Revenge is a dish best served cold...

Having four children is tough going. They keep us awake at night, on our toes with never-ending demands, constantly criticise our parenting efforts, wreck our house and do their best to eat or destroy everything in their path.
When quietness descends on the house and the dust settles after a busy day, the husband and I often utilise the hour after they all go to bed to contemplate how we can exact revenge for these years of torture.
We smile as we plan ahead, years ahead. We may very well be old and grey when we get our own back. But revenge is indeed a dish best served cold. And we will serve a big bowl of freezing cold spaghetti carbonara, much akin to the substance Finn spilled down the back of the sofa, when our time comes.
We have made a vow to get them back for all the hair-greying, wrinkle-producing, stress-headache inducing tactics they have used to make our lives more ah, colourful. Regardless of where they are in the world, we will travel, we will have our revenge, our day will, as they say, come.
Say our oldest boy is all grown up, living in a big fancy house with a posh wife and a lovely car out front.
Pensioner versions of the husband and I will turn up at his house. We will eat spaghetti bolognaise on his fancy white sofa, covering everything within a metre radius in that nasty red sauce that never comes out. When he shouts at us to stop wiping our hands on his nice cushion covers we'll tell him to catch himself on that it’s only a stupid cushion.
On overnight visits we shall call him into our room approximately every 36 minutes to furnish us with fresh glasses of water, tissues and perhaps a new duvet cover because the one with the dinosaurs on it is really scary. We shall also put in requests for stories about aliens and spend the rest of the night in his bed because aliens are far scarier than dinosaurs.
In the morning the husband and I will spend 45 minutes swinging our clothes around our heads, kung-fu kicking each other and refusing to brush our teeth instead of getting dressed and ready to go back to the old folk’s home, thus leaving him late for his fancy job.
Also, we will throw up in the back seat of his fancy car so that he goes to work late and stinking of vom.
After we have completed our torture of Daniel we shall move on to his younger brother, whom, I am confident, will also have a fancy job, wife and car.
We shall begin our reign of pensioner terror in his kitchen where the husband - grey, old and decrepit as he will then be - will attempt to forcibly part kitchen
cupboards from their hinges. We will both eat everything at and below eye level and within reaching distance, then complain loudly and with bewilderment about feeling sick. We will also ask 10 questions in succession and not listen or care for the answers.We will follow him and his fancy wife around the house asking for more food and whining that we are literally weak with hunger. We mat well rock the TV back and forth until it falls off and smashes on the ground for no reason other than it’s just there.
Then we will make our way to our youngest boy's place of work. While the pensioner version of the husband distracts him by asking him to fill a sink with water and bubbles so he can dunk random stuff – remote controls, loaves of bread, cordless phones ¬– in, I will jam a jammy-covered DVD into his computer disc drive. I will also lie in wait until he has completed, but not saved, a very long and important document then pounce and switch the computer off at the wall.
When he brings us to his, no doubt, fancy abode we will attempt to blow up his kitchen by placing canisters of deodorant into his oven. We shall also busy ourselves eating dog pellets before being sick on his living room carpet.
The baby girl – who by this stage will be a beautiful and successful young woman – we will keep awake for three-week stretches by calling her on the phone at 10-minute intervals throughout the night
There's plenty of time yet to imagine methods of torture that wouldn’t look out of place in a Jean Claude Van Dam movie. Our brain cells and memory may well diminish with age but these pages will serve as a constant reminder and detailed record of days, and torture, gone by.

School daze...

