Noah (pretending not to hear): I love you too, Ivy! Love you too.

Ivy: You spewed, I said, you spee - you - ed!

Noah: I not pooed Ivy.

**************************************************************

2:20am Ivy: “I want to snuggle with Mummy! Iwantosnugglewithmummeeeeeee Iwantosnugglewithmumeeeeee!”

Mummy: “No, you stay in your bed.”

2:22am Ivy: “I want to snugs with you Mummy, Iwantosnugswithyooooooooooowithyooooooo

Mummy: “No, stay in your bed, Mummy’s here”.

Every two minutes until 3am: ” I want to sleep in your bed Mummy, I want to snugs with you !Iwantosnugglewithyooooooo”.

3:02 am:  Mummy relents and takes self and lobbyist to nice warm bed, out of the freezing night.

3:03am Noah: “I want to come in your bed, Mummy”. Proceeds to climb into bed.

Mummy: “No, Noah sleep in your bed”.

Noah: “No, I not“!

Get into her ribbon stash (that another chef has neglected to pack away) and pull Every. Single. Ribbon from its roll and call it ‘pasta’.

Take scrapbooking cardboard flowers (hundreds of the little suckers) from the back room, sprinkle a few into the ‘bowl’ you have aquired from the plastics cupboard and the rest (read majority) onto the floor for creative effect(an important part of being a successful chef).

Shred rediscovered tissue paper, from birthdays past, into tiny little pieces and declare them ‘lettuce’. Place a handful into the bowl and the rest can go on the floor.

Mix heartily.

Present to Mummy in the laundry.

For added effect, try to stuff some of the ribbon ‘pasta’ right to the back of her craw, until she gags.

Proceed to sing The Wiggles ‘Fruit Salad’ (yummy, yummy) song at the top of your lungs (to drown out the tears when the Mummy discovers the aftermath) and ask innocently ‘What’s wrong, Mummy?’ when she falls to the floor sobbing.

After pretending to feed the Mummy the concoction for a large part of the morning, proceed to fight over lengths of  ‘pasta’ that you want made into tails, because you are now horses. (Of course it is vitally important that you both have the same piece of ribbon).

In true executive chef style, throw a hissyfit when asked to clean up your ‘creative’ mess.

This is how you make “house salad”.

He climbs onto the bed, looking for me to read him a book but then changes direction when he discovers his father is home.

I put my hands out to him but he refuses…

“No, Mummy, you not read the book, Daddy read it”.

David and I have been having a ‘heated discussion’, so this obvious favouritism erks me even more.

” Fine, Daddy can read it”, I proclaim, “we all know he is the be all and end all”.

As I get up to leave the room, making it to the doorwell, Noah pipes up and says…

“No Mummy, Daddy is not the beetle and the egg -  all”!

All my defences fall away as I double up in mirth and wonder at this innocent that is my son.

Mummy: “Are you a sexy beast”?

Noah: “I not a sixty beast. I Noah Yilliam Androo Trickensa”!

We were watching Jamie Oliver on the TV the other night.

We love his ‘bwilliarnt’ accent. Yeah?

Especially Dave. He likes to imitate Jamie and does a pretty good job of it.

Anyhow, Jamie was making this odd broad bean paste (on a side note, does anyone - besides my mother, actually like broad beans?) and he was clumping on a bit of this and that and playing his own cooking skills up, you know how he is.

Just as it breaks to the ad, Dave pipes up and says in his best cockney accent…

…” and naow I’m goink to urinate on it, yeah? But don’ you do it, yeah? ‘Cos it won’ taste enny goo’, know wha’ I mean? Bu’ when I doo it, yeah? It tastes sumpin’ speshal”.

Eat your heart out Jamie!

Davey Oliver lives at our house!

I love my kids!

They rock and they totally made  my day, made everything okay, if just for a small moment in time. The belly laugh was SO needed.

Immy: “No, don’t do that Noah, that hurts Immy.”

Noah: ” No”

Immy: “I won’t play with you if you are going to do that”.

Noah: (increasingly angrier) “NO”!

Immy: “Oh well, I will just have to…”

Noah (interjecting and pointing to Immy) : “NO!! You in time out”!!!

Why do neighbours who are way past their prime, insist on having loud night sex with their harem of  locals, just outside our bedroom window? At 11:30 pm, no less. Hasn’t anyone heard of the ‘not after 11pm sex policy’ in the boonies? And do they care?

Why do children and husbands pick long trips down in the car to discuss sewerage trucks? Why are sewerage trucks called honey wagons and why is the connector tubing on the truck clear?

