The Trouble With Eavesdropping
byIt’s hard to have a private conversation in a house with five kids running around.
It’s hard to have a private conversation in a house with five kids running around.
“So how was your lunch today?” my father asked me. “You like your sandwich?” It was 1976. I was 9 years old. And this wasn’t going to end well…
I figured the coffee I was making my wife and the fantastically good mood she’d be in from her sleep in would make her happy.
I was wrong on both counts.
I’ve noticed, over the years I’ve been with my wife, a worrying lack of nooky on those rare mornings we both happen to wake up before our children. Sure, there’s snuggling, huggling and sometimes canoodling, but no nooky.
Our oldest daughter, Miss10, is a bit of a klutz. So far she’s managed to injure herself, in one form or other, every day of the holidays. Yesterday, while mucking about with her cousins and younger siblings, she jumped off our small retaining wall but seemed to change her mind midway through the manoeuvre.
“Toily! Toily! Toily!” screamed our three year old, just inches from her older brother’s sleeping head…
“Holy Ship!” said Master9 whilst playing Awesomenauts on the Xbox with Miss10, Miss7 and me.
I paused the game and I turned to my son.
“What?” he said innocently.
Every three months or so my wife spring cleans the house and my role, during this mass exodus of stuff to the dump, is to place myself between my wife and the wheely bin and try to save as much of my crap as I can.
That our family of seven is crowded into a three bedroom house (with a small sleep out) is never more obvious than on school holidays. On more specifically, at the end of the school holidays.
Usually I let the kids chose a loan but they’re all in bed now so this month I’ve chosen to help someone who helps make my kids safer every single day – a coffee grower in Honduras.
“The kids think I’m old and wrinkled,” my wife told me this morning. Yep, and they weren’t subtle about it either…
“Our bowling scores were really bad,” Master22 told me after he’d gone along to his local AMF bowling centre. He sounded a bit miffed. “I don’t know what’s happened. I was better at bowling when I was in school. I definitely need to practice.” Funny, I don’t remember any talent scouts knocking down our door…
To anyone thinking maybe this sounds like a good idea and maybe they might do – stop thinking. Just do it.
My good wife was out for the day being a photographer and I was home alone with the sprogs.
This, I believe, saved her.
“I need a hug,” said my wife, throwing her arms wide and drawing me in. She was looking sad but in a fake way. “What’s up?” I asked her. It turns out Miss6 had been running roughshod over her emotions today…