The old man

“Are you seeing this?” Aaron asked me, laughing as we drove along.

“No, what?” I was looking out the window in the opposite direction.

“Over there.”

“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! HIS BUTT CRACK IS HANGING OUT!”

“I think his underwear are from 1970.”

We laughed and laughed as we drove past.  It’s not every day that you see an old man mowing the lawn right next to a busy road wearing only his droopy maroon underpants, with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and skin that resembled leather.  Only in the western suburbs….

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Copyright 2012 Sheri Thomson

An afternoon at home

“Mommy, I want to do craft!” Hannah told me.

“Hmmmm…Ok, if you sit up at the dining table, you can do some drawing.” I told her.

“I want to paste.” Sigh. There certainly won’t be any pasting at the table. I’d end up with a bunch of random, torn pieces of paper all stuck to the table.

“No sweetie, not at the table.”

“How about at my desk?” Cheeky little monkey, she always has a solution. But I can’t let her paste at her desk because Daniel is awake and he likes to eat everything he is not supposed to. Paper. Paste. Pens. Crayons. Stickers. Pencils. The list goes on. And Hannah’s desk is within his chubby little reach. Plus he stands at her desk, swiping all of her things while she’s trying to make stuff, and if I don’t let him swipe her things, he holds on to the desk, rocks himself back and forth like a madman, and makes obnoxious tantrum/whingey noises. Sometimes to the point of whacking his face on the desk. Or bathtub. Or whatever it is he may be tantruming on. Sigh.

I feel bad because I used to do craft with Hannah all the time. Before Daniel. Now it’s a bit hard.

I set her up at the table with her art supplies. Out of Daniel’s reach. She gets out her paint pens and gets her art on. Daniel is happily pushing a car around the living room floor on his hands and knees.

Painting at the table

I take the opportunity to make dinner. It’s hard to get time for that, without one whinging and the other attempting to climb up my leg whist whinging. Did I mention whinging?

Stir. Check on the kids. Chop some stuff. Check on the kids. Add to the pot. Check on the kids. Repeat.

Where’s Daniel? He isn’t pushing his car around. He isn’t getting into the drawer.

I look over towards the table. Hannah’s paint tubes are everywhere. Her hands look like half a dozen paint tubes vomited all over them. Paint tubes are all over the floor. And there is Daniel, sitting under the table eating a tube of paint. Cheeky boy.

His mouth is an interesting shade of blue. And sparkley. Luckily it’s non-toxic.

I get up to get some wipes.

As I kneel back down, he puts something questionable in his mouth. As I shove my fingers in his mouth in a vain attempt to retrieve the questionalbe item, he swallows it.  An old pea maybe? Lucky I vacuumed the day before. Can’t have been too old. I try to pick up all the food that falls on the floor when they eat, but the carpet is brown. It’s like camouflage.

I clean Daniel up and take Hannah to the bathroom to wash her hands.

Daniel follows us in, lightning fast, and shoves his hands in Hannah’s potty. He has an obsession with it. He leans over and to give it a chew. Ick. I leave Hannah standing on her monkey stool washing her hands while I pick Daniel up to avoid a probable e-coli infection.

I clean him up again.

Dinner time.

“I don’t want it.” Hannah says without trying it. She won’t even get in her chair. Like merely going near her wholegrain macaroni pasta bake with spinach, chicken, peas, corn, and carrots would give her leprosy (Aaron and I had it for dinner too. It was delicious by the way).

Daniel likes the pasta. He eats quite a lot. And then decides that he needs to sweep his tray clean with his arms. He puts his forearms on his tray and flaps them back and forth like windshield wipers on red cordial, knocking the rest of his food to the floor in an instant. Sigh.

He takes a drink of water from his sippy cup and then spits half of it back out. Just like he always does. Sigh.

I get a wipe and attempt to remove the food from all over his face.

He cries, turns his head from side to side remarkably fast, and grabs at the cloth with both hands. Apparently he likes having a face full of food.

Time for a bath.

