Together Or Apart

18. Door Stoppers

It's incredible how the mind of a child works. Even the slightest of things can capture their attention. For instance, London has taken three plastic door stoppers off the doors in the house and she has put two of her fingers inside each of the three stoppers.

She is tapping her fingers on different objects in the house such as the floor, rug, sofa and tv cabinet. I watch and listen as she studies the different sounds and rhythms that she is making. She then begins humming along to the rhythm. It seems as though we already have a little musician on our hands.

I'm currently leaning against the kitchen table which overlooks the lounge room. I could stare and watch my kids play for hours. It never gets boring. Sydney is sitting in her rocker, looking around the room occasionally but her main focus is on her sister.

Sydney starts to giggle when her sister starts making animal noises with her mouth while proceeding to make rhythms with the door stoppers.

Her laughter fades when London bangs on the tv cabinet too hard and the door stopper flies over to the other side of the room. "Oh no" Londy shouts, startling Sydney even more.

Here come the tears. As I start heading her way, the tears start flowing. She looks to her right and sees me approaching her which only makes her scream louder. With her hands whaling in the air and her lungs full of volume, I reach Sydney and pick her up.

"It's okay baby" I say to her as I bend down and pick her up. "Shh, shh, it's okay" I slowly bounce up and down in attempts to calm her down. "It's alright, it's just Londy. Look" I point to her sister who once again has all three door stoppers on six of her fingers.

"It was just an accident." London says to her sister.

Sydney's sobs decrease by the second as she looks from her sister and up at me. She grabs ahold of some loose hair pieces that have fallen onto my face. She laces her fingers around my hair and gives it a hard pull.

I release her fingers from my hair and push my hair back off my face. "Thanks for that Syd, there won't be any hair left by the time I have my next hair appointment." She has two pieces of hair around her fingers that she has snapped from my head. I take the pieces from her hands and flick them onto the floor.

No wonder my vacuum cleaner gets so clogged up with my hair. I am too lazy to put it in the bin, so I simply flick it on the floor. Between mine, Harry's and London's hair, you can imagine the chunks of hair the vacuum sucks up.

With Sydney still on my hip, I walk back into the kitchen and get the silver cooking pot out from the cupboard underneath the stove. I have gotten pretty used to doing things with one hand. Most of the time I have a child in the other so I have great practice.

I fill the pot with water and put it on the stove. Turning the stove onto medium heat, I let the pot heat up.

Tonight I am cooking London, Harry and I pasta for dinner. Sydney can munch on some pasta because it's good to suck on with her gums. Due to her teeth coming in quite slowly, most of her diet consists of liquids and a whole lot of breast milk.

I get the pasta from the food cupboard and take off the peg that is enclosing it. I pour about half the packet into the pot and let it cook, stirring occasionally.

While that is cooking, I begin getting out the ingredients to make the sauce. I'm making boscaiola pasta but changing it up because I like broccoli in it instead of bacon. One day I put broccoli in it and loved it so I've been making it this way ever since, for years. Let's not forget, a whole lot of mushrooms.

London never liked the bacon in it anyway, she always picked it out.

"I'm going to have to put you down little one" I say to Sydney because I need to cut the broccoli, grate the cheese and grate the carrots.