Flour babies

On Monday I decided to have a sneaky play on the Sims after Ben got home from school. I settled the kids with a snack and their favourite DVD, and then crept upstairs to customise the house I’d built. Anyway, I was happily choosing wallpaper and furnishings when I heard the cupboard door in the kitchen being opened and shut, so I called out to the kids to come out of the cupboard. Thinking no more of it, I went back to my game. From downstairs I could hear some real giggling and belly laughing and thought to myself how nice it was that, for once, the kids were playing quite happily together with no sounds of fighting/arguing/crying….little did I know…..
A short while later Jasmine came rushing upstairs and climbed onto my lap saying, ‘the bear’s gonna get me mum!’ (?) Absentmindedly I helped her up, when I noticed that she was rather white. Yes, she was white. She was naked and covered from head to toe in a fine powdery substance. ‘What the..!?’ I exclaimed, my heart beating because I wondered if she’d got into the cupboard under the sink and gotten hold of the washing powder/soda crystals, or some other chemical substance I keep under there (the cupboard is locked, but I never underestimate the determination of a child that wants something!). I dipped my finger into her hair and smelled the powder and realised it was of the edible type. So I rushed downstairs and the sight that greeted me will stay with me forever. Two naked toddlers covered from head to toe, standing in the midst of a blanket of flour. My living room looked like it had been hit by a blizzard! There was flour everywhere! I ran to the cupboard and checked, yep, they had taken my plain flour, my wholemeal bread flour, my chickpea flour, my sugar and my butter! I was a strange mix of emotions right about then…..Firstly I wanted to laugh, not only did the children look hilarious, but there was a kind of surreal quality to it all. Add to the mix a little anger - the monkey rats!!! They’d destroyed my living room!!! Throw in some despair, some self-recrimination (I did leave them unattended after all) and a pinch of relief (at least they didn’t get anything dangerous) and you can pretty much understand how I was feeling at that moment in time. I went back into the living room to assess the damage and noticed that not only was the floor between the back of the couch and the piano about an inch deep in flour (not to mention butter and disposable cutlery and plates (?)), but it was all over the freshly washed clothes that were waiting to be ironed, the freshly ironed clothes waiting to be put away, up the curtains, all over the couch and the (dry-clean only) cushions, the rug and the lounger and throws. It had also been trampled out into the hallway and kitchen. Big Sigh! I needed to approach this in an organised fashion…..so, I ran a bath and dumped both Ben and Jas in. I washed their hair – which Jas hated as usual. But Mrs nice mummy I was not! I poured jugful after jugful of water over her head and she screamed blue murder. I however, was having none of it. I couldn’t really get too angry at them for the flour incident as I was partly to blame, but there was going to be a consequence. If you put flour all over your hair, it has to be washed out, whether you like it or not, so there! From my questioning of the two of them, the culprit appears to be Jasmine – which I can totally imagine. But Ben got told off for joining in when he knows that I don’t like them playing with the food in the cupboard. Next I tackled the mess downstairs, whilst the kids were confined to their bedroom. I had to shovel up the flour with the dustpan before taking the hoover to it. Bad idea. Hoovers can’t cope with such large amounts of fine dust and I could hear its groans of protest. I then had to rewash the clothes and only just finished that today. Whew! Moral of the story? When the cat’s away, the mice will play. Or rather, when mummy is not looking, the fun really starts! Pictures of the insident will follow shortly.....