I woke this morning a little after 8, and was surprised to find W already up, washed, dressed, and packing a few final things in her bags. She is away this weekend with her Mum on the south coast, where her Mum will be running in “The Great South Run” on Sunday morning.
After she had kissed us all goodbye and left the house, I looked around the corner of the bedroom door through bleary eyes to see if our eldest had got up yet.”Time to get upwe have to leave for football in the park in an hour”.
Rather amazingly, our eldest lurched out of bed with no further encouragement (normally it takes a small thermonuclear device), and started looking for her football kit. Downstairs I discovered the others sat watching Sponge Bob in their pyjamas.”You two need to get dressed tooafter we drop your sister off at football practice, we’re going to the big park”The prospect of “the big park” workedthey slid off the couch, and fought their way up the stairs.
An hour later we left the house, and started picking our way through the back streets of the town towards the football grounds. After perhaps fifteen minutes, Little Miss Seven slowed to a stop and complained of a stone in her shoe.”Let me help you hang on! You’re wearing Wellies?! I told you to put socks and shoes on before we left the house AND YOU’VE GOT NO SOCKS ON!”She of course had no excusessheer laziness had caused her to grab the nearest pair of wellington boots (which didn’t fit her anyway), somehow pull them on with no socks, and blister her feet. There was no stone.
I lost it. Totally. While we sat on a park bench trying to sort her wellies out (I even thought about giving her my socks), I reduced her to tears. I was caught in two mindsif to let it go, and just carry her home, or if to dig in and make her realise the stupidity of what she had done.”How are you going to get home? It’s about a mile away, and you can’t even get the boot back on. What am I supposed to do? Leave you here? Your little sister can’t go to the park now either, because you can’t walk anywhere. Why ON EARTH didn’t you do as you were told and put shoes and socks on?”After hopefully making her realise the implications of her lazinessbasically wrecking her little sister’s morningI of course did what any parent would I carried her all the way home.
The wellies went straight in the dustbin.
We try to deal with things as they happen in our house, and not let them cloud the rest of the daywhich would explain how I found myself baking with Little Miss Seven later in the day.
At about 2pm there was a knock at the doorand a sad looking Miss No Wellies peering up at me.”They’re being mean to me in the parkthey said ‘Ner ner na ner ner at me’"”How about we make those jam tarts we talked about?”Her face brightened instantly, and I dropped what I had been doing. Of course it doesn’t take a genius to figure her outshe had just got one-on-one attention from me.
Half an hour later a scene replayed itself from my own childhood. News of the jam tarts spread to the playground from our house faster than the telegraphresulting in our girls and a couple of their friends queueing up in the kitchen for the tarts before I had even pulled them from the baking trays.
I can remember doing the same when I was littleand burning the skin on the roof of my mouth while trying to eat things my Mum had told me to leave alone.
This evening we had soup for dinner. The original idea had been hotdogs, but we couldn’t find any gluten free sausages at the shop earlier (eldest daughter is coeliac). Soup was the easiest, quickest win that I knew everybody would eat, and they all love trying new flavours out well, apart from Miss Seven who has yet to try anything except tomato.
Let’s hope tomorrow goes by as relatively peacefully as today. Yes, the hinges did come off this morning for a while, but we got the family rail car back on the tracks pretty quickly.
The girls didn’t say anything about their Mum being away at bedtime, which is a first. I was half expecting fake tears, and “I miss Mummy” from the ever entertaining Miss Seven. Perhaps spending most of the day running wild in the park, watching a movie, and staying up a little late wiped her out more than I thought.
They finally hit the sack at a little after nine (it’s eight on school nights), and fell asleep almost immediately. I’m sat here in the living room in relative silence. No TV, no music on. I can hear the odd thump as the cats nose around the house, looking for mischief, but otherwise it’s deadly quiet.
Despite the usual frustration that we can’t hear ourselves think while the kids fight running battles from room to room, this quiet is strange. I’m not so sure I like it.