"Terror" at the Grocery Store
I was talking to my very talented mum this morning via that marvellous invention called “SKYPE” and telling her about the antics of my rather entertaining Butterfly and it occurred to me how much more time I spend laughing at her antics then I do scowling.
Every fortnight we all bundle into our trusty $200 Nissan and head off to do a grocery shop. Every fortnight I arrive home with not only groceries but also a Butterfly story or two. The Butterfly refuses point blank to sit in the chair part of the shopping cart and as shops here do not allow you to put a child in the main part of the cart, Butterfly gets to stroll around on foot. Come to think of it though, I doubt I would ever have put the Butterfly in the cart anyway as I am sure she would have tried to eat just about everything we put in the cart, packaging and all. The Mauritian stresses uncontrollably when our Butterfly behave instinctively like a child and runs off down the shopping aisle and I find it extremely irritating trying to keep her under control and shop wisely at the same time. So I braved the sideways looks of my fellow shoppers and attached the Butterfly to me by means of my “Toddler Strap.” This strap goes around one of the Butterfly’s wrist and the other end around mine, thus freeing up both my hands and giving the Butterfly the illusion of freedom. Apart from some rather disapproving looks from some people, using the “strap” was very successful. Successful that is if I discount the times the Butterfly managed to wrap the strap around my knees or her throat, went charging off in the opposite direction pulling me with her or bringing herself to a shoulder jerking stop or when she decided she needed a rest and plopped herself down in the middle of the aisle pulling on the “strap” saying “Thit mummy I very tired!” By the end of the shopping spree however both the Mauritian and I did not feel overly stressed just a tad worn out.
Last night however the Butterfly, for the first five minutes, was an absolute “gem.” She strolled obediently next to me keeping in step and not tying us up into a knot or trying to take me somewhere other than where I needed to be. I was pleasantly surprised and thus lulled into a very false sense of security! I reached up to get a bottle of juice and turned to place it into the cart when I realised that there was no tension on my wrist, I looked down to find that the Butterfly had worked out how to take her end of the “strap” off her wrist and she had charged off down towards the end of the aisle. I called to her to stop, which to her credit she did immediately, turned to face me, smiled, waved and yelled “Look Mummy I tooked it off!”
It was at that point that the Mauritian sauntered back towards me carrying a tray of eggs, his smug expression of having found a bargain turning to horror when he noticed the absence of our Butterfly. “Oh hell!” was all I heard as I took off down the aisle after my surprisingly quick almost 3year old. Butterfly of course found this all very amusing and fun and when she saw me coming giggled delightfully and took off again yelling “I catched you mummy!” much to the delight and amusement of everyone in that aisle. Needless to say the Mauritian and I arrived home highly stressed and exhausted after what should have been a one hour shopping trip took all of two and a half hours. Oh well at least both shoppers and staff had an entertaining evening.
Whenever we venture out with Butterfly we always seem to have a time when she causes her parents to cringe in horror, which amuses all the onlookers no end. One of the places we frequent our Butterfly is so well known by the staff that I now no longer bother to keep her with us, the staff quite happily keep an eye on her and when we are done I just go to the shoe section put away all the shoes she’s been trying on and pick her up to leave while she waves cheerfully and says goodbye to everyone. I have a feeling we would not go there as often as we do if she was not so popular! There is a restaurant we enjoy going to where the Butterfly is equally well know, so much so that the last time we went she strolled happily into the kitchen looking for the waitress who often serves us. She is on a first name basis with the owner of the local “Cafe” or “Dairy” as they are called here at world’s end, she even greets the postman/woman/person with great enthusiasm and she loves going to the petrol station with her Papa to put petrol in the tank.
Yes an outing with the Butterfly is both entertaining and exhausting but she does not reserve her antics just for entertaining perfect strangers she leaves some of her best tricks for keeping her mum on her toes. She has made neat little piles of sugar on the kitchen floor, methodically snapped spaghetti into little bits piece by piece and scattered them throughout the lounge, experimented with her new crayons and discovered they draw beautifully on the television screen and even cleaned the bath with a nail brush and my hair conditioner. All this before lunch of course! I am now in the habit of checking outside every evening while the Butterfly is in the bath and collecting my Tupperware which is used for tasks such as digging up and collecting sand or a makeshift vase or someplace to put her leaf and grass collection. She has even opened her piggy bank and had a blast taking handfuls of coins and seeing how high in the air she can throw them, once she buried almost all the pegs and recently found her sitting inside my Kist having taken all the linen out first. She has emptied all the draws in my chest of drawers, taken all the CDs and DVDs out of their stands, played bowls with the potatoes and onions and drawn pictures on the carpet with the dish washing liquid. I now have to remember to check the settings on my washing machine as she has discovered how to override the child safety and change the temperature or the cycle, I once almost boiled my sheets clean and the next day washed the Mauritian’s grease covered work overalls on a cold gentle wool cycle. I reset the television channels at least once a month and just the other day caught her undoing the wires from her Papa’s $1600 loud speaker. Her latest trick is resetting the tension on my “Orbitrek” and I either end up going so fast I nearly fly off or it’s so tight the wheel won’t budge.
