Go back to shhhhleep

Some of the world's greatest discoveries have been made by accident - chocolate chip cookies, potato chips, Viagra. And now it seems I'm going to add my own stroke of accidental genius to the mix.

"You!" Tracey came into the kitchen and snapped at me this morning.

"What?" I asked in a very good impression of our two year old using her new favourite word.

"You know!"

I really didn't.

"Last night," she sneered lovingly at me. "When the baby woke up." I must have continued to stare at her with a dumb look on my face because she went on. "At about 2am." I could vaguely remember the kettle boiling and covering up my back after a cold draft of wind, but that's about it. I certainly didn't open my eyes and look at the clock. "You woke me up to go fix the baby a bottle."

"I did not," I said confidently, although I admit there have been times over the past decade where I've accidentally woken Tracey up when my foot has involuntarily jerked at the sound of a baby's cry and struck my sleeping wife's leg. But it's not like I ever did it on purpose.

"Oh, it's not like you said 'Hey, Tracey, the baby needs a bottle' or anything obvious like that," she said in what can only be termed a mocking tone. "Oh, no. Instead you had your face all up in my ear and you were whispering 'Shhhh! Shhhhhhh!' louder and louder until you woke me up."

I went for the save. "So even deep asleep, I still attempt to pacify our baby. Wow. My subconscious never rests."

"You were waking me up!" She shook her head at me. "Don't pretend like you don't remember."

I really, genuinely don't.

But that doesn't mean I'm not going to claim it as a stroke of fatherly genius. I wonder if I can patent this - The Bruce Shhh Method. The BruShhh Method! Genius aside, it seemed I needed to dig myself out of a hole earlier than usual this morning.

I went for the usual bold-faced lie. "You know as well as I do-"

"Shhh!" hissed Tracey at me, and sat down to deliberately drink her morning coffee..

"-if I heard the baby cry-" I continued.

"Shhhh!" she interrupted again.

"-that I would immediately get up-"

"Shhhhh!" Tracey hissed at me loudly and pointedly. And I finally noticed a squawk coming from the bedroom.

At least she was grinning when I went to fetch our baby.

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Ticked Off

Class newsletters are always full of interesting snippets, especially when one of our kids is singled out for something they've accomplished. Like last week's edition for Master7 year two class.

"Congratulations to M, L, T & K for completing every homework for the year so far! This is particularly fantastic for one child as she has been away and yet still managed too complete her homework. Unfortunately there are 2 other children who did NO HOMEWORK all term! Very disappointing!"

I'll tell you what was disappointing about this note - Master7 wasn't mentioned for getting all his homework done. He's always the first to finish his set work at home because then he can read his books or play outside.

As for those two kids who haven't done their homework. Tut Tut. Some parents just don't see the value in homework. When I was a single dad with my oldest two, homework was a nightmare. I'd work all day, pick up the kids from daycare, get home and start dinner. Homework was not my priority and finding time was a trial some weeks, but I understood why it had to be done.

As did my mum when I was a kid, which was why she unfailingly did it for me.

These days, with Tracey being home four afternoons a week, it isn't as difficult to find the time, but I'm told the frustration aspect still exists.

So you might imagine Tracey's surprise when she ran into the teacher after school this week and found out Master7 was one of those two kids who hadn't handed in homework ALL TERM!.

"But he does it!" she told the teacher, her voice begging to be believed. "I'm forever finding the completed homework sheets on the floor in his roo....ahhhh."

This makes no sense to me. I always made sure I handed mum's homework in first thing I walked into class.

Naturally, Tracey confronted Master7 about this and, naturally, he immediately saw an opportunity.

"What do I get if I hand my homework in?" We let Miss8 and Master7 buy a book for three consecutive weeks of getting all their spelling words correct. Turns out he thought a computer for three successful weeks of handing in homework sounded about right. Unsurprisingly, Tracey had other ideas.

"Well we could work on a reward system, but since handing your homework in is something you have to do I think we'll go with punishment instead. No homework handed in means no DS that weekend."

All I know is there better only be one kid on the next newsletter who hasn't handed in homework all term.

And for the love of Pete, let it be someone else's kid.

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Mopping About

The worst thing a bloke can do is draw attention to how little he does around the house. Or more specifically, inside the house.

