Some days you just have to dance it out

Some days after school are easy. 

Everyone piles in the front door, bags are unpacked, food is devoured & homework is finished. Then more food is devoured before they all scatter off to fill the time void between snack two & dinner time. Minimal bickering & maximum amusement. Will & Blake scamper off outside to ride their bikes or jump around like lunatics all over the back yard. Ben, Rianan & Jack pull out the UNO cards & see how many rounds they can each win before it's discovered that Rianan has been cheating by sliding a few extra cards under the couch so she can declare "uno!" first.

Other days are not so easy. 

When everyone pushes their way through the front door like a herd of stampeding elephants, bags are dumped in bedroom doorways or along the hallway. The kitchen is filled with too many kids all vying to find the best after school snack, then stomping away when there is only the usual's on offer still. When getting their homework started, let alone finished is harder than trying to devour a bar of chocolate undetected in this house filled with minions. What would normally take ten minutes to complete, will instead span over an hour painfully filled with moans, complaints, messy & spaced out writing or staring at the same pages in the same chapter of their book. And that is just the older three.

Then there's Blake, Will & Clay, who will spend their time either a) running, screaming, jumping their way through the house until someone gets knocked over & trampled on the unforgiving floor tiles. Proceeding to burst my ear drums with their screams, before turning to retaliate against whoever they think is guilty of sending them sprawling to the floor.

Or b) Blake & Will spend the next hour or so annoying each other until I can't stand it any longer. While Blake & Will have me distracted with their arguing, Clay will quietly walk through each bedroom, opening drawers & pulling out every shred of nicely folded clothes he can reach. 

Before I know it, 5pm has ticked over, dinner isn't even thought of yet let alone cooking away. The house looks like an abandoned clothes warehouse after a cyclone has torn through & we've all given up on any legitimate attempt on the homework front. Forget about baths, at this stage the kids will be lucky to get anything more than spaghetti on toast before being shipped off to bed at my soonest possible convenience...after tidying from the storm that wiped me out flat.

Half an hour into yesterday's after school gauntlet & I could see the sides beginning to crumble. While the bags were put away, empty stomachs were filled & homework was done (because there was hardly any required) the disagreements & arguments were starting to come thick & fast. Add in several emails & phone calls that demanded my attention & could not wait, meant that everything going on out of my little bubble had to wait. By the time I put the phone down & decided the rest could be done after the crazy had passed, there were shoes everywhere, clean & dirty clothes littered the house mimicking behind the scenes of a fashion runway show, Clay was cranky, Ben, Jack & Blake were filthy from the waist down after playing soccer together & a lone empty fry pan was still waiting on the cold stove top.

I issued orders like a drill sergeant - "pick up those shoes"

"dirty clothes in the laundry now"

"put the clean clothes on the couch with the rest of the washing"

"bags in rooms"
"balls outside!"
The minions responded like a class of hyped four year old's coming down from an intense sugar rush.   

There was only one way to rescue what was shaping up to be an evening from hell & the breaker to demolish the last whispers of sanity that were stopping me from going all exorcist mummy.

Ignore the time & turn the music up.

You can't hear the petty little arguments, whinging & dobbing if they are drowned out with only the best playlist selections from the iPod on a volume level just bordering too loud.

It was the best decision made all day. It didn't take long before the boys turned the Xbox off, Rianan came out of her room (after escaping in there for some peace & quiet) & the younger three channeled their destructive energy into dancing like maniacs. While I was chopping up chicken, dancing & singing my heart out to Clay who had joined me in the kitchen, the other five had set up the coloring in gear on the table & were all happily getting along, talking, encouraging & laughing together, with the occasion dance off thrown in for good laughs.

Before we were even a quarter of the way through the playlist, dinner was cooked & the table was swiftly cleared & then set, on my first request, ready for the plates & bowls to be distributed. Knock knock jokes were told & the best things about our days were shared as we slowly finished eating. The tension & frustration that was flooding us all not forty minutes earlier had completely evaporated. Baths & showers were done, with the older minions doing a quick but thorough {enough} tidy around the house while the younger three were bathed & prepared for bed, not that much later than their usual bedtime either.

By the end of the night everyone went to bed in a good mood & I didn't feel like crap for spending the last three hours nagging & yelling while serving up a less than substantial dinner. I'm fairly certain that I'm not alone when I say I would much rather listen to the likes of Paramore, The Smiths, Ed Sheeran & Pink {to name a few}, than give myself a headache & everyone else immunity towards the nagging tones in my voice, topping off with foul moods all round.  

Next time our evening - or morning, is beginning to morph into a train wreck I'm going straight to that magic button, play.

Boys & their toys

Have boys, they said. 

It'll be fun, they said.

{ok, we didn't get a say in the whole boy:girl ratio, but work with me here}

Boys are awesome. Our boys are awesome. They are loud. They are hilarious. They are adventurous & cute as puppies when they are up to no good. You know that saying 'silence is golden'? Nuh-uh. If the house is quiet it's a telling sign they are up to no good...True. ALL true.

Another truth about boys - they make your toilet smell like an alley behind the local pub. No lie. 

