My Daughter Is (Temporarily) A Vampire….

Tags

Accidents, Bruises, Bumps, fun, funny, holidays, Humour, kids, Parenting, Safety, Scooters, Skateboarding, stay-at-home Dad

“Daddy, can I have a cuddle?”

Now that’s a (hopefully) funny headline, and obviously I’m joking because vampires don’t really exist – right, right? – but this is something of a cautionary tale, and an example of very, very poor parenting on my part.

The kids are currently into having fun on wheels – my son is in love with his skateboard that he picked up at a brocante (a second hand market/car boot sale/fleamarket for readers not familiar with that term) for a mere four euros. He tries to skate everywhere on it, even inside the house, much to my annoyance. Whereas my daughter is all wrapped up in her scooter, a metal-framed pink thing on two wheels that may have princesses on it. Or pink fluffy dogs.

Or unicorns. I forget which.

Anyway, so they are in love with these wheeled-wonders and they task me, each time we venture out, of finding them what they call ‘ramps’. These ramps must be gently sloping tarmacced areas, can go on for any distance but crucially must be smooth and downhill. If they aren’t smooth then my son generally approaches me, skateboard stuck under one arm, and explains to me, in detail and at length, what the problem is. Generally if there are holes in the road/ramp with a diameter in excess of 1mm, he will not be happy. Likewise is there is too much in the way of old, dead branches he will request that I ‘Make myself useful and clear it away’.

My daughter, on the other hand, does not care about holes, branches, people, dogs, tanks, or aliens. She just gets on her scooter and off she goes. She’s the same in swimming pools – while you are patiently trying to explain the best way to enter the water, she’s already jumped in from one of the diving boards, screaming ‘Banzaiiii!!!’ as she does so and almost giving the ladies in the water-trampolining club a group coronary in the process.

She’s seven by the way.

So this week, as it’s the holidays, I’ve been doing my best to find them great ramps. I found one, a great one, a super smooth one.

I wished I’d never found it.

You see I forgot the first rule of parenting when it comes to doing anything with kids involving wheels – always use a helmet. I didn’t bring them with me, as I thought, naively, that it would be OK, nothing would go wrong. But it wasn’t OK, and it did go wrong…

The kids had been up and down this ‘mega-ramp’ quite a few times, with no problems whatsoever. In fact we’d just decided that we’d had enough and would go and look for another, even better one. the kids just wanted one more go, and looked at me with that look – you know the one – and so I relented and off they went, for one last blast.

My daughter came hurtling down – sans helmet of course – then made a kind of ‘Whoah’ sound and wobbled to the left. Then she slid, and fell completely off her scooter, just sliding along the floor on her front, and then immediately sat up. I thought she was OK at first. Until she started screaming, then looked at me and I was forced to watch in horror as her forehead turned green. I’ve never seen anything like it before, and I never want to see anything like it again. It was like some bizarre special effect, only it was real and it was on my daughter’s head.

I quickly bundled her into the car and we raced off to the hospital, stopping to pick her mum up from work on the way, and getting her checked out by the on-site medical professional while we were there, who thought she was fine but ‘You never know….’. My daughter had regained some of her composure by this point, even with what appeared to be a small planet stuck to the front of her head, and was able to count all fingers held up in front of her and let us know that she was hungry.

We were seen relatively quickly at the hospital, they checked her over, admonished me for neglecting the head-protection, and then let us go after a brief period of monitoring, advising us to watch her for the next 24 hours and return if anything was ‘off’. Happily she’s recovered well, only feels pain if she touches her bump and is very happy with the bottle of perfume that Daddy bought her to assuage his guilt (it didn’t work 100%).

However as the swelling has progressed it’s made her face take on a distinctly disturbing aspect, changing the way her eyes appear, and making her look, well, a bit creepy. A bit like one of the vampires from Buffy The Vampire Slayer, truth be told. It’s gotten so unnerving that we’ve even mentioned using garlic, crucifixes and holy water on her if she answers back, or doesn’t eat all her food.

I also asked her if she wanted me to take the mirror out of her room as ‘It’s useless for you now’. She even plays into the ‘part’ and will happily chase you around the house, hissing and baring her teeth. She even faux-chomped my neck last night, which was quite the most bizarre sensation I’ve ever experienced, and not something I want to repeat, ever.

She’s been a very, very good sport about it, and I’m surprised at how little it bothers her, as she can be very self conscious at times (she pointblank refuses to have any form of physical contact with myself or her mother outside the school gates). The swelling will go down, very soon, hopefully.