Sassy Bathtime Pals Squirt and Float Toys

I get some wash cloths and turn the water on in the tub. I get Daniel in the bath and have to call for Hannah a million times before she comes.

Daniel thinks it’s great fun to shove his face in the water and eat bubbles. And drink the water. He coughs. Apparently it didn’t go down so well. But he does it repeatedly anyway. He finds it hilarious. I don’t, I sit there hoping he doesn’t actually inhale any of the water and drown, dreading every second.

After a while he gets a little too rambunctious and tries to stand up on the side of the slippery bath. I have a non-slip bath mat in there, but it doesn’t go right up the sides of the bath. Once (probably more than once), he hit his head on the side of the bath. He’s a bit wild like that. I sit him down, but he just gets back up again, shoves his face in the water, giggles, and then tries to climb the bath again. Time to get out….

Hannah refuses to dress herself even though she can. Instead she stands next to the change table and cries/whinges as I attempt to dry, moisturise, and nappy Daniel. Daniel is crying too. He hates getting dressed. He’s screaming and flailing and doing butt lifts, making it nearly impossible for me to get his nappy on.

I take him off the change table and try to put his clothes on. He turns into a giant pretzel, making it super hard to get his sleepy suit on. Hannah still refuses to clothe herself and is whinging in my ear the whole time.

When I finally get his clothes on, it’s Hannah’s turn.

I put her on the change table to put a nappy on for night time. Daniel pulls himself up on my pant leg, nearly pulling my pants down, looks at me with those big brown pick-me-up-please-mommy, googley eyes and cries when I don’t.

I get Hannah down from the change table and sit her on my lap to put her feet in her pant legs. Daniel thinks we’re having some sort of awesome fun piggy pile. He crawls over and excitedly stands up next to me, pulling Hannah’s hair and giggling whilst trying to get in my lap.

“NO DANIEL!” Hannah yells. Sigh.

Just a typical afternoon in the Thomson house.

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Fight with the sun

We were driving home from Grandma’s house when Hannah started making a fuss.

“NOOOOOOO!” She shouted

“NOOOO, GO AWAY SUN!”

I looked in the mirror and tried not to laugh. Her arms were flapping around like she was attempting to defend herself against an entire swarm of mosquitoes.

“GET OUT OF MY FACE SUN! LEAVE ME ALONE SUN!”

It was the afternoon and the sun was getting lower in the sky. Hannah’s car seat is right in the middle of the back seat. There is no front seat to shield her poor little eyes from that blazing Australian sun shining through the wind screen. Sure it would be easier to actually get her in the car if her seat was to one side, but then if Aaron and I wanted to drive Grandma somewhere, we couldn’t. Because how would an 82 year old woman climb over a child’s or baby’s car seat and then manage to fit in between them?

Home wasn’t far away, only a couple of minutes. But Hannah was getting increasingly unsettled.

“Shut your eyes sweetie, then the sun won’t be in them.” I told her as she flapped about.

“IT’S STILL IN MY EYES!” She yelled while they were still closed.

“Put your head down and look at the floor, then it won’t be in your eyes anymore.” I told her.

“GO AWAY SUN, I DON’T LIKE YOU! GET OUT OF MY EYES! GO AWAY! GO AWAY! DON’T BE MEAN SUN!”

She started crying. Crying and flapping and screaming for the sun to get out of her eyes.

I felt bad for her, but at the same time, it was pretty hilarious to glimpse in the rear view mirror.

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Fear of the septic tank

I can’t believe it was a whole year ago that I visited my parents in the U.S.  On one hand, it feels like years ago that I was there, but on the other, it feels like it was only a couple of months ago.

Recently I signed up for Timehop, a free service that you link to your social media accounts. Each day, you get an email with your status updates, tweets, etc. from exactly 1 year before.  Since I was in the U.S. at this time last year, I’ve been enjoying re-living a little bit of my trip each day, and seeing the funny things Hannah used to say before she could speak so well.

