I just had a brilliant idea. Which of course arose from a problem that has been plaguing my life for the last few months. We have a dirty linen bin, at least I’m pretty sure we do underneath that festering monster of fabric with shirt button eyes and smelly sock ears. I’m sure the kids would love to play with it. I remember tipping my mums Aladdin style bin over and making a cubby out of it, but ours is always brim full to over flowing with clothes. To empty the bin means I need to wash the clothes to wash the clothes means i need to take the last load out and hang it on the line.
Here in lies the problem. With Saby being a small and defenceless baby I can’t leave the house to get to the line and leave her inside. You see her older siblings can’t seem to get it into their minds that this baby is breakable and on more than one occasion I have returned to the house to find small baby perched precariously on the edge of the lounge chair ( because she can’t see the wizard of Oz from the floor and this bit with the green lady melting is just hilarious Mummy) or even worse on top of the dining room table. I was putting her in the rocker but that meant I had to lug the thing out to the line every time and now that she is older she doesn’t get the same kick out of being tied to a chair as she once did. Plus we have been getting a bit of rain and the squelchy mud yard is not really my first choice for setting down the baby.
Then i remembered this swing. It was given to Lani for her first Christmas and we loved it and she loved it and used it constantly right until she opened her sweet little mouth right in the middle of a back swing and produced the most spectacular pink fountain of vomit the result no doubt of the blackcurrant drink we had just let her try for the first time. She didn’t stop at one little chuck either ho no my darling child morphed in to the swinging pendulum of magenta vomit. I might just add here that this was the first night since Lani was born that Glenn had asked to go out with a friend, I think to the pool hall. I was all offended and "of course you can go out I’ll be fine with the baby by myself". literally seconds after he kissed us good bye she threw up. i took one look at the carnage in front of me and flipped open my phone, all previous indignation over the assumption that i couldn’t;’ handle things gone. And poor Glenn hadn’t even gotten to the end of our street before he heard a frantic voice in his ear, "Help come home vomit everywhere!"
Now we had to stop the swinging without ending up immediately in the line of fire, then unclick the pink slime ball and clean her. Then we had to figure out some way of removing the vomit splatters off the deck and all the way up the side of the house. What fond memories, but at the moment it’s serving us nicely and I once again have clean clothes. Just as a precaution, we’ve put a ban on any overly enthusiastic pushing and a rule of wait an hour after drinking before swinging. Now all I have to do is figure out a way to stop them taking her for a jump on the trampoline when ever I go to the toilet.
