“You may not speak to me like that, I’m your mother, not one of your school friends.”

I cringed inside as I snapped that sentence at Amy, remembering my mother saying exactly the same thing to me when I got too mouthy or talked back once too often. It was the right time to say it however, as Amy gulped and apologised.

Five is full of mouthiness and opinions and arguments. It’s also full of discussion, interesting conversations and some amazing creativity, but those aren’t the bits making me tear my hair out.

You don’t get to speak to me like that seems to be my catchphrase of the moment; the only thing I’ve got in the face of increasing rudeness and screams. It’s not that she isn’t allowed to disagree with me, it’s that she isn’t allowed to do it in quite that tone.

You know the tone, the you’re so much stupider than I am right now.

I’m sorry kid, I’m not stupid and you need to go and sit in your bedroom until you can speak nicely.

TIME OUT is my other weapon in my ever decreasing arsenal, as she shouts at me that she WILL NOT GO and YOU CAN’T MAKE ME and YOU’RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME.

I respond with you don’t get to speak to me like that, you can come out when you’re ready to speak nicely, NO, you CANNOT hit me and I swear to God child, you can stay in there until dinner is ready if you try that again and no, I don’t care that you kicked the wall, it wasn’t very sensible and ACTIONS EQUAL CONSEQUENCES. You hurt your OWN foot.

It’s frustrating and admirable how defiant she is in the face of two parents staring her down. Even as I march her to time out, with, if I’m being honest, the help of her ear because there was no other option short of bodily lifting her, I am proud of her spirit and of her anger, and her ability to decide what she wants and aim for it no matter what.

I don’t want to destroy that.

I also don’t want her hitting – me or anyone else, or thinking that it’s okay to shout I WANT and expecting me to capitulate simply because she wants something.

Five is tough, and extraordinary.

Five is where the influence of her peers starts to war with the influence we can provide and I’m left explaining that X is not the boss of you and you can play with other kids if X is being mean.

I suspect that X is a sassy little so-and-so at school – but I can’t blame my daughter’s behaviour on them.

Much.

Five is amazing, however I’m not sure I’m going to get through it with all of my hair follicles intact. Amy shouts and screams and throws objects and gets marched to her bedroom to think about why she needs to speak nicely over and over again. It doesn’t seem to make any difference, except that she’s learned the value of a good apology (spoken 5 seconds into the time-out, with expectation that she is free and clear because of a sorry) and I’ve learned that she responds poorly to being told that Sorry can’t fix everything and you need to think about why I’m unhappy with you.

It was easier, when she was smaller. She was more contrite, less mouthy and if nothing worked, at least she was small enough to be lifted bodily without causing any damage. Now, flung elbows are like little sharp javelins that you’ve got to dodge for the sake of your nose.

It’s hard and amazing, to watch your child grow into herself.

Now excuse me, I need a hot drink and a good lie down.

Parenting is a funny thing sometimes. I’m currently writing this while my children fight in the background.

Isaac has just had a meltdown over the indignity of being forced into underwear, rather than the familiar comfort of nappies, and Amy is declaring that Isaac has stolen all her love (translation: He hugged her and sucked away all her hugs, so now she doesn’t have any).

It’s an interesting time, having a three year old and a five year old. Much pleasanter than when Isaac was newly toddling and Amy was throwing herself off furniture shouting “TATCH ME MUMMY!” but that is mostly because I can send them outside, content in the fact that they’re probably not going to kill themselves.

It only took Amy touching the electric fence twice in her short lifetime to make sure she never goes near the fence again, and her emphatic warnings to Isaac that THAT FENCE BITES is enough to keep him from escaping as well.

And so this morning, after a bit of a rough start, my children headed outside to play, while I stayed in bed, occasionally being woken by shouting under my window. When I emerged an hour later, I discovered that they’d harvested all of my ripe tomatoes for me, picked and eaten all of the strawberries, run the outside tank to fill up the duck’s water, had a picnic in the greenhouse and decided that they were having tomato salad for lunch.

I can live with that.

It’s a bit daunting to be heading back into newborn territory when my children are finally getting old enough to not require my supervision every second of every day, but by the same token, I am really looking forward to having a smooshy baby again. Amy and Isaac mostly sleep through the night, we’ve got Isaac’s chewing, swallowing, bowel and sensory issues under some sort of control, Amy is at school full time and even with the screaming meltdowns, it’s mostly smooth sailing.