The final straw, however, came the day she decided to play with every single one of her toys, and I mean that literally. She has a bag into which I put all the little fiddly toys and also her puzzles and smaller building blocks and fridge magnets, she took everything out. She emptied her toy box, her pencil case and her book shelves, entertained her stuffed toys on the veranda with her bike riding and ball kicking and built numerous “Lego” towers at the front entrance then had a rest on her donut which was in her tent covered with both the sheet and duvet off her bed. I, of course thought, at first, that this was all very cute and grown up, as she went about her day playing happily and entertaining herself, freeing me up to write a blog or a poem or was I reading at the time. When I did eventually survey the mess I was suddenly very tired. In a sudden spark of genius I told the Butterfly that before she could watch any television that afternoon she had to clean up and put away all her toys. To my complete amazement she did! Of course she is only almost 3 and making the mess is so much easier then cleaning it up but with a little guidance and reminding from “Mum” and the odd bit of assistance clean it up she did, and all rather joyfully too.
So now every evening after supper and just before bed it’s the Butterfly’s job to put away and tidy up everything she’s played with for that day. Amazingly it works really well because I don’t wear myself out picking up and putting away only to have the Butterfly take it out again and the Butterfly knows that when its clean up time it’s also calm down time making bedtime a calm and pleasant experience for both Queen Butterfly and her slaves.
This morning after telling my very talented mum all about our shopping experience she said about the Butterfly: “Where does she come from, do you think she was swapped at birth?” I laughed and replied that she most likely was because there was no way I was ever as cheeky as my Butterfly is. But, even if there was the remotest possibility that she was swapped at birth I would never swap her back. The Butterfly is a lot of work and I need to be one step ahead of her all the time, but always seem to be ten steps behind. The Butterfly is cheeky and stubborn and not scared of me at all. The Butterfly is very independent, strong willed and will do almost anything to get her own way, including telling me she doesn’t like me anymore and run crying to her Papa. The Butterfly is noisy and loud and never stops talking or singing. The Butterfly has character, is intelligent and has a wicked sense of humour and even though at the end of the day I am completely worn out and feeling old I wouldn’t have her any other way because a day with my Butterfly is a day filled with laughter, love and inspiration.
No, I love her exactly the way she is.
Every fortnight we all bundle into our trusty $200 Nissan and head off to do a grocery shop. Every fortnight I arrive home with not only groceries but also a Butterfly story or two. The Butterfly refuses point blank to sit in the chair part of the shopping cart and as shops here do not allow you to put a child in the main part of the cart, Butterfly gets to stroll around on foot. Come to think of it though, I doubt I would ever have put the Butterfly in the cart anyway as I am sure she would have tried to eat just about everything we put in the cart, packaging and all. The Mauritian stresses uncontrollably when our Butterfly behave instinctively like a child and runs off down the shopping aisle and I find it extremely irritating trying to keep her under control and shop wisely at the same time. So I braved the sideways looks of my fellow shoppers and attached the Butterfly to me by means of my “Toddler Strap.” This strap goes around one of the Butterfly’s wrist and the other end around mine, thus freeing up both my hands and giving the Butterfly the illusion of freedom. Apart from some rather disapproving looks from some people, using the “strap” was very successful. Successful that is if I discount the times the Butterfly managed to wrap the strap around my knees or her throat, went charging off in the opposite direction pulling me with her or bringing herself to a shoulder jerking stop or when she decided she needed a rest and plopped herself down in the middle of the aisle pulling on the “strap” saying “Thit mummy I very tired!” By the end of the shopping spree however both the Mauritian and I did not feel overly stressed just a tad worn out.
Last night however the Butterfly, for the first five minutes, was an absolute “gem.” She strolled obediently next to me keeping in step and not tying us up into a knot or trying to take me somewhere other than where I needed to be. I was pleasantly surprised and thus lulled into a very false sense of security! I reached up to get a bottle of juice and turned to place it into the cart when I realised that there was no tension on my wrist, I looked down to find that the Butterfly had worked out how to take her end of the “strap” off her wrist and she had charged off down towards the end of the aisle. I called to her to stop, which to her credit she did immediately, turned to face me, smiled, waved and yelled “Look Mummy I tooked it off!”
It was at that point that the Mauritian sauntered back towards me carrying a tray of eggs, his smug expression of having found a bargain turning to horror when he noticed the absence of our Butterfly. “Oh hell!” was all I heard as I took off down the aisle after my surprisingly quick almost 3year old. Butterfly of course found this all very amusing and fun and when she saw me coming giggled delightfully and took off again yelling “I catched you mummy!” much to the delight and amusement of everyone in that aisle. Needless to say the Mauritian and I arrived home highly stressed and exhausted after what should have been a one hour shopping trip took all of two and a half hours. Oh well at least both shoppers and staff had an entertaining evening.
