Weekend again already ...

It feels like I only just got over the last one.

Me and my brother and his family spent the weekend at my other brother's place, having a bit of a family get together.

On Saturday night, I slept on a mattress on the floor while my brother and his missus slept in the guest bed. In the middle of the night, Terra went and jumped in between them. Terra is about 4. Her real name is technically not Terra, but she was nicknamed "Terror" soon after she started crawling and it's become more-or-less her real name. Terra may or may not be on some sort of behaviour spectrum, but she most definitely is babied and spoiled. Also, she's been obsessed with boobs ever since her mother bought her sister a training bra. On Sunday evening, my brother and his missus left their kids and went home, which meant I inherited the guest bed -- and Terra. I think I still have grab marks around my nipples and a footprint on my kidney.

And since Monday was a pupil-free day, and since my brothers are both teachers who are married to teachers, and since my work hours can sometimes be quite flexible, I got to spend Monday babysitting two batches of nieces and nephews.

We spent most of the morning in the lounge room. The kids wavered between playing games on their tablets and watching cartoons on the telly. I'm usually a fan of cartoons, but despite how entranced the kiddies were by the flashy visuals and dramatic music, I'd have to say that these ones were uniformly fairly awful. They all seemed to follow the same basic formula of characters "dueling" against each other in some sort of game/contest/battle involving things that I would guess are sold as collectible toys. Also, the female characters were all pretty generic and rubbish, which got up my nose a bit.

* Melbs, have you ever considered writing a children's adventure story with good female characters? I think the world could use a few more. *

One of the lads was thumb-wrestling a younger cousin. After beating her easily, he chanted "I win, you lose, now you've got a big bruise" and thumped her hard in the arm, reducing her to tears. I stormed over, thumped him in the arm, made him apologise, and gave him an earful of grief. Afterwards, I thought about the discussion we had here recently and wondered what I could have done to handle things better.

Half an hour later, the same lad came over and had a cuddle with me on the lounge. Then he asked if he could have some Coke.
- No, I said.
: Why?
- It's 10 in the morning. Too early for cool-drink.
: Why?
- ... 'cause it makes ya act like a total ratbag and I don't wanna put up with that, okay?
: Auntie Paula and Auntie Lilly lets me have Coke.
- Do I look like Auntie Lilly or Auntie Paula?
: ... No. They've got more hair, and wear makeup, and they're more prettier.
- ... You're gonna be lucky ta get lunch at this rate, mate.

While the kids may have been content to sit on their arses all day, I was not. The first thing I did was get them all in the kitchen making sandwiches. Then we put on our bathers and went down to the seaside. I shouldn't have bothered putting togs on the younger ones. I've already talked about how much the kids in my family like playing in the nude, and within about 15 minutes, Terra had cast her duds aside and was splashing around shouting about her bare boobies. Within 5 minutes of Terra stripping off, half of my mob were running around starkers as well. Then another young lass disrobed and joined in. Her dad quickly grabbed her and put her bathing suit back on. She immediately took it off again. So he put it back on. At this point, it turned into a struggle, and the lass began screaming and thrashing around. The dad gave me a filthy look before hauling her off to their car and driving away.

We ate our sandwiches and the wind picked up. The kids made a game out of watching the seagulls and ibis navigate the turbulence while racing for crusts. At one point, the wind got strong enough that the smaller kids were seeing how far they could lean into it without falling over.

So we abandoned the ocean and made our way to the park. The kids played on the equipment for a little while, and then we kicked a ball around for a bit. Then the kids decided they wanted to play poison ball. After a while, one of the lads, who is quite puny for his age, started getting upset because he couldn't hit anyone; so I decided to get "distracted" and "accidentally" walk into the path of one of the balls he'd thrown. Then, for the rest of the game, the little bastard kept saying shit like, "Ha-ha, Auntie Alex is really terrible. I can't believe how bad she is. Aim for Auntie Alex, she doesn't know how to dodge." I wasn't sure what to say about that one, so I let it slide.

Then we played a game where some people had to stay as still as possible while the rest tried to make them move/laugh/talk by doing and saying silly things. I was unbeatable at that one, until the rules were relaxed to allow tickling, and Terra of course, went straight for the bra.

By that time, the afternoon was getting on, and I decided that since everyone had been relatively good we should all get some ice-cream. Terra wanted a piggy-back, which was fine by me, since as long as she was on my shoulders, I didn't have to worry about her running onto the road, or into someone's legs, or  one of those standing menu boards, or something. The lady at the shop who sold us the ice-cream was probably about 20, and had curvy, pointy, banana-shaped breasts (you know the type). I mention this because Terra decided they were novel enough to comment on. "Arnnie Awix, dat lady's boobies are funny."

Fucking hell. I don't know what they're going to do with that girl.

We went home, had an early BBQ tea, said our goodbyes, and parted company. I like days when I get to spend time with the kids in my family; they're always lively and fun, but they're also exhausting and I'm buggered if I could actually raise a mob of the little mongrels myself. Melba, Squib, and parents everywhere, my hat is off to you.

***

I have decided that in commemoration of Cracker Night, I will be re-reading the fabulous 10 part V For Vendetta comic book miniseries, which I have not looked at in about 20 years. I will not be re-watching the shitty movie. If anyone would like to join me in this venture, let me know and I'll send you a digital copy.