A First Time for Everything.

All mothers remember ‘firsts’ in their children’s lives. 

Their baby’s first tooth, that first tenuous step, and the first word uttered from their sweet mouths (which let’s face it, is usually mum or dad) are special moments that stay with us forever.

Sometimes those ‘firsts’ can be something we take for granted and our child’s new wonder and delight fills us with a sense of fresh admiration for whatever it is they have discovered.

I recall the first time we took Lulu to the Gold Coast and she ran out on to the sand. Living in North Queensland, where the Great Barrier Reef precludes surf, we put up with coarse, grainy sand on our beaches that feels harsh and scratchy underfoot and is not that nice to lie on. 

The minute Lulu scampered on to the silken, powdery sand at Broadbeach she stopped frozen in terror. Looking up at me with horrified eyes she squealed,

“What is it?” and promptly burst into tears.

It was a similar situation when Jonah had a life-altering moment at about three years of age. 

Pizza Hut had been on the dinner menu that night and I had failed to notice how much pizza Jonah had been stuffing down his little gob. I tucked him into his racing car bed early in the night and was roused from sleep at about eleven o’clock to the sound of crying. 

When I staggered into the room and turned on the light I thought I’d walked into a scene from ‘The Exorcist’. There was so much vomit on his Superhero bedspread I waited for Jonah’s head to begin spinning.

“What happened?” wailed Jonah incredulously. 

It was the first time he’d thrown up in his memory and he must have wondered why his insides were being ejected from his mouth.

Everyone jokes about how much poo you have to deal with when you have a baby but no-one goes into depth about the spew. It’s preposterous the number of nights I woke up beside an ailing child in bed who would sit up without warning and puke all over the place. 

I’d get up, rinse the vomit off the sheets (making sure to poke the chunky bits through the plug holes with a pointy instrument) wash the child and myself, and change our pajamas and sheets. Thirty minutes later they would do it all again.

Hagar’s ‘first’ realisation of the circle of life was a truly endearing moment. 
At about four years of age, he snuggled up beside me in bed reading a book. We came to a sad part when an old family dog unexpectedly went to the big kennel in the sky.

He looked up at me with his black-lashed grey eyes and whispered,
“Why did he die Mummy?”

“Well Hagar, the doggy was very old and everything dies eventually.”

“Will Odie die?”

“Yes, one day he will Hagar.” I replied (thinking that if Odie didn’t stop incurring complaints from the neighbours he would be going to bone-heaven sooner rather than later.

Hagar seemed satisfied with that answer.

“But you won’t die, will you Mummy?”

“Darling, one day Mummy will die. Not for a long time (I'm hoping anyway) but everyone gets old and they get tired and they die.”

It took me about an hour to pacify his sobbing. 

It was awful.
I try to manipulate Hagar’s sensitivity these days. When he is being a classic a#$%hole teenager I switch into ‘Jewish 
Mother” mode.

“So what! You wanna kill your Mudda! You wanna give me an aneurism and have me drop down dead on da floor? Oy vey!”

It doesn’t work. 
He just grunts, “Meh….” and walks away from me.

Padraic’s ‘first’ was the first time he ran away from home. 
He was about five when he artfully absconded with his loyal partner in crime, Lulu, who was four years old. 

They were missing for roughly ten minutes, during which time I had been running up and down the street in my pajamas screaming out for them like a demonic harridan. 

In the distance I spotted a fluorescent workman walking up the hill with the pygmy version of Bonnie and Clyde trotting along beside him. 

Handing over the naughty duo he scrutinised me curiously, probably thinking I was the type of neglectful woman who should be prevented from breeding.

 Thaddeus’ first was my favourite. 

He was a late talker and at three years of age he was still only saying about ten single words. My then-husband and I were a tad concerned and I had been reading books about delayed onset of speech. 

One muggy, unpleasant day I was lying miserably on an old papasan with Thaddeus and Jonah playing on the floor around me and Hagar in my belly. Thaddeus stopped playing and stood up looking at me carefully. 

