“Listen up,” I told my kids on the way in to the supermarket this week.
I confess, there are times when it occurs to me I have the oddest life at the moment.
How many people get to throw their hands up in the air when things don’t go exactly to plan and then think, oh well, at least I can write about that?
Case in point, I was asked to think of a way to showcase some school lunch ideas you can pick up from Woolworths, so the family and I got to go shopping together – all seven of us.
This would be a big enough challenge in itself, let alone with the added joy of filming the kids picking out some things for their own lunchboxes. My idea was they’d focus on the fruit and vegetables, with us adding a juice box, muesli bar and maybe a yoghurt pouch treat for them to choose from (there’s a heap of easy snack options available these days in the Woolworths range with the green w stickers). Together with a sandwich or some gluten free corn thins, that’s us all sorted.
The main thing for our kids is a bit of variety and not too unhealthy, so the fresh munchies are always a great option.
Now you’d think my mob would be old hands at being in front of the camera by now – and to a large extent they do really well – but I still felt like I should maybe run through a few things as we drove to our local store.
“First things first,” I said when I thought I had their attention. “You guys need to listen when I ask you to do something tonight because I don’t want to yell in the middle of the supermarket.”
I’m assuming this is a fairly standard parental instruction given to offspring when stepping out into the world, along with threats of removing iPads, wifi privileges and heads.
“Did you hear that?” Tracey called back to Miss6, who sits in the back row of our Kia.
“Mum’s asking you something,” Miss14 added after several seconds went by unchallenged. She was seated in the middle row.
“What?” I heard a voice ask sweetly.
“She wants to know,” Miss14 said, “if you heard what Dad said.”
“Oh, okay,” said Miss6.
More seconds zoomed between the gaps in this conversation.
I was about to throw my first rule out the window when Miss14 stepped in again.
“Well, did you?” she prompted.
“Did I what?”
“Hear what Dad said.”
“What did he say?”
You know that thing where the eff word can be used as an adjective, noun and verb? I was running through those sorts of sentences in my head.
“He wants to make sure,” said Miss14 with a touch of the frustrations I was drowning in up the front of the car, “you’re going to listen while we shoot our video.”
By this point we were pulling into the carpark. I’d already forgotten what my second point was going to be, or whether there was even a third. Probably something about staying out of the lolly aisle and not to think of the trolleys as pushcarts. I don’t know.
But despite all that had just been said and left unsaid, Miss6 quickly put my mind at ease as we got out of the car.
“Of course,” she said. “I always listen to Daddy.”
For lunches the kids each get to choose their two treats. If there’s any left. Not always the way of things lol
Raising a family on little more than laughs
Thank you to Woolworths for inviting us to accept this challenge and for sponsoring this post