A is for aaaaaaarrggghhh

It happens every day. No matter how the day starts (and today started fairly badly with me waking up with a voice that sounded a bit squeaky, a head that felt like it was full of porridge and a whole new collection of spots, cold sores and snot adorning my face) it’s pretty much guaranteed that with two small children determined to assert their ever growing sense of independence, the day is going to contain at least one ‘aaarrrggghhhh’ moment.

And today, amazingly, I made it through the morning and part way through the afternoon before it happened.

Despite the rather unfortunate wake up, things went fairly smoothly to begin with, mostly thanks to the Other Half who sorted out washing, dressing and feeding of the kids and shepherded them into the car. All I had to do was drive them to Discover, the Children’s Story Centre in Stratford.

I was kind of expecting it to be a bit mental as it always is during the school holidays, but clearly no-one else had realised it was open – or else they were all enjoying very long lie ins, or hadn’t realised the clocks went forward – because when we arrived half an hour after opening time it was like a ghost town.

Brilliant!

No hordes of screaming kids, badly parked pushchairs and overflowing nappy bins to navigate – just a nice smooth trip into space where Bubby D meticulously filled out her ‘Captain’s Log’ and the Wee Man dealt with repairing a robot; a tale of stomping around on the moon accompanied by singing and bouncing; and the rather sad story of Little Rabbit Foo Foo who just couldn’t stop bopping things on the head (something which the Wee Man found extremely amusing).

Even Nando’s (where the kids decided they’d like to go for lunch) afterwards was relatively pain free – the waitress found us a table quickly, everything (apart from a bit of lettuce) got eaten with no complaints, and there was no frozen yoghurt, ice and cola ‘potion’ launching (aaaarrrrggggh) like the last time I mistakenly took two small children to a restaurant on my own.

But then it happened.

Feeling like perhaps the kids were having a pretty much unheard of day of general well-behavedness, I decided to chance a trip into Next to spend the gift voucher we had that expired next week. Bubby D happily picked out her outfit, the Wee Man enthusiastically picked a new t-shirt, we moved towards the queue…and then…suddenly…the Wee Man was stretched out on the floor, wriggly and giggly, determinedly putting the brakes on the pushchair with his teeth.

Every time I tried to move it, and get out of someones way, the pushchair wouldn’t budge, and neither would the Wee Man.

‘SPLAT’ went Bubby D’s drink bottle as she flung it into the mayhem.

‘Flop…flop…’ went her socks, as she ripped them off her feet, squealing in merriment, and hurled them to the floor.

‘sock nose stopped buggy brakes on RAAAAA’ sung the Wee Man joyfully with a wicked gleam in his eyes, seemingly blissfully unaware of the growing line of disgruntled and disgusted shoppers trying to push past behind us.

‘Eeeeeeoooooooeeeeeeoooooeeeeeoooooeeeeoooo’ joined in Bubby D, clearly sensing that some state of emergency was imminent.

And the wriggling, writhing, squiggling and giggling escalated with each passing second, until suddenly, here it came….

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHH

I knew it was too good to be true.

Still, there’s always tomorrow…