"Carnage"

Fashioning the 'Birthday Breakfast Table' for Dumps Thursday night now feels like a distant memory!

It's nearing midnight and I sit here tentatively typing on my laptop in bed - the baby breathing heavily beside me and the husband on the other side of him also having a troubled sleep.

I am petrified that I have ahead of me a repeat of what occurred last night.  I'm still in shock, still certainly traumatised, and doubtless still reek of the carnage of the past twenty-four hours.  Literally.

But let me back up a notch.  Last I wrote I was frantically preparing for Dumpie's 6th Birthday Party.  As it turned out, I pulled it off - more or less - but just barely (and certainly wouldn't have without the help of my sister 'Auntie Kenz' and her lovely ex-flatmate who came over to help fashion a riot of six little boys into some semblance of a party).

Suffice it to say it was HARDCORE though I did learn a few things about giving a birthday party for little boys which I thought might be helpful in case anyone is interested:

1.  DO NOT host the party in your home if it is a domicile you intend to keep living in after the party (however if moving vans are already parked in the drive and it's your last night before moving into new digs - then go for it - why not!)

2.  DO NOT give water guns as a party favour in the goody bags.

3.  DO NOT start the party serving up all manner of chocolates, treats and sweets on the heavily laden birthday table (ditto filling the 'pass the parcel' game with layers of cadbury's chocolate buttons)

4.  DO NOT allow the children to leave their seats using whatever means necessary during meal and snack time, thereby lessening the likelihood of finding remnants of popcorn, red velvet cake and apple juice smeared in carpets, mirrors and under sofas for days to come.

5.  DO NOT have the party last for more than an hour and a half.  Two and a half hours is just upping the likelihood of you offing yourself after the last messy little guest leaves.

finally...

6.  DO NOT have boys.

At any rate, I've made it through the birthday circuit for another year and Thursday night is but a hellish memory (I was up till 3am fashioning cupcakes and 'letter biscuits') now superseded by what occurred LAST night (sigh).

Thirty-Six (count 'em) Homemade White Chocolate and Vanilla Cupcakes 

I had just turned the lights out and was desperate to pass out given that i'd had but three hours sleep on Thursday night, and same again on Friday night given that the baby had spent from the hours of 2am until 7am projectile vomiting all over himself, me and the bed due to some sort of sudden viral onset.  Nightmare.

Having been relatively okay the rest of the weekend, I wasn't prepared for the sudden burst of what appeared to be enough pancake batter to feed a family of six issue forth from the baby last night.  I lost it.  I wanted to cry.  I cried out to the husband but he wasn't there.  He had alreadybolted to the toilet, dispensing with what sounded like an entire keg of beer being emptied into the bowl with great force.

I started to laugh manically (this is what happens when confronted with double pukage on 'no-hours-sleep' two out of three nights in a row.

Mopping the sick off myself, the baby and our bed proved a hateful task - almost resulting in a sympathetic puke by yours truly, and by that time the husband was back in bed, moaning with nausea and groaning in agony.

Before I could jump in the shower and clean myself off, I heard a great wail from downstairs, which had gone stereo by the time I finally raced into the boys bedroom to find Egg sat upright in his top bunk, projectile vomiting down through the ladder onto a horrified Dumpie who had been awoken by the heavy stream of puke raining down on his hair, face and whole person.

I started laughing like a maniac again.  How could I not?  It was utterly absurd.  The thought that I was stuck in house with everyone compulsively vomiting at the same time was just too much to mentally digest.

I didn't even know who to help first.  I decided that Egg still had some way to go in the vomiting olympics so I grabbed Dumpie out of bed and attempted to calm and change him.  He was of course by this point hysterical and now fully awake - the horror of what had happened hitting him with each new discovery of vomit on his body.  Poor guy.  j

Anyway I shan't bore you with the details.  I'm sure you can imagine how the night went, how I went, how this house currently smells (despite a whole day spent scrubbing, laundering and de-chunking...) and what my current mental state is.

Obviously the husband and children did not - could not - go to work or school today, so I played day nurse and basically devoted myself to the equivalent of cleaning the loos at Glastonbury.  All day.

I cannot say why I am the only one who didn't succumb to this nasty onslaught.

Oh wait a minute - yes I can.  Somebody has to clean up the mess.

The Birthday Boy and the 'Birthday Brudder' pre-pukage onslaught

"Oooh...I'm Wicked And I'm Laaaaaazy" - David Byrne (...and 'The Husband')

*Notice how the L.W.M. (lazy wife and mother) blends into her natural habitat :)

I just looked down at my wrist to see what time it is and discovered that today, for some inexplicable reason I'm wearing two watches.

(True...it's better than wearing two bra's at the same time - though come to think of it, there is much to be said for a firm bust line for a woman of my advancing age.)