And in future I will make sure that where there are wheels, there’s always helmets too.

And soon, very soon, I’m sure I’ll be able to stop sleeping with a wooden stake under my pillow…

Honey, We Cloned Ourselves…

Tags

children, Family, funny, Humor, Humour, Life, Relationships, stay-at-home Dad

Any excuse to feature a photograph of Stormtroopers

The missus has been working away a lot recently, last week in Birmingham in the UK and this week in Cannes in France. Birmingham to Cannes – that’s roughly the equivalent of one week in a Thailand prison vs one week in a…well, one week in Cannes.

This working away malarkey has led to me being on my own-some with the kids. Or should I say ‘kid’. You see at the moment my daughter is going through a somewhat annoying phase where she prefers the company of females. This is despite me raising her for the last six years. Therefore, to avoid unnecessary upset (for both her and myself), when my partner works away she stays with her grandma – or ‘mamie’, as they prefer to be called in France.

If I’m honest I really can’t complain too much, after all as anyone reading this who is a parent will know – or anyone with half a brain cell for that matter – one kid is much easier than two. I do still miss the kisses and cuddles at bedtime though, I’m not a completely cold-hearted monster.

So I’ve have had  lot more time recently to spend just with my son, and this has led me to reflect on how similar we are to each other. It’s something that’s been pretty obvious for the last few years – or maybe since ‘day one’ if I really think about it – but these last few days have really hammered it home.

He loves reading, he loves having a laugh, he loves video games, he loves to draw, he loves films, he daydreams (a lot) he’s annoying, he whines (a lot) , he’s lazy (very) and sometimes I suspect he wouldn’t be able to find his glasses if they were sat right on the end of his nose. He’s also got a very high-pitched voice that can cut through any other conversation with all the effortless precision of a dentist’s drill.

Yup. He is me.

Obviously not all those characteristics still hold true for me. I’m nowhere near as lazy as I was when I was younger, but this is something that we often lose as we get older. Well, some of us anyway (I’m specifically thinking of my father here, who wouldn’t get out of bed even if his house was on fire, and whose catchphrase was ‘No’, usually in response to the question ‘Can you help me with *insert generic favour here*’ but more often in response to the question ‘Are you physically active?’.)

He even sits to read the same way that I do – curled up in a corner, one legged crossed over the other, completely lost in a far-away world. We both enter creative ‘fugues’ as well now and again – him much more often than me. This is where he becomes obsessed with creating some new thing, drawing some new creature or painting some new portrait. He will not be distracted from his goal until he is spent/it is finished (whichever comes first).

This, obviously, leads us to my daughter. Who is a perfect clone of her mother.

Organised. Strong-minded. Laid back. Friendly. Easy going. Mature.

Stubborn.

As.

Hell.

Yes, unfortunately with this one I think a little bit of me slipped in during the ‘cloning procedure’.

Apart from that though, she is just a mirror image. 2/5 scale size mini-mum, if you like. This also means that she has a tendency to mother her older sibling, something that he used to find annoying, but which he is relying on and appreciating more and more (see: lazy.) Needs his shoes? His sister brings them. Needs more tomato ketchup on his chips? It’s already in her hands. His glasses are dirty? She’s cleaning them. Getting picked on by a bigger kid? She’ll beat them up for him (this last one is a joke, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out to be true one day.)

Yes, we’ve cloned ourselves quite effectively, and can see ourselves in our kids each day. More and more as they get older.

He has blonde hair though.

Just like our old milkman did back in England.

I’m just saying….

My Garage Renovation – Before And After…

Tags

D.I.Y, Design, exercise, Fitness, funny, Home Improvement, Humor, Interior decorating, Renovation, stay-at-home Dad, Working Out

Bit of before and after malarkey. I’ve got my exercise equipment set up in my garage and I got tired of working out in a gloomy, cobweb-infested cave, so decided to give it a face-lift.

 

 

I’ve fitted a material ceiling and will see long-term how that works out with regards to insects/dust but it gives it a fresh, airy look for now. If when I am doing pulls up I come back down with a face full of arachnids then I will fit a proper ceiling.

 

 

Hanging/floating chair in place so that me or the missus have a nice quiet place to come and read/nap/avoid kids.

Strip lighting in various places for when I’m working out at night/evening as the current one bulb is not up to the task of illuminating the whole room.

