A bit like an Elvis Sighting

Guess what?!?!? 

Some people think they've seen Elvis.  It's called an "Elvis Sighting."

Well we think - think - we've had a Greeny Sighting.

This could be Greeny. 
He looks different to how he looked before, so we're not sure.

But he's a different kind of moth to the regular inside moths.  

So we think it's Greeny.  We're going with that.

He was in our homework corner so we put him in a container and released him.

He was too quick for Mum to photograph and anyway, Rex was in her arms and she can't do anything when he's in her arms. 
So this is a recreation of how "The Release Of Probably Greeny" went:

A fake depiction of the release of a moth that may or may not have been Greeny.  Lame?  Possibly.

We can all sleep well now.

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Greeny Part 1: "Greeny"
Greeny Part 2: "Goodbye my larva, 'tis time to pupate"
Greeny Part 3: "In Which Procrastination Finds Me Out"

Name that Mutation

"tonsillitis"

The word "tonsillitis" means an infection or inflammation of the tonsils.  My little guys get it occasionally in winter and it's easily cleared up with antibiotics.  (There is no indication that it would be appropriate to go whacking parts out of the children at this stage, that's not where I'm going with this.)

Tonsillitis seems to be more contagious than modern medicine realises, and it suffers more mutations than the text books would indicate.

I have noticed that if Jessie is unfortunate enough to get tonsillitis and have a day off school, the illness spreads quite quickly to Buzz.  However, it undergoes an important mutation before it does.  Once it reaches Buzz's little body, what used to be a strain of tonsillitis has in fact mutated to:

"asymptomatosis"

Asymptomatosis, observed and named by me, simply means:
• "a-" = without
• "-symptoma-" = observable symptoms
• "-osis" = a general condition, as opposed to "-itis" meaning inflammation or "-oma" meaning a mass.  Just a plain old "-osis."

More properly, the illness is referred to as "acute selective asymptomatosis."  "Selective" means it happens whenever Buzz pleases, and "acute" means it comes on suddenly in the morning when I say, "Go and find some school socks."

Once Asymptomatosis has infected poor dear Buzz, it spreads quite quickly to me.  It undergoes another critical mutation before it does.  Once the illness gets to me, it has mutated to:

"asymptomatata"

Sing with me: 

"♫ Asymptomatata! ♪♫ I made up the phrase ... ♪

♪ Asymptomatata! ♫ It's a passing craze ... ♫

♫ I have no worries ♪ It's not a genuine sick day ... ♫♪♪"

Which basically means one or more of my children want to stay home without displaying any observable symptoms, and I couldn't give a toss.

Sound bytes from today

Today was a student-free day, so I had all the children at home with me while Mr de Elba was back at work changing the world.  Now I am just curious about the deep-thinkers on Facebook who put statuses like this up on Friday afternoon - and I may be paraphrasing a little but the essence was:

OMG I'm so super-excited lol, it's a LONG WEEKEND LOL!!!!!!!!!!

I would like to ask them what brand of sedative they use on their children? Where can you buy it?  Would they consider using it on themselves before Facebooking about the next student-free day?  Just asking.

As a free gift to them, I will donate a few moments from today so that they may thoroughly enjoy the richness of my student-free day, along with their own.

Jessie: [says something]
Buzz: [copies Jessie]
Jessie: [says something else]
Buzz: [copies Jessie again]
Jessie: MU-U-UM!  Buzz is copying me!
Woody [from another room]: Buzz is copying me!
Jessie: MU-U-UM!  Woody's copying me!
Woody [wicked giggle]: Woody's copying me!
Me: I'm going into the woods to hide.

 

Me, driving: Now Rex, don't cry when I drive over the bumps...
Jessie and Woody in unison: Bums!
Me, to Rex: Sometimes cars just have to go over bumps.
Jessie and Woody: Bums! 
Me: I said "bumps."
Jessie and Woody: Bums!
Me: You guys are from a different planet. 

You're welcome.

Goodbye my larva, 'tis time to pupate

Greeny gave me a scare.

A few days ago, he went off his food and he seemed to have stopped growing.  He got all slow and sleepy, scrunched his body up, gradually turned from green to brown, and appeared to give up on life.

I couldn't work out what was happening.  I was expecting a silkworm-like cocoon to be spun, and this was nothing like a silkworm-like cocoon.  I watched him over the hours, and noticed he was going hard and crackly, until he had changed completely.

I am about to post some of the most un-fascinating photos you have ever seen.  Haute photographie, this is not.  Are you ready?  Behold, the new Greeny:

Happy Halloween!  It's Greeny, dressed as a mouse dropping.

Well if that isn't the most awesome photo you've seen today!  Here's another one from a slightly different angle lest you miss any of the excitement:

We know he's alive in there because when he's disturbed, he wriggles!

I know, right?  But it's totally not what it looks like: it's actually Greeny.  As an aside, Greeny did a huge one of those right before changing to brown and crackly.  Who knew the little grub had that much inside him?

I needed to do some research on the cabbage moth tout de suite, because this was not what I was expecting.  It was hard to find information that didn't solely focus on pesticides to kill the common cabbage moth, but I found what I needed in the end.  I learned something that probably most primary school students know:  Some insects pupate inside a pupa instead of a cocoon.

