Archive for the '“Getting Dressed” (ha!)' Category

The Creator

Published on 15 February 2010 in "Getting Dressed" (ha!), AAARGHH! GET ME OUT OF HERE!! and Overheard. Closed

Ah, half term holidays: a time when the girls can take not-getting-ready-in-the-morning in all kinds of new and exciting directions.

The following conversation took place this morning, Nicola at the bottom of the stairs, the girls in their bedroom after some 30 minutes or so of “getting ready”:

Nicola: Girls, are you ready yet?
Lauren: Er… nearly!
Nicola: Come on you two! Get dressed!
Lauren: [in cod American accent] Sure mommy, whatever the creator of my life says!

This was around half an hour ago and they’re still in their pyjamas. I’d better go and jog them on a bit or there’ll be hell to pay when the Crucible of Life finds out.

How do you solve a problem like this?

Published on 12 October 2009 in "Getting Dressed" (ha!), AAARGHH! GET ME OUT OF HERE!! and Maddening. Closed

8:05am. As tradition requires, the girls have been reminded/politely asked/told/commanded about a thousand times to get dressed. Hannah is now dancing around the room in the nude, singing “How Do You Solve A Problem Like Naked?” in a trill operatic style.

My friends, I fear all hope is lost.

33, 34, 35, 36

Published on 14 July 2009 in "Getting Dressed" (ha!), Funny, Overheard and Trouble with words. 1 Comment

Hannah to Nicola: “Mummy, do the numbers 33, 34, 35 and 36 occur to you?”

Nicola: “Occur to me? What do you mean?”

Hannah: Y’know, do they ring a bell?”

Hannah is standing half in her wardrobe. She is “getting ready for bed“.

Nicola: “No, not particularly.”

Hannah (producing theatre ticket stubs with a flourish from within the wardrobe): “High School Musical seat numbers!”

Nicola (slapping forehead): “Of course…”

Daddy, Hannah said I have breasts!

Published on 1 November 2008 in "Getting Dressed" (ha!), Funny, Girls will be girls, Growing up, Maddening and Overheard. Closed

Back when this blog started, almost 4 years ago, I’ll admit I was entertaining some rose-tinted notion that, as time went by, the ratio of getting-ready-in-the-morning to full-on-conflict-resolution would improve. I probably thought that by the time they were, say, 8 years old, they might get washed and dressed most mornings – or even just some mornings – without requiring the intervention of Nelson Mandela and a United Nations peace-keeping force.

Ha!

That 2005 version of me was an idiot. Nowadays I’m far more realistic about the scale of the task we face. If you want a picture of the future, George Orwell might have told me, imagine a small foot stamping deliberately on its sister’s foot – forever.

Last week’s case in point came from Lauren, just as I was getting out of the shower.

“Daddy, Hannah said I have breasts!”

I went into their bedroom to find them both inspecting each other’s naked chests. (This was, I should point out, after some 30 minutes of “getting dressed”.) I told them to stop being silly and get ready but instead they chose to have a discussion on the differences between:

  1. breasts
  2. boobies
  3. nipples
  4. willies

I have to admit it was all rather fascinating, even if I got a bit lost in the detail: I’m pretty clear on the difference between boobies and willies, less clear on boobies v. breasts. In any case, the consensus after a few minutes of robust debate seemed to be that they both have (or sort-of have) items 1-3, but definitely not item 4.

“Don’t we, Daddy?” said Hannah. “Don’t we?”

The path of least resistance beckoned. “Yes, girls. Now get dressed.”

“Aha!” cried Hannah, turning to Lauren with a triumphant finger in the air. “You breast my case!”

My family and other animals

Published on 29 January 2008 in "Getting Dressed" (ha!), Education, Funny and Growing up. Closed

Since September the girls have been at junior school (I think that’s 3rd grade to US readers). The change in them has been amazing: they’re just drinking up facts and information like… well, like things that drink up facts and information, I suppose.

