Wrecking Ball(s)

I’m sorry if I’ve lured you here in the hope you’d see me nude and all Miley Cyrus-esque on a wrecking ball (what a frightening thought) .. but alas, no.

I have vivid childhood memories of how angry my parents used to get when my siblings and I broke or damaged stuff around the house, or the house itself. I remember it happening a lot.

I don’t remember feeling guilty, but I wasn’t particularly fond of getting in trouble. All I can guess is that as a kid it’s hard to put monetary or sentimental value on anything like you do as an adult.

We were destructive. I’m not sure if we were more destructive than other kids our age but now that I have children of my own I’m guessing probably not. Unless destructiveness is just hereditary.

My three sons are like individual wrecking balls, swinging blindly through my beautiful house, somehow dodging all the furniture and stuff I don’t particularly care about and hitting the things I love.

Every single day.

** (Just as a side note from where I am typing this right as we speak my three sons are walking through the garden bed on top of the box hedge that has been struggling for life since we moved in. See?)

Now that we are back in Sydney we’re finally living in a house that we own after many years of renting while we were in the UK. So basically I care more when my kids break stuff than I have done in recent years.

Funnily enough the Landlord of the last house we rented in London was concerned about our dog, so we had to give two months bond instead of one. Rob and I thought this was hilarious because our kids cause a thousand times more damage than our lovely old dog does. I wouldn’t want to rent a house out to us.

Before we left for the UK we spent several years substantially renovating our little old house into a beautiful family home. Unfortunately we left before it was 100% completed so we’ve never lived in it until now. It was well looked after by tenants and before we moved back in we had it repainted so it’s like a freshly renovated 1920’s period home. We love it.

Anyway. It’s only been nine weeks that we’ve been back in our house and the damage my kids have done so far is staggering. If I think about it enough I could probably cry.

During one particularly nasty fight they put a crack right through Luca’s bedroom door.

It looks harmless enough until you see the other side of the door. It’s a solid timber door and is cracked straight through. If you push it gently, you can see through to the other side. I give it a week until they finish it off during another fight, the whole panel will be broken like that scene from ‘The Shining’.

Not satisfied with that they also smashed the front door.

Both these doors are original to the house. So they’ve been happily opening and closing since 1920-something. In less than three months my kids have done more damage than our tenants did in the six years we had it rented out and probably even the past eighty years or so since it was built.

It doesn’t stop there.

Rob and I always knew we’d never spend any money on good furniture until we moved back in, so when we knew we were moving back to Sydney we furnished the whole house for the first time since we were married in 2001. We were still using bedside tables in our room that I bought with my ex-boyfriend in 1993 so it gives you an idea of where we were at.

It was so nice to have a freshly painted house with beautiful furniture we’d been waiting to buy for more than a decade.

That was two months ago.

Look at my sofa now ….

I’m fairly sure most of that is snot.

Obviously it’s my fault. I must have forgotten to teach my sons to use tissues, they just throw themselves on the chaise lounge and wipe their faces on that. Jude used to wipe his nose down the dogs back so I guess it’s an improvement on that. Or maybe it’s just that Peanut is still in quarantine.

I know that worse is to come .. that although I have a rule that no person under the age of 40 is allowed to even look at Mummy’s special lounge room it’s only a matter of time until my beautiful black velvet wing back chairs are violated by one of my ratbag kids. I have nightmares about it.

They’ve also broken all the fly screens on the rear windows. Luca has snapped eight branches off my treasured miniature frangipani and one of them drew all over my new coffee table before taking a huge chunk out of the side of it.

All in less than 63 days.

And I know this is just the beginning …. just.the.beginning.