Picture is there so that while doing curls I can escape in my mind to a sunny place and imagine myself diving off the deck into the cool, fresh water (5 Euro in the reduced section of Aldi’s shit aisle). Took me a couple of weeks just doing the odd hour here or there, see what you think to the results … (apologies for quality of pics, I have a pauper’s phone).

 

Trapped In The Negative Zone..

Tags

Family, funny, Humor, kids, Life, Parenting, Relationships, stay-at-home Dad

 

All I ever seem to do at the moment is say negative things to the kids. And I don’t mean I’m just hurling abuse at them and saying nasty things – well, perhaps a bit. No, I mean all I’m ever saying is ‘no’ or ‘stop that’ or ‘give up’ or ‘put that down’ or…

The problem, for us anyway, is that they refuse to learn by their mistakes, so instead of understanding that what they have done is wrong, followed by them stopping doing it, they just do it again. It may not be that exact day, but they will inevitably repeat it.

Hitting each other, leaving rubbish everywhere, not doing what they are told, hitting each other, not tidying their rooms, interrupting people when they are talking, fidgeting ALL THE TIME, talking too loudly, being disrespectful, hitting each other…

I’ve been working a lot recently, in a travel and tourism office, and so my partner has had the kids to herself full time at the weekends, as tourism offices have family-unfriendly hours. This has led to her experiencing what I am only too familiar with: being bored by the sound of your own voice.

It’s generally after lunch that it hits you, after you have spent all morning with the kids, telling them to stop doing whatever it is they shouldn’t be doing. You sort of step outside of your body and start hearing what you sound like: a stuck record. A stuck record that just drones on and on and on in a Yorkshire accent.

I know some people may be thinking things like ‘why don’t you try to be nicer’ and ‘it’s your own fault’ and ‘what’s Yorkshire?’. And I wish I could be nicer and I know it’s my own fault to a degree, but I’m just not that sort of a parent. Oh and Yorkshire is a county in England.

Sometimes I see ‘positive reinforcement’ parents babbling away at their kids, in soothing tones, talking about ‘unkind words’ and ‘unkind hands’ and calling their kids things like ‘angel’ and ‘darling’ and ‘sweetheart’, and I want to be them.

But then I see their kids kick them in the knees two minutes later, before running away after refusing to eat their fruit-based-snack and I realise that they are just the same as I am. They are just fighting the natural order of things. But they will learn, they will turn to the dark side once Tarquin or Felicity has drawn ‘Mummy is a Dog’ on the wall in their own faeces.

I wonder if there will ever be a day when I get through a full 24 hours without shouting at my kids, a blissful day of no arguments, and no fighting. But that day will never come to pass, and I know why.

Because they are my kids, and they have my spirit flowing through them – and I was an even bigger dick in my day than they are.

And you know what, after all that moaning that I’ve just made you read? I don’t think I would really want to have it any other way…

 

…OK, maybe a quiet Saturday morning once a year would be nice. One can but dream…

Mr Home Improvement…

Tags

D.I.Y, Design, Home Improvement, Humour, stay-at-home Dad, Upscaling

Since moving to France, and particularly since moving into our new home, I have become somewhat obsessed with making it as lovely as possible.

And that’s a sentence I never thought I would type.

So far I have redesigned the living room, laid new floors in the upstairs bathroom and downstairs kitchen, painted the front of the house, repainted our external buildings, repainted the interior of our dependence….the list goes on. This has met with some resistance from my partner, as she sees it as me taking over control of her house and styling it to my tastes. She’s right, to a degree, but I see it another way, I see it as MY job to do this. I’m the stay-at-home dad, remember, so I have the time to do this, whereas she is busy at work, earning the pennies.

So on to the point of this blog, a little insight into what I like to do – maximise potential of items that we aren’t using. Things that are lying around, that just need a few ‘tweaks’ to bring them back to life, so to speak.

With that in mind, here’s what I did with a cupboard discarded by my Belle Mere (mother-in-law) and a Crayola table (the one with the multi-colour legs that look like crayons) that the kids had managed to break.

I sanded down the cupboard and each leg and then varnished everything. I then attached the legs to the cupboard and placed it in our kitchen.

My main goal was to make use of something that – on its own – wouldn’t work anywhere. In addition I wanted something to replace our tea-towel basket – those upright wicker-type things – as I cannot stand them. So now the tea-towels live in here and we have a bit of space on top too, to add pretty things (all marbles and wavy bottles found at brocantes).