But, the daily re-living has made me remember the septic tank. Yeah, you read that right, the septic tank. My parents have one. I grew up with one. And well water. Whenever the power went out, we’d have no water either. But that’s another story for another day….

Back to the septic tank. The septic tank is toward the back of the side yard. That doesn’t make a lot of sense, but, I mean to the side of the house, more to the back than the front.

When I was little, I used to avoid (as much as one could) playing near the septic tank. I gave that side yard a pretty wide berth. When I could help it. When other people were around and walking/playing/bike riding/horse riding through the area, I’d go there too. I didn’t want them to know that I was scared of the septic tank. But I was. Wuss.

I always imagined it to be this gigantic deep cylindrical thing, with a very thin lid on top, and dirt and grass on top of that. I thought that if I stood there too long, or jumped too high, or ran too fast, the lid would collapse and it would swallow me up.
RID-X Septic System Treatment: 2 Dose Powder

I’d fall in with spectacular fashion and be stuck in a huge pile of thick poop, trying to swim, but barely able to even hold myself up.  There was no ladder, and the walls were so high, there was no way I could pull myself out.

I was terrified of drowning, all by myself, in a pile of poop.  No one would find me, I’d be totally swallowed up by the crazy poop monster.

When I visited my parents last year, my Dad said he needed to open the lid of the septic tank.

“How are you going to do that?” I asked him, visions of huge tractors in my head. How else would you open a gigantic lid?

He looked at me funny. Like I was stark raving mad. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

We piled on our coats, hats, and boots (it was very cold over there!) and went outside.  I held Hannah particularly tight. I certainly didn’t want her to be gobbled up by the poop monster.

My Dad grabbed a shovel, dug up a tiny bit of dirt and grass, and then stopped.

Imagine my surprise, when the gigantic septic tank lid that I was scared of all those years turned out to be this:

Not even my leg would fit in there. And then I googled septic tanks, and found this:

Septic tank before installation. Image courtesy wikipedia

That is what I was afraid of all those years?!  I could stand up in that and not even get my head wet! Sigh.

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The quiet Mommy

I’ve been singing to Hannah while she has a bath since she was tiny.  She loves it.  Ok, she used to love it.  I’m not delusional, I know I suck at singing.  But I did it anyway.  Kids don’t care if your  singing sounds like a dying moose, they just like that you sing to them.  Until they get to toddler-hood….

Hannah was in the bath the other day and I was singing to her as usual.

“Twinkle twinkle little star” I belted.

She looked at me all serious and told me matter of factly:

I would be offended if I wasn’t laughing so hard.

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Am I hard to live with?

Aaron, Hannah and I live with Aaron’s Grandma.  It’s mutually beneficial; she can’t afford to pay the bills by herself, so we pay all the bills, and we don’t have to pay any rent. Hannah gets her own playroom and bedroom, big backyard and plenty of Grandma cuddles.  Grandma gets her bills paid, doesn’t have to worry about falling in the shower and no one finding her for many days (an actual concern she had before we moved in), doesn’t have to do the vacuuming and cleaning, lawn mowing and if she’s not being ridiculously stubborn, has someone to do all of the other chores as well.

It took all of us a while to adjust to living together, but in the end, we got there (mostly).  Sure, we fight and annoy each other immensely sometimes, but that’s to be expected.

But now YaYa (Grandma’s daughter, Aaron’s mum, Hannah’s YaYa) is here too.  We’re all butting heads and driving one another crazy.  I don’t think any three women with families of their own can actually live together.  It doesn’t work.  Everyone thinks they are  the Mum, everyone has their own way of doing things which of course doesn’t correspond to anyone else’s way and drives each other nuts, and everyone thinks that their way is best.  Or maybe that’s just me….

I started thinking (yes, I do do that sometimes).  Maybe I’m the annoying one?

