I awoke the other morning to the not so dulcet tones of Kaitlyn screeching. She wasn’t upset, mad or stuck anywhere. She was just awake. It wasn’t even at the top of her lungs, she has quite a large capacity for loud noises and this was certainly not her loudest. We’ve tried to teach her about the perils of making such noises anywhere near a person who has yet to consume their first cup of coffee but to no avail.
It seems she has been conducting secret training sessions because Abigail is also becoming quite proficient at the loud screechy noises. In fact I am wondering if perhaps the student might yet become the master in this ear piercing art.
I guess she could have been getting me back for the previous day’s deviousness. You see with all this screeching and loudness, sometimes it just gets too much for me. I’m a pretty quiet person, I like quietness and I like to have time to think about stuff. That’s a bit hard to do when you’ve got three screeching, babbling, very loud daughters. We also like practical jokes in this family. We’re always teasing each other and having a good laugh. Actually the other week the kids snuck off up to our room to perpetrate a stealth attack. It wasn’t very sneaky or stealthy as it turns out because we could hear them giggling the whole way up there and then whispering at the top of their lungs as they undertook the mix-up of a lifetime.
What they did was they took random items of clothing from James’ closet and put them in mine and vice versa. They did this to our underwear drawers too. I’m not quite sure what they thought would happen. Maybe that Daddy would leave for work the next day wearing Mummy’s shoes and a blouse? Or perhaps I would wonder why my underpants felt a bit weird and my t-shirt was black?
Anyway, they did all of this and then couldn’t wait for the joke to be discovered naturally. They started asking us if we didn’t perhaps want to go and change our clothes (giggle giggle). It was reasonably effective as an annoying ploy though, I’m still finding my clothes in James’ closet and I’m pretty sure we’re missing a pair of shoes too.
Well, back to the previous day’s deviousness. It had been a particularly difficult day and was ending with a shopping trip to Wal-Mart to pick up a few essentials. We were on the final run to the checkout line when we spotted a tank of lobsters. The girls always like to stop and look at them (they think its an aquarium). Emily was off looking at something else and Kaitlyn spotted these ones on her own and was standing there with her face pressed up against the glass right next to a giant lobster. I decided it was now or never, payback for all the harassment of the day had to come swiftly. I sidled up behind her and gave her an almighty pinch on the bum. She jumped and screamed so loud that several people stopped and stared. I was laughing so hard and she was not amused. It seems that the general public were also not very amused. I got several filthy looks and I quickly moved the girls off to the checkouts before anyone decided to report me.
I did a similar thing to Emily a few weeks back. She had crawled into our bed during the late evening while we were watching a show about great white sharks. She said she had had a bad dream and we were letting her cuddle for a bit before sending her off to bed again. Well you know those shows about sharks are pretty dramatic and they always play such enticing music. Enticing for those of us who want to give a good scare that is. They were getting to a particularly dramatic part, the music was at its most heart racing and the shark was going in for the big kill. I also swooped at that moment and underneath the covers I found Emily’s little bare leg. I gave it a sudden squeeze and it had the desired effect. Lots of jumping around, screaming and finally laughing. I am glad she didn’t pee herself with fright.
It’s actually pretty hard to successfully pull off a joke with the kids in the know. A few months ago I had heard about a particularly nasty trick from a very fine upstanding woman I know. I decided this had to be done. The trick is that you take an Oreo cookie (one of James’ favourites) and replace the white cream with toothpaste. We just happened to have some Oreos in the house and I put 4 on a plate and doctored up one of them with the toothpaste. They looked perfect. Then we waited for James to come home. The girls were finding it hard to contain themselves and this was before he had even arrived. I wasn’t sure how this would go once he actually got home.
Soon enough he walked in the house and it was game on. He was grilling that night so he went straight out there and walked past the plate of cookies!! I was very surprised, normally he wouldn’t let any kind of task get in the way of a plate of Oreos. The kids just about burst their boilers and I was sure he had heard them whispering about when he was going to try one and whether he would randomly choose THE one.
Eventually he noticed the cookies and moved in for the kill. The kids held their breaths and leaned in closer to see what would happen. It wasn’t the one. Just as I figured, he couldn’t stop at just one so the others went down just as fast as the first. All except the special one that is. He put that in his mouth and looked at me and said “is this one ok?”. The kids couldn’t get the words out fast enough trying to tell him just what was wrong with his cookie.
Good thing it was Father’s Day that weekend and we were able to give him his presents early so retribution was delayed for a while.
We were shopping in a craft and sewing shop a few weeks back and the kids were being little toe rags. I had explained to them that I needed just a little bit of time to get some supplies together so I could do some quilting. They agreed that this was a wonderful idea and that they would be on their best behaviour. That worked for about the first 5 minutes. I had Abigail in the trolley so she couldn’t really join in except for the fact that the aisles in that shop are so narrow that she could reach out and touch fabric with both hands at once. I was trying to make sure to park her far enough away from anything dangerous while I picked out fabrics. The older kids were getting bored. I asked them to help me pick out colours and that had them interested for a little while.
Pretty soon they were done picking fabrics and wandered off. I had brought my tape measure with me and Kaitlyn had managed to get it off me and was wandering around measuring everything in sight. She would measure something then yell out “hey Mum this pin cushion is 8” and “Look, that flablic is 27”. Oh boy, the shop assistants were going to be on me soon. I only had a little bit more to do. I just needed a few more minutes of quiet. It was at that moment that Kaitlyn came around the corner with the tape measure around her neck “look Mum my neck measures 17” and before I could stop myself I had called out “is that with it pulled tight?”.
I turned around then and there was a very elderly woman walking towards me with the aid of a Zimmer frame and she was not in the slightest bit amused. The look on her face was quite frightening actually. I’m not quite sure if she was disgusted at my comment or the fact that I clearly had no control whatsoever over my children at that moment. I decided it was probably best to get out of there as quickly as possible and away from elderly judgmental woman.
I guess not everyone gets my sense of humour which is sad, they are missing out on a lot of fun. And for the record Kaitlyn didn’t feel hard done by either. Although perhaps the next night when I went to do the late night toilet stop with her and she got such a fright she peed in the bed when I woke her up may not have been an accident? hmm.
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