Who knew?  Not me.  Everything I know about caterpillars turning into butterflies and moths I learned from this guy:

And he built a cocoon. Ergo (I assumed) Greeny has got it all wrong.  But he hadn't.

In the last growth stage of some caterpillars they moult as usual but the next skin hardens rather than staying soft, to protect them as they change inside.  They do this instead of spinning a 'silk' cocoon.

I know you already knew that.  I didn't, okay?  In general, the average Australian has less than zero interest in the life cycle of the cabbage moth, preferring to douse their habitat in Dipel and understand the life cycle of pretty butterflies instead.

Now Jessie thinks we should change his name from Greeny to Browny.  I'm thinking he should stay  "Greeny" because if he looks like how I expect him to look when he hatches, we'd have to then change his name again to Whitey.  That would be silly.  I'm going to keep calling him Greeny.

We're now watching Greeny do nothing but look like a mouse dropping for the next ... how long?  The Very Hungry Caterpillar stayed inside for "almost two weeks" but this guy could be different.  If I don't put some netting over Greeny's deluxe egg carton suite, he might just hatch and escape, causing deep emotional suffering among Greeny's human friends.

There is still the potential for Greeny to refuse to pupate in captivity and perish in his suite, again causing deep emotional suffering among Greeny's human friends.

And of course, rough handling or a hungry bird could ruin his release into the wild, yet again causing deep emotional suffering among Greeny's human friends.

The pressure on me to deliver this cabbage moth to local vegetable gardens alive and happy remains strong.

Jolly Greeny.


----------
Greeny Part 1: "Greeny"
Greeny Part 3: "In which procrastination finds me out"

Greeny

Wow.  Monday is awful isn't it?  Well, Rex hates it.

He cried all around the grocery shop while Buzz, Jessie and Woody made me say things that made other customers smirk as they passed us.  It's a bit of a blur, but I do remember hissing to them that I'd attached a device to the trolley that caused it to deliver a strong electric shock to all unearthed children who touched it. Completely justified.  I'd struggled to manoeuver the trolley with one hand while Rex, who refused to snuggle down in the baby cradle thing lined with layers of his soft Storchenwiege wrap, cried in my other arm while the three big children tried to "guide" the trolley in all the wrong directions then fought each other to get into it from where they could do nothing but stand on the lamingtons.

They're good shoppers in twos and threes.  Four just breaks the zen.  When we were done, I declared to the quiet, echo-y carpark, "I am never buying groceries ever again!  What could we possibly need so much that would make that experience worthwhile?"  I am 55% sure there was nobody else in the carpark.

The challenges keep on coming.  I just moaned to Mr de Elba via Google Talk:  "Am wondering what to do with these miserable scraps of life-extinguished fowl before I can call them 'dinner.'"  He replied, "Sounds palatable."

I'll try to redeem today by telling all you non-facebooking friends and relatives out there about Greeny.

Mum has been growing chickpeas, and they are delicious to eat fresh.  We were munching our way through a container of them when I noticed one chickpea shell had a hole out of which was crawling a green grub.  "Shall I squash it with my fingers?" I thought.  "Not worth getting icky green grub blood on my fingers - I'll just put it over there for now, and take it outside later.  Some random bird will solve the problem for me."

Unfortunately, between then and later, the grub had been named, and was therefore, in the eyes of three of my small dependents, "a pet."

Allow me to introduce you to "Greeny."

 

 We've kept him alive for quite a few days now, because as my friend The Accidental Housewife pointed out, we know what he eats.  However he has gone off chickpeas and moved on to pumpkin and lettuce, so I'm not sure what to do with him when he turns up his nose at that and desires something else.  But if he thinks he can refuse his veggies and then ask for dessert, he has another think coming.

Each day, he gets an urge to hop onto the rim of his container and motor around it quickly a few times, almost as if he's having daily exercise.  If he was a 55 year old man, he'd call it his "constitutional" and use words like "bracing."  At many points in his constitutional, he stops and tries to make a break for it.  Like the refusing veggies thing, I am having none of it.

Greeny gives me a scare every day - he hides in his lettuce and can't be found.  This, along with the potential for his haphazard diet and random habitat to cause him to be rapidly re-classified as "Browny" prompted me to ask Jessie the other day, "Sweetheart, if Greeny dies or gets himself lost, will we cry, or will we be okay with that?"

Without skipping a beat, she replied, "Cry."

I feel the pressure is on me.  The happiness of a number of small children depends on my ability to nurture this green grub to the cocoon-building stage and beyond.  The best-case scenario involves Greeny hatching and being released into the wild for the purpose of laying eggs which will hatch into other vegetable-eating pests for the joy of my neighbours and myself.

In reality, I only hope Greeny manages to fly out of sight of the children before being snapped up by a bird.

