The Stinky Boy

Tomboy enjoyed her first couple of days of school, but had a major complaint at the end of the second day.

I asked her how the day went and she declared, ‘There is a very stinky boy in my class!’

‘Was he farting a lot?’ I asked.

‘No.’

‘Had he pooed his pants?’

‘Noooo, he was just really stinky,’ she replied with obvious frustration at my inability to understand the ‘stink’.

‘Okay,’ I said. To avoid aggravating her further, I changed the subject to her upcoming birthday party and who we should invite.

Tomboy’s first request was, ‘Can you not invite the stinky boy?’

We’d delayed her birthday party so we could also use it as a way for Tomboy to bond with her new school friends. The boys outnumber the girls two to one, and I didn’t want her party being too big or dominated by a bunch of boisterous boys.

I explained that I was thinking of having a small party with only the girls from her class.

‘No, I want boys there too. Just don’t invite the stinky boy. He has too much stinkiness!’

We didn’t invite the stinky boy or any of the other boys. As originally planned, we invited the other five girls in Tomboy’s class and have booked a fairy to come and entertain the girls with games and face painting tomorrow.

She may still end up with a stinky boy at her party if her brother, Boywonder, and his butt are in fine form.

Leaking

Recent episodes of Home and Away were very sad for Junior Accountant and me when a main character we really liked died.

After watching the funeral, Junior Accountant said, ‘I did well, I only had one tear escape.’

Still sobbing, I turned to her and said, ‘Wait until you get older, it’s harder to keep them in.’

To which she replied, ‘What, like your wee?’

I had a few more tears after that, but at least they were from laughing so hard.

And no, I didn’t wet myself from laughing too hard!

Chilli Anyone?

The three youngest children enjoy helping me with our little veggie garden, but they also get bored quickly. Five minutes after accompanying me outside to stake my tomatoes and find a suitable pot for my new chilli bush, they disappeared back inside the house.

A short while later Boywonder came to the back door and told me his nose was burning. I didn’t doubt it, as his nose was so red he looked like Rudolph. He said that Tomboy’s top lip was also burning.

I made it very clear to him that they weren’t in trouble and that it was very important that he tell me what they’d put on their faces. The possible scenarios raced through my head. Had someone left the exit mould out after cleaning the bathroom and they’d sprayed it in their faces? Had they used something they’d mistakenly thought was sunscreen?

Boywonder was adamant that they hadn’t put anything on their faces. ‘All we did was smell the chilli,’ he explained.

‘You didn’t bite one did you?’ I asked.

‘No, you told us not to taste them because they were hot, so we only smelled that one,’ he said pointing at half a chilli on the ground near the chilli bush.

Just as they’d been told, they didn’t pull anything off of the bush (the offending chilli had fallen off when I was repotting the plant) and they didn’t taste the chilli.

And now they also know not to touch their faces with a chilli when smelling it.

They spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the house holding wet facewashers to their nose and top lip and I was pleased to know that we’d bought a chilli bush with some heat in it!

A Good Mum

Children often come out with random statements that make us laugh. A little less often is a random statement that melts your heart, even more so when spoken by a two-year-old child soon after I’d had a battle of wills with her.

As is the usual at the moment, Miss Flora told me which cereal she’d like for breakfast, I made it, she then refused to eat it, and I told her she’s getting nothing more to eat until after she’s eaten her breakfast.

Realising she wasn’t going to win this battle Miss Flora proceeded to eat her (now soggy) breakfast. So she didn’t have loneliness as an excuse to leave her breakfast, I hung about in the laundry (next to the dining room) and loaded the washing machine.

Miss Flora asked me what I was doing.

‘Getting the next load of washing ready,’ I replied.

‘You’re a good mum,’ said Miss Flora.

Wow! I was expecting another question or the exasperating ‘why’. After overcoming the initial shock, I felt really appreciated. I stopped what I was doing and gave her a cuddle. ‘Thank you’, I said.

Miss Flora then pointed at the bookcase. ‘Are they your books?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ I replied.

‘Have you read them all?’ she asked.

‘No,’ I replied, realising that my exalted moment was over and Miss Flora had moved on to the next topic of conversation. It seems precocious two-year-olds are too busy to allow tender moments to slow the momentum of their thoughts.

Only A Little Bit Fat!

Now that summer is here, Junior Accountant has decided to lose some excess weight.

As Junior Accountant set up the Wii Active, Boywonder, Tomboy and Miss Flora crowded around her asking questions about what sort of game she was going to play.

