Snot Season Survival

I have fallen in a heap - yeah, another one..

Mother and child both with bad colds and the wheels in our household slowly grind to a halt. She's sprawled on one sofa under a blankie watching Finding Nemo on loop. I'm under a throw, on another sofa with Dr Phil then the Nanny.

The front door's left half painted, a chair is in two pieces with its new upholstery stuffed into a wardrobe between winter coats. I keep shifting this bag of fabric, bought two weeks ago to make a new nightie, yet I'm still waking up with the old baggy one twisted around my body, corkscrew fashion.

When we manage vertical postures we stumble through rooms dotted with baskets of clean unfolded laundry like large untidy land mines.

Where is my obsessive compulsive disorder this week? I blew it out my nose into a wad of Kleenex. That was right after I sneezed eight times in a row throwing my back out in the processes. My back has never been the same since childbirth, followed by years of carrying child on hip and then child hitting 20 plus kilos.

Why am I not any thinner?

Well, when you're sick as a dog and your lovely husband offers you a Moroccan Lamb pizza with no washing up involved... Who gives a pair of dingoes kidneys? I'm ill and grumpy.  I need nourishment not dishes!

"I wont think about those calories now, I'll think about them tomorrow," said Scarlett.

Each day the clutter builds, no one has the energy to pick up anything and there are literally dozens of Barbie's and Ken's strewn about the place, hanging from lamps and other fixtures, tucked under bedding and cushions and making head-to-toe trails from one room into the next.

The Barbie dolls themselves have become very untidy too it seems; there are tiny stilettos, hats, handbags, uniforms, tiaras and stethoscopes all over the place. You'd think Doctor Barbie, at least, would be a bit more meticulous about her medical equipment.

We had something happen to our barbie population this week. Visiting some friends at the weekend, their very generous little girls gave our littler girl a box of old Barbies. She was over the moon and seeing her delight I was too. For a bit.

We now have a bit of a housing shortage to deal with. My clever re-purposing of two IKEA STÄLL shoe cabinets no longer cuts the mustard space wise.
I've just counted and each compartment (designed for four pairs of shoes) at a pinch, holds up to twenty barbies.

OH MY DOG!!!: that means she has over 40 Barbie dolls now?  How did it come to this? No wonder I can't close the compartments anymore without having a ribbon or ponytail poking out somewhere.

It's like a mass immigration from Mattel - we'll have to introduce off-shore processing if the situation gets any worse.

So after a week without TV, I turn on Finding Nemo. And it stays on. And on, and on. 

You see when She-Who-Loves-Pink is not dragging out her entire Barbie collection, she's into drawing murals. Elaborately themed pictures that run over at least five A4 pages taped together. They're very cute and creative but wall space is another diminishing commodity in this place.

So the old' idiot box' goes on after so much silence.  I make my excuses that Nemo is about the ocean and considering this is her science topic at school this term, I am, in fact, merely supporting her education. Yeah.
It has nothing to do with the fact I need her to be still for a while and give me time to clear up, take some drugs and have a damned good lie down myself.

Yeah- it's all glamour and cocktail frocks this mummy gig.

Aaaaaaaachooooooo

Footnote: 

By pure coincidence, this came through Facebook today from a wonderful page called
'Meanwhile In Australia'

Footnote 2

Many thanks to the divine Mr Frenchie, who cleared the land mines, folding the clean washing and putting it all away. We must not breathe on him, lest he is contaminated and rendered incapable of further acts of  kindness, support and pizza purchases. As always, he stops the wheels coming off entirely.

Love and Other Bruises

Happily playing one minute - eating sand the next

If your child was running while looking the other way and knocked another child flat, even if your child came running to you in tears, wouldn't you ask if the other child laying in the dirt crying was OK?

At some point?

Or is that just me?

Well this afternoon it was.  

After pre-school pick-up we took Lucie and Buddy to the park. 

Exhausting all options with Bud and the Frizzbee, I left him panting in the shade and went into the playground to join in a game of hide and seek. 

This is when the incident happened.



 Lucie was standing looking about, I was up on the slide and her dad was just behind a fixture so close he could touch her.

A bigger, older boy, looking one way and running flat out the other way, mowed her down, with the point of  impact being both their heads. Lucie went face-down in the dirt stunned and the boy went running to his mother who was sitting on a bench a few meters away. 

As I shot over to Lucie where the daddy person was scooping Lucie up I heard the boys mother gasp, "What happened? Did someone hit you?" followed by lots of oh my God's.

As I worked on getting the sand out of Lucie's mouth and wiping her tears, I glanced back at the boy and his mum.  She was busy examining his head like a triage nurse and looking horrified and confused.

I went over to her and explained that her boy had run into my daughter quite by accident and they'd bumped heads. She didn't look up at me or acknowledge me, so I asked "Is he ok?"

She still didn't look at me, she just tilted his head and parted his hair with a dramatic gaasp; "It's swollen!"

I thought; "Yes, my daughter's fine, thanks for asking" although she's still crying and spiting out sand. 

Honestly her boy looked fine, it wasn't like either of them were concussed or anything, but she was carrying on like he'd just been hit by a bus.  In fact he was the bus that ran down my little girl.

So I shrugged and left them, her carrying on like a headless chook, and him doing impersonations of Luis Suarez trying to win a penalty, and I went back to my sobbing little bundle of road-kill.

Kids have playground accidents, some serious some not so. We all know it and we try not to make a big deal of it even when bones are broken because it scares the poor little buggers.  

Don't get me wrong; I don't support the 'boys (or girls) need to toughen-up theory' sending them out like gladiators with teeth missing, and blood still flowing. But seriously I don't think it does their emotional IQ any good to treat them like fragile little lap-dogs either. But hey, what do I know? Only what Dr Phil and Dr Green told me.. and that's not nearly enough.

Lucie was OK, just a combination of the shock of standing still one minute to being flattened by a blow to the head the next, and also being very tired after a busy day at pre-school. Late afternoons are the short end of the emotional fuse in our household.

As we got in to the car and I watched The Mother rush her son to their car, I wondered is she going to Royal North Shore Hospital? Is she going to turn this boy into a complete basket case (with no manners) or will he go on to become a premier league football player? 

I still think most people,even if it wasn't their child who caused the accident, would ask after the other child, no?

On the way home her damp little face got suddenly serious and she asked; "Mummy? Daddy? Did he have a zizi?"*
"I would think so" I said. "He was a boy and all boys have them."
"Yes." Lucie decided. "He DEFINITELY  had a zizi."

Has your kid been either the playground bus or road-kill?

What did you do?

Is your child semi-obsessed with confirming gender genitalia?

*Zizi - cute French kid-speak for penis. Girls' 'parts' are called zizette