I think we peaked too soon in the first week of the summer holidays doing far too many exciting activities all at once. Mummy has realised that if she is going to have enough wine money for her holiday we need to chill a little bit on the days out/lunches out/films.
So this week we have mainly being visiting parks. It is the first time in five years of park visitations that I find myself able to sit on a bench for some of the time. It may not sound much to you, but I'm finding it to be pretty life-changing. One Mum gave me a very odd look this morning when I realised I had been staring at her from my bench in a pitying fashion for more than a socially acceptable amount of time as she endlessly walked her not-quite-walking child around and around the playground. My time of that is over. I'm nowhere near the glorious heights of bringing a book or a newspaper with me and just occasionally interacting with one of my offspring if there is an emergency of sorts, but, it is a serious improvement on last year nonetheless.
However, I don't know if it is my control freak nature, or my teacher-training, or just the fact that there are a lot of muppet parents around but I seem to pick up on 'situations' much faster than many of the other parents. Zak and Sebi are not angels by any means but I like to think that if they aren't behaving then I am breathing down their necks before they have a chance to get seriously out of control. Example, a six year old boy karate chopped Zak in the face on Tuesday morning while his Dad was walking the dog at least 50 metres away and didn't see. I roared my most ferocious "How dare you!" at him and he shat his pants and legged it. I toyed with chasing him back to the father (who was flirting outrageously with somebody who definitely wasn't the boy's mother) and letting him know what his son had just done but I ended up leaving it as Zak was fine, the boy wouldn't come back in a hurry and I couldn't cope with the idea of the incredulous disbelief from this Dad who has no idea what his kids are up to.
Children can be really mean. Zak walked up to a boy and a girl yesterday morning to see if they wanted to play. "We don't like you", said one little cherub; "Go away and leave us alone" said his sidekick. Again, the parents were oblivious. I told Zak to ignore them and play with Seb until his friends arrived. Within twenty minutes Zak, Seb and their two mates were having a whale of a time and the nasty-snot-ridden-meany-peg boy had gone home leaving the little girl skulking around on her own. Part of me was proud when she asked Zak if she could join in his game and he said "yes" without hesitation, though part of me wanted him to tell her to do one maybe with a teeny-tiny punch in the boobies. He definitely gets his nice nature from Stuart.
We had a go at 'Play in the Park' this morning which is a couple of hours of FREE outdoor activities. Seb is technically too little to join in but the (bored teenage) organisers didn't really seem to care so I let him loose with trepidation. Sure enough, during a parachute game where Seb was meant to be a 'cat' crawling on top of the parachute catching the 'mice' he lay flat on his face in the middle and refused to move and so I had to crawl across the parachute and drag him off by his feet!
Hmmm, maybe caning £60 on a visit to the zoo doesn't seem like such a bad plan after all...
No comments:
Post a Comment