I should add I’m no Mr DIY and also if you think it looks uneven, it may be. But equally it may be the house/floor/wall that’s uneven – we seem to be completely lacking in straight walls/floors/ceilings etc in this house (which just adds to its charm) 

Games I Play With My Kids (That I Invented)…

Tags

entertainment, Family, fun, funny, games, Humor, Humour, kids, Life, Relationships, stay-at-home Dad

 

There are loads of games you can play with your kids aren’t there? Hide n’ Seek, tag, musical statues, sleeping lions etc. I however have become a pioneer in this field and have decided to do what no other parent has ever done: I have invented my own kids’ games.

Wow! I mean, I bet your mind is blown right now, isn’t it?*

So without further ado here is my current selection of games. I say current because the games change as they grow older, and what they love today they may not necessarily love next week. Or tomorrow for that matter.

 

To The Moon

For: both kids

Necessary props? A swing set

This game involves me having one or more of my kids on the swings. I then ‘check their tickets’, these tickets being purely imaginary. All details on the tickets have to correspond with each child, and they must agree with each and every detail. So for instance if I say that their name is Lord Poopy Pants the Third, and that their favourite hobby is eating rotten squids with snails, then they have to agree.

I also say all this in an South African accent. I do not know why I do this.

Once they have agreed to all details on the tickets then they may ‘go to the moon’. This simply involves me counting down from 1,000,000 or sometimes just 100 in a very haphazard manner e.g: 999, 12, 6, 57, ZERO! And I then launch them as hard as I safely can on the swings.

I am then obliged to relaunch them multiple times, verifying new details on new tickets each time, and must also keep their momentum up by pushing them several times – even though they both now know how to do it themselves.

 

Plants VS Zombies

For: both kids

Necessary props? just us

 

This is a variation on the popular mobile video game. Except played in real life of course. Now before you start thinking I am one of those amazing parents who designs plant costumes for his kids, and wears authentic zombie make-up to chase them around the garden let me reassure you: I could honestly not be bothered to do any of that, so it’s just me in my coat (depending on the weather) slowly chasing my kids around the garden and moaning and shambling like a zombie.

I am always the zombie. They let me be a plant once, oh what a happy day that was.

I also get hit now and again as the kids have to ‘defeat’ me, and they are both at that age where they are somewhat dangerous. My son because he is eight and can throw things with some force, and my daughter because she is five and is at the same level as my testicles.

 

Poo Lamps

For: my daughter

Necessary props? lights and a dark night (is nighttime a prop?)

This game is one which we generally play at night before bedtime. This is because it involves us looking out of our upstairs bedroom window and counting how many poo lamps we can see.

Now for the uninitiated – by which I mean everyone – poo lamps are poos that have been laid by cats in our garden that glow in the night.

In reality they are actually my many, many solar lights and any other neighbourhood lights that may be lit at that time. So three solar lights, two lights in the neighbour’s house = five poo lamps that night.

Sometimes my daughter improvises and counts the moon and the stars too. On nights like that the game can go on a while.

As it’s not dark now until after she goes to bed she has taken to counting the next-door neighbour’s chickens – around ten of them in total – and she still classifies them as poo lamps…

 

Pizza Delivery Foot Phone Call

For: my daughter

Necessary props? one of my daughter’s sweaty little feet

This game involves me using one of my daughter’s feet as a mock telephone. I place one of these damp little things – left or right, we have no set preference – next to my ear and pretend to phone a pizza shop. My daughter is the ‘chef’ and answers the call. I then place an order and verify each item, however I must always, always pretend to get annoyed with her if she does not have what I ask, or if she has something that I think she shouldn’t. Here’s a brief example:

Me: Can I order a pizza please?

Her: Yes of course, what would you like on it?

Me: Can I have mushrooms?

Her: Yes.

Me: And do you sell Anchovies?

Her: Yes.

Me: Why would you sell Anchovies? they are disgusting and taste awful, you should be shut down for serving those things they smell like poo and make my eyes water! You know each time you eat an Anchovie a demon is born in hell? What are you thinking?

Her: (laughing) OK! OK! We won’t sell Anchovies any more

 

And so on…

 

I Can’t Talk Properly Because My Son Is Crushing My Chest With His Powerful Muscles And Making My Voice Go All Funny

For: my son (surprise, surprise!)

