Morning Chaos

Sometimes the reality of life with four kids hits me harder than usual. This morning I woke up when Charlie stuck his finger up my nose at 5.30am and nearly gave me a heart attack. Soon to be followed by the lungs on steroids upstairs squawking for attention because of a nappy that had exploded into areas of his room you wouldn’t believe possible. The cat spewed onto my beautiful Turkish rug and our dog, Peanut, had spent the night annihilating the bottom row of christmas decorations off the tree.

All while Rob lay in bed with a hangover from his christmas party last night, which in fairness to him he’s been working his bum off so deserved a big night out.

So my first thought was ‘that will make a good blog post’. Then the realisation dawned that this isn’t really that much different from other days of my week.

With four kids, chaos becomes the norm and anything different is just weird. Being woken by the kids at 6am to sentences like “Did you know Lego doesn’t flush down the toilet” are typical and if there isn’t a bodily function of some description to clean up each morning then it’s just not an average day.

The noise generated from our house is extraordinary and more often than not I can hear my kids from halfway down the street when I get out of the car which sometimes makes me want to keep walking past.

My poor long-suffering neighbour told me a while back that her daughter sleeps with ear plugs in and suggested I put Jude in a room that doesn’t have any adjoining walls. Like it would make any difference, you could hear him from space. The Victorians clearly didn’t have my family in mind when they designed attached terrace houses.

So my solution to this morning’s chaos? “Boys, you know those bells on the christmas tree? Daddy really wants you to sing Jingle Bells to him in bed. Really loudly”.