Toddler-induced chaos and exhaustion!

Have you seen Toy Story 3?  Probably not recently, unless you have a young child I'm guessing.  There's a scene near the start of the movie where the toys have arrived at Sunnyside Daycare and are anxiously awaiting the return of the children from recess so that they can finally be played with again.  Playtime is a little more strenuous than they'd expected though!

The toddlers run around screaming, banging the toys all over the place and putting them in things and places they shouldn't be.  It's quite loud and chaotic and by the end of the day the toys are exhausted!


You guessed it!  That's me tonight!


My gorgeous nephews (aged 3.5 and 1) came over after dinner tonight so that their parents could go to a show.  And the Little Big Fella was SO excited!  No really, he was SOOOO excited!


They ran around and played and squealed for about 15-20 minutes then I ran the bath for them.  My nephews don't have a bath at their place so they were quite eager to get their gear off and start splashing around :-D  The youngest one was laughing his little head off when he got a cup of water and accidentally splashed it over his head.  He kept doing it over and over and giggling away about it all.


The next challenge was to get clothes back on them!  Did you know little kids really love running around in the nuddy?  Almost all of them do it, and boys in particular.


The Little Big Fella was still way excited so I let them run around for another 15-20 minutes to get rid of some more energy.  Unfortunately, getting them (okay, my boy) to calm down was quite an effort!  We tried to read books but in the end I had to give the Little Big Fella a hugging time out in my room for a couple of minutes, speaking to him softly, holding him close.  Thankfully the other boys were fine in the next room - they're such well-behaved boys (so's the Little Big Fella too, by the way, normally.  He was just so over-excited).


So I finally got the Little Big Fella calm enough to try to get my youngest nephew to sleep.  Problem is, he can't stand to be out of the action!  As soon as I put him in the cot he bawled his eyes out!  I resisted the (very strong) urge to pick him up and cuddle him, talking to him quietly and telling him it was sleeping time (at the same time telling the other boys to play nice and quietly so the youngest could go to sleep - they're really good at that, by the way).  He calmed down so I went back to the other boys and they'd calmed down enough that, after one more book and a little squabble, they were in their beds and sleeping.


And I'm knackered!  I was already tired from running around today (the Little Big Fella was at Super Carer's today so I was squeezing a bunch of errands in as well as packing and sorting).  I've considered going to bed and letting my sister wake me up when they get here to pick up the boys some time this evening, but I think I'll just tough it out - they should be here relatively soon anyway.  And I've just attacked the rest of the dark chocolate bunny that was sitting on my bench (bwah ha ha ha) :-D


See you tomorrow for another rambling, sleep-deprived post in the stunningly exciting world of ScooterShell and the Big Fellas :-D