If Tracey heads out the door and say, "Can you put away the washing?" I put away the washing. I didn't know there was even washing to be put away, so clearly she's washed, hung, taken down, folded and sorted the washing without me even knowing. By the time she comes home those clothes will be in drawers and cupboards.

There's even an element of guilt at contributing so little to the process, so I'll probably do the dishes as well.

But not all blokes think like this it seems.

The husband of a friend of mine is on holidays at the moment. Their kids are at school and she's at work, so he's got the whole house and day to himself.

Every morning this week, as she's left the house, she's been asking him to mop the floors. Finally, yesterday, he dragged himself off the lounge and went looking for the mop, and from her telling of the story, she's livid.

"Where's the mop?" he phoned to ask her mid-morning.

"Which bucket?" he phoned to ask her a short time later.

"What do I put in the bucket?" he phoned to ask her just after lunch.

When she arrived home from work she was greeted at the front door by her husband.

He'll be wanting praise, she thought. I better turn it on thick or he'll sulk. But he wasn't standing there for applause, he had a bone to pick. Personally, I don't think he put a lot of thought into his statement.

"Did you know," he demanded indignantly, "it takes over an hour to mop the entire house?!"

Considering they've lived in that particular house for over two years now, she probably does.

Considering he now knows where the mop, bucket and detergent are kept, and the manic look in his wife's eyes when she told the story, I'm guessing he's just had a new chore added to his feeble list of duties.

Methinks he really should have kept his mouth shut and done the dishes.

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Our Too Cute To Boot Theory

Until ten months ago we'd never had a Terrible Two.

We'd heard about them, of course, and how they test the waters and then the boundaries and then your patience, all without a brain to guide them, but we'd never had one in the house. Instead, we've always been 'blessed' with Temperamental Threes - still no common sense but faster and heavier so they're harder to catch and do more damage to your back when you do manage to get a hand to them.

Tracey and I have been developing a theory these past fifteen years we've been raising kids together: the reason mother nature has made young children look so very, very cute is you wouldn't put up with them if they weren't.

Seriously, there'd be that one "NO!" too many, after a week of refusing to eat what you've cooked or sleep in their own bed or stay with you in a shopping centre, and you'd consider driving into the country, letting them out and hoping like hell they didn't have a sense of direction.

Instead, after pulling all the saucepans and Tupperware and cutlery out of the draws and pouring water from one to another, and more often missing, they smile at you and say 'duddle' instead of 'cuddle' and your heart melts and you forgive everything. The crafty little bastards.

We're just praying our Miss2 hitting the Terrible Twos instead of waiting for the Temperamental Threes means we'll be through this phase quicker and not, as we fear, that we'll have two years of hell instead of one.

At the moment, Miss2's weapon of choice in testing her parents is with words: or more specifically, with one word. Kids tend to go through a 'why' stage but our little miss is going through a 'what' stage.

Not a smart what stage like, "what is aluminium made of?"  Oh, no. A dumb what stage as in when we answer one of her endless stream of questions and she says, "what?" like we're interrupting her train of thought.

Here's a sample of the quality banter we've been having with her lately.

"Would you like a milk?"

"What?"

"A milk?"

"What?"

"Milk. A drink of milk. Would you like one?"

"What?"

So I give up and walk the milk bottle back to the fridge. And suddenly she's screaming at me, "I want a milk!"

"So you do want a milk, do you?"

"What?"

"Honey, I'm talking (Miss2) out for a drive!"

"I wanna duddle, daddy."

If only life took the same precautions with teenagers you might not be so keen for them to move out.

Instead, during the Terrifying Teens mother nature matches their toxic attitude with pouting, sneering and a face full of zits. Before you know it you're offering to help them pack and putting up bond money...

...and looking whimsically at photos of them when they were two or three and super cute and therefore so much easier to handle.

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Call me HOTGUY!

Master7 told me last night if he could be any superhero, he'd be Hotguy.

"Who?" I asked him. 

Master20's lifelong obsession with all things geeky means I have a better than necessary knowledge of the world of superheroes. And all things Pokemon. 

I don't know which superhero I'd want to be but if I could choose to be a Pokemon I'd be Snorlax - he only wakes up to eat. Although having said that, Master7's superhero choice was sounding a bit of alright.

