It is fair to say that my current job has few measurable rewards, and rather a lot of setbacks, and that successes are generally of the domestic kind. At the end of the day, you might find me talking at my husband or having a lively internal conversation with myself, recounting the triumphs of my day. Like this:

“I did three loads of washing and cleared the pile to HALFWAY! Cha-ching!”

“The vomiting has stopped!”

“Noah has not had to have his uniform changed by the teachers. I cannot smell any wee WHATSOEVER! I can use his trousers again tomorrow and there will be NO IRONING!” (high-fives self)

etc etc. And so, I thought I would share my latest success with you, in the spirit of Over-Achieving, Type-A Mothering and Needing a Proper Job. It is of the domestic variety, and it is probably boring, but it is also actually quite genius, even if I do say so myself. Ahem.

It was Multi-Cultural Day at school last Friday, and we were asked to dress the kids in their national costume. Our New Zealand national costume encompasses everything from jandals and sunburn to gumboots and woollen singlets to traditional Maori outfits and pois and pounamu and t-shirts with L&P logos emblazoned across the chest. Barnaby was keen on dressing like a Maori warrior, mostly because he would get to take wooden weapons and sticks to school. I was resourceful, and made his costume from cardboard, string, a hemp bag-for-life, cotton handles, and the wool insulation torn from my Abel & Cole delivery. It was a triumph of MacGyver-like proportions. See below:

SUCCESS. Like my rainbow cake, but not cake. Or rainbow-coloured.

It turns out I am quite good at this stuff, and smug, and competitive, and alarmingly focussed – at the expense of other things, you could say. A success, therefore, but not without its flip-side of drama and blood. I would really like to be able to say that no-one was harmed during the making of this Outfit of Authenticity and Michael Van Der Ham-like tailoring-innovation, but alas, the new IKEA sharp craft scissors were left out on the bed during my frenzied cutting and pasting and colouring-in, and Casper, sensing weakness and parental distractedness, ferreted them away like a little dangerous monkey, and they were then used to cut the baby’s finger. Not entirely off, as I am sure was intended, but a good way through the pad of the ring finger on MY TINY BABY”S LITTLE HAND. And there was more blood than was believable, and we thought about taking him up to the A&E, but then I reasoned that Social Services might get alerted, and I just didn’t have the strength for any more of those kinds of episodes, and so we DIY-first-aided and he is ok and his little tiny baby finger is healing very well, no thanks to his psychopathic brother.

The lesson in all of this could be thus:

Just send the kids to school in an All Black jumper. There will be less joy, but also less blood. Presumably. See Noah in his no-effort-no-blood-slightly-bummed-out-but-too-bad Costume of Equal Authenticity:

And in other baby-accident-related news, Ned was charmingly climbing on our antique post office chair last night, and I pointed out to Mark what a clever little baby he was, and Ned was beaming, clearly proud of his gymnastic abilities, and we had a moment of parental pride, and then he fell off into the corner of the TV and smashed his brow and has a black eye.

And I had a haircut following a fit of despair, and it was daring and short and angular and scary, and now I look like Dave Stewart from the Eurythmics. Not in a good way, though. Sort of like this:

Once again, I fall for Aveda’s calming head massage and peppermint tea. WHEN WILL I LEARN that they collude in making me look experimental and a bit daft?

And I went on the school trip to an Orthodox Synagogue and found the man quite attractive, and found myself becoming increasingly drawn to the kosher section in Waitrose.

How was your week?