1.to take, seize, or halt (someone or something on the way from one place to another);
2.to sieze a large can of shaving cream from the hands of a mischevious three year old child, at the right moment…

re·lief
[ri-leef]–noun
1.alleviation, ease, or deliverance through the removal of pain, distress, oppression, etc.
2. the emotion experienced when one discovers, after 3 days of panic, that their wedding and engagement rings have been stowed away in the hollows of a Ukulele, as opposed to buried in the backyard by a cheeky toddler.

My cosmetics sit in a large perspex divided tray in the top drawer of my dresser. There is a plethora of loose eyeshadows, mascara, eyeliner pencils, liquid foundation, loose powders, lip glosses, lipsticks and even tiny ziploc sample bags and pots of mineral powder shadows and foundation. If one puts their mind to it, there really is a lot of potential in that one, unlocked, freely accessed drawer, to create enough mess and graffiti to keep me scrubbing and washing till they are are ready to be booted out of home.

On Wednesday morning, i tucked the kids into my bed in a desperate hope that the warmth of the electric blanket and the extra mummy cuddles would lull them into an extra 15mins of sleep.

Fat chance!

Actually, it lulled ME into a quick 15min power nap and since there was no bouncing on my head or doona tents being made i assumed the kids had joined me in my slumber… its so wrong to assume…

They had stealthily slid out of bed and the loud rattling of plastic containers woke me up. I see Nicholas doing something frantic in my make-up drawer and Alex by the window playing with a train. On closer inspection, Nicholas had discovered my ‘paint brushes’ and my favourite tube of gloss (Estee Lauder Pure Pops- the purpley glittery one)

and decided to squeeze out half the tube and PAINT the inner sides and base of the drawer with the sticky goo. So even before i had a chance to rub the sleep out of my eyes, before i had a chance to put the kettle on, or have a morning wee, i had to shampoo 8 make up brushes, wash the inside of a drawer and about 10 different tubes, pots, bottles and vials of make-up as they were all very sticky and purple and glittery!
The culprit of course was later found sitting on the lounge watching ABC Kids and proudly showing me his "Shiny mouth, mum"- which was in fact gloss spread right up to his nose and down his chin, in some weird disco clown look.

After i re-assembled the drawer and its contents i put some junk in the bin next to the window and discovered that Alex wasnt meerly playing with his train! He had commandeered my dark brown eyeliner and drew a lovely piece of concentric circle line art on my WHITE window sills!!

Serves me right for trying to catch that extra 15mins of snooze time!

The next day i discovered this on my bed:

His first foray into the Goth look, courtesy of Revlon Colourstay Liquid Eyeliner in Jet.

I think im going to have to invest in a large safe or something lockable for those kids, er…. cosmetics, now they’ve had a taste im sure there will be no stopping them!!

"Son, whats that supposed to be?"
"Its a sun, mummy"

He then spent 20mins avoiding me and commanding "I NOT wash hands!" whenever i opened my mouth to speak to him!

Instead, he decided to scoop some of the flour into the bananas, and onto the bench and floor and himself. I just sighed in frustration, dusted him off and thanked him for his help. Then took the stool away.

He protested wildly for about 30seconds then wandered off. I thought ‘Hmmm… that was a short tanty. Good" then continued on with the cake.

I got it into the oven and was halfway through washing up when there was a blip on my Disaster Radar… the house was quiet… TOO QUIET! I dumped the dishes and raced through the house. Bedrooms? No. Main Bathroom? No. Office? No. Oh wait… there was a light on in the office bathroom. I slide the door open and see :

"NICHOLAS!" i shriek.
"Oh Jeezusss…" he laughs, already knowing what my next words were to be.
"Whats all this mess?!"
"I play the flour," he explains cooly.

So when Mum dismisses you from the kitchen for playing with the flour, you go and find your own:

And make sure every inch of the bathroom is covered

The wiped areas on the floor are where he was laying down flapping his arms about trying to make snow angels…

So i strip him in the powdery hazy ensuite and get Chris to put him in the shower while i vaccum and try not to inhale the freakin’ talc. I finish vaccuming and start to pack up the machine when i realise that the powder haze is starting to settle and is covering all the surfaces again. So I vaccum again!

I was dressing him after his shower and he was having a giggle saying he "had fun in the flour".

