While We Were Away

*Beer tasting at Six String Brewery. It was all part of my important work.*

There’s a price to be paid for running away together and leaving the kids for four nights in the capable hands of others.

This afternoon, a cup was hoisted under Tracey’s nose. Naturally, she grabbed at it, fearful it was about to attempt to nest in a nostril. The little hand responsible for it’s relocation quickly retracted.

“Refill, please,” said Miss9, tottling back to the table.

I’m not sure what service was like at Nanny and Grandma’s houses while we were away, but it seems it was at least on par with the four and a half stars we received at the Crowne Plaza Terrigal.

“You want the what now?” stammered Tracey.

Sitting down, Miss9 looked back at her mother and seemed stunned to find Tracey was still standing where she’d left her. “Milk,” she said, a touch impatiently. Seriously, they don’t train mothers like they used to. When this prompting still didn’t have Tracey moving towards the fridge, Miss9 obviously gave the whole thing a mental review to try work out where communications had broken down. Then she frowned a little and went on, “You know I’ve already said please, right?”

And to my great surprise, Miss9 got the milk she wanted. Delivered, because this establishment is all about service.

It’s going to take some time, but with a little love and guidance I’m sure we’ll get our little ferals back to spilling their own milk on the counter and scraping their own scraps onto the floor beside the bin. Clearly, they don’t know what they’re doing at the moment. I’ve met their mother and she’s lovely and all but she’s nobody’s slave girl.

So our munchkins have been well and truly indoctrinated into Cult Grandma and Cult Nanny. The devious old gals even took them to the local show while we were away and showered them in sugar.

We’ll simply have to be patient with our kids while they once again learn to function back in the real world.

Meanwhile at home here, where Master24 and his girlfriend were in charge over the weekend, our kids decided to mess with our plans for more grandchildren.

They were watching a video together when Will Wheaton said the phrase terri-farking-bull.

“Sorry,” said Master24, lunging for the remote to change the program. “This video swears.”

“I know. That’s okay,” Miss9 shrugged. “Mummy does too.”

At which point all the kids sitting with them nodded their agreement.

This is not the contraceptive story – I just wanted to put it in because it makes Tracey sound like she drives an eighteen wheeler.

The funny-but-stop-doing-that moments happened a few minutes after that.

Miss4 did something she shouldn’t have, so Master24 insisted on an apology. Our littlest ‘princess’ stepped towards him, as if to comply, then as she reached him she twisted and before he could say ‘what the hell?’ farted straight onto his leg. And I mean straight on his leg.

“She dropped her daks to do it,” he told us. “Do you know how awkward that is?”

Of course we do. Because parents.

Then she ran off to tell the other kids how hilarious she was. Oh, how they laughed.

Following straight on from this, while her big brother was trying to find something more suitable and less mother-like to watch on the television (he’ll learn – just switch to Barbie Life In The Dreamhouse or How To Train A Dragon and open a beer to numb the ride) Miss12 walked up and looked him dead in the eye before dropping her head and saying softly, “I think I might be pregnant.”

He immediately sent us a message in awe of his sister’s acting abilities saying she thinks she’s hilarious and my friggin heart stopped for half a second!

So great. A teenager who can act and thinks it’s funny to mess with adult’s headspace. The next six years are going to be a riot.

Just how much Master24 and his girlfriend enjoyed being parents for a couple of nights was written all over their faces when we arrived home. And just in case we struggled reading facial cues, Master24 wasted no time herding his girlfriend towards their room.

“That’s it,” he said. “We can clock off. Good luck,” he added to us as they disappeared.

I know that sort of sounds icky, like they were going off to practice making babies of their own, but I know for a fact without our years of gentle immersion into big family parenting, after two days of our kids they were going to bed to sleep.

Meanwhile, unless we’re planning on wearing name badges and porters caps, we now have the difficult task of deprogramming our little cultists.

“Clean that up, would you?” Miss9 said with a vague wave of a hand in the direction of her plate and empty milk cup on the table.

I won’t repeat what my trucker of a wife said, but let’s just say it turns out I was wrong about the patience bit.