Liam is five and a half. Today, as on every Monday, Liam and his long-time sidekick and friend, Cameron had a post-school playdate. Let me just give you some context. On Thursday, The Walnut Office, our business, is running an event for 1000 people. The event is the culmination of 3 campaigns we have run and we have been working on it all since about March this year. To call this week stressful would be like calling Kim Kardashian's marriage to Kris Humphries short-lived.
I was sitting in our boardroom sipping my 4th cup of Nespresso and viewing the function's multimedia DVD with the designer when I heard hysterical sobbing. I bolted upstairs and found Liam clutching his head.
"I crashed it!! I crashed my head!!"
Liam and Cameron, in their wisdom, had woken up Ben (my 2.5 year old who really needs to sleep at lunch time), sent him down the passage where they believed he would be less of a hindrance, and converted his room into a fucking snow storm. This is actually very easy to do. You simply take everything off the compactum, empty a full bottle of calming lavender talcum powder onto said compactum, use the laundry basket to hoist yourself onto the powdered surface and then launch forward into the air, hoping to land on a soft surface. Sometimes, as in Liam's case, it doesn't end well.
So now I have a designer downstairs waiting for me, a room that looks like Lyndsay Lohan had a binge in it, an exhausted toddler rubbing his eyes and crying and a preschooler with a minor head injury.
After the kind of screaming session that would make a banshee run for its life, one would think that Liam and Cameron would take out a sticker book and do something constructive and unobtrusive. As if.
Fifteen minutes later, the two of them are ripping the safety foam off the trampoline Jump King for no apparent reason.
"That's it! You are not touching this trampoline for the rest of the week Liam, and if you go near it, I am giving it to a school where children will appreciate and respect it!!!"
Liam is now sobbing. Cameron, who has known me since he could barely walk, thinks that this is a good time to share his opinion about my parenting style.
"You're not a nice mom Jo, cos you just keep shouting at us."
You have to admire his chutzpah.
At this point, I'm convinced that they wouldn't dare step a foot out of line, but as I turn my back, I notice that the little punks are shaking my lovely lemon trees, so that the almost-ripe lemons fall to the floor. I would like to shake them like lemon trees, but I restrain myself.
An hour later, after a stern talking to and some tough punishment, Liam passes out on his bed, exhausted from his own misdeeds.
This evening, I took my boys to Parkview to trick or treat. Liam was a ghoul (nuff ssaid) and Ben was a pumpkin. (I was an angry-bitch mother - subtle) We had a picnic and made our own jack-o-lantern and went down the slide and asked the neighbours for 'trick or treat, smelly feet' and it was lovely.
At home, Liam told me that I was both his 'high' and his 'low' for the day. I told him he behaved like a real ghoul. We laughed and sang a song about a washer woman.
Boys. :)
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