All the Fun of the Family
In June, I got my first nibling — apparently the combination term for nieces and nephews. Mine came in the form of Zachary Terence, named for my dad but christened immediately by his cousins as Baby Zach Zach. With his arrival, my sister and brother-in-law were launched into the world of family life, with its sleepless nights and complete lack of free time, and a social life which revolves almost exclusively around Baby Sensory classes. I am thoroughly enjoying BZZ, as he is commonly known, although I must confess that I am not sorry to have moved out of this stage of life. However, as I realise now, 12 years after we became parents, the only thing that changes is the nature of the chaos related to having children (and pets). The quantity seems to remain unchanged.
For example, two weekends ago was the anniversary of my dad’s death. My mum felt that this would be the right occasion to scatter his ashes (half of them actually as there are alternative arrangements for the remainder) in the River Wye, one of his only favoured holiday destinations and the place he had been fishing when he died. So we all loaded up (seven adults, three children, four dogs, and Baby Zach Zach) and headed to Wales, where we scattered my dad and spent two nights in Long Barn and Top Barn (too many of us for one accommodation). Over the course of those two nights, and in only one barn, we experienced two episodes of canine vomiting (both admittedly the work of one dog), one spectacular incident of child vomiting (child in question was unfortunately sleeping in the top bunk and had eaten lasagne for dinner), and one poo in the shower (culprit not yet identified).
Or consider the events of a few nights ago. I was woken up at 1am by my elder daughter. Despite the fact that she is nearly ten years old, night wandering is common and the excuses for this varied. On this particular night, she alleged that she could hear scratching in her room. My initial response was to tell her to go back to bed and to stop bothering me at unsociable hours, but then concern crept in. Her hamster’s cage is in her room and he has had a number of escape incidents, the most protracted eventually resulting in my husband laying hamster traps and playing hamster mating calls on YouTube. I begrudgingly followed her upstairs and peered into the hamster cage (consisting of three separate habitats linked by plastic tubing as a result of my husband’s guilt about caging animals). To my horror there was no hamster in any of them. And then I heard, subtle but unmistakable, the sound of scrabbling rodent paws from behind the wardrobe. Now, Gus is not a tiny hamster, and how he had managed to insert himself into the minuscule gap between the wall and the cupboard remains a mystery. But squeeze he had, before wedging himself in. And so Operation Retrieve Gus (Version IV) began, involving the removal of furniture, precarious tipping forward of a heavy wardrobe and the shooing out of a rather disgruntled hamster.
If children and hamsters are instigators of disaster, they are nothing compared to dogs. Or dog, really, to be more accurate. For some unfathomable reason, we have two. Six years ago, just a few months after Florrie was born, we made the questionable decision to get a puppy. Fast forward through some of the most challenging years of my life and we have Justin, a fully grown, well behaved dog. There are some (many) days when I love him far more than my children. Life was good, the kids were getting older, the dog was fully settled… and then all of the family (with the notable exceptions of Justin and myself) decided that we needed a puppy. ‘Why?’ you may ask. Unfortunately this is not a question that I can answer, as I do not know myself. But I was overruled, and along came Winnie. There are countless irritating things that this puppy brings to the table, including a penchant for urinating inside and a taste for tea light candles, but these are nothing compared to her most recent misdemeanour — the consumption of a share sized bag of giant chocolate buttons. As any canine lover will know, chocolate is poisonous for dogs, and following some brief internet research involving an online toxicity calculator, the errant puppy was taken to the emergency vet, where the circumstances were assessed to be serious enough that she was triaged second only to a collapsed bunny. This particular episode cost us upwards of £200 and the bill would have been considerably higher had the husband followed the vet’s advice to leave her there overnight with a drip in place for fluids. ‘We’ve got water at home,’ he said, ‘she can drink that.’
People who meet us often assume that having a severely disabled child is the cause of many family issues, but in fact Sasha is one of the more straightforward members of the household. As long as Mr Tumble is available, he is generally content to just chill. Of course, on the occasions when iPlayer is malfunctioning, hell hath no fury, but thankfully we have learnt over the years to have layers of backup tech, so this rarely causes major disruption. The main thing about having Sasha is that his issues, when they do arise, tend to be significant ones — the iPlayer being one example, but he is also awaiting orthopaedic surgery to correct the current dislocation of his hip. We are all anticipating this with a feeling of impending doom, as it will involve a reasonable hospital stay and up to six months of recovery time, but life has taught us to take one day at a time and try not to stress too much in the run up to an event, as there is usually plenty of time for this once the unpleasant happening is upon you.
But of course, the strangest thing about it all is that we wouldn’t really have it any other way. While I complain on a reasonably regular basis about the busyness of our lives, on the rare occasions when I have free time, I am rather at a loss.
