On 3 year olds being creepy

Living with 3 year olds can be very creepy sometimes.  Here are 3 examples

No 1.  We live beside the green - i think I've mentioned this before - it means we get a ot of knocks on the front door with people looking for their lost balls, anything from small little kids to preteen lads about town...  I got the other night featured a trip to the bin, where I found inside the wheelie, everything from Danger's sneakers which had been drying on the windowsill, to all the toys from his sand table, his spiderman scooter, and even my jeans that had been hanging on the line.  It was a surreal act of vandalism.  The only explanation my head could make up was that some one of the preteens was severely disgruntled when we couldn't find his sliotar, or when his nike ball turned out to have been slightly punctured by our ever fun loving hound.  I thought it was extremely creepy, scary even, and I was angry too that someone would invade our personal space like that, and throw prized possessions of a three year old in with rotting food/ dirty nappies etc. The first thing I did was to close the front door - it being a fine evening Danger had been pottering in and out, but I no longer felt safe.  I decided to empty the bin.  As he watched me, Danger began picking up the things I was lifting out and trying to get them back in.  He quickly admitted to being the culprit and even pointed out that the recycling bin too had gained in content.

No 2. A few weeks back he asked if I remembered the time the two of us were walking in the woods and then my head fell off and I had no eyes and we weren't friends any more.

No 3.  The art - weird things happen when a 3 year old demands entertaining and they insist on putting all the art up, all the time.

 

Unfriendly Fathers

I'm not one to generalise, but in general I find fathers unfriendly.  Specifically I would have to say my own father, and my husband the father of my children are both very friendly - but generally fathers out there in the world are unfriendly.
I am a full time mum at the moment.  It's not the most rewarding (oh except it is the most rewarding job in terms of reason for living/ continuation of the species yadda yadda)/ glamourous (oh except on those days when your child insists on picking your clothes for you so that you actually decide not to leave the house) of jobs - no one has ever sent me a mail after I folded the washing to say it was particularly well done, nor has anyone high fived me if I manage to get the sitting room tidied up while 3 year old is doing something non mess creating, (or at least no bigger than the mess in the sitting room prior to my tidying) - ok well no ones ever high fived me for anything in a real job either thankfully (though there was that door to door job in america that I had for two days where everyone clicked their fingers as a kind of applause for each other and we had to tell people to give money to our cause or suffer polluted air forever - it was actually a bit creepy really - I think maybe it was a cult - though there was supposed to be free pizza the third day, but they fired me on day 2 as I wasn't bringing in enough funds)... the point is - I am doing this job of minding/ feeding/ guarding from all danger/ empowering/ educating/ loving/ hanging around with and enjoying my kids and it's great.  And one of the nicest things about it is the colleagues actually.  I meet other mammies all over the place - at playgrounds mostly, or just out on walks, and we usually chat - and I'm not a chatter - I'm actually pretty shy, but for some reason the mammies are great, they chat, I chat - we're just like the people in the "wheels on the bus" song going chatter chatter chatter, in fact I've never talked so much to my co-workers in any job ever.  We have so much to talk about you see - how old are they, how big a gap between them, did you find they did this at this stage, are they more like daddy or mammy, what school are you thinking of, what's your favourite cartoon etc etc etc  But - and here's where it gets really weird. - the daddies - not so much.  Why is that?
There are lots of daddies out there - doing the same job as me - minding - and they don't chat, ever.  I don't get it. Today I was in a beautiful playground by some water, baby was asleep and there were no other kids, so I had to be a stand in kid for my 3 year old to play with, I was climbing up the slides, walking the rope bridges, even dragging myself through the tunnels, and woe of woes allowing him to spin me on those roundabouty things until I almost remembered what it was like to drink way back in 2010....  Anyway we were nearly ready to go when a daddy and a little boy arrived - yay I said to myself, and said we'd have another 10 mins, just to let my little fella socialise. If the daddy had been a mammy we'd have been there chatting like old friends in no time, but nope.  This guy was following his child around dutifully, but actually kept his phone held out in front of him like a shield as if in actual fear of his life that I'd talk to him.