Gently, he climbed up on the chair, rested his little body on my chest, wrapped his chubby arms around my neck and said,

“I wub woo Mum!”

Why breastfeeding sucks more than the latest Hangover movie!

                                    

Geez, breastfeeding women and the divided opinions about discretion and breast exposure seem to flare up in the news again and again. Frankly, I’ve seen more boobies on the blokes at the local swimming pool than you’ll ever see providing nourishment to a baby.

When Thaddeus was born, as a first time mother, I had a lot of trouble getting him to latch on. I persevered through cracked nipples and a few other icky issues and managed to endure three months of it before he was put on the bottle. 

I was able to hang in there until about twelve months with the rest of them and lucky Lulu was breast fed until she turned two.This effort was due to a fundamental laziness at not wanting to sterilize bottles rather than a zealous fixation on breast feeding.

Was I a discrete breast feeder?

No, not particularly.

Modesty was the best policy when I first began nursing Thaddeus but by the time Lulu was born, I’d pull out the old milk jugs while pushing a shopping trolley around a supermarket. ..anything to stop a screaming newborn.

That is not to say I had sacrificed my feminine dignity. 

Not until the glorious, “Tradesman Porn Show Event” that is.

Grabbing a quick shower in the morning before my then husband left for work, was a coveted activity in the months after Lulu was born and there were five children under seven years of age trolling around the house.

One morning, emerging from my steamy indulgence, I realized I had brought my knickers and nursing bra into the bathroom but had neglected to grab my nursing pads.

Now excuse my vulgarity, but Twin 1 and Twin 2 were both fully engorged with incoming milk and I was reluctant to fasten the bra cups as I didn’t want any seepage sullying my clean brassiere. 

My cunning strategy was to make a dash from the bathroom across the hall to my bedroom wearing my knickers and my nursing bra with the flaps down. 

'Surreal' is how I’d describe my emotions, as bursting into the bedroom at high speed, I realized there were two men standing beside the air conditioner.

One of the men was an apprentice electrician; the other was my stupid, stupid then-husband who had invited the young bloke in to the bedroom to check the wiring.

‘Traumatised’ comes close to illustrating the expression on the young lad’s face.

I doubt at his tender age, he’d ever heard of or seen a nursing bra.He was plainly bewildered at the bizarre woman, standing immobilized at the door, with two pointy norks sticking out of her creepy Madonnaesque brassiere.

We did organize to get the air-conditioner repaired but the apprentice never returned. 

His boss probably sent him off on stress leave.

I answered a knock on the door a few days later.

“Hi, Mrs Poinker,” said a leering and more senior Sparky with a barely concealed grin on his face. 

“I’m here to fix your airconditioner.”

Knocked Up

About six months later I was in the front room teaching a drama lesson to a group of students.All of a sudden one of the little girls who had finished her lesson and was waiting to be picked up by her mother came tearing in.
“Mrs. W! You need to come quickly! There’s something wrong with your cat! I think it’s sick!”

Interrupting my lesson I ran outside to investigate the state of affairs. The cat was undeniably acting in a very abnormal manner. Rolling around on its back and wailing in a horrible and uncharacteristic caterwaul it appeared to be having some sort of seizure. 

“Hey Kitty, what’s the matter?” I tried to calm the frenzied creature.

She leapt up and began to rub her stomach on the ground, waving her bottom and tail high in the air and yowling like an alpine yodeler. By this stage all of my students had come out and we stood helplessly watching her writhing in what seemed to be agonizing pain.

I was wondering about whether or not to put the cat in the car and make an emergency trip to the vet, when a mother arrived to pick up her daughter, got out of her car and came over.
“That cat is in season.” she confidently asserted.

Oh, I thought. She’s not in pain; she’s just behaving like a slut.

I returned to my studio with the highly amused students believing that I could deal with Pussy Galore later. After ten minutes another student barged in shouting,

“Mrs. W! Your cat is running down the street with three other cats chasing it!”

