Top Five Tuesday! Five things I wish I had never started!

Five Things I Wish I Had Never Started!

(Apart from this Blog!)

 

Last night, for the first time since Father's Day, I put my youngest daughter to bed and read her favourite story to her. Usually she goes straight off to sleep, but last night she refused point-blank to go off. The reason for this is that, for Father's Day, I bought Prince Charming a personalised book from her that they could read together and this has become THEIR ritual. There was no way that she was going to go to sleep until DADDY had read to her! I must admit that there was a pang of jealousy as they laughed and giggled together, and she fell asleep without a murmur, followed by abject panic when I realised that I was never going to be able to get her to sleep on my own again!

 

This got me thinking about things that I've done that I wish I had never started. So here are my Top Five!

 

1. The Bear!

 

Bear!

Bear is the youngest child's most treasured possession which she has had from the day she was born. I am regularly awoken from a relatively peaceful sleep to find Bear being thrust in my face and the yelling of "Morning, Mummy!". This is not a pleasant way to be roused in the mornings...especially during the Summer Holidays! There is also the whole bedtime routine in which Bear has to be kissed several hundred times in alternation with the youngest child. This might not seem too much of a problem...but Bear is always manky! (For those people who are unfamiliar with Brummy terms, this means that he is always disgusting and filthy!). No matter how many times I wash Bear, five minutes later he is inevitably just as grubby.

 

And then there are those times that Bear is very naughty and hides...usually just before bedtime. Cue plenty of wailing and the troops being sent on a mission to find him so that the small child can go to bed!

 

 

2. Cookie Monster Fudge!
 

 

 

Having jumped on the slow cooker bandwagon (which is great when you are a full-time working mum!), I joined many different slow cooker-advocating groups on Facebook, all of whom seemed to have an obsession with Slow Cooker Fudge. So, I thought I would try my hand at it...however, I decided to give it my own special Wicked Stepmother twist! Why do I have these terrible ideas?!

 

Basically, slow cooker fudge consists of four bars of the cheapest chocolate you can find, a tin of condensed milk, vanilla essence and butter chucked in the slow cooker and stirred occasionally! However, if you want to be a bit different, you can do what I did...add blue food colouring, cookies and chocolate buttons for eyes to make it (somewhat!) resemble the Cookie Monster! (See the picture above).

The problem with this is that the amount of sugar in this fudge makes it like Crack for kids! Every weekend I am nagged and nagged and nagged until I give in and make it! Then the Munchkins spend most of the rest of the weekend, hanging around the fridge, drooling and moaning like extras from The Walking Dead!

 

 

3. The Cheeky Monkey Song!



Cheeky Monkey is a stuffed animal that was given to me when I started my first teaching job in 2001. I must admit that I was rather sad at the time and bought him a passport which I got stamped for him wherever I went...he even accompanied me on my honeymoon to Thailand, Australia and Singapore!

Anyway, as the Step-Munchkins have been forbidden, by the Evil Queen, to bring any personal belongings from their own home, I donated him to the boy Step-Munchkin. One particular night, when he was rather emotional, I invented the Cheeky Monkey Song to cheer him up! Now, you are probably thinking that it has some amazing lyrics with me being an English teacher and all that...Well, I will enlighten you. This is how it goes!

"He waves his arm. He taps his foot...because he's really funky. He's the ONE, the only ONE. He's Cheeky, Cheeky Monkey!"

As you can imagine, this song also has actions and emphasis on certain words! So now, every time the Step-Munchkins stay over, I am reduced to a puppeteer akin to something off CBeebies or Sesame Street!



 

 

4. Making Prince Charming's Lunch

 

 So, in the early stages of our relationship I decided that I needed to prove to Prince Charming that I was some sort of domestic goddess. Naturally, that didn't last long (particularly due to teaching full-time, planning and marking in the evenings, and running around after six Munchkins!)! The one thing that did remain, however, was the making of his lunch every morning.

 

To start with, it was cheese sandwiches and the odd batch-cooked curry out of the freezer...then it became homemade steak bakes and curry slices, along with homemade chicken tandoori wraps! It even got to the point where his co-workers were also places orders for the lunches...although I must admit that this gave me a bit of an ego boost (Move over, Nigella!)!

 

I must spend a least half an hour every morning doing his lunch after taking his order in bed (although I must admit he does a large proportion of the cooking in our house). There is one advantage however...he has learned that, when there is no lunch waiting for him in the morning, he is in the dog-house!!

 

 

5. Letting My Children Have Musical.ly Accounts

 

 

Disclaimer: Before you judge me, I am fully aware that they are not really old enough to have musical.ly accounts, however I can assure you that they are closely monitored.

 

Since having their accounts, it appears that my children have lost the ability to speak! They spend hours staring at their tablets with their mouths opening and closing, but no sound coming out! I have listened to song after song played at various speeds until even I'm not sure what they sound like properly any more. Bedrooms are left as bomb sites from the various costume changes that are apparently required to film some of these 15 second clips!

 

But the most dangerous thing about musical.ly is that you never know where you are going to find them being filmed. I decided (as a totally embarrassing and annoying mother might!) to burst into the girls' bedroom and wiggle my bottom (covered, of course!) at them...only to find my rear end then the star of a new video! I have rushed out of the bathroom naked, having forgotten to take a towel into the shower with me...to find my boobies being filmed jiggling behind one of their heads!

 

Be warned...you could find yourself accidentally becoming a musical.ly sensation without even knowing it!

 



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