“It’s Town Day!”

Tuesday is our town day. Sort of. Most of the time. Alright, we try to get to ‘town’ one day a week to do some grocery shopping. A simple trip to the supermarket. Sort of. I feel that when I say ‘town’ we are a real bunch of country hicks complete with straw in our mouths but it’s not really like that. We live in a beautiful, quiet, peaceful, friendly little place called Dimboola that has pretty much everything we need; but our nearest big shopping centre is Horsham, about half an hour away. See – just a short drive, a simple shop, no sweat.

Well today began much like any other. After having a cursory taste and then discarding the amazing breakfast of porridge with almond milk and blueberries I had whipped up (vegan as well!) the boys got busy with their playing and climbing for the day. Both boys had fairly significant falls before 9am – Paddy after Bede kicked him off the shelf while they were reading books, causing him to land on his head and a Tonka truck. And Bede fell off the ledge into the (empty) spa in our bedroom (it’s amazing but pretty dated and way too hard to explain) which caused him to open up the existing crack in his head. All quite normal thus far.

Whilst I tried to get ready, which these days entails finding a clean black top to go with semi clean jeans and ensure that my hair isn’t sticking up too much, I could hear the fridge beeping. It does this when the door has been open for too long. Upon investigation, I found the boys sitting on the floor eating frozen broccoli. Who needs superfoods for breaky when there’s broccoli to be eaten? Although, maybe that’s a superfood as well?

We eventually made it to the supermarket after detouring through some of the backroads while they had a snooze and it was all systems go. For a number of reasons, but mainly because it’s cheap, we shop at Aldi. Have you seen the sketches on “Open Slather” (Comedy Channel) about ‘guess who’s been to Aldi?’ I’m that person. I love checking out what ridiculous things they have in store. Our local is still trying to flog the walking frames from about 10 catalogues ago! But one thing I don’t love about Aldi is that they don’t have double trolleys. So I have to get one baby into the Tula baby carrier and carry the other, making sure that my dollar coin is easy to get to and that I can still lock the car before finally getting him into the trolley. Shop shop shop. Pack bags. All the while with a baby strapped to my front, and stopping the one in the trolley from turfing the goods or himself onto the ground.

Another part of our ‘town day’ is meeting up with Shane for lunch and a play. This was much more civil before the boys could run and climb. Now, I have to use every skill I learnt from my days as a teacher on yard duty and school camp – eyes everywhere all at once. One up the top of the slide, the other heading straight into the path of a swing. Which one to stay with? And so on and so forth. Today, we survived and eventually left without too much protesting.

I am lucky enough to have two boys with exceptionally strong wills and such passion for life that they think sleep just gets in the way. They’ve now moved to one sleep a day. And that is it. There will never be more than one sleep a day. Even if it was for half an hour and they were awake before midday. No sleeping. I really hope that they use this determination to make the world a better place. Today, they just decided to stay at cranky until bed time. Cranky that the pushalong walker simply would not fit through the crawl tunnel. Cranky that the

cat didn’t want her tail pulled. Cranky that they had shoes on. Cranky that their shoes were off. You get the picture. Some days, it can take until about 5pm to finally unpack the groceries and this was one of those days. Now they’re finally in bed and the dishwasher is humming along – which always makes me feel like I’m actually doing something and I can have some peace out time. Thank goodness ‘town day’ is only once a week!