So....are you thinking of having children?

Excuse Harried Mum's long silence.  We've been busy!

Anyway, I felt compelled to post, as a lovely friend appears to be contemplating children.  Whilst she is doing that, I thought I would share some vignettes that she might find illuminating.

- Lunatic Child drew an enormous 3-eyed alien on the hall stairs.  In sharpie pen.  Because 'paper is boring'.  Of course it is.  Prior to confessing the crime, he tried to blame Trouble.

- Lunatic Child refused to practice his lines in the school Christmas play.  Instead, he used only the words 'fart', 'bum' and 'poop'.  As in...'The farts told the poopyheads that the bum was born at last.'  The teachers literally had steam coming out of their ears.  The times.  They were bad.  Harried Mum had to sit on a small children's chair in the classroom at a crisis parent/teacher meeting and receive a stern talking to for being a deficient working mother.  I note that on the day, however, he rose to the occasion and 'The angels told the shepherds that the saviour was born at last.'  A teacher was hovering about one inch away from him at all times.

- Trouble knocked over the TV and broke the screen in what I can only assume was an attempt to change the channel to Peppa Pig.  We are now on TV number 3 since moving to the UK.  The one we brought from the US didn't work.  Number 2 is a casualty.  We're hoping the 3rd time is the charm.

- Our sofa is basically a hazardous waste zone.  At any time, you can expect to find: a desiccated apple core, peanut butter, cracker crumbs, jam, snot, chocolate and/or sticky puddles of dried juice.  Perhaps we should clean more often, you say in a superior tone...Yes, well.  You can just bugger off, Judgy McJudgy-Pants.

- The cat has Stockholm Syndrome.  She cannot stay away from the children, even though she is constantly subjected to all that you might imagine a 5 and 2 year old boy would do to a cat.

- On the other hand, there is nothing better than when Trouble throws his arms around you, gives you a huge hug and a sloppy, open-mouthed kiss, looks at you with his big hazel eyes, and....smacks you across the face as hard as he can.

- Or, when Lunatic Child crawls into bed with you in the middle of the night because he's had a bad dream...and then you spend the rest of the night trying to sleep while he starfishes in the middle of the bed, you get prodded by his bony arse and elbows and receive a face full of skunky 5 year old breath.

I love them so fiercely.  They make me so crazy.  We are always tired.  They are our joy.  They drive us to tears.  It's not for everyone, and I can really understand that.  But, for us, we don't miss (too often...or at least, not every day) life without them.  Besides, if I didn't have kids, I'd have nothing to blog about but my boring lawyer job and Fun Daddy's annoying habits, and who would want to read about that?