Snow…

The above happened a while ago now…

That yellow ‘snow’ all over my living room was once a couch cushion. My poor, harrassed, neglected, wee’ed on couch.

And what was I doing when the snow storm hit? I was cooking dinner.

You see the problem is that our house is not set up to supervise children very easily. The kitchen is out the back and while I leave the door open to the lounge and the girls can’t get out of the lounge to wreak havoc anywhere else I still can’t SEE them. I can hear them… but when I am cooking and something is sizzling on the stove or the over head fan is on… well I can’t hear as well I need to. Plus my girls have a habit of being very quiet when they want to. I know I know… I should have learnt by now that quiet is NEVER a good thing.

So there I was cooking, the chicken sizzling away… On this occasion I did in fact realise it was quiet and called out to ask what they were doing. In trotted Zoe to tell me they were cooking. Ah a cooking, for Rabbity and Casti… no probs, something constructive that should keep them out trouble for the next little while. Silly me I didn’t ask WHAT they were cooking. Later, when I wondered why the foam snow was stuck to everything in the lounge and why I hadn’t noticed it stuck to either of the girls clothes when they had come in and out of the kitchen looking for spoons and bowls I realised…. they are cunning and had stripped off naked (as they do) so as not to bring the evidence into the kitchen with them!

When I finally had dinner at a point where I could walk away, I swear a mere 15 minutes later, and went in to really see what they were doing, the above photo is what greeted me with a ‘Look Mamma, snow!’

I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry… I did yell, but only a little and I tried not to let the screaming monster get the better of me. I did have to send them both to their room to play though… not as ‘punishment’ (that is not the way we parent) but simply because I couldn’t face cleaning up the mess with their help. I knew I’d yell at them more and really that doesn’t help anything and just makes us all upset.

The problem with these occasions (and if you read my blog you will know this isn’t the first such occasion) is that it isn’t really anyone’s fault. The girls are just doing what they do, finding cool stuff to play with. They had cooked up a lot of ‘snow’ for their toys for dinner. I was doing what I do, cooking dinner. The problem is mostly that those two things often simply don’t work together. If I’d be able to see them I could have suggested a different option to cook with, rather than shredding our cushions and I am pretty sure they would have happily gone with that.

So the moral of the story is…. we need to renovate so that the house is better set out to supervise the twinadoes while I am cooking dinner or doing other stuff. I need to magic about 30 grand into our mortgage by the end of the year so that can happen, even if that means giving up thoughts of a new car…

Oh and yes I scrapped that with my new kit ‘Every Day Moments’ which you can see up there on the left side bar and is in the pop shop now! :)