Necessary props? Just me and my son

My son is at that age where he thinks he is very strong and likes to display this power by occasionally pushing over his five-year-old sister and squashing my chest. So this game involves me lying in bed next to him and just having a casual chat with him about day-to-day life. While I am talking however he will start pushing himself – using his bedside cabinet as leverage – into my side and so making my chest constrict and causing my voice to alter.

Of course as my son weighs about the same as a bag of sugar this means I have to pretend that he is very strong and he is doing this, when in fact I am just modulating my voice, much to his amusement. My son is however made out of elbows. Hard, bony elbows, approximately 67 I would guess, and these things can really dig into you. The result is that the next day you generally end up with a new bruise that you didn’t have before.

But at least he doesn’t bite like his sister.

 

 

So that’s the current crop of games that I have invented for my kids, your read it here first, you don’t need to be constrained by the world’s selection, you can make your own!

All it takes is a bit of imagination and a desire to make your kids shut their bloody mouths for more than five minutes.

 

 

*Tune in next time when I will be showing you how you can teach your kids to go the wrong way UP A SLIDE! OMG! Rule breaker right here!!!

 

Sandwiched Between Indifference…

Tags

Family, food, fun, funny, Humor, Humour, kids, stay-at-home Dad

On tonight’s menu in Mr Mum’s house we have a veritable feast of delightful foodstuffs, all lovingly prepared to cater to the needs of the individual’s requirements. It may be only sandwiches, but no corners have been cut (literally BOOM BOOM!) in the efforts of the Michelin starred chef that has created this bounty of bread-based, bite-sized taste-bombs, that will surely set the tongues of the tasters alight with joy.

 

For Her

Carefully sectioned into quarters, this sumptuous feast features only the (supermarket) freshest ham available, and with all the fatty bits trimmed off and shoved in the bin, there remains only the choicest pieces of ham to ensure the palate is treated to a veritable pork-based party.

Cucumber has been loving rinsed for three seconds and then sliced to make it look slightly posher than it actually is, and the segments have each been painstakingly, and liberally, salted, to avoid cries of ‘SALT! SALT!’ as has happened from time to time.

Fresh (ish) tomatoes have been added for a little variety, and also because there’s nothing better than cleaning the seed explosion from off of the sofa cover (purchased to protect the sofa underneath from seed explosions*  (*and other things)) when madam bites into them like some kind of animal.

The whole dish is served up on a dazzlingly blue plate emblazoned with Ella and Elsa, or Sarah and Sue or whatever they are called, from the tragi-comedy that is ‘Frozen‘.

 

CRITIC’S RESPONSE

Grunts and chewing noises can be heard and there seems to be a word emitted from the thing on the sofa. Could be ‘Merci‘ or ‘Thanks daddy, I love you‘ or ‘This is delicious, I’m so lucky to have you making this for me‘ but in all likelihood it’s probably ‘Where’s my water?‘.

 

For Him

Eschewing the needless frivolities of cucumbers or tomatoes, this dish is served up in as bare a bones style as possible. This suits the needs of that most exacting of connoisseurs: my son. Who has rigid rules, very much like Fight Club.

These rules basically boil down to:

1. I don’t want any fruit
2. I don’t want any veg
3. I just want ham
4. With bread
5. Or sometimes pasta

With this in mind the meal for sir has been carefully prepared on seedless brown bread – oh yeah, rule number six, I forgot:

6. I don’t want any seeds in my bread

Again all traces of fat have been removed from the ham to ensure only the best meat passes sir’s lips. The resulting mix of bread and ham and butter has been loving shaped in to what one hopes resembles a face. Six consecutive attempts were made to try to lovingly shape it into this, after the first five were what could lovingly be described as ‘nightmare-inducing‘.

The whole meal is beautifully presented on a random beige plate due to sir’s ‘Marvel’s The Avengers‘ plate being out of commission due to an earlier incident involving chocolate.

 

CRITIC’S RESPONSE

‘What’s that?’ (after being told it’s a face) ‘No, it looks weird, it doesn’t look right…where’s my water?’

I Was At A Loose End And I Had A Lot Of White Paint So…

Tags

D.I.Y, Decorating, funny, Hobby, Home Improvement, Humor, kids, Painting, stay-at-home Dad

…I decided to do what any normal middle-aged man would do: I painted the inside of one of my dependances and turned it into a ‘chill-out’ area for adults. It’s a literal chill-out zone too – I mean, as in it’s not very warm in there.

