If you can’t beat them, join them!
Week ten, and our writer throws the rulebook out the now-clean window...
MONDAY
ANOTHER week, another change of tack. The rulebook — not that there ever was one — has officially been discarded. Instead of continually trying to implement some order (or at least insist that the children get dressed every day), I’m going to do the unthinkable. You know the old saying, if you can’t beat them, join them?
For some peace, it strikes me that in order to understand the children, I should be at one with the children. Think like a person who is still actively forming brain circuits. What would make them happy? Layla gives me some indication when she requests repeatedly to ‘play with something that has a button’ (meaning a phone, Ipad, PC or remote control). I tell her no, that the best things in life don’t have buttons — like nature, animals, music. She interrupts me excitedly, ‘Yes Mama! And LOL dolls!’ Sigh. How profound.
So the girls want to eat icecream for breakfast, not get dressed, watch TV and suck a soother for hours. I join them in the former and skip the latter, as that would be really weird and I don’t fancy being institutionalised, not right now anyway. My waistline may not thank me for this, but I’d rather gain love handles than lose what’s left of my sanity.
TUESDAY
I CAN’T do it. Ice-cream is just not a good way to start the day, even the highprotein stuff. Children need guidance and role models, and while we can certainly learn life skills from their capacity to live in the moment, I can’t let these tiny humans who can’t tie their own shoelaces or even read to dictate the best way to live.
Kids thrive on structure, no matter how flimsy. So apples and toast are back on the menu, as is morning yoga. Surprisingly, they agree to this, even the five-year old, who has become particularly surly this week, taking to hissing at us and lamenting about how ‘booooored’ she is.
The pair devise their own ‘bum yoga’ (which sounds ruder than it is). It involves coordinated downward dogs and, well, rubbing their bottoms together. They are dissolving into giggles with their new-found fun, and they are not the only ones. I wipe the tears of laughter from my face at the sight of them. Children really are mental. If an adult attempted to do that in a yoga class, they’d be arrested.
WEDNESDAY
I’VE been desperately googling ‘how to entertain children during lockdown’ and it’s amazing what comes up during my daily searches. From snail racing to making elephant’s toothpaste, there’s no end to the insanity in the continual battle to keep boredom at bay.
I have accepted that there’ll be no weddings/holidays/general craic for the foreseeable future, so my online clothes shopping habit has halted. Or it had, until last week, when I purchased a load of stuff in a desperate bid to get them out of the house and into the garden. A large chalkboard with jumbo chalk. A pair of pretty pink deckchairs for their den. And the piece de resistance — a mud kitchen with a working tap which came with an eye-watering pricetag (and a back-breaking two and a half hour construction time, which I didn’t realise until delivery — sorry Owen). Most of this garb arrives today, and all of it is dismissed as quickly as the next. Half an hour tops, before small eyes start wandering, eyeing up the next project. In fact, the mud kitchen — which, I presumed would be a stellar hit, given its sole purpose of creating pies of mud — is a complete flop.
Layla even goes as far as saying that it ‘is disgusting’, wrinkling her small nose in contempt while she demands I wipe her mucky paws. ‘What?!’ I internally scream. ‘I’m giving you carte blache to get completely filthy, and this is how you thank me?’ God give me strength — and my money back if possible.
THURSDAY
REMEMBER the conversation about the best things in life not having a button? Well, it turns out this is true — but they may have a nozzle. The things I find that actually hold the children’s attention are (a) a hose, used in tandem with a paddling pool and (b) shaving foam. I happened upon the latter tip online, and it seems shaving foam ‘art’ is the perfect solution to good, clean fun. I get some cheap sensitive stuff — none of your fancy Gillette here — and set the scene.
Out on our patio, two plastic boxes lids, a can of foam each — you can add food colouring and paints if needed but why complicate matters — and a couple of brushes they can use to peak and swirl the stuff with, should they feel that way inclined. Boom. Game changer. They don’t just like this idea, they love it, and within a matters of minutes, they are stamping their bare feet in its spume amid hoots of delight. Then, they are going off-grid, getting it all over the patio, and I’m about to interject until I think, they are outside and what’s the worst that can happen? The patio slabs get a wash? All of a sudden, things take a sinister turn. Lana-Rose scoops up handfuls of the stuff and throws it on our sliding doors with a satisfying SPLAT. I look on in horror, while she then rubs the matter up and down the glass in pure joy. Her sidekick joins in, and I don’t think I’ve seen the pair of them this happy since Christmas Day. The sunniness transforms into a wintry snow scene with white lather coating every square foot of slab and glass. I’ve cracked the code. I run to Aldi to stock up on more cans, filling my basket with them. The same teller serves me, and either thinks I’m half-wolf or full crazy. ‘Foam party!’ I joke, as I shake a can and she eyes me with deep suspicion. I don’t care. I’m on to a winner, and later on, when the mess is hosed away, we end up with the sparkliest windows EVER.
FRIDAY
ANOTHER morning, another foam party. The neighbours must think we are completely cracked, and I’m slightly concerned for the environment but ecowarriors, don’t worry, we’ll probably just get another day out of this. Lana-Rose’s moods are swaying between infantile and adolescent, cuddling up to me one moment and stomping off the next. I really didn’t expect that for another few years.
The little one has gone the other way, defiantly sucking her soother and announcing that she’s ‘half-toddler, half-baby’ at every opportunity. But at least we have the toilet training figured out. Now if only we could just stop her talking about it.
By unfortunate coincidence, she always seems to conduct her business around the time my work wife Maeve rings to discuss professional matters, and today was no exception. I could see Layla running excitedly towards me, naked, so I knew what was coming, and tried to hurry Maeve off the phone. No adult needs to hear of other children’s toilet tales. ‘Mama, I did a BIGGG…’ Christ. ‘La la la la,’ I sing loudly down the phone, drowning out the proud proclamations in the background.
Maeve finds the whole thing hilarious thankfully, and I tell her that her new official title will be that of poo whisperer.
Then it’s back to mayhem — and while my back is turned, the pair of them have gone upstairs and dressed up as a witch and a ghoul. They present themselves and their Halloween buckets and ask sweetly for treats, and I’m so impressed by their ingenuity I relent with some mini marshmallows.
What’s that other old saying? Oh yeah, God loves a trier…