Perhaps I'm subconsciously trying to eek out more time during the day so as to make even a tiny dent in the never ending list of daily errands I have breathing down my neck.

Or maybe I'm just so bone tired and at the end of my rope so as to not even be aware of such things anymore.

Perhaps by wearing two watches my subconscious is trying to (albeit stupidly and pointlessly...mostly the former) trying to give me twice as long today, to get everything done that I need ready by tomorrow - Dumpie's 6th birthday.

For tomorrow around 3:30pm, a gaggle of five and six year old little boys are going to descend upon our house for a birthday party.  Between now and then I have to not only bake thirty cupcakes to bring into Dumpie's class tomorrow morning, but wrap all the presents, clean the house, prepare party games and goody bags, blow up a ton of balloons, decorate the house, do the laundry, prepare a big meal in advance for the half dozen or so guests descending tomorrow night for 'Dumpie's/Dada's Traditional Shared Birthday Dinner Party', AND summon enough energy to conjure up the now traditional 'birthday breakfast table'.

I'm exhausted just thinking about it.

Which might explain why I jumped down the husbands throat this morning when he had the audacity to look up calmly from his breakfast porridge and declare that he'd come to the conclusion that he and I are both (wait for it)...LAZY.

I suppose he may have a point in one respect.  If I hadn't been feeling so 'lazy' this morning I believe there is a very good chance that one of us - or more likely the both of us - would have ended up in A&E.

As it was, I was too tired and disheartened to do more than admonish him for this totally untrue and demoralising statement.  Worst of all, I think he truly believes it.

There is nothing for it but for a fairy to come down right now and do a 'Freaky Friday' on us.

I would love nothing more than to suddenly blink my eyes and find myself sitting in some boring meeting right now, dealing with difficult employees and despairing of the work day ahead of me.

And the husband could:

a) change the dirty nappy the baby has festering at the moment
b) clean for the next four hours alongside the cleaner who has just arrived
c) do the laundry
d) race on foot to the mall half an hour away with cranky/bored/hungry/screaming baby to do last minute grocery/party shopping
e) come home and bake thirty cupcakes, a birthday cake, homemade birthday biscuits, a giant lasagna for tomorrow, and sort out dinner for tonight
f) wrap a dozen presents
g) blow up thirty odd balloons
h) make up the goody bags
i) fetch the children from school
j) clean up the boys bedroom and put away the mountain of clean clothes rising like Vesuvius in the middle of their carpet
k) etc...etc...etc.

For you see, at some point today the husband will get to leave the office and wander off somewhere in Soho to clear his head and get some lunch. And after work, he's meeting a friend for a drink.  Or two.

Not me.  Even as I type this, it's over the prostrate body of a nursing baby on my lap.  And make no mistake: alongside all the tasks listed above, I will be nursing, bathing, feeding, playing with and generally keeping out of harms way the aforementioned baby.  While I carry out all these tasks a chubby nine month old infant will either be on my lap, trying to climb my leg, or hanging off one or both nipples.

With enough coffee and a whole lot of determination I could probably get through the next 48 hours with my sanity intact.  But with the added handicap of a 9 month old joined-at-the-hip baby (who, I might add, has just entered that period of 'making strange' - meaning I can't even venture out of his sight or he'll go mental) I feel like a contestant on one of those crazy Japanese game shows...for which there's not even a decent prize if you win!

Or maybe I'm just lazy :)

"Come On...Hook A Brother Up!"

Nine months old and proud (yes, I am aware he looks like a toddler)

It's nice when you're reminded periodically throughout your marriage, exactly why you chose the partner you did.  Last night was one such time.

Already incredibly good natured about the twelve odd pound Squit who has been bunking down in the marital bed for nine months now (gulp), I am amazed that the husband can still keep a sense of humour when all about him, others are losing theirs (ahem...).

With all the chubby cuteness, precocious comedy value and squidgy fat cheeks to pinch (all the live long day) it is easy to forget that having a(nother) baby means that you willingly forego uninterrupted, delicious sleep for the foreseeable.  And this can make you cranky.  Especially in the middle of the night when said twelve pound squit is slapping you upside the head (why do all my baby boys do this??) demanding to be put back to sleep...courtesy of le nipple.

So, last night I just ignored the plaintive whining, covered my exposed facial parts with a forearm and tried to fall back asleep.  The Squit wasn't having it.  Nor was the husband.

"Come on...hook a brother up," the husband muttered.

I ignored this.

The husband repeated himself, this time with a plaintive tone creeping into his voice.

"Come on...hook a brother up!" 

It was all I could do not to snort out loud, but being bloody exhausted and half asleep, all I could manage at the time was a responding snuffle as I pulled the Squit close and made good on the request.

This morning I reminded the husband what he had said, and he barely remembered it - claiming he had probably been dreaming.

I daresay a new family catchphrase has been born.