Junior Accountant – ‘It’s an exercise program to help make me thinner.’

Tomboy – ‘But you’re only a little bit fat.’

Junior Accountant – ‘Gee, thanks for that.’

Tomboy – ‘What? I’m only commentating.’

Tomboy’s commentary was soon forgotten as the three little ones busied themselves with some humorous attempts at imitating Junior Accountant’s exercises.

Fifteen minutes later Tomboy tilted her head to the side, looked Junior Accountant up and down, and declared, ‘I don’t think it’s working, you’re still not thin!’

When I Grow Up

On our way to school earlier this week, the kids started discussing what they wanted to be when they grew up.

Boywonder said that since he was so good at pulling his seatbelt out and across him to do it up that he would be good at making car seats and belts for cars.

Tomboy said that she was good at drawing so she would be an artist when she grew up.

I asked who was going to be a doctor.

With their professions already chosen, Tomboy and Boywonder nominated Miss Flora, to which Miss Flora responded with, ‘Nooo, I’m going to be a dog!’

It brought back memories of when The Apprentice was little and declared she was going to be a tree when she grew up. The interesting thing is that she’s studying conservation land management and horticulture…

Dumb and Dumber on Holiday

Mr T and I had a couple of “moments” during our last weekend in Traralgon. We stayed in a lovely spacious apartment that included a deep spa bath, a remote-controlled heating and cooling system in the lounge area, and a walk-in wardrobe in the main bedroom.

After sussing out each room and cupboard in the apartment we unpacked and Mr T hung his shirts so they didn’t get creased. Unfortunately, the more Mr T tried to keep his shirts from creasing, the more his forehead creased.

I found him having a great deal of trouble as he attempted to hang his shirts' coat hangers on the door handle of the walk-in wardrobe. The door handle was too close to the doorframe, thus preventing him from getting the hangers to sit over the handle properly.

‘What are you doing?’ I asked, rather confused as to why he was persisting with the door handle when he had a whole wardrobe on the other side of the door.

As he opened the door to the wardrobe in an attempt to hang the shirts and then close the door, he remembered what was on the other side of the door. ‘I could just hang them in there, couldn’t I,’ he said rather sheepishly.

It wasn’t long until Mr T decided to check out the spa bath. After a while I too went in the direction of the kids’ bedroom and the bathroom that contained the spa bath, only to be met by a loud rumbling sound.

‘What is that horrid noise?’ I asked.

‘It’s the spa bath, don’t worry, it’ll turn itself off soon,’ replied Mr T, thinking that it worked on a timer.

After ten minutes the sound didn’t stop and I went into the bathroom to where the “empty” spa bath sat, still desperately trying to circulate air and water through an empty bath tub. I became a little worried when I noticed a slight burning smell. I looked at the button Mr T had pushed to turn it on and went back to where he was in the bedroom and asked if he had tried to turn it off by pushing the button again.

‘No,’ said Mr T slowly as he thought about the merits of my suggestion, so I returned to the bathroom and pushed the button. The spa bath stopped.

Both are understandable gaffs when one is unfamiliar with the abode or its amenities, but there is no excuse for the dumb moment we shared on the first night.

We decided to turn the heating on when it became quite chilly during the evening. The instructions above the remote control on the wall said, ‘Pick up remote, turn it on, set temperature. There will be a delay before the system starts’.  It sounds pretty simple doesn’t it, and even more so when it was the standard wall-mounted system, like the one in this picture, which you can hear and feel when it’s on and working. Not for us!

We pushed the on button and the remote beeped. We set the temp and the remote beeped each time we went up or down a degree. We sat back down in front of the television and waited for the heating system on the farthest wall to start warming the place. After twenty minutes, I increased the temperature on the remote to 29C (84F) because the room temperature hadn’t changed at all.

After discussing how useless the heating system was, we concluded it must be because it was trying to heat a very large room. After another fifteen minutes, by which time I was wearing my large overcoat over my pyjamas and had a blanket wrapped around my legs and feet, I went to the remote and picked it up and increased the temperature by another five degrees. I moved closer to the heating system and noted how quiet it was – too quiet!

With the remote still in my hand I pushed the power button on the remote again – maybe turning it off and on again would help – and instead of the remote control beeping, this time the heating system beeped as well – and a light came on! It was at that point that we realised the heating system hadn’t been on at all because we hadn’t picked the remote up and pointed it in the direction of the heating system.

We took comfort in the fact that we were as dumb as each other when it came to figuring out the heating – or lack of it.