I am posting from a place of serious tiredness today. I am not entirely sure my brain is functioning in any sort of what you would call ‘normal’ capacity lol.
Last night my brother took ill and had to go to hospital and his 3 and 4 year old daughters came to stay with us. I didn’t know this had happened until I checked my phone when I finished work at 5pm. Then I raced to get the shopping for dinner done and got home to enjoy the onslaught! Honestly I don’t know how my brother and his girlfriend do it. Major props to them. I adore these girls I truly do, but seriously they are cheeky, devious little ninjas who will always find the most inappropriate thing to play with and make the biggest mess possible.
I arrived home and immediately asked what was in E’s (3 year old’s) hair. Apparently she had decided her hair needed to be shampooed so got into the shower, pumped the heck out of the shampoo bottle and smeared it all through her hair.
It was like this! She went full Shia LaBeouf on me!
The she decided she wanted to play a game that was housed in a ziplock bag so instead of asking for help like a normal person she chewed the bag until she could get to the parts inside it! Seriously you can’t make this stuff up. Her sister A (4 years old) was actually pretty well behaved this visit, I didn’t have to talk to her too much for misbehaving except when she started acting out because E was getting attention for being naughty. A has been pretty well behaved at our place since she found out that if we threaten the time out corner we mean it lol. But she was still trying it on a little bit and not doing what she was told and whining a lot and interrupting and ignoring/pretending not to hear you if you were asking her to do stuff she didn’t want to – you know, normal kid stuff.
Back to E for while… apparently E has spontaneously developed a fear of the toilet. Before I came home she had already weed somewhere and after I got home I was desperately attempting to wrangle them both and throw together homemade pizza, E was playing with the doll house then climbed up on the kitchen bench. I told her to get down, there was some back and forth, but in the end she did it, then I see watery stuff everywhere. It took me a bit to figure it out (I actually figured I must have spilled something whilst cooking because why would I think the kid peed on the kitchen counter?), I realised there was more watery stuff on the floor and I could literally trace it to her. I talked to her about it (she is advanced for a 3 year old and truly knows she should be using the toilet) and asked why she didn’t go to the toilet to be told she “didn’t want to” and that she liked to wee in her pants. So we clean up her and everywhere she has been since she peed and I go back to making pizza. In the end something that usually takes me 10-15 mins to throw together took an hour by which time they were taking turns attempting to steal things from the pantry and fighting with each other and whinging about being hungry. Again normal kid stuff haha. Then there was the whole A standing on the table throwing a basketful of toys around the place whilst screaming with joy. That was so entertaining!
Pizza is cooked and even though they both adore pizza there is all this kerfuffle and a bunch of cajoling to get them to sit down to eat it. E is actually placed in her seat whilst claiming she doesn’t like pizza because it is too spicy. I go to the kitchen and debate with myself whether to try and make my mini pizza or just eat their scraps. Mum convinces me we should do the former, so we embark on that mission. Minutes later E comes running through the house with a piece of pizza flying about in her hand, I catch her and lead her back to the table whilst wondering if it is legal to restrain a child until they finish dinner. I finish making my pizza in record time and bung it in the oven. The girls are behaving because you know… food. My pizza is done and Mum and I ask Dad to keep an eye on them so we can eat.
Haven’t even gotten one bite out of my pizza before hearing Dad yelling. Apparently his view of ‘watching’ the girls is somewhat literal and he is barking orders from his chair whilst E merrily dances on the kitchen bench. I get her down and rowse on her, turns out they have finished their pizza. I give them a second slice. I decide to gobble down my pizza whilst watching a bit of netflix or something and go hide in Hubby’s office. Only to find that his recent rebuilding of the computer has meant everything works weird. So I sit alone quietly in the office eating my pizza and ignoring the thunder of little feet for awhile until I feel sane enough to emerge and help Mum and Hubby (who is now home and has fixed said computer issues).
The girls are bathed. E’s shampoo is properly removed from her hair. A decided to get her hair all wet in the bath so her hair is all messed up too. Both girls have very long hair, A’s is waist length and E’s isn’t far behind. When you have two little girls with very long blonde hair and a serious tanty throwing hate of the hairbrush you wish long and hard that they were yours and you could just shave it all off hahaha. After many months of work with them I am now the only person in the family (including their parents) that they will reasonably behave with whilst getting their hair done. I put in the ‘magic spray’ (AKA detangle spray) which ‘magics away all the knots’ and then when we are all done I do their hair very nicely (usually plaits because that is the best hair style to avoid knots for many hours hahaha) and we all look at their hair and ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh’. I still get some tantys during the process and so it can be a very long process. E wasn’t too bad because she was really tired by this point. She was complaining about it and I said she could go to bed as soon as I got her plaits in which she apparently took literally because about 10 minutes after I was done we found her in bed fast asleep.
A took longer. She is not into bed time and fights it like a pro! Her hair took a while because it was seriously bad guys. There were parts in there I thought I might have to cut out because they were matted with whatever she had managed to get stuck in it, but with a mixture of part conditioner part water I managed to work it all out. I plaited her up and then the had multiple stories and was put to bed, then put to bed again, and again. This happened a few times before I stood outside the door and sent her back to bed the second I heard her get up. Then she took to yelling out, she got in trouble for this and I told her if she woke her sister she would be in the corner for a long time. Eventually she drifted off at some ungodly hour at which point the clean up commenced and I poured myself into bed sometime around midnight.
In the morning I wake up to a massive crashing sound and E screaming blue murder. I come out to find Mum cleaning up her cup of tea after E apparently climbed up onto the kitchen bench (seriously she is obsessed) and when told to get down she somehow Chuck Norris’d Mum’s tea all over the kitchen.
This was after she peed in Mum’s wardrobe, I’ve heard of people peeing in wardrobes when drunk, but this was the first time I have heard of it happening because someone was looking at pretty jewelry.
E and A then proceeded to argue much of the morning over normal kid things like stealing each others chocolate milk and whatnot.
Then they were playing nicely on Mum’s piano until E wet herself and the antique stool *facepalm* at which point I put her in the corner. She screamed and cried and I got her calmed down and asked her if she understood why I was going to put her in the corner. She said because she didn’t go to the toilet, I agreed and reminded her that I had said if she did it again that she would go into the time out corner. She went quietly, but tried to make a game of it and got pretty sullen when she realised I wasn’t having any of that. After her 3 minutes in the corner I told her she could come out and speak to Nan and she apologised for weeing on her chair.
Within 10 minutes we found her just as she was hopping off the kitchen bench again with a little bottle. Turns out it was nail polish remover and she wanted to ‘play’ with it. SIGH.
By this time it was 12pm and I had to go to work so I wished my Mum well, kissed and hugged the girls and came to work. I truly do adore my nieces through all of this, yes they can be naughty and cheeky and cause great messes and damage, but I love them so much and often get a lot of giggles out of their antics 🙂
I have no clue what transpired after I left or what condition I will find my parents and the house in when I return hahaha. GULP!
Ditch the Bun 