The youngest of my boys is due to start playschool in September and as such has to learn to abide by a few of their rules – the most prevalent of those things is not to pee anywhere except a ceramic receptacle in the boys bathrooms.
Problem is he has absolutely no interest in parting ways with his Pampers.
It’s fair to say we’ve been down this road a few times at this stage and know, more or less, what to expect with the potty training experience. There have been certain boys in our house, who shall remain nameless to spare their blushes, who utilised plant pots in doctor’s surgeries, antique rugs, and wooden floors as a tactic to avoid using the actual toilet. One child blew up a fancy freestanding lamp ¬– and in turn fused the lights in the entire house – in the living room by mistaking it for a urinal. An easy enough error to make.
These are the dangers we must now face with our youngest son. But as parents we are fully prepared – mop bucket and bleach in hand – for the challenge. We have to tackle the problem now otherwise the boy will be showing up for his first lecture at university with a thick wad of sodden padding poking out over the top of his futuristic jeans.
But there are other ways we must prepare him for his entrance into the world of academia. He may be two and a half but he needs to know the ways of the world, the rules of the jungle.
I decided to research what areas we need to cover over the summer to get him organised for the school start in September. And as there are no set rules supplied by my boy’s nursery school, I had to look to a few schools in the US for guidance on how my child should behave. I mean, how much different can Derry be to, say, Detroit?
So according to these rules he must not wear chains on his trousers. This is a decidedly awkward one as the boy is already showing signs of worshipping Goth fashion. Just the other day he asked me if I thought his Cult t-shirt went better with his thick black eyeliner and backcombed curly hair look. He is also not allowed to wear spiked jewellery. Bummer.
He must not have creases on his trousers. As in deliberate creases, not the messy ones you get when you don’t iron your threads. This is gang-related thing. He is also forbidden to wear all red, all blue or a plain white t-shirt, lest the little man might be mistaken for a gangbanger. He must also refrain from wearing a comb permanently in his hair.
The child must refrain from other obvious wearing gang-apparel such as sleeveless denim jackets, or any other clothing, such as jumpsuits or long overcoats, which could conceal weapons. He is also not permitted to carry large bags.
All crayons, markers and non-prescription drugs are off the menu, only food must be consumed on school grounds.
He is also not allowed to chew chewing gum, which is unfortunately his most favourite past time, alongside drinking beer which is also frowned upon, by the way. There is also a no smoking, no knives and no firearms policy at most schools.
He is also not allowed to drive a scooter in the corridors of learning or use a bench as a mode of transport to descend stairs. I say whoever invented those particular rules are health and safety nerds and need to get out of their dusty classrooms more. Where I ask, is the fun in that?
So I think we’re clear enough on the ins and outs of school rules. We have the summer to get him off the beer, drugs, firearms and gang apparel. First to get the boy out of Pampers.

First Communion – What Not to Wear.....

We spent last week trying to sort out the boy’s threads for next month’s First Holy Communion.
I dragged the boy through 10 different shops, tried on a positive mountain of occasion wear, matched shirts to his hair colour and made several attempts at gearing him out with footwear. But the boy was not happy.
What kind of suit do you want? I would ask him. He would shrug his shoulders. Is it a grey one you’re after? The shop assistant would inquire. What about this lovely stripey shirt and tie combo? More shaking of his head and shrugging.
As I discussed the hopelessness of the situation with the shop assistant Daniel called me from across the shop to say he had found the perfect suit. It must be perfect, I thought, practically rugby tackling other shoppers to get to the one and only outfit that had actually made my boy smile for the first time that day.
And there it was, in all its glory. The full Darth Vader suit – long black flowing cloak, big black shiny headgear and red light saber, which makes whooshy and whirly noises.
I told him it wouldn’t really go down well in the church.
He didn’t care.
I told him all the other boys would be wearing real suits, as in waistcoat and shirt, not midnight black breastplate with red flashy lights and high boots with knee pads built in.
He said he didn’t care.
He said that people at that chapel on the day would be able to sense his confidence, as well as his off-the-chart midichlorian count as he strode up to the altar to receive his First Holy Communion. He said that once the priest did the whole sign of the cross thing he would be able to say ‘Amen’ in a deep, smoky heavily computerised voice. He said his mates would be so impressed they would high-five him on the way back to his seat. He said that this suit would render him literally unstoppable, except maybe at the buffet afterwards. He said he’d like to dine at a restaurant afterwards that served MGD 64 because chips wouldn't fit in through the breathing gaps in his helmet.
He said he was wearing this suit or no suit at all. That was my choice.
As I pondered the suit I did, for a moment, contemplate the advantages of those sturdy, black shoulderpads, the handiness of those black, padded gloves, the fact that the helmet would infact keep the bright sun off his fair skin. At least it was practical. At least he would get some wear out of it.
As it happened to be World Star Wars Day there was a variety of costumes on display. I’ll admit I had a vision of us in the church that day. And, by golly, it was spectacular.
I’d be in Princess Lea’s get-up – granted the metallic bikini may be uncomfortable for a particularly long mass but I’d be willing to pay the price for fashion. We could pray that we get a priest who prefers a short and sweet service as the husband will only be able to endure a brief period dressed as the rather hairy Chewbacca. Caolan would be a fabulous Stormtrooper. Finn the terrible will make a great R2-D2 and the wheeled underbelly of the robot will prevent him from running up and down the aisles shouting obscenities during the quiet bits of the mass. The baby will, of course, is the perfect size for Yoda. It may take a while to paint her skin green, and I suppose we could get baby-friendly super glue for the pointy ears, but if we are going to do it, we are going to do it right.
We will surely turn heads.
The countdown is on. Only four weeks to go. May the June fourth be with you – Sith Lord and Jedi alike.