I have to say that my students got more than their money’s worth that day.

Nine weeks later the cat was lumbering around like a baby hippopotamus and ready to drop her bundle any day. My kids were overwrought with excitement and taking bets on exactly how many kittens she would have.

The cat appeared one morning loudly mewing for food. 

She was thin. 

After the ‘cannibal mice’ incident it crossed my mind that she may have eaten her babies.

Either that or she’d delivered them in the bush land opposite our house and had abandoned them to be devoured by snakes.

Hagar immediately coordinated a search party scouting out every inch of the yard. 

“Found them!” he screamed joyfully after about an hour of thorough exploration.

She had delivered her kittens behind overgrown shrubbery in our pool enclosure. One by one Hagar ferried a tiny parcel of fluff out to us. There were five altogether, one for each of the kids to name and cherish. 

For a little while at least. 

Hagar was the most enamoured of his furry friend naming it ‘Pubit’ (don’t ask) and vowing to teach it circus tricks when it grew up a bit.

Watching the five ravenous kittens greedily gnawing on her teats and constantly vying for her attention brought back some uncomfortable memories and I think I actually bonded with the cat that day.

Extracting loveable, six week old kittens from the tenacious clutches of my distraught, sobbing children and sending them off to good homes was no easy feat. 

I had her ‘fixed up’ at the vet after that. She had an operation to remove an abscess a few years later that cost me $600. If I added all the years of vaccinations, worming treatments and food and shelter on to that, I guess she wasn’t such a bargain cat after all.

The moral of the story is – Don’t count your kittens until they are hatched.

"Who flogged me thongs?"

 As part of the verbal slurs entrenched in every day conversations, they took to bestowing girly nicknames on each other.

“Mum! Harriet (Hagar) took my basketball shoes to his mate's and I have training in ten minutes!”

“They’re my thongs Tamara (Thaddeus) giv ‘em back!”

“You took my thongs on the weekend and lost them Jacqueline (Jonah)!”

“I’ll punch you in the head if you don’t giv ‘em back Patricia (Padraic).”

Shoes and the rightful possession thereof, was the common theme underlying a large percentage of the aggression.  I’m speculating that it was because they all had, more or less, similar sized feet. Most of Lulu’s shoes were auspiciously pink so she escaped any of the footwear- category altercations.

There was a whopping great wicker basket outside our front door which housed all of their mud splattered thongs, school shoes, runners, soccer and rugby boots, basketball shoes and the occasional mystery sock. Every week day morning there would be a panicked skirmish around the wicker basket. Shoes would be flying out in all directions as the boys attempted to identify school shoes (which unfortunately were all  exactly the same black leather, lace up type) while I sat in the four wheel drive watching the clock tick towards another late arrival at school.

One morning as my four wheel drive pulled up in the school drop off zone there was an earsplitting scream behind me. All doors of the car opened at the same time with five kids launching themselves out shrieking and shouting in obvious terror. Propelling myself out of the car at high speed I ran around to the collection of distraught and roaring children standing on the footpath to see what was going on.

Apparently a large cane toad had taken up residence in one of their shoes overnight and had delivered a lovely squishy surprise when the owner attempted to insert his foot. I shook the offending creature from the shoe and we watched it hop away down into a gutter looking slightly traumatised.

The mums in the cars lined up behind us probably had a good laugh.

Kids just say it like it is!

It’s a well-known fact that children can be embarrassing and I certainly experienced several cringe worthy incidents.
We were at a breakfast during a conference my then husband was attending. He ran into one of his colleagues and his wife as we were leaving and politely introduced myself and the kids. Thaddeus, about five at the time, stared at the wife and said in his sweetest voice, 

“Hello, you look…strange.” 
We bustled him out as swiftly as we could. She did look a bit strange but even so…
I couldn’t make as hasty an exit though, when I was at the checkout at the shop one day and I noticed Padraic (about three years old) gawking at a very petite man standing in front of us. 

“That man’s short!” he rasped loudly for all and sundry to hear.