Whenever we venture out with Butterfly we always seem to have a time when she causes her parents to cringe in horror, which amuses all the onlookers no end. One of the places we frequent our Butterfly is so well known by the staff that I now no longer bother to keep her with us, the staff quite happily keep an eye on her and when we are done I just go to the shoe section put away all the shoes she’s been trying on and pick her up to leave while she waves cheerfully and says goodbye to everyone. I have a feeling we would not go there as often as we do if she was not so popular! There is a restaurant we enjoy going to where the Butterfly is equally well know, so much so that the last time we went she strolled happily into the kitchen looking for the waitress who often serves us. She is on a first name basis with the owner of the local “Cafe” or “Dairy” as they are called here at world’s end, she even greets the postman/woman/person with great enthusiasm and she loves going to the petrol station with her Papa to put petrol in the tank.
Yes an outing with the Butterfly is both entertaining and exhausting but she does not reserve her antics just for entertaining perfect strangers she leaves some of her best tricks for keeping her mum on her toes. She has made neat little piles of sugar on the kitchen floor, methodically snapped spaghetti into little bits piece by piece and scattered them throughout the lounge, experimented with her new crayons and discovered they draw beautifully on the television screen and even cleaned the bath with a nail brush and my hair conditioner. All this before lunch of course! I am now in the habit of checking outside every evening while the Butterfly is in the bath and collecting my Tupperware which is used for tasks such as digging up and collecting sand or a makeshift vase or someplace to put her leaf and grass collection. She has even opened her piggy bank and had a blast taking handfuls of coins and seeing how high in the air she can throw them, once she buried almost all the pegs and recently found her sitting inside my Kist having taken all the linen out first. She has emptied all the draws in my chest of drawers, taken all the CDs and DVDs out of their stands, played bowls with the potatoes and onions and drawn pictures on the carpet with the dish washing liquid. I now have to remember to check the settings on my washing machine as she has discovered how to override the child safety and change the temperature or the cycle, I once almost boiled my sheets clean and the next day washed the Mauritian’s grease covered work overalls on a cold gentle wool cycle. I reset the television channels at least once a month and just the other day caught her undoing the wires from her Papa’s $1600 loud speaker. Her latest trick is resetting the tension on my “Orbitrek” and I either end up going so fast I nearly fly off or it’s so tight the wheel won’t budge.
The final straw, however, came the day she decided to play with every single one of her toys, and I mean that literally. She has a bag into which I put all the little fiddly toys and also her puzzles and smaller building blocks and fridge magnets, she took everything out. She emptied her toy box, her pencil case and her book shelves, entertained her stuffed toys on the veranda with her bike riding and ball kicking and built numerous “Lego” towers at the front entrance then had a rest on her donut which was in her tent covered with both the sheet and duvet off her bed. I, of course thought, at first, that this was all very cute and grown up, as she went about her day playing happily and entertaining herself, freeing me up to write a blog or a poem or was I reading at the time. When I did eventually survey the mess I was suddenly very tired. In a sudden spark of genius I told the Butterfly that before she could watch any television that afternoon she had to clean up and put away all her toys. To my complete amazement she did! Of course she is only almost 3 and making the mess is so much easier then cleaning it up but with a little guidance and reminding from “Mum” and the odd bit of assistance clean it up she did, and all rather joyfully too.
So now every evening after supper and just before bed it’s the Butterfly’s job to put away and tidy up everything she’s played with for that day. Amazingly it works really well because I don’t wear myself out picking up and putting away only to have the Butterfly take it out again and the Butterfly knows that when its clean up time it’s also calm down time making bedtime a calm and pleasant experience for both Queen Butterfly and her slaves.
This morning after telling my very talented mum all about our shopping experience she said about the Butterfly: “Where does she come from, do you think she was swapped at birth?” I laughed and replied that she most likely was because there was no way I was ever as cheeky as my Butterfly is. But, even if there was the remotest possibility that she was swapped at birth I would never swap her back. The Butterfly is a lot of work and I need to be one step ahead of her all the time, but always seem to be ten steps behind. The Butterfly is cheeky and stubborn and not scared of me at all. The Butterfly is very independent, strong willed and will do almost anything to get her own way, including telling me she doesn’t like me anymore and run crying to her Papa. The Butterfly is noisy and loud and never stops talking or singing. The Butterfly has character, is intelligent and has a wicked sense of humour and even though at the end of the day I am completely worn out and feeling old I wouldn’t have her any other way because a day with my Butterfly is a day filled with laughter, love and inspiration.
No, I love her exactly the way she is.
Well said Sam xxx
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