Germ Warfare

Elsa sneezed in my eye...again. And now I'm sick...again. I've never had more colds than in this past year while taking care of the girls. It's not right. Everytime I turn around someone is coughing on me or sneezing on me. Or one delightful time, we were walking to the park and I was holding Elsa's hand and I thought she had been kissing my hand. Turns out she had been wiping her runny nose on the back of my hand. *Shudder* Children are experts at germ warfare and sadly, I'm the one who is losing this battle. Now, where the hell did I put my airborne...

you would be sooooo sued in the states

We got home from our lovely beach trip earlier in July, only to discover that while we had been gone (for 5 days) the owners of our building had decided to have the outside redone. We walked up to the building and there was scaffolding covering the front of the building. We went down to the apartment discussing the lack of safety measures in place for the workers, put up the blinds and were shocked to see that they had also covered the back of the house with the scaffolding as well. Our beloved terrace had been taken over by the most unsafe looking scaffolding ever. Not only that, but to set it up they had to take all of our things off the terrace and they just sort of piled it all willy nilly out in the yard. Needless to say, many of the girls' flimsier outdoor toys did not survive.

It's been weeks now, and it's still there. And it wouldn't be a bad thing, but we don't let the girls out in the garden anymore because of the work. Yesterday, I saw a bucket fall from the top layer of scaffolding. To be fair though, their pully system is just a hook tied to a rope, so you know, things are bound to fall every once in awhile. They leave all their tools and work supplies out on the terrace. I have found nails, broken glass, and razor blades hiding in the grass. Of all this, the thing that bothers me most is all the random guys walking around the garden and staring in at us. Blatantly. I now have a new appreciation for how fish in bowls must feel.

they spontaneously tied themselves

Kate has had friends in town from New Zealand. They are hilarious. They also have two kids, a 5 year old boy, Isaac, and a 3 year old girl, LuLu. I've frequently been watching all four kids for the past 10 days, and am starting to feel a bit like the pied piper.

I was babysitting the kids on friday night, while the adults went out for a nice dinner. Kate was worried about me having to feed them, bathe them, put them all to bed, but I told her not worry, I got this. We get through dinner no problem. LuLu announces she needs to do a wee and heads off to the bathroom. I get the other kids cleaned up and into the lounge when I hear LuLu yell that she's all done in the bathroom. I go to help her out and the door won't open. The door on the bathroom sometimes sticks, so I give it another good tug...still won't open. At this point I know that pulling on it more won't do any good, I'm just not quite ready to accept this fact yet, so I stand there tugging for a bit longer before giving up. Defeated by the door, I now start, through the door, trying to lure LuLu off the toilet. It's at this point that she begins to panic.

"But I can't open the door. It's too hard." (Sobs and sniffing)

"Honey, I don't want you to open the door. I just want you to get off the toilet."

"But I don't want to open the door." (More sobs)

"Pet, I just want you to get off the toilet. You don't even have to go near the door."

"But the door is too hard to open." (Fewer sobs, thank god)

"Honey, I'll open the door. In fact, I don't even want you to touch the door. Just get off the toilet."


I hear her moving around and she's finally off the toilet. But now what? I decide that maybe it's not locked, maybe it's just the door knob being a jerk (denial, it's a beautiful thing). So off I go in search of power tools. I find the electric drill, but sadly this attracts the attention of the other kids and they all start crowding around and asking many, many questions: What's going on? Where's LuLu? Can I use that big noisy thing? Did she fall in the toilet? etc. So i do what any good nanny would do...I got them each a bowl of ice cream and put them in front of a movie. Back to the door. I get the knob off, but sadly that wasn't the problem. I start putting the knob back on and, of course, the drill starts losing power, until finally I'm twirling the giant drill to screw the last screw in. It was at this point that I have to finally admit that she has locked herself in. But here's the really strange part...there's no way she could have locked it. When I asked LuLu to come to the door, she couldn't reach the latch. I'm pretty sure it was at this point in the evening when my tubes spontaneously tied themsleves...never having kids. So now I'm sitting there looking at her through the key hole and trying to get her to find something to stand on so she can reach the latch.

"LuLu, go get the rubbish bin."

"I can't find it."

"It's right there next to the toilet."

"I still don't see it."

This proved harder than it really should have been. Finally I get her to go over and open the cuboard under the sink and take out the basket in which we keep the toilet paper (she could get that out of the cuboard, but she couldn't get the rubbish bin that was in plain site...I don't get it!) I hear all this noise as she drags the basket over to the door. And finally I hear the most beautiful sound in the world...the latch being slid back. I yank the door open and there she is, standing on the basket with such a look of accomplishment on her face. I pulled her into the biggest hug and we laughed and laughed. I got her a big bowl of ice cream for being so brave.

And when all the kids were asleep, I poured myself a hefty glass of wine for being so brave.