Im getting good at keeping a straight face nowdays!
But seeing those pics again, i can still taste the powder in my mouth and the entire office smelled like lavender for 3 days!

Chris and I looked at each other in that silent exchange of:
"You go…"
"No you go…"
Then we both get up to go see what the commotion in the bathroom is all about.

BUSTED

The kids had been out in the backyard all morning, playing in the patch of dirt that the dogs had unearthed through the pebbles. After showering them I’d tossed their filthy shoes in the hallway to deal with later.

Apparently someone else had plans to wash their shoes as well… in a slightly different manner…

"Are you going to get a plastic bag?" Chris calls out to me as i run off down the hallway.

"No!" i giggle, "I’m getting the camera".

He’s thrown in his shoes, Alex’s pair of sandals and an extra pair of volleys in, because, after all- you shouldn’t run the machine unless you have a full load!

As soon as I opened the door, he said "Wheres the kids?!", he normally gets tackled around the thighs while they try to run away with his laptop bag and keys. I told him they were watching tv in silence and his jaw dropped! They gave him a small smile and went back to staring at the TV, as he greeted them.

I stood back for a while and waited for their heads to spin or to hear them speaking in tongues- then went back to perparing dinner. Perhaps they’ve been zombified…

Milk on the lounge:

Milk on the floor:

Milk on the cushions:

Milk on the entertainment Unit:

and of course Milk on the windows…

"Nicholas" i sighed in utter defeat.
"What a mess, Mummy" he commented
"Uh-yeah" i reply
"I cwean it Mummy," and off he thunders down the hallway while i get my mop, chux, paper towels etc.

While im mopping the floor he returns, zooming into the lounge on his scooter, armed with his cleaning equipment.

One square of toilet paper.

He proceeds to wipe up a puddle on the lounge and once the paper square reached maximum capacity it dissolves into pulp.
"Ugh! Thats disgusting!" he exclaims, and abandons his clean up attempt.

Later when the floor is mopped, the couch is clean and the windows wiped and windexed he comes to inspect my handiwork.

"Well done Mummy! You did it!" he shouts proudly and pats me on the leg.
Honestly, some days i just think he does this to me to see how long it takes me to clean it up. I’m sure he’s making mental notes like:

"Butter Disaster- 10.7mins
Window Smashing- 20mins
Window smashing #2- 15mins
Toilet Overflow- 25mins"

Later that evening i go to the loo and find he’s dumped an entire roll of toilet paper in there. And he’s left me a present in the potty because the toilet was blocked.

"Oh Nicholas" i sigh again. He materialises by my side, inspects the solid and liquid contents of the potty and says in his most grossed out tone:

"YUCK! Thats disgusting!"

Anyway, my parents took the kids to Bunnings as they had to pick up some bits and pieces. I was impressed at their bravery.

My last Bunnings attempt solo with the kids resulted in a 4lt tub of Osmocote fertilizer being opened and spread down one aisle. For those unfamiliar with Osmocote, its not just the stinky dirt variety of fertilizer. Its billions of minuscule balls of slow release fertilizer, the size of half a rice bubble.

So the Bunnings trip with my parents went without disaster, apart from the kids shouting "Hurry Up Grandpa!" at the top of their voices (egged on by my mother, no doubt!)
When they got home, some groceries were stacked on the kitchen bench while my dad set off to wall mount his new dustbuster. With my Mum and Alex asleep and Dad distracted with his tools, Nicholas set to work…

He dragged the bar stool around the breakfast bar and found a bottle of shampoo and half a loaf of sliced bread. He took both items to the coffee table and made a lovely Shampoo Sandwich! My Dad caught him emptying the contents of the shampoo bottle all over the coffee table when the bread couldn’t contain anymore liquid. "I should have known he was up to something when i heard the bar stool being dragged around the kitchen," said Dad!

SEE! Its not just me! It happens to the professional parents too!

It was the Greek Orthodox Easter on Sunday so we had about 20 family members over to celebrate that as well as Chris’ 30th Birthday. After the window breaking incident was fixed it was business as usual with the eating and drinking.

Someone kindly gathered up the two garbage bags of rubbish and placed them outside the gate, near the big  household waste bins, out of the reach of the two dogs.

