Boys will be boys

What is it about little boys that they have to be so aggressive, destructive and loud? Why do they have brains the size of teeny tiny peas that prevent them from remembering incidents that happened mere seconds before? Like bouncing on the bed and crashing their cheekbones into the headboard and then doing the same thing less than a minute later despite shrieking in agony. How is it that they are able to beat each other so hard that they draw blood/cause large contusions yet seem to blank the event immediately and are best friends again? And why are they incapable of saying anything at a normal volume level? Why must it be yelled, shrieked or roared?

Today is my last weekday with them before they head off to an eternity of school and pre-school. I should be savouring every last moment. I'm not. I'm counting down the hours till I can hand my children over to state-paid-for employees. This obviously makes me a hideously bad mother. But on the plus side, I am honest.

We spent the morning at our local toddler group, which both of my children are now far too old for. Luckily there were several other little boys also too old to justify being there and together they caused mayhem. The little girls played sweetly in the playhouse with the pretend cooker and fake food. The boys stood precariously on top of the slide, attempting to summon the God of Broken Arms, before diving down head first and knocking the children at the bottom of the slide over like a row of skittles. They drove the ride-on cars, pursposefully bashing over every other toy and constantly crashing into each other with whiplash-inducing speed. They threw toys and smashed train tracks. And throughout it all, they roared at ear-splitting volume.

I now face our final afternoon of freedom in which we're not bound by school times. And I'm at a complete and utter loss as to how to fill this momentous occasion. I feel a trip to Sainsbury's coming on, a) because it gets them out of the house that I attempted to clean at 7am this morning and which is teetering on the brink of becoming a pig sty again, b) we need food if only to have something to put in their mouths so that they can't make more noise and c) the cavernous interior of Sainsbury's can accommodate their ungodly racket more comfortably than our low ceilinged cottage can. But a shopping trip hardly seems appropriate on such an important day.

Perhaps I just need to unleash them onto a large field and let them run off the demons. However we pass the afternoon, I can honestly say that tomorrow cannot come soon enough. I must go as one of them has thrown a car at the other causing a retaliatory whack on the head with a large plastic space ship. There is a lot of wailing and they're no doubt covered in blood so should probably go break it up. Sigh