For people who don’t know what a dependance is, it’s the French term for outbuildings, so running alongside our house, but not connected to it, we have a garage. Attached to that garage is a separate room that houses the boiler, and this room then connects with the aforementioned dependance that I’ve decorated.

There’s also another dependance at the very end – again, also connected to the others – but that one’s a bit damp and so I didn’t bother with that. Plus the door is set painfully low, and if I bang my head on it one more time I think I might dust off my sledgehammer and set about it in a rather unpleasant manner.

As you can see they had a sale on in one of my local paint stores on white Dulux paint. Having a sale on paint in France occurs with roughly the same frequency as winning the lottery. Or finding a French baker open at 12.45pm.

I spent a fair bit of time on the prep, cleaning it up and getting it ready, but unfortunately neglected to take any ‘before’ pictures, so you will have to use your imagination and picture a grim, grubby, grey box of a room.

My main aim doing this – apart from the previously mentioned relaxation area for adults – was to highlight some of the features that the prior owners had neglected: the wooden beams. I cleaned each beam and then painted between them to really make them ‘pop’ – if beams can do that? I’ve never written anything like this so I don’t know if they can.

Apart from the paint I used only existing materials with the exception of a few bits and bobs I bought from Aldi, in the reduced section. It seems nobody wanted to buy their ‘nautical-themed’ items, so they had reduced them to clear and shoved them in their ‘shit aisle’ (you know what I’m talking about). I also picked up a couple of coloured bottles and a rather garish pinky-orangy candle-holder/big glass jar thingy (hanging from the ceiling at the end next to the bottles). This was also from Aldi, and I bought it to give a bit of colour to the room and – even though you can’t see it – there is a flamingo on the reverse.

Total expenditure on ‘objets d’art’ (ooh I will pay for using that term) : 22 Euros.

I also added a bit of blue paint here and there – the door, window frame etc – as I realised that if I painted everything white it would stop looking like a chill-out area for adults, and start looking like a holding-facility for adults with mental-health issues.

I’ve curtained off the other part of this dependance, where the boiler is, as it’s not quite as neat and tidy as this one is – yet. This will be the next part of the ‘project’. For the time being the family refers to this as ‘Monica’s Closet’, which should be familiar to fans of the TV show ‘Friends’, but if you aren’t familiar with that term, it basically means it’s where I’ve shoved all the crap for the time being.

The eagle-eyed among you may have noticed the presence of toys in the room. These appeared approximately 25 seconds after I revealed my secret project to my family and explained what it was I had wanted to achieve with it. This is an unfortunate side-effect when you try to create a space to get away from children: they follow you. They have now commandeered our all-new dependance with cries of ‘Thank you daddy’ and ‘Thank you for building us a play-house daddy, can you close the door on you way out, please?’.

Still I’m not begrudging them stealing our new area, because if they are in there, we can have the actual house all to ourselves.

Win-win, eh?

How Many Pieces of Lego Have You Hoovered Up?

Tags

annoyances, cleaning, Family, funny, Humour, kids, stay-at-home Dad, toys

I believe I broke through the £300 barrier today – that’s the approximate value of Lego I have hoovered up.

In days gone by I would bend down and pick them up, but then I discovered that ‘accidentally’ hoovering them up was easier. I also realised I was fighting a losing battle, as for every 1 piece I picked up my kids would drop 6 more.

I draw the line at figures (complete figures only, heads still go up the tube) and pieces in excess of 10cm, but everything else is fair game.

They get everywhere. I guarantee that if you look under any parent’s sofa it will look like a Lego-battleground; heads, wheels, arms, blocks, lights, tools, legs, those pointy corner bits – they’re all under there. I recommend the narrow attachment for this. Another tip – if you can’t quite reach them all under there, and you have a rug – drop it at one side of the sofa and the resulting breeze will blow the parts towards you – as well as all the dust-bunnies.

The kids might not be happy, but at least when I go for a pee at 4 a.m I don’t wake the house up with my cries of anguish after stepping on Lisa Simpson’s Lego-head.

Cost-effective? No.

Easier life? Oh yes.

The Fog Of Awwwwww…

Tags

Family, France, French, fun, funny, Humor, Humour, photography, stay-at-home Dad

I’m taking a gamble today trying the kids out at a new place. Always a risky choice with kids, deviating from the norm. Plus I wasn’t sure if the village I’d decided to visit had a park. I knew what would happen if I didn’t find one. That would be all I would hear about for a week. I saw promising signs on the way into the village, and pulled up at the local lake. Parks and lakes go together like fish and chips, right?

