1st & 2nd born are girls. We lived in a pink, plastic filled, Mattel coloured world. We had tea parties with plastic sandwiches dressed in princess costumes. We wore tutu’s from dawn til dusk & aspired to wear lipstick & live in a tower. I’m not saying any of these things are desirable for a Mom with regards to how her girls should act. But this is just how we were.
(This weekends expedition to the Panto in The Gaiety was a boy-less expedition – but as you can see we dressed for the occasion! #ChristmasJumperExtravaganza)
Then we had a boy. No one told me about boys. I was unprepared, to say the least. Boys change everything. See that rule book? I’ll see your rules & regulations and raise you obliteration & destruction.
3rd born has blazed a trail……through the house, up the stairs, under the beds, you see it? I’ll climb it! And not only that……but then I’ll drag it from room to room, oblivious to skirting boards, shins, toes & anything that dares act as an impediment. LET THERE BE NO STONE UNTURNED……I AM HERE THE WRECK THIS JOINT.
But now, I fear, things are rapidly declining at a ferocious rate.
You see, 3rd born has developed the MOST disturbing obsession. This I fear will horrify & intrigue anyone reading this in equal measure. You see 3rd born is a boy and he loves to play in the toilet.
Yes you are probably presuming that I mean the bathroom & am calling it the toilet (which is an Irish thing to do & horrifies Americans – I learned this to my detriment whilst on a J1 incidentally. They avoid the term toilet at all costs ….) but alack & alas no, I really do mean the actual toilet bowl!
Splish, splash, Splosh at any given opportunity. He thinks this is so amazingly great & literally gallops across the floor at breakneck speed when he is given even a whiff of an opportunity (oh dear…..unfortunate terminology here.. Freudian slip?)
My heart sinks & a little piece of me dies every time I round that corner and discover he has slipped in there unbeknownst to me. I am greeted by a 10 month old archaeologist-alike, on his tippy toes, smoothing down the inside of the bowl & splashing his chubby fingers in the water (presuming 1st & 2nd born actually flushed it) like he is at the pool.
I usually suppress the urge to a) cry b) be sick & c) run screaming down the hall & into the car for a tetanus. I sometimes leave out an audible whimper and I ALWAYS make a mental note that this must never happen again. But boy child is clever. It’s as if it is sewn into the fabric of his very being that he & this germ infested Pool must be closely acquainted. Now I am a great one for ‘clean dirt’ & all that malarkey, but this? No.
I like to write my little blog pieces over a few days and I got to this point by Thursday morning. Then Thursday night arrived and there was an incident. It wasn’t pretty. It involved an un-flushed toilet, boy child & my upstairs bathroom. In my defence I was packing a bag & thought all was well. But no, a very peculiar sounding splash drew my attention to the bathroom & what I was greeted with will remain embedded in my mind FOREVER. I cannot even write about it.
Now why am I telling you this? I do have a point. I think there comes a point in every parents lives where they think ‘I am failing’. I am quite literally the worst parent out there. This would not happen to so and so. You hear everyone’s stories of calamity, stress & craziness & you think ‘oh dear GOD I am way worse than everyone else……their bad stories are us on a good day. If only they knew………’.
So next time you think that remember this story. Think of me. And the story about the poo ALL OVER MY BATHROOM.
And I will believe there is someone out there with worse stories than me. And if not I will think, hey, if I’m going to fail at this parenting thing…..at least I’m failing better than the rest. And being better than the rest has to count for something. Right?
In other news – and referring back to the panto pic at the top – this weekend we went to see Peter Pan in the Gaiety. It was fantastic. In my youth a weekend in Dublin would have found me shopping on Grafton Street or the like but this time, whilst it found me in the same part of Dublin, the activity was vastly different! Cater to your audience and all that.
We went feeding the ducks in Stephen’s Green following a quick stop at the Disney Store. Incidentally we bought nothing!
(He’s behind you…..oh yes he is. Can you imagine the horror & fear going through a 3 year old brain at this point? #BadOlaf)
(At this point all was well, apart from my Mommy Fear that she would fall in)
(However at this this point I was reaching for my antibacterial spray from my handbag whilst supressing the urge to run screaming back to the hotel and douse her in Milton)
Until the next time,
Cli
xx
