Hmph, couldn’t post this morning because Mr. Claire needed the net to download an update for the Xbox. Yes, I come second to the Xbox 
Now back to today’s announcement…
Mornings can go a couple of different ways in my house. The Little Man or The Princess can wake me up. The Little man does this by jumping on my head or stomach until I need to die or pee. The Princess does this by screaming her head off as if she is stuck in between the bars of her cot and in excruciating pain. Sometimes they don’t want to wake me up for various reasons. The Little Man could be on a rampage and passing biscuits on to his baby sister to keep her quiet about the whole thing. It’s a team effort.
On days like this, I get woken up in one of two ways. One could be the sound of Mr. Claire’s horrified voice shouting saying, “For the love of God, LIAM!!” followed by the sounds of Liam running as fast as he can into the bedroom before jumping into my bed and putting his cold hands and feet all over me in an effort to hide. This scenario can be built up to by the sound of Mr. Claire’s disgusted voice shouting saying, “Oh, Jesus what’s all over her face? Isobel! NO!” Cue frenzied double-checking that it is in fact chocolate and NOT poo all over her face. The relief doesn’t last long for poor Mr. Claire, I’m afraid because at some stage he has to look at what damage has been done while we were asleep.
Alternatively, my beautiful sleep is disturbed by a strange noise. It could be an odd tap tapping noise, the sound of tearing, a rather loud squeaking or a whole array of other noises. The Oh, shit, no, sensation starts to kick in relatively quickly. Half asleep, I KNOW that my son is no longer asleep, I KNOW that I don’t want to look at what he is doing but I KNOW that I have to stop it right now before it gets worse. There are many sights that could await me once I grudgingly pass by Mr. Claire’s pretend snoring body with a deadener to the arm and the sight of my daughter’s four shining white teeth amongst a mouthful of brown drool. I enter the crime scene kitchen.
Flour/sugar/pasta/rice/coffee/ripped up tea bags/baby formula could be strewn across the floor in cleverly constructed mounds. Thomas the Tank Engine’s friends will all be stuck in one of these mounds and poor Thomas will be the scruffy hero attempting a rescue. Usually a couple of these mounds are mixed with broken eggs and yoke while others are overflowing in about 2litres of milk. This is so we can’t clean it up as quick. It is really hard to clean up raw eggs mixed with dried up gunk (or else we’re just not doing it right). Parts of the floor will be pulled up, most of the battery powered toys will have the backs unscrewed and their batteries replaced. He is quite good with a screwdriver. Something somewhere will be dented by a hammer of some sort. Kitchen towel, toilet roll and Kleenex will be floating in the air. I sort of imagining him running free around the room with a look of glee across his face and pieces of paper in his hands twirling elegantly in the air. It is art.
Every single toy will be out of the toy box and covering the doorway for a couple of feet in every direction so that no matter what you do, you have to stand on a toy to clean up. Sometimes, the tap will be left running and a mini flood will occur – this is probably a river to wash the filthy trains in after they have been rescued. Things are better since he’s been potty trained though, he used to take his nappies off too but I won’t finish that story.
Of course, all this hard work and effort makes a growing boy hungry. So he will have to feed himself at some stage. Think of chunks of butter everywhere but the bread. Jam sliding off the table. Packets of cheese and ham overturned on the floor. Twenty pieces of bread on a plate, each with one bite taken out of them. That’s before he even pours himself a drink. Anything that was placed so high up that even I can’t reach it, is somehow, magically, on the ground.
Today wasn’t too bad, maybe he’s taking pity on us at last. He managed to get behind a huge television stand/cabinet thingy and take out a Transformer we had been saving him for Christmas. Firstly, I do not know how he found the thing, secondly, I do not know how he managed to get behind the cabinet, and thirdly I do nott know how he managed to get the toy open because I struggle with it. But he managed all three. He also managed to get his hands on three board games. I hate when he does that because you can never find all of the pieces again. Never. So, he decided it would be fun to take all of the cards out and throw them up in the air, watch them all fall to the ground and then go make brown sauce sandwiches.
Brown sauce sandwiches. What a connoisseur…I can’t go into my kitchen for longer than five minutes today because the smell of brown sauce is sickening me. I hate brown sauce; it’s a Mr. Claire thing. Obviously, it’s a little man thing too considering he’s making sandwiches out of the stuff. Bleurgh! It tends to be like a treasure hunt in the mornings, trying to figure out exactly what has gone on before I woke up.
I wonder how he manages to wake up first every single morning no matter what time I get up at. It’s a talent. If I died and nobody realized for a couple of weeks, my son would be well able to look after himself and his little sister. He sometimes makes toast, I’ve caught him trying to make bottles for her before, there is nothing he won’t try. He even cleans up sometimes
Today, he didn’t want to clean up. Mr. Claire told him to clean up everything and then he was going to go straight to bed. Little man knows it’s an empty threat and fluthers around the place regardless. Mr. Claire joined in on the cleaning while I judged the damage on the Princess. I’m thinking she had a brown sauce sandwich too. I told my son to either clean up his trains or else throw them in the bin. He tries to throw them into the bin…Plan b, Mammy, what’s plan b? I did the countdown. I say, five, four, three, two…I don’t quite know what happens at one, we’ve yet to get that far. I have no idea why it works because even I don’t know what happens at one but it does the job so I’m not complaining. I’m aware that my parenting skills leave a lot to be desired but whatever. Both kids are happy and healthy…maybe it’s down to the brown sauce sandwiches?
