The Family Newluks

Sitting in Baked with the sun streaming onto my shoulders and the quiet bustle and hum of cafe white noise wrapping around me; do you hear my children grunting and questioning and demanding? No? 

That’s because they’re not here. And when I say ‘not here’ I don’t mean that I’ve let them wander off into the toy shop across the hall to play unsupervised as I usually do4x, but they’re actually not even in my care right now. Home with Mountain Dad who is being Domestic Dad for the morning. As I put on my shoes to gleefully fly the roost for an hour or two, Mountain Dad was deep into the morning dishes and calling out to me,

“But where are the kids?” 

For a change they weren’t entangled in our ankles but instead quietly secreted off somewhere. It seems that Mountain Dad has yet to hone that sixth sense of immersing yourself in task at hand while retaining a consistent, though somewhat unconscious, mental tracking of your offspring. Even when they’re in the toy shop I know they are there. I just pretend that they don’t belong to me and allow perfect strangers to look after them. I see it as a win-win situation; I get to relax (ish) and the perfect stranger gets to feel like they’ve done a good deed for a frazzled and harried young Mum. 

“They’re in their bedroom playing,” I called back, slipping on my jacket, ear-warmers and mitts, “DON’T interrupt them until you hear crying!” I advised as he began heading toward said bedroom. It’s a tricky balance to strike when you realise that they are unusually silent; to interrupt because they’re probably up to mischief (like when Loki was playing in the toilet water) or to leave them be. It could be a rare, rare moment of sibling harmony and parental peace.

I know that Mountain Dad will nail this fine balance. He typically errs on the side of ignoring toddler tantrums anyway, so it’ll come naturally to him. I think he must learn to tune into his Internal Child Location Beacon (ICLB).  If it tells you that ragamuffins are in child-bedroom, allow silence to continue. Nay, allow a little crying to continue (Loki can’t yet escape the closed door of their bedroom and so wails to alert us to his predicament). Only interrupt if it sounds as if someone is physically injured. If ICLB identifies location as parental-bedroom, move quickly. Seek, unearth and destroy whatever fun they were up to because surely it was of no good. Like when they found some of my lotions and potions and used them as a kind of improvised face/body paint. 

Anyway, enough about that. Isn’t it typical that I get away for a couple of hours and spend that time writing and thinking about them all. Even the couple of folks I’ve bumped into here at Baked have commented on my single status of the moment. And so we get to chatting about the kids and Mountain Dad and the Junction House. My staples of conversation. 

For your information, they’re all very well. Loki has a very runny nose. Our Little Ladie is growing into a real Lady, maybe a sequin-covered-fairy-wing-adorned-princess Lady, definitely an attentive big sister. Mountain Dad has now been home for three non-work days and it’s incredible! Like we’re on holiday or something. He’s home and laying on the carpet with his kids, sleeping more, doing the dishes and compiling lists of all that now needs to be done on our house. It was loooooong.....

Right, that’s enough talking about the family Newluks. Onto other things. Let’s look at pictures of them. Aren’t they just the most beautiful lot of ragamuffin’s you’ve ever seen? I think I need to go home and see them now.