We do toilet checks on the hour every hour - or after each pit stop, to comply with standard OH&S recommendations. A wet toilet floor is a slippery toilet floor, & no one wants to land in someone else's pee. Or even your own pee.

I was aware that the younger (& not so younger) male species may need reminding to refine their aim. I was prepared for drips on the toilet seat & few a strays on the floor. What I was not prepared for was the proverbial showers that would dry in yellow droplets all over the seat & lid. Neither was I expecting to regularly find Lake Bonney on our toilet floor. I kid you not. I had no idea that so much wee could come from such a small person in one trip.

With four boys taking regular jaunts to the lavatory, one of whom has a low capacity, hyperactive bladder meaning he is nearly always busting straight off the mark. Some days I clean the toilet floor more than I load the washing machine.

Over the last four months or so it seemed to exacerbate, likely due to the school holidays & with now four boys using the commode on a rotating door basis. Fed up with having to resort to a towel to clean up the initial mess, going through rolls of toilet paper & bottles of disinfectant on a weekly basis I called all the boys to a toilet door meeting. Mum was serious.

Rule #1
When you go to the toilet, hold your penis! 
Many times I had busted Jack just thrusting his hips forward & then refining his aim as he went. Which was never successful, & often by the time his aim was on target he'd run out steam, so to speak. By then it was too late.

Rule #2
Put the toilet seat UP!
You can't drip wee on the toilet seat if it isn't in your way. {I didn't bother asking them to put it back down once finished. I learnt long ago to pick my battles & right now putting the seat down is very low on the list of parenting warfare.}

Rule #3
Watch where you are weeing.
How do you know if you are meeting water with water when you are staring at the ceiling or looking over your shoulder? 
To reiterate - hold & watch, from beginning to end.

Rule #4
If you make a mess, clean it up. If you need help, ask.


We went back to basics, even though we had covered all of these back at the beginning when they first began running around in jocks. With these rules {verbally back in place} I was hopeful. 
Hopeful my days of soggy socks from stepping in some one's wee were over. Wiping seats, behind lids, walls & floors with disinfectant could be done less than five times a day. Minimum.
For a few days it helped. Lake Bonney never returned & but for a few splashes here & there, it seemed they were taking their responsibilities as boys seriously. Then every now & again I would find a puddle returned, or the beginnings of a yellow shower over a seat that hadn't been lifted. I was able to rule out Ben from the offending list. That still left Jack, Blake & Will. It appeared each of them were guilty, in random order, of breaking one {or all of} the toilet commandments.

Through constant reminding & follow up checks, we're slowly getting to a clean & visitor safe lavatory. Most of the time anyway. If they make a mess they do clean it up - to the best of their ability. The seat & lid now both stay down, so if they need to pee they lift both instead of aiming over the seat. Every boy is holding their hose & watching where they are aiming - a big win.

Seriously, I never imagined getting boys to use & leave the toilet in a clean state would be such an on going drama. We were not lazy with their toilet training or have low standards of personal care & hygiene. It just seems that they are too busy & find the need to vacate their bladder a time consuming interruption to their days. So it was done as quickly & as haphazardly as possible. After all there are soccer balls to kick, bikes to jump & scooters to ride. Who has time to go to the toilet anyways.

In a predominantly XY gene'd large family two toilets are not a luxury.

They are a necessity.

Dirty seven letter words

So, there was meant to be five more posts preceding this one. NaBloPoMo & all that. What can I say? My days all just filled up with stuff & any spare time was not spent here. 

I believe I left off with a post on the destruction of boys bedrooms & whether to leave it to the little stinkers to clean up their own trial of toy carnage & desecration, or had it exceeded their attention span limits. For the carpet to ever see daylight again was it up to me to rectify the minions mayhem mess monstrosity.   

That post kicked off the motivation I needed & the next day life was breathed into those nylon fibers. No search party was needed, however if one was launched they would have had better luck digging through our Mount Washmore searching for my bodily remains. 

It's been mentioned here & there that our washing is of epic proportions. Epic. Monstrous. Colossal. Incessant. Infinite.

Infinite. 

Shoot me now. 

Or employee a personal full time laundress. 

Neither are feasible options, so instead you get to read about it. It's been a long time coming, this post. I've held off as long as I could. Much like the folding. 

To think I used to complain when we had three children. Man those days ain't got nothing on us now. 

I would rather change another dirty, butt covering, stinker than fold {& put away} another basket of clean clothes. That is just how over folding clothes I am. Desperate. Dirty nappy changing desperate.

Keeping up with the dirty washing that our laundry attracts faster than iron fillings to a magnet isn't the issue. Sort & separate, chuck in the machine, scoop of washing powder, turn it on, press start. Done. 

The epitome of laziness, our drier is used just as frequently as the washing machine. Once those warm, clean, minion covering clothes are smelling fresher than Clay just out the bath, is when the massive aversion & antipathy kicks in & all of a sudden the small task of folding that one basket is just too much. So begins the pattern of wash, dry, dump. Dump zone being the couch (by day three, plural) in the rarely occupied second lounge room. Of course, once more than three loads - one or two days worth, piles up the task is now impossible. 

