Mummy’s Little Helper

Tea time and bath time were more chaotic than ever in our house last night because our seven-year old, bless him, decided to ‘help’.

So when our toddler decided he had much better things to be doing than eating his tea, J ‘helped’ by making an ‘aeroplane’ with his food.  This was a nice thought and indeed, helpful, if the following hadn’t happened instead.  Our stubborn little toddler decided he was having NONE of it, so just as J’s aeroplane reached his mouth he started to shake his head violently from side to side.  At the same time the little scamp (read ‘shit’) clamped his cherub lips together like a vice and put his cute dimpled hands up over his mouth.

Meat pie, mushy peas and gravy were then thrust at the space where our toddler’s mouth had been open a second ago.  Did J give up when he met resistance?  Not on your nelly.  His brother WOULD eat his tea because J was being ‘helpful’ and he continued to try to force him to eat the food he was ‘kindly’ ‘helping’ him with for quite some time.

Our toddler did indeed have an empty plate in the end: it sadly wasn’t in his mouth though.  It was however on his nose, cheeks, chin, hair, hands, eyebrows, table, clothes, walls, his brother, his brother’s hands, his brother’s uniform…and probably the dog (as she’s always standing nearby when there’s food).

Next (and because God loves a trier), J decided to ‘help’ by taking the plates and cutlery over to the sink.  Now if you’ve read previous posts you’ll know that my son was at the back of an awfully long line when they were giving out balance and concentration and the next bit happened in slow motion: the plates started to slide sideways out of my son’s grasp.  Gravy began to run in rivulets down the plates to land on the table, the floor and in the dog where most of our toddler’s tea now was.

To his credit, J managed to right them just before they fell.  Unfortunately, it was too late for the cutlery which continued on its trajectory to the floor, with every single knife and fork hitting my son’s white uniform on its way to form a variety of abstract yet staining patterns that rendered it unfit for another day’s wear today.

Then at bath time, completely unprompted, J decided to ‘help’ again by washing our very tired and emotional pre-schooler’s hair.  Cue screaming meltdown and cries of ‘MUUUUUMMM! I DON’T WANT JOSH TO WASH MY HHHHAAIII…’  (This was followed by panicked coughing and gurgling as full jug after full jug of water was flung unceremoniously over his head).

The water was distributed in the following way: 50% in M’s mouth, 20% in his eyes, 20% on the floor, 8% on J and 2% on the hair he was supposed to be washing.  (A less kind person may suggest our eldest got some sort of sadistic pleasure in half-drowning his brother, but I’m going to keep believing that his intentions were worthy).

Then, bored when M didn’t actually choke, he left him covered in suds, screaming and rubbing his bloodshot eyes to fluff up his quilt as he sees me do every night.  The difference is, I don’t stand in the middle of the landing shaking it so violently that it takes out the other members of my family one by one: an elbow in the crotch here, a blackened toe there, a shoulder in an eye already red-raw from shampoo and, if not for a stair-gate, probably a bum nudge down the stairs for the smallest member of our clan.

M then decided he wanted a poo and a few moments later he shouted that he’d finished.  “I’ll wipe his bum!” announced our eldest enthusiastically.

Hubby and I looked at our soaked bathroom floor and traumatised younger children.  We thought of the of the gravy and pea massacre awaiting us downstairs.  I thought of the extra washing and cleaning I now had to do and how much messier things were about to get if we allowed our eldest son to be ‘helpful’ one more time.

“Thanks, anyway, Sweetheart, but I think I’ll do it.” 🙂