All My Children

Most normal families look forward to Sundays as the traditional day of rest and/or recreation. Not my family.

This, of course, is perfectly natural. Face it: we are not what you would call a normal family.

For us, Sunday is just another working day; the day my wife the estate agent has to go out to work while I, fresh from a week of feet-on-the-office desk refuge from domestic strife, must revert once more to my role as a full-time househusband responsible for the care, feeding, control, cleaning, rescue and entertainment of an ever-increasing menagerie of diverse domestic life-forms. To wit …

• Two growing daughters.
• A six-month-old baby girl.
• One raggedy haired white rat masquerading as a Maltese poodle.
• One rapidly-ageing, extremely flatulent watchdog who is now in official semi-retirement — mainly because he only barks when strangers leave the property, not when they arrive. Not that he needs to bark at all: one whiff of his homemade gas vapour would be quite sufficient to render any burglar senseless until the cops arrived.
• One disdainfully independent adult cat composed of 50 percent longhaired Persian and 50 percent tomcat-from-down-the-road.
• One half-grown, totally crazed offspring of said Persian/tomcat-fromdown-the-road, who spends the day (a) lurking in dark corners and pouncing therefrom to attack the unsuspecting feet of whoever may pass by, (b) using the lounge suite as its own personal scratching-post, and (c) yowling loudly for food the moment any of us enters the kitchen.
• And (will we ever learn?) a brand-new puppy that is a cross between a Bernese mountain dog and a Boerbul.

A tremendous dog, to be sure. In size as well as character.

I don’t know if you’re familiar with either breed. If not, I should point out that, when it is fully grown, a Bernese mountain dog is roughly the same size as one of the elephants that ferried Hannibal and his troops over the Alps. A Boerbul, on the other hand, is of much more manageable stature — it only grows to the size of an adult’ hyena.

Put them together and you have our new puppy — a scarcely-weaned, 200 kg bundle of joy, enthusiasm and devotion as large and ungainly as a VW Beetle. And she’s only eight weeks old.

In due course, she will become our replacement watchdog/family companion/mobile, free-ranging lawn fertiliser. At present, however, her prime functions are divided equally between (a) tearing up the newly planted shrubs and palms in our garden, (b) eating my takkies, (c) knocking over the children, and (d) piddling ecstatically on your foot whenever you pat her.

To be perfectly honest, the animals aren’t much of a problem when I’m on Sunday duty. As long as they’re provided with food and fresh water, they’re all quite content to spend the day doing all or any of the following …

• Screaming in quivering, territorial outrage at anything that dares come within a two-kilometre radius of our house (the Maltese poodle).
• Lying asleep on the patio and snoring loudly at both ends (the semiretired watchdog). Because the sound of these two wind-generating activities are virtually identical, it is impossible to ascertain which one the dog is practising at any given moment — unless you are foolish or unfortunate enough to be downwind at the time.
• Lying on top of the garden wall, preening herself in the sunlight to pass the time until her next meal (the Persian).
• Skulking Garfield-like in dark corners and sallying forth every so often to slash at your ankles or shred another piece off the lounge suite (the kitten).
• Tearing up the newly planted shrubs and palms in the garden, eating my takkies, knocking over the children and piddling ecstatically on the nearest foot whenever she gets patted (the new puppy).

Come to think of it, Alex and Kendall aren’t that much of a problem either. Kendall, for example, will play happily by herself for hours, provided you keep her plied with enough soft-drinks, sweeties, chips, jigsaw puzzles and the occasional cuddle.

When not indulging in any of the foregoing activities, Kendall may also be found crayoning all over the house.

Quite literally.

On recent Sundays, Kendall has crayoned on the new carpet in her bedroom, on the new carpet in Alexandra’s bedroom, on the walls of both, on the cupboard doors of both and all over the side of the baby’s compactum.

It is a habit that — along with her custom of climbing into our bed at two o’clock every morning — we have never managed to break.

Indeed, if anyone out there has need of totally untouched colouring books, please call Kendall. She has dozens of them.

Up until now, my Sunday workload has been eased considerably by Alexandra’s wonderfully capable, no-nonsense ability to feed, burp, dress and soothe her brand-new baby sister. She has, truly, been a tower of strength in this regard. (Which is why I’m putting this in print, so she can show her own brats one day.)

However, as Alex is also a perfectly normal, well-adjusted nine-year-old pre-teeny bopper, she has recently discovered there is more to life than helping harassed Dad dispose of overloaded nappies, powder plump little bottoms, find missing dummies and all the rest.

Which means that she now spends a good deal of her time secreted in her bedroom — staring rapturously at herself in the mirror, combing her hair, flinging her tresses to and fro with a trendy toss of her head, dressing herself repeatedly in a procession of garish, totally mismatched garments — and all the while listening to loud and obnoxious tape-recordings of the dreadfully mediocre pop person known as Kylie Minogue. When she has tired of all of the foregoing, Alex may be found standing on her head in the lounge, watching television. When asked why she is standing on her head and watching television, Alex will reply: “Because I want to be a gymnast.”

Fair enough. Every girl should have a career, I suppose. And if she doesn’t make it as a gymnast, I guess she can always get a job as a television critic in Australia.

Which brings me, finally, to the baby. What can I tell you about a six- month old baby that you don’t already know? That she fills nappies as fast as you can fit them; that she will throw up with equal abandon on anyone and anything that happens to be within range; that she won’t sleep when you want her to; that she will when you don’t.

That she’s adorable and cuddly and soft and smooth and round and plump and happy and that she smells like your own distant childhood memories of warm milk, butter cookies and freshly-baked bread. That one gaping smile from her makes you feel better than the winner of the Million- Rand Gold-Rush. That she can spend hours absorbed in the fascinating mysteries of her own big toe. That we all love her madly; that she has brought a rejuvenating sense of delight and joy into our lives; that she reminds us, every day, of all the wonderful, happy, heart-warming delights of babyhood we had begun to forget without even realising what we were missing. That she is, like all babies everywhere, the pure, perfect, untainted essence of everything that is good and worthwhile about the human race.

And that, when I consider the collective virtues of the four females who make up my family, I really do reckon that I’m the luckiest man alive.

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