From zero to a hundred…

From zero to a hundred in six seconds and back again…. that is what life feels like around here some days. Days like today for example…

I suspect the girls are not 100% today – they have red rosy rashey cheeks and rashey bellies, they are snotty and just super narky. So we ‘piked’ on playgroup yet again (sorry E!) and have tried to just play quietly at home. Though if you read my blog you will know that there is no such thing as ‘quietly at home’ when it comes to my girls….

They wanted to walk to the letter box by themselves to get the mail today. ‘Sure’ I say thinking it would do them good to get out in the sunshine and if they could learn to do that job responsibly that would be great for all of us. They come and tell me they are ‘ready’ and I wander out to the lounge to help with gumboots, but they are not ready.. they are SO not ready!

In the space of five minutes, while I put their brother to bed, when they were supposed to have been packing up their pasting things they had managed to not only NOT pack-up but to scatter foamy shapes and snipped bits of ribbon all over the dining room table and the floor. Every pencil from the tin was gone, and ‘snow’ from the hole punches was scattered about the place.

If that was not enough to send me spare then I noticed the living room floor… the new High Five puzzle was spread about (why I ever let that come home I do not know!), the fuzzy felts were stuck to the couch, which of course had not a cushion on it. The fan was on fill bore and when I went to turn it off I noticed they’d pulled off the knob… on further questioning neither of them now knew where it was! I had to get the pliers out to turn off the fan which shouldn’t have been on in the first place!

Oh and I have forgotten to mention that one child was naked, and the other dressed a strappy summer dress, her new tights and fairy shoes….neither were attired to go outside!

ARRRGHHHHHHHHH!!!!

I wanted to shout, heck I wanted to scream and break things, but I have been trying really hard not to give in to that urge of late so I quietly seethed and gave them both dirty looks instead. I informed them that they WOULD NOT be going to the mail box and that they had better get their clothes back on and go out into the backyard…. NOW! I figured better that they escaped outside and left me to rant and rave and want to hurt something real bad while I packed up, than bare the brunt of my frustration. Of course much wailing and ‘I can’t’s and ‘I want my Daddy’s ensued while they got dressed, still Izzy was dressed and out the door surprisingly quickly while Zoe waited for me to help her with her socks (why she still can’t put socks on by herself when she can put on a party dress and tights is beyond me!).

A few minutes later I let Zoe out the back door and looked out to see if Izzy was still crying and carrying on… not that I really cared much right that second as I was still hopping mad!

As I looked around the back yard I couldn’t see Izzy. I called her name a few times, nothing. I wandered out onto the back step and called again… nothing. I noticed the side gate was open and the chickens were out… I called again. Nothing. I ran back inside to get some shoes and scoop up a sleeping Muski.. suddenly I was in a panic…

Back outside I bolted out the side gate with Zoe starting to panic along with me. I was calling Izzy’s name but still no response. All those wild and somewhat ridiculous things you think when you have lost a child started whizzing through my head.

What if she had gone out to visit the horses and gotten zapped by the electric fence?
What if she had gone into the chook house to get the eggs and encountered a snake?
She knows she isn’t allowed out of the garden.
What was she thinking??? (cause she is three and three year olds are so good at logical thinking!)
Oh crap, I love her so much what if something terrible has happened???
What if she had gone round the back of the shed and one of the Baldy Boys bits of junk had fallen on her?
What if she had gone to get the mail and gone onto the road and been hit by a…..

Then it hit me.. as I ran towards the front of the house… she had gone to get the mail! Just as sure as I told her she wasn’t allowed to do it because they hadn’t packed up, trust Izzy to go do it anyway!

Sure enough as I rounded the corner of the house there she was, just reaching the letter box. I started walking down our long drive towards her, and just as quickly as my initial rage had turned into panicked love it turned back into rage. WHAT WAS SHE THINKING!?! It is sooooo not safe for her to wander off like that, nor to go to the letter box without me watching… oh I was furious! Thankfully Izzy was oblivious to this furious whirl wind of a woman marching up the drive with a wailing baby over her shoulder, she was too busy trying to get the letters out of the letter box.

A second later Izzy with letters in hand came trotting back down the drive way…. Her crazy messy hair flailing in the wind (she won’t let me take the braids that aunty Kate did on Sunday out of her hair so it is a mess!), her little feet shuffling along in her new gumboots, her bum wiggling and both hands waving above her head.

Awww… how could I stay mad at the wild little girl running up my driveway, letters in hand, with such a proud look on her face?

So the girls are still banished to the back garden with a bowl of biscuits each to keep them happy, just to give me five minutes to jiggle their brother back to sleep with one foot while I type this up before I forget. I am not really a speed demon, so I’d rather not hit 100kms an hour when I am running on empty, but it’s kind of nice to see how love and anger always seem to balance out in the end.