The kids were not initially impressed by my risky gamble…

Me: ‘Look at this, what a great view, all that fog’

Him: ‘It’s all white daddy, look! Everything is white!’

Me: ‘Yes, this is a reaction caused by the cold weather’

Him: (a rare moment of parental concern) ‘Will you be warm enough daddy? You don’t have a thick coat like us on, yours is thin, you might be too cold’

Me: (tear rolls gently down face and almost freezes on cheek) ‘It’s OK son, I’ll be fine, thanks for asking though’

Her: ‘Awwww….there’s no park here’

Me: ‘Yes, but there might be one on the other side, and look at all this fog, doesn’t it look great?’

Her: Blows air out of her mouth and makes a negative ‘Pfffffft’ noise that you would  expect to hear from someone in their forties. This ‘Pfffffft’ effortlessly conveys and encapsulates her disappointment with the location, the scenery, the weather and me.

Me: (Looking up at the chateaux shrouded in fog and pointing it out to the kids) ‘What a great castle eh? Look at the height of the walls, I bet this was a good place to defend and look (pointing at ditch that runs along the base of the wall) I bet there was a moat here once too, what do you think?’

Her: ‘There’s no park here’

Him: ‘What’s that daddy?’

Me: ‘It’s where we put naughty kids’

Him: ‘Can you open it?’

Me: ‘No’

Him: ‘Ha, ha! Daddy can’t put us in there, he doesn’t have any keys. Ha, ha!’

Him: ‘Why are you taking pictures of a toilet? Why daddy? Why?’

Me: ‘It’s just in such a great location, look at it, surrounded by all the trees and leaves’

Him: ‘Weecee, it’s a Weecee’

Me: ‘No, it’s a ‘WC’

Him: ‘What’s that mean’

Me: ‘I don’t know’ (I’ve remembered now, without the aid of Wikipedia, and I think it means ‘Water Closet’)

Me: ‘Come on, I’ll take a picture of you both under this little house’

Her: ‘There’s no park here’

Me: ‘There’ll be one round here I’m sure. Now why don’t you both get under the house for a nice photo for mummy?’

Him: ‘No, I want to hug a tree instead’ (Hugs tree)

Her: ‘Weeee! A park!’

Him: (disappears in a puff of air and reappears on the see-saw)

Me: (thinking: ‘Everything looks wet – where are the swings?’)

Me: (Now bored of the park – quickly done) ‘Let’s have a look over here kids, I think I can see something’

Both: ‘What is it?’

Me: ‘I think it’s….

Me: ….another toilet! And look, it’s got a little heart-shaped hole, how romantic’

Him: ‘I am getting really annoyed at you daddy, why do you keep taking pictures of toilets? Stop taking pictures of toilets daddy!’

After venturing inside and using the ‘facilities’

Me: ‘Why is the lock on the outside? How strange…and a little bit worrying’

Her: ‘Can we go back to the park now?’

Me: ‘Let’s have a look over here, I think I can hear something, can you hear the water?’

Both: ‘Yes!’

Me: ‘Maybe it’s a waterfall?’

It’s NOT a waterfall….

Me: ‘Well, it’s not a waterfall, but it’s close’

Her: ‘No it isn’t’

Me: ‘Let me take a picture of you in front of the foggy lake, and promise not to stick your tongue out’

Him: ‘OK daddy, I promise’

Me: (takes photo knowing exactly what will happen)

Him: (is seven-year-old boy, therefore sticks tongue out anyway)

Both: ‘What’s that daddy?’

Me: ‘It’s a little island, do you want to live on it for a couple of weeks and give me and your mum some peace?’

Him: ‘No!’

Her: (launches a series of physical attacks upon my person, primarily focused on the groin-area)

Him: ‘What are you doing daddy?’

Me: ‘Just taking a nice photo’

Him: ‘Shall we play a game? It’s where the first person to speak loses, so everybody has to be quiet’

Me: (nodding so eagerly that I develop neck ache later in the day) ‘Yes that sounds like a good game’

 

This is now my favourite game and one that is unfortunately short-lived, but lasts just long enough too get us back to the car, whereupon it’s business as usual and I drive home with what appears to the casual observer  – and sounds exactly like – two wild animals in the back of the car.

It could have been worse though.

At least there was a park eh?