"Hotguy!" Master7 repeated to me, and my head filled with images of a caped crusader lounging against a bar giving passing women the old nudge nudge wink wink treatment: using his powers of hotness to save them from having nothing to dream about - a bit like the guy in the Old Spice ads. But Master7's next comment pointed me in the right direction. "From The Avengers."

I couldn't remember a Hotguy in The Avengers movie, although Tracey seemed to take a long time to answer my questions whenever Thor was onscreen. 

"You know, Dad, with the bow and arrows."

I mentally ticked off the Avengers - Ironman, Hulk, Captain Underpants....

"Oh!" I said, connecting the dots. "You mean Hawkeye."

I'm really glad we cleared that up. 

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TWELVE BIG YEARS

I did it!

Today is our twelfth wedding anniversary and I not only remembered first I remembered before either of us had left the house for the day!

"I'd like to accept this 'husband of the year' award with thanks to my lucky wife, Tracey, and all the encouragement she's bellowed at me over the....." Yeah, maybe that's a stretch. But I'm still going to pat myself on the back.

Twelve years! Where does the sleep go?

Tracey's popped off to work now, but tonight we'll head out for a nice dinner. Or, we'll take the kids out for dinner with us. We're currently locked in discussions about which way to go.

Below is our wedding song, which, despite not knowing a crotchet from a quaver, I wrote the words and melody for. Fortunately I have clever friends who play and together they wrote the music and recorded this special (for us) song with Tracey and I singing vocals.

We played it while Tracey walked down the aisle and then while we danced our wedding dance. It's lovely to be able to reflect on our years together while we play this song which helped begin this part of our journey.

Love you, Tracey. Incredibly, more now than ever. I'm self-diagnosing Stockholm Syndrome. XX

Perfect.

I spent a night taking stock 

Of what I am and am not

I know my faults more than some

I face my demons head on

And there's one thing I've found

I'm not perfect it's true

But I'm perfect for you

Sometimes at night while you sleep

I lay awake as you dream

It seems like fates lent a hand

And I know how lucky I am

To be here in your arms

I'm not perfect it's true

But I'm perfect for you

The nights don't seem so cold now you're here in my home

My laughter spreads to my eyes when we talk late at night

We'll reap from seeds that we've sown as we age, and I know

This love we've declared 

Is perfectly shared

With every word from your lips

With every touch every kiss

You sweep the doubts from my life 

You give me strength and I find

Life with you seems so right

You're not perfect maybe

But you're perfect for me

When we first met it felt right

You made me work for a while

Then you brought the mountain to me

You placed the world at my feet

And I need you to know

You're not perfect maybe

But you're perfect for me

The nights don't seem so cold now you're here in my home

My laughter spreads to my eyes when we talk late at night

We'll reap from seeds that we've sown as we age, and I know

This love we've declared 

Is perfectly shared

I believe, I believe, I believe (you're perfect for me)

words Bruce Devereaux

music Brett Young with Martin & Carol Hart

If you'd like to hear the song you can link over to last year's anniversary post HERE. I'd repost the song only I can't for the life of me work out how the hell I did it. I'm such a technoputz.

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Unscheduled Stops On The Toilet Train

It does seem I'm having a poo themed month, although I promise this isn't the case. Fact is, when you're toilet training a little one it can be all consuming.

There has been more than a little success this week with Miss2 managing to make it to the toilet several times to do wee and even achieve splashdown a couple of times.

Yesterday, Miss2 raced to the bathroom yelling, "I do snake!"

"You do what?" Tracey wanted to know, trying to work out what toilet function rhymes with snake.

"Snake. Snake. I do snake," repeated Miss2. And sure enough, she did: pointing at the long, snake-like thing she'd cleverly produced which was floating in the bowl.

But the moment we realized that was definitely light we could see at the end of the tunnel and not just an oncoming train was when Miss2 slept through the night with no nappy and no accidents.

Not that we meant to put her to bed with no nappy. And by 'we' I, of course, mean 'I'.

Tracey was at work so I was in charge. The kids having been fed and bathed I settled in to catch up on my Facebooking and emails while they watched a movie in the next room. Only Miss2 wasn't watching TV, was she. She'd tottered off to bed with a bear and a book and fallen asleep.

