"He needs to go the toilet," she said.
It was at that moment I realised it was time to recap some of the shenanigans from the twins R and J, and toddler O too. Before we start, here is a recent picture of them, along with baby L:
1.
A typical morning in my house sees a race between my alarm clock and toddler O to wake me up.
If the alarm clock wins, I get to shower in peace. If O wins, then it's chaos.
I'll usually shepherd him to the back of the house, so he can't wake anyone else up. I will then try and open the curtains. He will immediately shut them.
"Close them, mumma still asleep!", he admonishes.
To recap: this is a kid who if I let my guard down will jump into his brothers' beds and lick them until they wake up. He is now concerned the light coming into the kitchen will wake his mother, who is in a bedroom with a closed door at the opposite end of the house.
I have been having this argument with him for weeks. I still haven't won.
2.
On the opposite end of the spectrum is J. He is not a morning person.
Recently when woken up for school, he told me, "I'm not getting up until you turn the lights off!".
Not only was his bedroom light not on, but O had ensured the curtains remained closed. And the Sydney smoke haze was blocking most of the sunlight coming through the gap between the curtains and the window edge.
His other favourite delaying tactic is to protest about school attendance.
One time, after declaring, "I don't want to go to school!", he then asked, "how long do I have to go for?"
"You have to go to school until you understand calculus," I replied.
Of course, this is not true. Or I would still be repeating year 11.
"Calculus is not a thing! You've just made it up!", he yelled.
3.
Once he's awake, J doesn't mind before school care.
Yet R - who bounds out of bed each morning, launching into random questions before even saying good morning - absolutely hates it.
He doesn't mind after school care, where there is a fixed amount of kids that allows structure around activities. But he's not good at dealing with the trickling in of friends in the morning, and having to improvise his own fun.
His best protest was when we got there, and after placing his bag down, he dropped to the floor beside it. There was a thud - he took as little care with his own body as he does with his schoolbag.
"Ok Gandhi, get up" I said. I was quite pleased with my reference to political non-violent resistance that he wouldn't understand.
He looked up and grinned at me. I think he correctly guessed I wouldn't carry or drag him into the classroom.
So I tried negotiating.
"Come on mate, I'm going to be late for work", I began.
"Why would I care if you're late for work?", he replied.
I started to explain how I need to work otherwise we would have to move out of our house and live in a garbage bin like Oscar the Grouch. Before I got too far an educator came out and volunteered to sort out my parenting fail.
4.
At the other end of the day, the routine is I will collect O from childcare, in the same building as my work in the city. Then we head home, with a slight detour to get his older brothers from school.
O is an experienced and usually well-behaved train passenger. But one day, he was really loud. Assuming that nobody wants to hear a yelling toddler on a peak hour train at the end of a long work day, I whispered to him, "can you be quieter please?"
"MY BEEN LOUD ALL DAY!", he yelled back.
"Yeah, but why?", I asked.
He responded with his favourite phrase: "BECAUSE MY SAID SO!"
5.
Once we get R and J, I have a ten-minute walk home to find out anything they do at school. After that, the information is lost forever.
One time, I thought R said to me: "today I learned about two arses."
"What?"
He repeated it. This time it sounded like two areses.
"Can you tell me a bit more about this?", I asked cautiously.
"It was Van Gogh and Picasso. Two areses."
"Oh, two artists!", you mean.
"Yeah, that's what I said."
6.
I am more successful learning things about school from R than J. R will engage in conversation, while J normally runs ahead or walks slightly behind us, in his own world.
His own world often involves talking to himself.
One day my wife interrupted his mutterings, to let him know it was lunchtime.
"Ok, halftime!", he called out as a means to end the conversation with himself. J then ran to the dining table to eat.
7.
Once we get home, I'll get changed from my work clothes into a t-shirt.
One of my t-shirts has penguins on it. O noticed this, and asked me, "are they penguins?"
"They are!", I replied.
"Penguins are disgusting," he muttered. His animosity towards adorable flightless birds shocked me.
"Uh, what other animals don't you like?"
"Giraffes."
8.
Upon getting home from school, one of the jobs R and J have is to empty any scraps or rubbish from their lunchboxes, then place them on the bench near the kitchen sink.
Close to 200 school days later, and they have never completed this task.
Recently, R still had his banana in his lunchbox.
"Why didn't you eat your banana?", I asked.
"Some kids at school don't like bananas," he said. This may be true, but I felt it didn't really answer the question.
"Yeah, but you do..."
He looked at me like I had rocks in my head. Or had suggested he care that I might be late for work. "Why would I eat bananas around people that don't like them?"
9.
Sometimes the boys get to watch a little bit of television at night. 6:20pm is Bluey time. Bluey is clearly the best TV show from the current golden age of television.
J was watching intently, and asked, "is Bluey a catalogue dog?"
"Yes, she's a cattle dog," I replied.
10.
Small children generally do not understand jokes. And even when they get the construction, they don't understand what makes it funny. Two examples from R:
Firstly, he asked me why Olaf the Snowman in the movie Frozen likes summer?
"That's the joke. He wants to experience summer without realising it will cause him to melt," I explained.
"It would make more sense if he liked winter."
A few days later, R said to me: "There's this thing called Star Wars day that is on May 4th, and people say May the 4th be with you. But it should be may the force be with you.
"The reason it's on May the 4th is it sounds like 'May the force'... it's a funny play on words."
"I think everyone should still say may the force be with you. That's what you're supposed to say"
And then, after all this, he was deliberately funny!
At the dinner table, he decided to wear his Harry Potter glasses from his costume box. When the rest of us engaged in some conversation, he started polishing the non-existent glass in the frames.
I noticed first, and pointed it out to my wife and J.
My wife laughed, but J said:"they don't have glass in them, it doesn't make sense."
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