When you’re deep in the hell that is a toddler and a newborn in the same house, you can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. People tell you that one day it will be easier, but you can’t believe them, because right now you’re covered in baby vomit and milk, while trying (and failing) to stop your toddler from emptying an entire container of flour on the floor.

The funny thing is, it does get easier. My children play together for hours on end and my selective hearing has improved to the point that I can ignore most of the fighting.

Even knowing that come September, we will have a newborn in the house again, I think it’s going to be okay. Amy will be six (and you guys, she is learning to READ – and LOVING IT. I’m thrilled), Isaac will only be a few months off four, and I think it’s going to be okay.

Plus, third babies are reputed to be pretty bomb-proof.

I’m sort of counting on that.

Where are you in your parenting journey?

Are you enjoying it, or are you still holding on by your fingernails?

A long time ago, I used to be a real person, with a real job. Nowadays, I live inside my head, writing things and being attacked by small children needing kisses, wiped noses and food, in equal quantities.

I do not regret this change.

This morning, Isaac ran up to me while I was brushing my teeth.

“Mummy, my bum huuuurts! It’s hurting! I need you to rub it better.”

And he wouldn’t leave me alone until I rubbed him better.

The other day, cries of “OH NO! I wee’d and the wee is running down my legs, MUMMY HELP!!!” emanated from the bedroom. I had to go and rescue him from his soaked socks and pants immediately.

He thanked me gravely, when he was clean again.

Amy was snuggling me after a teary meltdown. She burrowed into my neck while I read my book and it wasn’t until I felt the damp that I realised she was using my shoulder to wipe her nose.

Thanks kid.

Driving Amy to school, Isaac got very upset in the car and started shouting:

“AMY! Stop looking out of MY WINDOW! It’s MY WINDOW! NOOOOOOOOOO! STOP LOOKING!!!”

I was forced to remind Isaac that Amy was allowed to look out of any window. He disagreed, loudly.

Amy, showing maturity that I wasn’t sure she had yet, very nicely refrained from looking out of his window.

At least, she stopped while he was watching.

This is what my life has become and I’m pretty okay with that.

Isaac is watching Peppa Pig. I’m sure this would be fine, but he’s watched the same episode a dozen times already this morning and the way we’re going, even if I turn the computer off, he’ll be able to repeat it back to me word perfect.

I have high hopes for his future, with an obsessive nature and a memory like his. Maybe theatre, or tax accountant. I’m not quite sure yet.

I’m dealing with the Peppa Pig obsession by doing my very best to drown it out with music. This is probably not good parenting, but anything that keeps me sane is something worth pursuing.

Yesterday, I felt like killing my children.

Instead, I burst into tears and cried hard enough to make my nose bleed. Then I slammed the back door and cried some more, before going in to massacre the garden. Weeds died, tomato bushes were pulled and hung and everyone held their breath for a little bit.

I was okay, and when my children joined me 10 minutes later, they’d stopped whining and fighting with each other, and the urge to bang their heads together had passed.

Usually, things flow along nicely, autism or not, until something comes along to throw a spanner in the works. Five days of diarrhoea from Isaac* and an ear infection and some serious attitude from Amy, topped with never-ending morning sickness** and falling apart joints, PLUS cold weather and a dead duckling ***, well, it’s not always smooth sailing.

Autism is funny like that. Routines are kept, right up until the point in which they can’t be anymore, and then everything falls apart. Amy was angry that she couldn’t go to school and was stuck at home with her annoying little brother, while Isaac was annoyed that he wasn’t getting any free time away from his sister and both Nathan and I were annoyed that the children weren’t quite sick enough to lay down quietly, but were too sick to send outside to play.

Down came our house of cards.

This is how things work sometimes. This is how life works, sometimes. Everything is fine, right up until the point where it’s not.

We’ve reset things now, starting from the beginning again. Amy is back at school, Isaac is watching Peppa Pig on repeat and I got to eat breakfast this morning without anyone screaming and attached to my leg.

I think things are looking up.

—

* Laxative worked, we get to avoid hospital! Now we just wait to make sure the same problem doesn’t arise again.
** 17 weeks now and still feeling nauseous most of the time. No vomiting, because I’m still well medicated, but the meds have the lovely side effect of giving me a nearly permanent headache.
*** Inside duckling died. I have no idea why, it was fine at bedtime and dead in the morning. The children didn’t seem bothered. They’re very good at living in the moment.