The other day, I went grocery shopping with Grandma (we always go together, but buy groceries separately, as she doesn’t eat any of the same things as us).  I bought an avocado.  Grandma got one for YaYa.  My avocado was picked out specifically to go in a salad the very next night.  I picked it out knowing that it would be plenty ripe (but not too ripe) and super delicious in that awesome salad.  YaYa’s avocado wasn’t as ripe.  I didn’t know if it would be ripe enough to eat by the next day.  Looking at them, I knew that if someone were to come along and eat an avocado, they’d choose mine.  The ripe and ready one.  Of course.  But YaYa’s avocado wasn’t bought lovingly with a specific fate in mind.  It could have been eaten at any time during the week.  I didn’t know when it would be eaten.  So I wrote my name on my avocado.  I, of course, thought this was a genius, logical and easy plan to make sure that my avocado didn’t get eaten and got to grace us with it’s presence in my delicious salad.

No one noticed my name on the avocado.  Humph. I suppose it’s hard to see when a) you’re not looking for it, and b) avocados are rather dark.  At least when they are ripe.  Naturally, I whinged about my avocado being eaten.  I had to open the other avocado and hope for the best.  If it wasn’t ripe, it would be wasted and my salad would suck.

It was fine.  Just ripe.

Then I found out later that not only did people not think my name writing on the avocado was a great stroke of genius, but they actually found it obnoxious, annoying, and childish.

One day, YaYa asked what she could do to help.  I told her she could do all the big dishes because our dishwasher is a bit special and doesn’t actually fit normal sized plates (the arm is on the bottom of the top rack, and it won’t spin if they are on the bottom, but they don’t physically fit on the top) and other big things like pots and frying pans.  “But don’t wash Hannah’s cups.  They have to go in the dishwasher.”

I used to be ok with washing her sippy cups in the sink with the rest of the dishes, but then one day I was washing up when Grandma came in and grabbed the little bottle washer thing that I use to get in all the nooks and crannies of the sippy cup lid.  That is the only thing I have ever used it for, and that is the only thing I ever wanted it to be used for.

The First Years Take & Toss Spill-Proof Cups – 7 oz Pack

Thing I use to clean Hannah’s sippy cup lids

“What are you doing with that?”  I asked Grandma possessively.  “That is only for Hannah’s cups.”

“Oh, I was just going to clean around the taps in the bathroom with it.”

Excuse me?  Just clean around the taps in the BATHROOM??!?!?!?!?!?!!! You’re going to use it to scrub away all that disgusting black stuff that builds up around the taps????????

I was mortified.  How many other times has Grandma used Hannah’s bottle brush to clean the bathroom? What else has she used it for?  After that, Hannah’s things were strictly dishwasher only, and if I find them in the dish drainer when Grandma decides that she needs to do the dishes, I take them out and put them in the dishwasher anyway.

The cans in the pantry are in nice organised rows.  There is a row for pasta sauce, one for canned fruit, one for canned vegetables, another for beans and spaghetti, one for soup, and one for recipe base packets.  There is a shelf for snacks, one for pasta/rice, another for cooking things (flours, sugars, etc.).  I think my system is wonderful, logical, and beneficial.  I know where everything is (and anyone else would too if they listened when I talk). I always know what I have, nothing ever gets lost amidst the chaos of an unorganised pantry, and I don’t spend ages looking for things.

I get cranky when someone messes up my rows of cans, puts a snack item on the cooking shelf, or pasta on the snack shelf.  Others don’t seem to take much notice of my system.  They throw things where ever, mis-align my can rows, think I’m pedantically organised.  Humph.

But I know what happens when you have an unorganised pantry.  Things get lost, you can’t find anything, you never know what you actually have, and then before you know it, you eat a can of something, and spend all night vomiting because it had been in there festering for years and years. Or you go to use something else only to find it’s 20 years out of date.

When I first moved here, I cleaned out the pantry to super organise it to my standards.  Everything was everywhere, you could spend an hour looking for a particular item.  I actually did find food that was 20 years out of date.  Yeah, I really did.  See, my pantry organising doesn’t sound so crazy now, does it?

I suppose I can understand why I’d be hard to live with, but you know what? I do everything for a reason, and in my mind, they are all very good reasons.

Am I hard to live with?

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