The poor guy turned around and said graciously,
“That’s right little fella, I am short!”
I smiled apologetically and the people around us tittered politely.

Padraic, sensing that he’d elicited a reaction of some sort, shouted a bit louder,

“That man’s SHORT!”
This time the man smiled and nodded at Padraic while I made shushing noises and attempted to distract him, again smiling apologetically at the poor bastard.

Perceiving excitement in the air Padraic went for it again, even more stridently,

“THAT MAN’S SHORT!” he bellowed.
By this time all the other customers were looking at their feet, the shop assistant was glaring at me and the Danny De Vito lookalike was not smiling at all.

In fact, he was paying for his items as quickly as he could and almost running out of the store with Padraic raucously calling after him, 
“THAT MAN’S SHORT! THAT MAN’S SHORT! THAT MAN”S SHORT!”

Desecration of British Landmarks

We were often stopped in the streets of Paris and London by unassuming tourists who mistook us for locals. I like to think it was because of the chic French manner in which I wore my shapeless tracksuit pants, but it was probably more to do with the fact that no one usually takes five young children abroad.

 One rainy day, a wealthy looking American couple who happened to be standing in the Eiffel Tower lift with us, kindly pulled out three bright green parkas and asked us if we wanted them. They had belonged to their sons who had since grown up and for some baffling reason they’d brought the jackets to France. My guess is that they were looking for French street urchins to donate them to and my kids were the closest thing they had seen. Their fluorescent colour came in handy for keeping sight of Hagar, who managed to nick off into the bowels of the Paris Metro and had me bawling and sobbing thinking he’d never be seen alive again.

Blarney Castle was a hoot. Taking the eldest two up the precariously treacherous stairwell to the top of the tower was terrifying. 

Image credit: en.wikipedia.org
Allowing some old fart to hold their little bodies bent over backwards in order to kiss an ancient stone with God knows how much bacteria thriving on it was not one of my shrewdest decisions.  

I had visions of them hurtling over the parapet to a grisly death. Aside from irritating the other tourists with my fishwife-like hysterics, we made it down safely and have the certificates to prove it.

Leaving the historic site proved to be yet another complex procedure. 

On the way out of the estate there is an ancient iron turnstile contraption and by ingeniously stepping into the turnstile then slithering under and around the internal bars, Padraic managed to imprison himself. 

He was unable to get out and no one else could get in. 

Our predicament was that nobody had seen precisely how he had done it and after much coaxing to “push your arm through that bit” and “poke your bum through first and step over” we realized, as did the incredulous gatekeeper, that he was stuck. 

Even though it was getting late there were still tourists lining up outside the gate waiting to get in. I had visions of having to call an Irish welder to liberate my son, destroying a 600 year old gate in the process.

A large tourist coach pulled up outside and about thirty young American student types disembarked expressing loud dismay at the hold up. 

Padraic’s emancipator turned out to be a young man who had the nous to get Padraic to climb up the gate while he climbed up the other side lifting him above the pointy bits and down to the ground safely.

 Applause erupted from the crowd and Blarney Castle was back in business.

Whilst not an actual diagnosed ADHD sufferer, Hagar displayed many of the symptoms in his younger years. Being cooped up in a van driving all over Britain did not sit well with him and there were more than a few explosive tantrums. One time we became so fed up with him that we left him throwing a full blown rage attack in the car while we all went in to the Little Chef. 

He threw himself around the car in paroxysms of fury, screaming at the top of his lungs while we ate our burgers ignoring the judgemental stares from the other customers. 

He refused to get out of the car to go to the toilet and naturally, ten minutes after we had hit the road again he began whining about needing to wee. His father pulled over in defeat and the van door slid open. I heard a faint yelp, “Help Mum!” I looked out the side window and saw Hagar submerged up to his shoulders in mud. 
Ha, poetic justice.