This morning, as they were getting dressed, they wanted to know about mammals. No, actually, that’s a lie: Hannah wanted to shave her arms because they’re “all hairy” and we sort of managed to divert the issue by talking about mammals. I told them all mammals have hair all over their bodies.

“What, even pigs?”

Yes, I said, even pigs.

“Even whales?”

Even whales. (Please don’t correct me if I’m wrong: I’m a parent, not a zoologist. Remember the primary aim here was not to educate, it was to prevent shaving.)

“Even monkeys?” And so on.

I asked them if they knew the two other things that all mammals have in common. They ummed and ahhed for a bit. Nicola hinted it had something to do with babies.

“They all like babies?” said Lauren.

No, we said. Think about what they give birth to…

“Kittens?” said Hannah.

I think at this point we gave them the live young vs. eggs thing as a freebie. (It was getting close to school time.) This just left the milk thing.

“Think about the little piglets we saw at the farm,” I suggested.

“It’s got something to do with boobies…” hinted Nicola.

“And babies…” I added.

“Oh, I know,” said Hannah with a confident nod, “babies don’t have boobies!”

“And neither do piglets!” chimed Lauren.

Genius.

It’s that time of year again

Published on 3 December 2007 in "Getting Dressed" (ha!), AAARGHH! GET ME OUT OF HERE!!, Double trouble and Maddening. Closed

December fever is upon us. It barely seems a couple of months since last Christmas but as I type, the girls are dancing round the landing shrieking a song they just made up that appears to be called “It’s Four More Days Till Christmas.”

Today is the 3rd of December. They’re supposed to be going to bed.

The next 22 days are what makes or breaks a man. Wish me luck.

Update: Z26

Published on 22 February 2007 in "Getting Dressed" (ha!) and Growing up. Closed

We had a surprising update yesterday to the Slow to Zoom system. It turns out there is a speed even faster than Zoom, known as A1. This in turn is outstripped by B2, then C3 and so on, right up to the frankly interstellar… Z26.

All of this is pure theoretical physics, of course. I’m not convinced we’ve ever seen Zoom in our house, let alone A1. Hearing Hannah and Lauren talk about Z26 is like listening to Stephen Hawking on black holes: it all sounds very clever but you can’t quite imagine what it would actually look like.

I can only suppose it would be a bit like “VOOM” in The Cat In The Hat Comes Back: a tremendous release of energy, a blinding flash of light, and a fraction of a second later two girls would be standing there in their school uniforms, hair combed, shoes done up, coats on.

I can’t deny it sounds attractive, but their current method (lying on back, singing, reading, waving legs in air) probably causes less structural damage.

From Slow to Zoom!

Published on 2 February 2007 in "Getting Dressed" (ha!) and Growing up. 3 Comments

Hannah and Lauren revealed an amazing secret to me today: their five-level heirarchy of Getting Dressed Speeds. Ranked in order, these are:

  1. Slow
  2. Wide
  3. Fast
  4. Smart
  5. Zoom

Rather than defining each one precisely the girls offered rather scattered titbits of information, a bit like one of those logic puzzles where you get mismatching information about a range of items and have to work out the rest. What I now know is the following:

  • Wide is really slow, y’know, a bit dawdle-donkey, like with messing about and stuff.
  • Slow is just lying on the floor daydreaming.
  • Zoom is the fastest, where you just get dressed and no talking.
  • Smart is faster than Fast but you’re allowed a bit of talking.
  • Fast is what they normally do. (Note: I would never have chosen the word “fast” to describe it.)
  • If you want to go to disco dancing after school on a Friday you have to do Zoom or Smart.
  • This morning Lauren did Zoom but there is some disagreement over whether Hannah did Zoom or Smart.
  • I definitely heard both of them talking.
  • The whole system therefore appears dangerously corrupt.

Don’t tell them, but they’re going disco dancing anyway. It buys us a whole hour of peace and quiet.