"Cool," I said (very quietly) when I spotted her, not for a moment thinking to check she still had that nappy on (which she couldn't possibly because I didn't put one on her after her bath).

But she still seems to be having some confusion regarding basic anatomy.

This morning she barged into the bathroom while I was clearing some space for my morning coffee. After a pause while she summed up the situation she pointed at my tackle and asked, "What you call your tail?"

"A doodle," I told her.

"Why I got no tail?" she wanted to know.

"Cause you're a girl," I told her. "Like Mummy."

She left still frowning, but I think she's starting to get it. I'm just glad I don't call it a snake - that would really confuse her.

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Kids + 18yrs = $$$$

When you think about the costs of raising kids, it's easy to mistakenly think about how expensive university will be, or their first car - maybe something cheap like a VW Beetle, because you figure everyone loves Herbie, right? Well slow down, Turbo, there's a long way to go before you need worry about those.

With kids it's like you're always putting your hand in your pocket for something.

It's not just the cost of keeping them in nappies, formula, clothes and food. Even bringing them home is expensive, what with car capsule, cot, highchair and pig pen.

But the biggest expense is TOYS! The money we've blown on plastic junk! And I really don't know why when up to the age of eighteen months the only things they consistently want to play with are car keys and all the cards and stuff in a purse: presumably because they know how expensive and painful it is to replace them.

And we haven't even touched on cost of the stuff the kids break.

In the ten years before I had our five little grommets I made not one claim on my insurance. In the nine years since I've had them I've made eight, the last one being for a laptop they pulled off the table. You might think eight claims is a lot, but there would be triple that of things we could claim for but chose not to so we didn't blow out our premiums.

But it's the little things they destroy which can add up to big dollars. Like last Monday when my five and two year olds got hold of a permanent marker and went looking for things to write their names on, like they were claiming dibs on what was theirs in the event Tracey and I pass away before the others got all the good stuff. Fortunately I caught them before they'd moved on from their lunch boxes because there was still a lot of ink left in that pen. If they'd made it into the lounge room they could have made a real nice mess of the leather lounge or cabinets.

Which still wouldn't rate a mention against the stuff I wrecked growing up.

I was a bit of a poster child for this sort of thing when I was a young sprog. My hammer feats as an adult are well documented and may, in fact, stem from trouble I had as a child. Legend goes, I found a hammer while my parents were busy moving furniture into their new home. Despite this being a new home, there was a disappointing lack of nails and wood lying around so I did the next best thing - I walked around the house chipping the corners off the bricks at my chest level. The whole way round the house.

You can imagine the praise my efforts earnt me when my folks discovered what I was doing. Yep, my ass is still sore and to this day all common sense and logic seem to evaporate the moment I hold a hammer in my hand (Tracey's assertion, not mine).

So don't let your kids near tools, is what I'm sensibly saying here. Forget worrying about them losing a finger, they might do serious damage to your stuff!

Scissors are another thing they can wreck your stuff with. I don't like to see scissors in my kids hands ever.

We keep our scissors behind stuff in the highest cupboard in the kitchen and don't let them see where we get them from. They might start with the A4 sheets of paper we have in their craft box, but without supervision (proper mummy supervision, not the way I administer it) they'd soon be into books, clothes, hair and sheets, and that could get expensive.

Or they could cut out the middle man, as the young child of a friend of ours did yesterday.

Their kid got hold of both a pair of scissors and their mum's purse. You might imagine the little bits of kaos that ensued.

Last I heard they were still looking for the other half of a fifty dollar note.

Fifty dollars. Phooey! Their child's attempt at havoc is amateurish at best. Fifty bucks wouldn't have covered the call out fee for the tradesman to fix my parents' bricks, and that was forty years ago. One day I'll tell you about the time I painted their car. I gave it racing stripes and a number like Herbie :)

I figured everybody loves Herbie. Turns out I was wrong.

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Holy Crappoli

Toilet training is frustrating but there's the Holy Grail of 'no more nappies', which means steak is back on the menu, to keep you focused.