After the near desecration of the 600 year old Blarney Castle I was a bit nervous when we arrived at the 5000 year old prehistoric monument, Stonehenge. Like most security guards, these guys did not appear to have a sense of humour. The security guards at Hong Kong airport hadn't thought it was amusing when the boys had fired imaginary machines guns at them accompanied with resonant sound effects either. 

Neither had the security guards joined in the merriment at the Dublin Art Gallery while the boys were pointing and chortling at all the majestic nudie portraits.

However, open spaces for them to run around on was much more sensible than the nerve –racking, haunting nightmare of the Waterford Crystal Museum outing.

 I could finally relax, listening to the informative commentary on the audio headpiece whilst strolling around the roped off perimeter. Hagar had already run about five laps of the circuit and was walking behind me when he suddenly spotted his Dad across the other side of the monuments. 

Impetuous to a fault, he vaulted over the inadequate rope barrier and like Jonathan Thurston, stormed down the length of the field, ducking and weaving between the megaliths, streaking over the grass towards his horrified father. 

The world stood still as I experienced flashbacks of the Simpsons episode where Bart knocks over Stonehenge like dominoes. 

Image credit: en.wikipedia.org

Pinky Goes Abroad

Family holidays were usually fraught with complications. The logistics of organizing the packing and preparation for even a week- long vacation were daunting. It was a complex operation involving a lot of screaming, bickering, trauma and hissy fits. 

As I stated previously, I've always had an emotional temperament. 

On a plane trip to Sydney one year I had finally managed to line all of the kids up fully dressed, with suitcases by the door and backpacks on their shoulders to await the taxi taking us to the airport. The animals were in the kennels, the washing up done, the toilets flushed and we were good to go.

 I looked over at my then husband, fiddling with his mobile phone, and envied the fact that the only person he had to organize was himself. 

The taxi arrived a little bit late but, with good humour and high hopes we all bundled in. The only discouraging factor was that it was pouring with rain, but nobody appeared to have become waterlogged getting into the taxi so at this point everything was fine and dandy. We lived on a hill and just as we got to the bottom, out of habit, I flippantly asked my then husband,

“Got the tickets?”

He didn’t have the tickets.

The taxi driver was asked to turn around so that the guilty party could shamefacedly go back into the locked and alarmed house to retrieve the tickets. 

At this stage I had only just begun to nervously scrutinize my watch every two minutes. I had never missed a plane and certainly didn’t intend to miss this one after the maniacal effort I’d gone to. Halfway back up the hill the taxi began to shudder and finally stalled. Several unsuccessful attempts to restart it ensued.

“I’ll have to call another taxi to come and get you.” remarked the chilled-out driver.

A frenzied plan was made for my then husband to run back up the hill and around the corner to our house to fetch the tickets while I waited in the taxi with the five kids for the rescue vehicle. It was still pouring with rain. 

Patience and tolerance was never my strongest virtue and my temper was near boiling point. Finally the other taxi arrived at around the same time as the very saturated, father of my children. We were on our way once again with no time to spare.

“Maybe the plane is going to crash and we aren’t meant to be on this flight.” I thought out loud.

Later at the check-in counter Thaddeus and Jonah alarmed the surrounding passengers with a loud conversation about whether the flight was doomed or not.

In 2000 my then husband was fortunate enough to be offered the opportunity to attend a conference and study tour of Amsterdam, France, Ireland, Scotland and England. 

He was allowed to bring his wife along as well, however; as we had no-one to leave Thaddeus (11years), Jonah (10 years), Hagar (8 years), Padraic (6 years) and Lulu (5 years old) with, in addition to the fact that I would miss them too much, I refused to go without them. 
So, much to the horror, disbelief and amusement of friends and family, the plane tickets were purchased and accommodation was booked.

I actually blame Newman the neighbour for much of the misfortune that struck us down on that ill-fated pilgrimage. 

Two nights before the long anticipated odyssey, Newman had been struck down with a particularly nasty virus. Jonah and Newman had been living in each other’s pockets as usual and lo and behold, on the morning of departure, Jonah woke up with a burning fever and a hacking cough. 

