It was like watching a cartoon….

On the weekend we were ripping the floor out of our kitchen. Once we ripped up the layer of masonite, there were all these little staples sticking out of the floorboards. As we’re tiling, we decided not to sit there and pull them all out, but instead we’d hammer them flat.

We could only manage to find two hammers and two steel mallets so Michael, myself, Grace and Jed all started hammering staples. At some stage I went to the toilet and when I came back Michael was not paying one iota of notice to the children so I stood watching from the doorway.

Jed had found this big motherfucker nail and also found a little hole in one of the floorboards. He decided this nail is going in that hole! So he stands the nail in the hole and hits it with his mallet. The nail fell over. He repositioned the nail and hit it again. Again, it fell over. Now Jed’s not silly, he calls out “Graaaaaaaaaace… hold this for me!” Grace diligently holds the nail in place and Jed picks up the mallet in both hands and swings it right back over his head in true cartoon style. It was at this point I thought I’d really better put a stop to this so I grabbed the mallet out of Jed’s hand just as he was starting his downswing.

I must say, I did really want to let them go and watch the outcome… but that’s probably bad parenting!