And you need the encouragement because toilet training is a lesson in failure - you follow the kid around with a mop and every time they look a bit pensive you pick them up and run through the house to the loo holding them out in front of you like they're made of something smelly and foul. Which, if you're not quick enough, they may be.

You'll try anything - you talk to them about how much fun weeing in the toilet is, offer lolly bribes, you read them books on weeing and pooing, you write shitty ditties to sing ('peeing is fun with no nappy on my bum; I love to do a poo when I'm sitting on the loo'), you have them call up Grandma when they fluke it and you even show them how to sit on the toilet. Not that you need to arrange this last point.

As any parent will attest, there is nothing unusual about having the kids walk in on you while you're in the bathroom.

My dad tells a story about how he was reading a newspaper on the dunny when he suddenly realized my 2 year old sister was sitting on his lap and he had no recollection of her getting there.

Things are especially bad around our house because we only have one bathroom which is in the same room as the only shower, bath and toilet, plus both washing machines and the dryer (it's a big room). This means you are never alone in there - it's almost as popular as the lounge room as a place to catch up on the day's news.

Master20 was always very understanding with the little kids barging in on him when he was in the shower, but Miss17 is freshly horrified every single morning. Every morning. Without fail. Loudly.

"I'm in here!!" has been her early morning catch cry for about six years.

"But I need to do a poo!" whoever it is will say back, and then just open the door and walk in. Cause when you need to go, you need to go.

And Miss17's response to this is always the same. "Shut the door!!!" Because our kids just plain don't see the need to do that.

But the real problem with having only one toilet, which is in the bathroom (which has the bath, shower and laundry) isn't the lack of privacy or being able to see who's into the fridge from the shower. The real problem is things get a little confusing for the young kids.

Master7, for example, didn't pee standing up for years. Now we weren't about to correct him on this because, let's face it, there's a lot less mess to clean up. But unfortunately the confusion can work the other way.

Miss2, who is currently being toilet trained (by which I mean she is piddling all over the house and then running to the loo to sit and wipe) might need some extra toilet tutelage. I think she's been spending too much time in the bathroom while I'm in there.

On Monday she was standing in front of the toilet with her pants down, frowning and holding her left index finger with her right hand, as though it was a doodle.

"What are you doing?" Tracey asked Miss2.

"I do wees," she said. Then she pointed at Tracey's crotch and asked, "What you got?"

I might need to add a new line to my song: 'If girls pee standing up, you'll have to mop the floor a lot.'

Yep, things might be getting a little messy around here. Looks like before we get to the Holy Grail we're going to have a lot of Holy Fail.

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Permanently in the Poo

This morning, when I explained how tired I was to my young son, Master7 offered to help me out.

"I'll be the dad for the day and you be the kid. So you make the mess then I'll get pissed off and clean it up," he said. I quickly explained you can't say things like 'pissed off' when you're seven. He wasn't having any of that. "Well I can't say 'I'm pooed off'. That wouldn't make sense."

I knew it was going to be a rough day when I woke up at 4am to give the baby a bottle and couldn't get back to sleep. Further anecdotal evidence presented itself a couple of hours later when I went to make a coffee and had to refill the coffee jar. But instead of filling the jar I poured the whole lot into the plunger. I think my subconscious was making a point.

And sure enough, there was only moderate success today on the child minding front while Tracey was at work. I mean, no ambulances were called and they survived the day unscathed, but I confess I'm worried I may not.

Usually I manage to hide all the bits which go wrong: the baby sleeps for four hours, waking just before mum comes home, meaning she'll be up all night: the two year old pulls a chair over to the duchess and spends ten minutes riffling through Mum's makeup: the five year old wanders across the street to fetch their ball back. You know, that sort of thing.

What I'm fairly certain Tracey will spot when she arrives home are the scribblings on the side of the kids' lunch boxes, not least because Miss5 and Miss2 used a permanent marker.

The most disturbing thing about this incident isn't that it occurred a mere two meters from where I was sitting sipping tea and watching Youtube videos of QI, but that I'm pretty sure the permanent marker is kept above the stove.

I think there's a fair to middling chance Tracey is going to be a little pooed off when she gets home. And 'pooed off' makes perfect sense as opposed to 'pissed off' in this instance because I know I'm going to be in all sorts of shit.

I took photos because at this point I realized I was toast anyway

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