I dosed him up with paracetemol, and we set off on our travels. The first leg of the international flight was from Cairns to Hong Kong. From memory, Jonah slept most of the way but when we arrived in Hong Kong he was too ill to walk so we wheeled him around the airport in a luggage trolley. 

We had an overnight stay there and he was just well enough to do a little bit of sightseeing the next day. That night we departed for Amsterdam and the late time of night or too much activity during the day seemed to have freshened up his influenza. 

I sat with him apart from the others as I didn’t want him disturbed. He coughed for the entire flight often to the point of vomiting. I kept giving him regular doses of Ventolin from a puffer as he had experienced asthma in association with the flu previously and I was sure that was what was making him cough now. 

An Indian man across the aisle kept turning around and staring at us anxiously. When you’re midflight and you look overhead at the little plane on the screen showing you which part of the world you are flying over, and you’re crossing the Siberian desert at 60,000 feet with a sick child… well you tend to feel a bit panicky. 

Jonah slept fitfully and I didn't get a wink. It was a horrible trip.

As soon as we landed and found our accommodation we quickly discovered it was around the corner from the red light district, next door to a nightclub and across the road from a very seedy looking café called the “Fluffy Duck”. 

What was my travel agent (brother-in-law) thinking? I quickly began asking about medical attention and its availability. I finally fronted up with Jonah to a hospital in Amsterdam which agreed to see him as an outpatient. 
The doctor was a young woman who spoke fluent English and after checking him thoroughly, ordered me to stop giving him Ventolin as he didn’t have asthma, he had the flu. There was nothing I could do but give him Paracetemol for his fever. It was a big load off my mind that he wasn't going to die. 

That night Padraic vomited and went to bed with a fever. Ten minutes later Thaddeus vomited and went to bed with a fever. Later on that night Lulu woke up screaming. She was burning up and pointing at the air in front of her, deliriously crying out about a red bug that was coming to get her. I panicked. 

Why was she hallucinating? Was her food spiked with some type of drug at the restaurant we’d been to for dinner? After all we were in Amsterdam, where smoking hash is an everyday, acceptable thing to do. Then she vomited and went back to sleep. No, it was just the flu.

September 2000, if you cast your mind back, was the year of the Sydney Olympics. My then husband had to attend his conference the next day and left bright and early. With Thaddeus, Jonah, Padraic and Lulu as sick as dogs there was no alternative but to stay at home snuggled on the couch watching television. So there we were, ensconced on the other side of the world from our home, watching the only English speaking channel, the BBC, which happened to be broadcasting the Sydney Olympics. Do you see the irony?

The next afternoon when their father came home from the second day of his conference, I gathered the bags of dirty clothing and set off to find a laundry. I must have wandered the canals of Amsterdam for about one and a half hours before I finally found what I was looking for. My arms were aching when I got home, presumably from carrying those heavy bags for so long. Incorrect. About half an hour after getting home my fever set in. 

By this stage Hagar had already vomited and displayed signs of having the flu as well. All six of us were coughing, spewing, aching, feverish and wishing things would improve, which they did on our final day in Amsterdam. We were all well enough to make our way to the train station, destination Paris.

One aggravating thing about travelling with a number of young children is the amount of washing they tend to generate. I frequented the laundries of several European cities during our holiday and in some sense it was a culturally enlightening experience. 

I would escape the kids and leave them with their father while I traipsed around with my hefty loads in search of the nearest laundromat. The receptionists at our hotel in Paris were almost hostile and completely unhelpful when I asked if they could give me directions.

 I found a patisserie where a quintessential French Casanova was clearly chatting up the girl behind the counter. Neither spoke much English but Casanova seemed to understand what I needed and beckoned me to follow. He led me down into a back alley and I began to wonder if I was about to be assaulted when a Laundromat magically appeared in front of me. He grinned, waved and went back to his amorous pursuits. 

I stuffed the washing into one of the washing machines, added the detergent, popped in the coins, closed the machine and waited for the appliance to begin its cycle. Nothing happened. 

