I knew the chances were slim. Who wants to help out with triplets? The very word triplets conjures up a nightmare in your head, doesn't it? Straight out of a movie, screaming babies, Brad Pitt beefcake grinning childishly, holding a baby in each hand, one perched on his head. We're supposed to love the package; mother the lot.
Worse thing is, that's what it's been like - one on the head - with triplets. Without Brad Pitt. Who would be inept, so I'm not hiring him as a Mother's Help. Even if he asked.
I'm bearing a grudge, you can tell. That word. Triplets. It's been like a magnet held the wrong way round. Every element that might curve towards it just bounces straight away again. The one friend I thought would be my next mother said 'I want to help, I really do. I want to be your help'. Until I said, 'Would you like to help?' And then the silence was so enormous you could fill a stadium.
Because I need help, I really do, even though you have many more children than me, and can cope, juggling babies and laundry and teenagers and pre-teens and one on the way, doing a full time job and being strumpet of the boudoir come 11pm.
But there are some days help could come to me like a gift, like cherry pie, like an angel. Something special, help from those extra pair of hands.
So because I need help, I found out a contact and I contacted that name, advertising their helpfulness, their Mother's Help angelic role, straight from 1953, all clean aprons and warm cake and salvation with a broom, and I wrote Responding to your ad offering your services as Mother's Help! Yes please! I'm a mother! I need help! I have three kids!
And after the first exchanges comes the question again, How old? Because strangely, I don't say.
Now it's all over, because when I answer they're all aged 9 suddenly that silence falls, like curtains closing, windows shutting, doors bolting. I know that penny's dropped. They're all aged 9, so uhuh that makes them...
To the outside world, not three individual children, each with their special gifts, unique talents, their own personalities. Just, triplets.
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You know that swap I mentioned?
We could alter it to a kid swap. I am rather fed up of my idiot boys at the moment (having trod on a playmobil person three times this evening, smashed a test tube and found all three running round the kitchen with buckets on their heads)
Would you trade and take three boys all keen on ending up at A&E by the end of the week?
haha! kevin and perry come to mind when they were faced with each other's mothers. with a swap we might both be relieved with some change in behaviour!
I'd offer to kid sit if I lived in the area. We could do art projects, it would be fun!!!
They sound, um, rude... Rather like the lady I encountered recently who was attempting to sell her services to me in the John Lewis changing room... right up to the point where she realised than the baby with me was not my first and that I wasn't a totally clueless 'ex professional' new mummy but a mother of four who, um, wasn't polite about her gushing praise of GF and all that she entails....
hey, I'd have 'em over anytime (shame we're not actually in the same county..)
honestly, an extra three? wouldn't even notice :D
Divide and conquer? Three helpers taking one child each?
Come visit Australia again. If a reward strategy doesn't work we can offer free redback spiders for each misdemeanor.
not that it helps in anyway what so ever but any time you're in the neighbourhood feel free to drop them off for a while. They could help keep my two little satan impressionists entertained and go sledging and stuff.
If you're ever in glenfield bring em over. I find six just as stressful as three, but at times they might actually keep each other quiet, or noisy but in a different room.
d'you know, i'm starting to develop an evil plot to travel round the world, depositing kids at various locations...
I'm following you..
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