Tricky, very tricky

Obviously the God of All Things That Can Go Wrong has cast its eye upon me and is giving me a long hard stare. As I got out of my car this morning trying to hold a picture of lovely fragile autumn leaves stuck with copious amounts of glue to blue card made by my 3 year old, and a tray of 6 eggs I'd just collected, I somehow managed to have the car door jolt my arm. This resulted in the picture flying into the road and losing half its leaves and all six eggs leapt to their messy deaths upon the tar. Picture in tatters and eggs scrambled, I went inside, head in hands.

This incident followed a delightful visit to the doctor. For me. Yes, an actual doctor's appointment for something wrong with me, rather than one of my children. The doctor was suprised. He was even more surprised when I regaled him with my sad tale of woe (which I won't regale again as it definitely falls into the TMI category). But suffice to say that it resulted in me performing a swab with a giant ear bud from a place you really don't want a giant ear bud. I really can't go into graphic details, but let's just say that as I'll have to wait for the results before they can prescribe any treatment, it will have an impact on our lovely jaunt to Paris this weekend. Nuff said.

But neither smashed eggs or giant ear buds have been the major problem of the day. No, that honour falls to the fact that this morning the children discovered their Christmas presents. They hadn't been wrapped. They hauled them out and wanted to know who the Hotwheels cars were for and why I had a spiderman mini laptop thingie hidden away. I instructed them to put them back immediately and to never ever go into that cupboard again. That of course is an open invitation for them to do exactly that. So I now need to find a new present hiding place. I wanted to say that there was a monster with large fangs living in the cupboard and that if they opened it, it would jump out and eat them. But I figured that was just opening myself up for numerous broken nights as they shrieked from night terrors.

They persisted and wanted to know who they were for. I said I was looking after them for someone. 'WHO?' they demanded. 'Someone you don't know,' I said before frogmarching them out of the room.

Where do I go from here? They didn't see all of the pressies luckily so those can come from Father Christmas and I guess the ones they saw will have to be from mummy and daddy. But I just don't know how much they saw. I'd like to believe that they will have forgotten all about it come Christmas day. But my almost 5 year old has a memory like a crotchety elephant and there's no way he won't notice that the same toys I was keeping for someone happened to end up under their Christmas tree.

I have a sneaking suspicion that parenting is about to get harder. You can't fool them anymore. They are becoming cunning - like foxes. It sucks.