The Brothers Grimm
It’s like Goldilocks and the Three Bears in our house; I set out a small, medium and large toothbrush and put different amounts of toothpaste on each; I sort three lots of clothing into three separate piles and I even cool three plates of food to varying degrees before I give it to them (seven year old’s is too hot but he’s old enough to blow it first, eighteen month old’s is usually too cold because he wants to feed himself and I’m paranoid about him burning his mouth and three year old’s is jusssst right).
Other fairy tales from the Grimm Brothers also spring to mind; like Hansel and Gretel, our eighteen month old wanders off on a regular basis (see ‘Losing Things’), but if he’s eating I can just follow the trail of breadcrumbs (or banana, or biscuit, or rice cake) and I can usually find him. (If only I’d thought of that when he got lost).
However, like the birds in the story, the puppy will often erase his trail by hoovering up behind him (maybe she’s working undercover for the Wicked Stepmother).
I live in a house with only four other males rather than seven, but as some of them have multiple personalities, I think Snow White and the Seven Dwarves still applies.
Our seven year old is sometimes ‘Dopey’ if he’s not had enough sleep; he often stares at me gormlessly when I ask him a question, needs telling several times to do things and gets distracted and forgets what he’s doing halfway through doing it.
Every now and then, though, he tempers this by having ‘Doc’ moments of brilliance and coming out with some little known random fact or a sophisticated and eloquent sentence.
When we’re out, our three year old looks like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth and often seems ‘Bashful’, but when he’s ‘Sleepy’ noone is ‘Happy’.
I’m ‘Sneezy’, but only because I have hay fever and I’ll leave you to decide who’s ‘Grumpy’…
I often feel like Cinderella, picking up after everyone else (although I’m guessing she probably didn’t swear or kick stuff in temper half as much as I do). And I do need to go to bed by midnight but it’s me, rather than my carriage, that will turn into an inanimate vegetable if I don’t.
Finally, I keep wishing I was Sleeping Beauty so that I could go to sleep for a hundred years; not only would I not want a handsome prince to come and wake me up, I’d probably lamp him for trying.
Alas, no matter how many times I prick my finger on a needle when I’m sewing (and I do, several times), all that happens is blood and more swearing… 🙂