The next day I am walking around like John Wayne on laxatives, fabulous look.

Carnival time (and Monty's was the day before, hence 'plain clothes' not Obe-Wan Kenobe, as I have referred to him as in the blog.

Tufty is doing alright, as she is now known chez us…Margo the chicken apparently managed to chop her hair with the aid of her middle sister, the flap happy  (ha ha, had to get that in!) way in which she tackled Tufty’s hair left devastating unseemingly large fringe syndrome.. but we have ventured out in public, and asides the odd look of disbelief, my friends kindly and compassionately ask if she’s been at her own hair with the scissors again…’no’, I explain, ‘This time, it was the chicken’.

With hours going forward this weekend, my kids have been turned inside out by this hour difference. The night, now much lighter, they take as a sign to run around relentlessly in and out of each others’ rooms, honing their ‘I’m a scary monster, although I know I should be in bed’ skills. So much so, that, as the ‘parent’ saying goes, it’ll end in tears’, and it inevitable does. Mitzi has been so terrified by Esmie, her younger sister (a.k.a Tufty) pretending to bite her and eat her (although she cannot even get out of her cot because at 2 and a half, she is still in there. I am not yet physically or mentally at that capability level yet to ‘unleash the balrog’ and allow my toddler total freedom in and out of her bed *rocks in corner at very thought*. So the big-girl bed is still waiting a wee while yet). Mizti gets over this and decides to start climbing on Monty’s bed, he is obviously distraught by the fact she is on his bed whilst he’s trying to read, and cries too. Pleading with his younger sister to ‘leave me alone’, as by this time she has well and truly crossed the line by calling him ‘camembert cheese’ at this point I really do have to intervene, there’s apparently NO worse insult than being called a smelly cheese. I’ll remember that the next time bastard policeman starts to cross the road in front of me when I’m driving, then knocks at my window as he makes me pull over then proceeds to royally rollock me for not leaving the legally required 4 metres between a pedestrian and a car. Err, sorry for not knowing the 4 metre rule Mr Wanky policeman. As if?! That is a true story, I didn’t even manage to play the I’m English me no understand’ which would have left him frustrated on his megalomaniacle power trip, card either this time, as I was so stunned, so weak me, simply smiled sternly and wished him a fabulous day, and wheel spinned off. OK, I didn’t even wheel spin either, nothing, I was lame. Pure , unadulterated lameness. Anyway, the kids, well they eventually went to sleep about 9…

It has been carnival week this week, so I have been baking cakes and putting makeup on little kids and ‘lending a lame hand’ at their carnivals like a trooper. Hence the photo. Desperate to get away from the jedi and princess theme that plays out every single bloody year the same, I encourage other outfits, no-one other than Mitzi concedes, and goes as a bit of a different adaptation, an Indian princess. Lola is straight up princess, Monty the jedi (although he’s forbidden from wearing his mask in front of me as they freak me out too much, and I always run off screaming, arms flailing around, like I am being attacked by the real Obe-Wan Kenobe…).

As I walk around the day of the carnival, they land a surprise 2 mile promenade to the town hall, and back. marvelous. 50 odd kids in disguise, tripping over too long skirts/trousers, plus bedraggled adults trying to enjoy parading the tired, some of them crying, makeup streaming kids in disguise brigade. The next day I am walking around like John Wayne on laxatives, fabulous look. I am in agony. My little cow (in fairness, she was disguised as one) nearly broke both my hips, elbows and knee caps making me carry her ALL the way there AND back. TWO miles. TWO whole, hardcore miles on foot carrying a cow. May as well have been 50 miles in fact, for what my broken body was telling me threw it’s creaks and groans and those little clicky, not sure if a little bone somewhere in my body just snapped, or it’s just one of those weird clicky thing, noises. You know? You don’t? Oh well, I do, and that’s all that matters.

 Tonight as I put the kids to bed, I read Monty’s Flat Stanley book with him. He remarks that it’d be *well cool* to be flat, think of what you could do, he says. To which I answer, well I am pretty flat, I have a flat chest (please see blog: http://manic-mums.blogspot.com/2010/11/after-breastfeeding-4-kids-i-was-hardly.html. for further 'i'm boobless' jokes, although it’s my sad reality, so don’t fall over laughing or anything too mean, leave me some dignity), he looks at me and laughs and goes ‘Oh yeah, you’re right there, mum!”

On that note, I shall love you and leave you, you can think of me in the rain again, on a Wednesday (no school) with 4 kids on Duracell…