At 3am I was awoken by Amy coming into my bedroom. In her teensy tiny whiny voice that is guaranteed to set my nerves on edge, she declared that she was wide awake and hungry.

I am not at my best at three am, and that’s usually without being requested to make food. I told her to grab an apple and to go back to bed, immediately.

Amy is five and a half and she knows exactly where the fridge is. It’s shopping week this week and therefore, my fridge is full of things like yogurt, cheese slices, apples and carrots and the cupboard contains two different types of muesli bars – all of which she could have eaten, and not bothered me.

But instead, she needed an apple and she needed it sliced and despite slicing her own apples on any other day, she needed me to slice the apple for her.

I very nearly threw the apple at her head. Instead I sliced her off a piece, and sent her back to bed, with strict instructions to STAY THERE UNTIL MORNING.

A little before 7am, Isaac came into the bedroom.

“Mummy, you needa change me. I wee’d and it’s running down my legs.”

Oh. Right.

I changed him, made him breakfast, tucked him onto the couch, turned a movie on and went back to bed.

Only to find him in my bedroom two minutes later, melting down because I wouldn’t give him a jellybean.

That lasted an hour, long enough for Amy to wake up and continue her whining.

“I can’t make my own toast. YOU DO IT. I can’t find socks. Cut me an apple. Why can’t I pick up the duckling?”

I cut her an apple, told her to suck it up and make her own toast, made sure the duckling was safely tucked under my bed and went back to bed.

I think I slept for another 15 minutes, before Amy’s whining woke me up. Isaac was touching her, or looking at her, or something. I don’t even know what, but she had definitely forgotten how to speak like anything other than a baby.

It turns out that I can sleep through Isaac shouting. I can sleep through cupboards being climbed and cereal being poured. I can even sleep through the TV being turned up.

But I absolutely cannot sleep through whining.

And that is why I have a headache.

Today was the school athletics carnival.

If you are a school mum, this should conjure up a good, decent shudder from you, because now you know the kind of day we’ve had.

Tassie broke out the strangely warm weather for us, which normally would be nice – but for a good running carnival, I prefer an air of frostiness with thick coats required. Not only does the cold encourage the children to run faster, in order to warm up, a good coat also provides extra padding for the ground and means that I don’t spend all morning fighting to get my kid to wear a hat.

Needless to say, races were run and presumably, enjoyed. There might have been a little complaining about a lack of ribbons, but “run faster then” was my best response along with “but you had fun, right?”.

And then there were sausages.

The lure of sausages was too great for Isaac, who dragged me down onto the oval, to stand in line at the BBQ stand, in the beating sun, while he wailed that the sausages weren’t happening fast enough. I’m sure that was appreciated by the women cooking.

Then we HAD to find his sister – dodging small children running everywhere and trying not to walk on the running track. Easy when you’re mum – less easy when you’re THREE and OPINIONATED and I NOT WALK THERE.

Finally, we found Amy, handed off her sausage and convinced her to come and sit in the shade with us for a bit.

That was the easy part.

The hard part was trying to drag a small child from one end of the school oval to the other AND up a hill, when he’s hot and tired, and determined that he needed to go in the other direction.

Eventually, after letting him trail behind us screaming, while I cheerily chirped “we’re leaving you behind, Isaac. You’d best walk a little bit, kiddo” to the amusement of the other mothers there (and the consternation of anyone who has a perfectly perfect child who never loses their shit), I picked him up like a sack of potatoes.

This was a brave move on my part, as he was dripping snot and spit by that point, while also waving around a sausage like a greasy stick.

Up the hill we went, with Isaac pretending to have no bones and exercising his vocal chords and Amy pretending to not know us.

Past the fashionistas (who earlier, had had OPINIONS about autism and narrowly avoided having pinecones chucked at their heads – and who also seemed to think that tying a magpie to a clothesline, taming it down and then CUTTING ITS TONGUE IN HALF would enable it to talk. It really does take all kinds…) who tutted at me like I was a terrible mother for letting my child scream and not being sympathetic.

Of course, by that time I had put Isaac down and was poking him in the back to keep him walking, before trying holding him under the arms and prodding him along with my knee. It was not my finest parenting moment, obviously.