Happy Birthday Sunshine

My eldest son turns eight years old today.
It’s hard to believe that exactly seven years and 364 days ago the husband and I were just ordinary Joes, floating through life without so much as a care. In a heartbeat universes aligned, worlds collided and we became Mum, Dad and son. Forever.
It’s fair to say that we hadn’t the first clue what to do with our new baby boy. For the first few weeks of his life we fumbled through, regularly thinking the child was in mortal peril or broken because he slept too much/slept too little/cried/ or because we let the temperature in the room reach 19c. Then there was that projectile vomiting incident when I thought the child was possessed by the devil and rang the emergency parish priest hotline at Finaghy while the husband rang the doctor on his mobile.
Because I worked nights at the Irish News the boy would frequently stay up till midnight watching back to back Terminator or Lord of the Rings movies with his father. And because I wasn’t there in the evenings to supervise his musical development, the child was also subjected to an unhealthy amount of bad 80s rock music in his infancy which may, or may not, have affected his brain. He will surely recite these points as the reason for his issues when he books himself into counselling in a few years time.
But we’ve got him this far without accidentally killing him or totalling messing up his life, which is a victory in anybody’s eyes.
We’re not throwing a party this year due to the sheer volume of injuries that marred last year’s shenanigans.
As I sat in the ruins of a deflated bouncy castle I vowed never again to torture myself by inviting 35 seven year olds into my home.
Seven people had black eyes, two had bumped heads, one was a suspected concussion. Two girls got chewing gum stuck in their hair, one child had to wear a pirate’s patch on their eye for days after taking a direct hit from a foam machine gun pellet at close range. There wasn’t one single flower left in our garden and I was picking crisped rice out of our carpet for months afterwards. There’s still a large pinkish stain on the rug where one girl threw her Red Alien Milkshake at another girl for ‘dissing’ her hair clips and one child was still with us at 10pm that night after his parents ‘forgot’ him.
I bought 35 white t-shirts for all my little party-goers to decorate with markers and paint. They did the t-shirts then moved to their faces, their legs, the walls, our car, the bouncy castle, the neighbour’s fence/dog. By the time they went home – what with the black eyes and the bandages and the red paint – many of them looked like survivors of some manner of major disaster. There were precisely four odd shoes left behind and never claimed. There was talk of limbs being lost, and therefore no need for the shoes, but this rumour has never been confirmed.
So we’re thinking of going for something slightly little less stressful this year – maybe climbing Mount Everest or jumping from a plane without a parachute.
Regardless of what we do we’ll celebrate the joyous occasion that made me a mother, my husband a father and our son the centre of our universe.
Happy birthday my sunshine.