

‘Why didn’t you tell me Ben ee’d?’ I ask. (Ee is a very useful word for faeces, somewhat onomatopoeic.)

‘I didn’t want to disturb you,’ Oscar says.

‘I put the toilet paper on it, mummy,’ George says. ‘That was good, wasn’t it?’

Sigh...

Donations for a new carpet can be sent to my paypal account.