Please put some clothes on, stop eating, shut the door and find the remote!

Right now I am really frustrated with everything. I don't understand how, with all of my superb parenting skills and despite their increasing ages, these kids seem to be getting harder! Maybe my expectations just get bigger as they do, or maybe I really was in a fog for the previous years and I'm not remembering things as they really were. It's been raining all day and we are in a small space so the issues are literally right on top of me at the moment (C4 perched on the loungechair arm). So the issues are -


The clothes thing

I know they never used to wear clothes, it used to be a big laugh that in every photo there was at least one naked child, but now when they don't wear clothes I find myself getting irritated. I don't understand why they don't understand what used to be acceptable at 2, 3 or maybe 4 just can't keep going on now they are 4, 6, 7 and 8. C1 in particular will get around in just her undies, pulled right up, and think that it is quite alright to run to the door to whoever is brave enough to knock. She hates the feel of clothes. The others are mostly ok, except that's only until C4 goes to the toilet and then doesn't put his pants back on.

The food thing

They are bored = they eat. I don't think they have once felt hungry today. It's like a competition for food, if one kid is eating then the others must also eat. But when C2 picks a different thing to C1, who then wants what C2 was eating, and C2 wants what C4 is eating, but C3 has eaten the last of the thing that C4 was eating (but he's now passed that onto C1, and C3 wants something else now because C1 and now eaten 2 things) it gets very confusing. I've called an end to any more food being snaffled from the school drawer but there's still a sense of someone being hard-done-by in the air and wrappers aplenty on the floor.

The door thing

It is (now) Winter. We have all moved into the front loungeroom where the gas heater is, and we can heat this one small area fairly cheaply and quickly...until someone leaves the room and leaves the door open. As soon as that happens, in the time it takes for the offender to turn around and give a dirty look about being called back, the room has chilled again. If I only had a dollar for every time the door was left open or ajar during the day I could afford ducted reverse cycle heating in no time.

The remote thing

This is one of those bittersweet things. When they first learned how to use the remote, it meant sleep ins for me and no more interruptions to find Nick Jr while I was busy doing something outside of the loungeroom. Now they have mostly moved onto Cartoon Network and can capably find anything they want to watch all by themselves at any time, but this has meant we have lost control of the remote. I know one of them had it, because the tv has been stuck on Gumball/Adventure Time/Regular show for the past 4 hours and I didn't change it. But no one can remember who did change it, or have any idea where the control could be. C1 also tends to hide the remote when she leaves the room for just a short time (I bet she leaves the door open too...) so no one can change it in her absence. I have find the remote in the linen cupboard before, but it's not there now. I have looked.

I'm recording these things and hoping one day I will look back and smile. And right now any of these irritations are better than listening to them laugh and bang around in the bedrooms; when they do that it's only a matter of time before tears and always means beds have to be totally remade before sleep. I need a holiday.

ETA - I just went back through some old posts and found that in 2011 the remote thing and the bedroom things were annoying me even back then. I forgot all about that so that confirms my theory that this too shall pass (and by pass I mean be forgotten)