There were no instructions, at least no English instructions, and I wasn’t sure what I was doing wrong. There were two older Parisian women chatting in the corner. “Excuse moi,” I said in my best, Grade Ten French. “I don’t speak French.” They looked at me inquisitively.  Mumbling in English I showed them the washing in the machine and shrugged stupidly as if to say, “It’s not working.”

One of the women (neither of whom gave the impression spoke a word of English), gestured towards the coin slot, then turned away, her transaction with the idiot non-French person complete.

“Excuse moi!” I persisted. They both looked up with a faintly irritated air. I was desperately trawling my brain for any remnants of school girl French I might still have rattling around.

 I wanted to tell them I’d already put the coins in but I didn’t know how to say it. A brainwave hit me. Holding up the coins towards the coin slot I mimed putting them in and said sheepishly, “Déjà vu.”

They looked confused for about five disquieting seconds, then, insight flashed across their faces. 

“Ahhh!” one of them exclaimed and thumped the machine with her fist setting it instantly in motion.

“Merci beaucoup!” I said in a terrible French accent. 

They turned back to their conversation ignoring the American tourist that couldn’t operate a washing machine.

The Rugrats

                                    Theme song to hum whilst reading this post:
                                     "We gotta get out of this place" by the Animals.

With only eighteen months between them, Padraic and Lulu became the best of mates. Always in mischief and skulduggery the two were a formidable duo. Newman’s little brother (who will be known as George) was; at 3 ½ years, the same age as Lulu, and Padraic was about 5 years of age.


Outnumbered by boys six to one, Lulu grew into an unmitigated tomboy. Refusing to wear the feminine attire I had splashed out on after the uninspiring years of dressing four boys, she would only consent to wearing t-shirts and shorts. She cut her fringe in a diagonal slant, blackened her front tooth after playing rough house with her brothers and boldly snubbed any type of footwear barring thongs.


She was usually to be found trailing behind Padraic and George, who in turn followed Hagar around as if he were the fun guru.




Ranking in top dog status among the rug rats, Hagar managed to induce the trio into various wicked escapades. Sadly, Lulu was more often than not, the target for many of Hagar’s tomfooleries, and Padraic the stooge. One Sunday afternoon Lulu came tearing in the house, shrieking, gagging and clutching at her throat.


“Burning!” she bawled, spitting and retching.


“What is it? What did you drink?” we implored. “Tell Mummy quickly!”


Panic stricken and with my finger on the keypad of my phone, about to call Poison information, I glanced up to see Hagar holding up a coke bottle filled with a yellow liquid. Snatching it out of his hand and taking a deep sniff I pleaded with him.


“What the hell is it, Hagar?”


“It was Padraic, Mum.” He replied in a virtuous and scandalised tone. “He weed in the bottle and gave it to Lulu to drink.”

Deep in my heart I knew Padraic was far too guileless to come up with a lark such as this. The true architect of this peccadillo was standing in front of me, with barely concealed delight all over his face. 

We nicknamed Newman’s brother George, Bam Bam, as he bore a close resemblance to the Flintstone’s character with his brown muscular little body. He followed in his brother’s footsteps and was often to be found knocking diligently on our front door at 5:00 am. 


The big boys; Thaddeus, Jonah, Newman and occasionally Hagar, were too worldly to be bothered with the likes of the infants and left them out of most of the more sophisticated games. Padraic, George and Lulu were more interested in physical activities such as digging in the garden, building cubby houses and rummaging around for dinosaur bones in the rocky area under the house.One hot day I suggested George might like to join Padraic and Lulu for a swim in the pool. I didn’t need to ask twice. He was off like a piece of cheese, hurtling down the gully to his house presumably to ask his mother for permission. In seconds flat he was back up at our house enthusiastically launching himself up in the air in excitement. 

As Padraic and Lulu appeared in the hallway, ready in their swimmers, he dropped the towel that had been wrapped around his waist. In his agitation he had forgotten to put on his swimmers and was standing there stark naked. I wish I had as much zest for life as a four year old.