Dishes I can do on a never ending cycle, making sandwiches, cleaning floors, making beds, changing nappies, keeping little people in optimum health, all in a days work. 

But that washing. 

Every seven to fourteen days, three hours are sucked into that multi-colored, cotton blend, floral breeze scented, time warp known as folding.

Clearly this pattern isn't ideal. I was going to say it isn't working for us, but somehow it is, given this has been the modus operandi for the last year or so...okay three years might be more accurate. Minor details aside, it must be working on some impractical level. 

In a stepford wives world the washing would be folded & put away before it ever had a chance to cool down after its hasty exit from the dryer. Scratch that, the washing would have been folded immediately upon it's removal from the washing line. Their dining table would never double as a folding table. 

Alas my life is not perfect & our dining table has probably had just as many folded clothes piles as hot dinners graced upon it's scratched surface. 

I'm certain that maintaining a habit of immediately folding & putting away the clean clothes would make the whole washing debacle less torturous, but it's just so monotonous. I have better things to do with my time than stand there & fold washing several times a day. 

So people, I need your tips. Or just a fair old shaming for airing my lazy laundry habits. How can I kick the dump n ignore habit - do I just go cold turkey, suck it up & fold those darn clothes before they touch another surface?

   

Are you in category A: wash, dry, fold, put away. Or do you join me in the naughty corner over at category B: wash, dry{er}, dump. Only to commence the folding process once the clothes pile becomes a serious OH&S issue. (Note the omitted mention of putting the folded clothes piles away.)  

Category A or category B? Swimming or drowning?

Oh & those dirty seven letter words I was referring to they are of course - washing, folding, sorting, put-away. 

As an added bonus here's a nine letter word for you - groundhog day.

 

   

S.O.S - Send Out Search (party)

The boys rooms are a mess. 

M.E.S.S.

Despite sending the boys in their rooms for what is meant to be a ten minute quick tidy up - which won't bring miracles but will help their rooms look less like a toy catalog has vomited up everywhere. 

{Kaylee Clean Your Room by Diane McAffee}

Dress ups are on the floor, stripped off clothes hanging all over the dress up tub, puzzle pieces tipped out with the boards discarded randomly on every surface. Cars, trucks, diggers (front end loaders to be specific), Lego, super heroes & their web shooting accessories litter the floor just waiting for the next unobservant, tender footed casualty to walk in & fall victim to their small painful tactics.

Robe doors left open, shoes flung to the floor - not a matching pair in sight. Coat hangers dropped to the bottom of the robe, pillows shoved on the shelves from a previous two minute clean up during the ten minute room clean. At least something was done, other than sitting down playing in the scene of destruction. 

That right there is the source of my dilemma. Playing. 

Their bedrooms is the one place they can claim as their own. I try not to enforce too many restrictions - I don't expect them their bedrooms to be Pinterest worthy every minute, if rarely at all. But I think I do have the expectation that I should be able to walk in, without first needing to cautiously clear a path with my feet before proceeding any further.

It is the first area they can go to & let their imagination carry them away. Or anywhere in the house, because it's a pigs might fly kind of day when there isn't a primary colored something-or-other along with several super hero emblem toting figurines & a collection of anything transport based found in every room. Including our en suite. Not that I have a problem with this, I'm merely just stating a fact.

Often they are asked to clean up after themselves. Specifically, say, if they were playing with Lego, only to abandon it minutes after dumping the entire tub out {to find one wheel} then dashing off to play superheroes/shops/hide & seek...or party crash the kitchen for more food. But sometimes when they are all playing nicely or I can see they are in wrapped up in their play based world I leave them. Play is the most important aspect of childhood - who am I to interrupt.

But it's all gotten a little out of hand. What started out as a few bits n pieces left out has morphed into something bigger than any four or six year old could handle. Now when they are asked to tidy their rooms it's more of a 'damage control' scenario. We're working off a triage based system - just make it safe to enter.

So my spur of the moment decision to sign up to NaBloPoMo - National Blog Posting Month, & take on the challenge of blogging every day for the month of November with BlogHer is really ill timed on my part. With the clean washing piled up on the couch waiting to be folded, two bedrooms suffering in the aftermath of Hurricane Blake & Cyclone Will (plus a Jack induced toy Tsunami), toilet floors to be cleaned up & moped after every visit from Will, who believes he is now big enough now to bypass the potty & use the toilet. Even though his legs are still a little to short to enable him to reach the intended destination, requiring the utmost caution & vigilance when approaching the loo. We've also been organizing kindergarten fundraising events & birthday parties, plus plain ol' tiredness & can't be effed procrastination disease, which have also put me behind the eight ball. 

So I don't know, do I keep the responsibility to clean up their rooms on their shoulders, even though it has reached cataclysmic proportions. At least for the next month while the to-do list is longer than our grocery shopping list. Or do I make it a priority, spend a whole (school) day bringing everything back to Mother in Law visiting conditions, then put the onus back on the minions to not let their rooms reach devastation status again.

I guess if you don't hear from me for a period exceeding forty eight hours then you could hazard a guess that I ventured into the danger zone & a search party is required.