Did you know that when you do a spellcheck on email, it doesn’t recognise the word blog? It keeps telling me to change it to bog. David thinks my spellcheck is trying to tell me something! Hmmph!!!

Noah (sctatching vigorously): “I have fleas. I need a bath!”

  gotfleas.mp3   for those of you who want to hear the evidence. Oh and give it a minute, he needs time to warm up!

* Dummies. (No not that kind of dummy) Pacifiers, binkys, Wa - wahs, suckers. That kind of dummy. I will usually wake up with at least one plastered to my back, cheek or various other exposed body parts.

* Socks. Ok. What is it with socks? Sometimes the kids don’t even go to bed with socks on and yet, by morning it appears that, not only have socks found their way into my bedding, they have found some bizarre inanimate way to reproduce. Like rabbits, I tells ya!

* At least one other person, who isn’t my husband. Now gutter minds, I mean that in the cleanest sense. Once I even woke up to find Lily and Lily’s friend in bed with me. They had had a bad dream but I have no recollection of inviting them into the bed. None. Usually, it’s Ivy. If Noah comes in, it’s usually to wake me up and demand a ’shakey’.

Just on a tangent, this morning he was rolling around the bed, yowling to me that ‘he get up. NOW’. I asked him did he know what I wanted and his response was…’Yes. You get up too’.

Actually that wasn’t what I wanted but anyway.

* Various toys. Sadly not adult toys. “Ted” was in my bed this morning with his pants around his ankles. Does that count as an adult toy?

* Bodily fluids. Again, not the kind that many young 20 somethings would be thinking. I’m telling you right now, there is a miriad of bodily fluid that is in NO way related to sex and beds. Actually, now I think about it…

Spew, the great bed evacuator.

Urine, love that morning urine smell. Not.

And… other… stuff.

Let’s just say sometimes even the most robust night nappies cannot withstand the acid that is the Ivy - girl’s poo.

Yeah…I think I’ll leave it there.

I will never ever wipe an old man’s bottom, clean up his mess and tuck him back into bed if he has the cheeky look of a dog with yellow eyes. (Have you heard the old country saying - never trust a dog with yellow eyes? You have now).

I will never fall for it a second time

Okay, okay. I will never fall for it a third time.

I will never ever let anyone call me ‘nursey’ again, well, perhaps, I might let David call me nursey, if we were into that kinky kind of dress up for the night thing.

Maybe.

But no old man is going to call me nursey again and get a response.

Probably a good thing that we don’t see many of those in maternity.

I will never take an overflowing cup of warm sputum sample from an old man or woman again, (especially if he has just called me nursey) nor will I discuss, in any detail, the stringy bits of blood within that sample and then go on my lunch break, ever again.

Can anyone say hello to Huey?

I will never tell weird nursing ghost stories, on night duty, just after dressing a deceased patient again.

Trust me, it is insomnia inducing.

Also, when some smarty smarmy male nurse thinks it’s funny to make creaking noises when you are already freaked out, you WILL run, very fast and very far.

I will never ever work a paediatric shift again, have a small person throw up on me and go home before showering first. I have learnt that, even though you change from uniform to scrubs and clean any vomit off skin with disinfectant hibicleanse, gastro will still follow you home and infect your three girls and husband 24 hours later.

Also, when you have an immune compromised child, it’s okay to refuse to ’special’ a baby with RSV. Death stares can only last as long as the shift. In my case, 10 hours.

I will never ever do a rotation in Birthing Suite again and agree to do all the caesareans. It messes with your beliefs in childbirth.

I will never say yes to the kids having pizza again, when I know that gastro is going around the school.

I will never ever eat something my toddler presents to me without looking at and feeling the offerings first. Okay. You can just use you imagination on that one.

Not. Going. There. Again.

I will never tell anybody who will listen that I could ‘do’ twins again with my eyes closed.

That was like daring the universe.

This can’t be good. It is cracking on to 9pm. Why are they still awake?

There has been no red cordial. There has been plenty of quiet time pre - bed. We have followed the bed time routine to the letter but for the second time they have not gone straight to sleep.

9:30pm.

C’mon, already.

Go. To. Sleep.

Suddenly it’s quiet.

Are they asleep?

Creeping, creeping, shhhh, we don’t want to wake them…

What’s this?

Noah… you’re wearing a hat and sitting up with your sister, in the same bed.

Oh, she has a hat too, and some Little Golden Book reading material.

Oh and looky here, a tray, with two teacups and a teapot.

A ten o’clock teaparty!

At the wrong end of the day.

AAARRRRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!!