We were witness and party to many of the commercial fads of the years between 1992 and 2000. Hagar in particular, would become obsessed with whatever the toy manufacturers were advocating at the time. Power Rangers were very popular in our house for a few months. 

Each of the boys were in possession of a specifically coloured Power Ranger costume and would race around house and garden tackling each other and roaring, “Dragonzord!, Tigerzord! ,Mastodon!, Pterodactyl!” Whenever the television programme came on they would all be standing on my dilapidated couch waiting for the exact moment the music stopped and leap off together bellowing, “Go! Go! Samurai!” or “Time for morphin!”. 
No one really knew what any of that meant but that was irrelevant. 



Hagar as the green Power Ranger.

DVDs had not yet been invented, however, we invested quite a sizeable fortune in kid’s videos, in order to glean some respite from constant activity and mayhem. Respite for myself that is. We had a rather comprehensive collection until the big boys took many of them to be sold at the markets. 

Hagar became the most fanatical at watching movies and for some mysterious reason always became fixated on the nasty, malevolent characters. He owned the entire cast of plastic figurines from the “Lion King” and dragged them around behind him in a little sack no matter where he went. The most prized of his figurines, however, were the Hyenas. He always loved the sharks, the wolves, the Orks and any of the other anti-heroes appearing in the plot of a movie. 





Jonah refused point-blank to watch any movie more than once. He was far more interested in taking apart any mechanical device he could get his hands on. He was given a mini tool kit for Christmas one year and would sit consumed for hours on end, sifting through the innards of an alarm clock or the like. 

I had read somewhere that children watch the same movies endlessly because it's the best way for them to acquire and master new skills. They keep watching so that they can understand it a little better each time.
I remember at the age of two, Jonah could sing the entire chorus from “Don’t Cry for me Argentina” which was quite amazing (and a weird song choice) for his age. He had an extraordinary memory and I think that is probably why he couldn’t stand the repetitiveness of watching the same movie twice. 
Aside from that fact, it was very frustrating when I wanted them all to sit quietly for an hour and a half so I could get some me time.
Just like a glut of other children with irresponsible mothers in the nineties, all five of the kids were enamoured of the “Simpsons”. Knowing full well that Bart Simpson was not an exemplary role-model, I allowed myself the luxury of an hour’s peace while cooking dinner when they were ensconced in the lounge room watching it. So shoot me.

I recall staying at my parents’ house one year on holidays when the theme music for the show blared from the television. The kids were all getting up to no good in various locations in the house, but on hearing the music came scurrying in and plonking down together on the couch. Dad looked at the screen, at them and then at me in astonishment. 

“That was just like the TV!” he chortled.




Christmas was always an epic event embracing the completely commercial, materialistic ambiance of the occasion with wild abandon. I would spend the entire of Christmas Eve locked in the bedroom wrapping remote control cars, remote control helicopters, remote control boats and the like. 

A local charity had the brilliant idea of hiring out a fully turned out Santa to call in to your house unexpectedly on Christmas Eve for a measly ten dollars. We would invite the neighbours and various other ring- ins to come over, and then Santa would magically arrive clanging his bell and doling out chocolates to the astonished children. 
The next morning they would find the tree surrounded by a myriad of bright and bulging presents. Although they were all exciting and memorable times they were not without the inevitable tears, tantrums and dummy spits. But then again I have always been an emotional type of person.
Boxing Day would inevitably be spent returning faulty remote control toys to the store. Every year I swore to never purchase any toy that required batteries ever again. 



The best present we ever bought them was a wooden cubby house. It was delivered a few days before Christmas and it became an excellent asylum for the perpetrators of any wrong-doings. Also if any of them were feeling ill-tempered towards the others they would huff off in a strop and sit in the cubby for a while until they’d calmed down. 

The cubby is still standing in the yard, however, now it has become a sanctuary for the cat. 

                
Jonah on top and Hagar in the cubby sulking.