Isaac threw himself on our bags sobbing about trees and toilets, before wiping snot all over himself and hiccuping a bit.

This is of course, when he declared he needed to use the toilet.

My son, who is decidedly not toilet trained, due to some medical issues, wanted to go to the freaking toilet, that was all the way up another hill. Nathan had gone in search of more sausages, and so I was entirely without backup, or anyone to watch our bags.

Trusting that the fashionistas in front of us would be too grossed out by the snotty tissues and general aura of Real Motherhood surrounding our bags, I figured that they wouldn’t nick my kindle and trudged up the hill, to take my son to the toilet, whereupon, NOTHING HAPPENED.

Are you surprised?

Eventually, after another meltdown over slide privileges and assorted nonsense (MY HANDS ARE DIIIIRITY), we elected to cut and run, stealing our daughter in the process.

Sure, she had another race to run, but by that point, we did not care.

Hot and miserable, we made our way to the car and the comfort of air conditioning, before declaring that Athletics Carnivals are obviously designed merely to torture as many people as possible in as little time as possible.

I am not the kind of parent who cheers on the sidelines – no. Instead I am looking at my watch, wondering when I can leave.

Not my finest parenting, at all.

This morning, I was woken by my children happily shouting at each other. On weekends, I usually ignore them for as long as possible before getting out of bed. This normally works – they’re old enough now to make their own breakfast without tipping out the entire box of cocoa and paddling in it.

I think surviving parenting for this long entitles me to sleep for an extra hour if I can manage it and so far, provided there are cartoons to watch, they’re not arguing with me.

This morning however, there was shouting. Lots of shouting. Happy shouting sure, but it was loud.

Most weekends I’d ignore it, until someone started to scream, but my uterus was pressing on my bladder and staying in bed seemed like a dangerous option.

There was nothing wrong with the kids, strangely enough. They were merely crashing trains into each other and shouting about the entire thing, while the train track stretched around the loungeroom and the matchbox cars lined up neatly, waiting their turn.

As the day has worn on, my children have gotten louder.

I keep poking Isaac, but I’m yet to find the off switch and Amy is vacillating between screeching happily and screaming in woe. I’m not sure on any given moment what is going to happen with her, she’s rather like a volcano that might decide to fall asleep, but is more likely to spew ash and lava everywhere.

In the middle of this, I sit, progressively getting more headachey and trying to contain the chaos.

Now as I try and write this, Isaac has just spilled an entire bowl of cereal and Amy, while I was dealing with Isaac, took the opportunity to quickly spoon sugar onto her yogurt.

She’s quick and quiet, that girl.

How much longer until bedtime?

Amy rarely asks to have her photo taken, unlike Isaac who has a tendency to meltdown if I don’t regularly snap photos of him. That’s why, when she requested I snap a photo of her and Wolfgang today, I was a little surprised.

Luckily my camera and memory card were close by and the cat was more than content to stay sitting on her lap.

How has your Sunday morning been?

Firstly, there is this:

It’s the first day back at school for Tasmanian children and I am excited to have a few hours of relative freedom today (Isaac excepted). Drop off went well, as I suspected it would. Now we just wait to see how things go.

And then there is a reminder to never work with children, if you’d like to get photos of new clothes, as sent by a company.

There was grumpiness, and sulking and possibly a little bit of foot stomping. Also tears, because I insisted that hair be brushed before I take photos. Not that you can tell.

Amy was tired and Isaac wanted photos of “JUST MY FACE!” which in turn led to half of my modelling team running away to hide in the garden. This is what I have to work with.

Osh Kosh, as part of Trade Secret is running a huge promotion, starting today. Clothes are apparently hugely discounted and it’s worth checking out if you’re in the areas with stores.

Alas, I am not, and had to settle for mailed garments. My life is so terrible.

Amy has a minor speech impediment that sometimes makes some of her words “muddy”. As her parents, this amuses Nathan and I to no end.

———

Amy: “I am the Fighting Girl!”

[pretend punching at her brother]

Me: “You’re the what? The farting girl?”

Amy: “NO! I’m the Amazing FIGHTING girl!”

Me: “The Amazing Farting girl?”

Amy: “NO! FIGHTING. FIGHTING!”

Me: “Farting?”

Amy: “FIGHTING!”

Amy: “Hmmmmph. Now I’m the Annoyed Girl.”

I can’t stop laughing.