So imagine my surprise when i woke up on Monday morning to see a random meat tray sitting in the middle of the back yard. I was staring at it, wondering if I’d carelessly left it on the BBQ’s side table when i see the Beagle trot into view holding a glass bottle out the side of her mouth like an over sized cigar…
The sense of dread (or as i like to call it, my Sixth Sense) fills me. Should i open the back door and investigate? This option usually involves heavy cleaning of some sort, rubber gloves to deal with broken stuff and many garbage bags to wrap the bodies in… ahem! i meant WASTE…

Or should i just turn a blind eye and not venture out of the house for the whole day.

Curiosity got the better of me so i opened the back door and looked around the corner to find…

Yep - just as i suspected. Two big bags of garbage shredded and filth strewn everywhere.

I surveyed the damage then walked backwards slowly into the house and quietly shut the door.

"KIDS! We’re going out!"

Later in the afternoon, when the kids were napping i donned my cleaning outfit
and tended to the mess. Thankfully my garbage guts dogs had licked every surface clean of cake icing, meat juices, salad dressing, stuck on rice etc. so i just had to pick up 3,567 pieces of shredded plastic and other assorted rubbish.

What puzzled me the most was, how did they manage to pull two huge bags of garbage through the gate? If you go back to that gate picture, you’ll see that there is a wooden grid across the viewing gap, the squares are at most 10cm squared- impossible to pull big bags through.

I envisioned Jolie standing on Buster then scrambling up the grid like a ladder, grabbing the bag and hauling it over the fence. Some kind of bizarre circus freak act of desperation to get their paws on meat grease and icing…

I imagined some ingrate neighbour or passing kid, lobbing the bags over the fence just to watch the dogs to bezerk tearing the bags creating a Trash Tornado…

But the real answer was revealed to me 10 minutes later.

I was on the other side of the fence (in the front yard) picking up the rubbish that had fallen out before the bags got dragged through the fence. Apparently an 18m old Beagle can fit her whole head and neck through a 10cm squared hole!! She shoved her head through and was dragging an icing caked bowl through the hole!!

So I think she must have stuck her head through the gaps, torn bits of plastic off the garbage bags sides and dragged each individual piece of garbage through the hole for further inspection and shredding.

This was no small feat considering the 3,567 pieces of rubbish i’d picked up. She must have been up all night dragging garbage through the holes one by one…

Determination and Persistence… two traits that are strong in both my species of kids, fur and human!

Its Chris’ 30th birthday today and also the Greek Orthodox Easter Sunday so we have family over for a BBQ at 12. The entire house , including the backyard, has been scrubbed, swept, windexed, dusted etc. Clutter has been ruthlessly thrown of banished to the 3rd drawer in the kitchen (where all miscellaneous objects wind up).

So Im done with brekky by 9am and am washing up when Alex starts having a tanty about the blocks not fitting into the square holes in his truck. He’s sooking and sitting on the window sill and banging his head backwards on the glass panes.

Me: Alex! Stop that banging!

Alex: Eehhh. Not working… ehhhhh *resumes the reverse head-butting*
Me: ALEX! Youre going to break the-

S M A S H

Just as i say the word ‘glass’ he smacks his head back and the glass cracks into a 6 arm star with 2 pieces slightly pushed outwards, leaving a nice sharp jagged edge.

I fly around the breakfast bar and grab him off the window sill, by the head feeling for glass in his skull and inspecting for blood. Husband immediately wakes to the sound of smashing glass (i should make that his morning alarm ring tone!) and is helping me inspect the possible head trauma. Thankfully theres no damage.

Chris finds some cardboard to tape up the window then rings Windscreens O’Brien. Thankfully the guy shows up in an hour.

He looks about the lounge room and asks: "Have i been here before?" I don’t know whether to laugh or cry! I make a mental note to put the glass repairers number into the house phone speed dial menu. I should have just asked for his private mobile number considering he’s been to the house 3 times in 4 months!

Our party guests were oblivious to the window disaster and my mother came up with a helpful suggestion- board up the windows with plywood. Yeah thanks for that pearl of wisdom, Mum. Im not exactly going for the "we’re not homeowners- just squatters" look!

So out of the 12 panes of glass we have managed to destroy and replace 5. I should start taking bets on which window is next on the Smash List…