-----------
Greeny Part 2: "Goodbye my larva, 'tis time to pupate"
Greeny Part 3: "In which procrastination finds me out"

2012 Camp Bus Story - Prequel

What is camp without a good bus story?  This year we didn't manage to steal a bus, or the obvious one-up from that: exploding a bus, but we did manage a bus incident two nights before camp.  But before I tell you about the bus incident, which will seem quite tame after this wind-up, I need to tell you what we did the night we took the camp bus for a pre-camp trial run and fuel-up.

Before the warm spring holidays in our Queensland town, we received a flier in our school newsletters saying that there would be ice-skating and tobogganing in a Fitness and Recreation Centre 20 minutes from where we live.  Buzz and Jessie had been ice-skating before and enjoyed it, and we decided that we'd take all our kids along with Justamum, Belle and Banana (from the blog Yes I Said Four) to try it out.  They had a family friend, a boy of about 10, staying with them, so it seemed like a good idea to take the 22-seater bus to fit us all in, and also to do the pre-camp trial run in the same trip.

The kids loved ice-skating!  Buzz thought he was an Olympic-standard skater as he shuffled around the rink, Jessie and Woody both cried until they got little-kid skates which helped them shuffle around too instead of their usual falling/crying routine, and Mr de Elba and Justamum helped their respective children around while trying not to fall down, get wet or get bruised.

I was glad to sit out with baby Rex in the wrap, because can I just remind you of this:

which, while much improved since the birth of little Rex, cannot be trusted in a slippery-floor situation, much less an ice-skating situation.

The tobogganing was also a winner after initial tears from Jessie and Woody.  Jessie seemed to have had no real reason for tears, but we thought Woody's tears were probably justified.  His first ride went perfectly if his cape is anything to judge by, despite his facial expression:

 But his second trip was generally considered to have been a mistake:

Tears ensued, but Daddy saved the day:

Banana and Belle had a blast on the toboggans:

 As did Buzz and Jessie:

And when it was all over, we hopped into the bus to go home, with a quick stopover to buy 30c cones at McDonalds.  It was late, dark, rainy and cold.  Everyone was tired, especially baby Rex who needed a feed, a bath and his own comfy cot.  The bus felt a little old and unreliable, but what could go wrong, right?

Three random funny moments

Jessie:  [incomprehensible nonsense]

Mr de Elba: [whispers] I have no idea what she said!

Buzz: [whispers] Neither do I!

Jessie herself: [whispers] Neither do I!

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Woody in the car when pulled up in 2 lanes at the lights: Are you ready to race?


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Woody in the car with Rex crying his fool head off: The babies in the car go wah wah wah...

Mystery Legs

The school photos were coming up and I was trying to work out how I could get my kids looking their best.  Not looking like fashion models, just not with messy hair, old faded uniforms and Vegemite on their faces.

(I was heavily pregnant at the time.)

Among various strategies including making sure there were newish cleanish uniforms available, I decided to put Jessie in black stockings on the day.  I was expecting her legs to look a little like this in the photo, only with scrubby white sneakers as they were the only school shoes she owned at the time:

Now I will swear black and blue that I did - I DID I DID I DID - put her in black stockings on the day.   Only her school photos came back and this is what she looked like in them:

I cannot recall ANY day in her entire schooling that she has ever worn non-uniform grey and pink - PINK! - socks to school.  But there must have been one day and trust it to be school photo day.

I didn't promise it would be a particularly interesting blog post.

Father's Day

A few days ago I told you about the torches that Daddy was getting for Father's Day.

It turns out that torches, which as we know are much more loved by children than by fathers, are good for some pre-Father's Day fun when used by three excited children in artificially-darkened rooms.

Both of Daddy's torches were lost by Father's Day morning.  He laughed.

In other news, there was an "I'm packing my suitcase and leaving home" episode yesterday.

Thankfully, it ended in a change of heart. It was great to be able to present Mr de Elba with the gift of a full complement of children. You're welcome, Mr de Elba, you're welcome.

Let there be light

In an interesting twist on Father's Day, a seven year old boy buys HIMSELF a gift from the school Father's Day stall.

 But he's gorgeous.

On the way to school today, Buzz asked if he could have a "really powerful torch (flashlight)."  A few realities about this situation:

1. He doesn't need one.  Nobody needs one.  Everyone in our family except Little Rex and me seem to want ("need!") a torch, but those who stumble about at night don't reach for a torch before doing so.  We have occasional nocturnal visitors to our bed seeking asylum from nightmares and wet beds by cuddling up beside us and kicking us in the back all night long, so we are well-placed to certify that none of these visitors ever presents him/herself with a torch shining the way to our bedroom.  Pity, as the way is sometimes littered with matchbox cars.
2. Our home is already filled with torches.  Mr de Elba has a "really powerful" one that he doesn't ever use, the children have acquired a vast array of those cheap ones that you can buy at the counter of pretty much any store, and cheap torches have been the usual purchases at the annual school Father's Day Stall.  Buzz never really learns that Mr de Elba isn't going to actually USE the cheap torches Buzz buys for him, and the torches break quite soon after purchase anyway but always manage to find their way to where I can't find them before I can throw them out.

Now that I'm clued up to the torch problem at our house, I will send Buzz and Jessie with less money to future Father's Day Stalls, and I'll give them a stern talk before they go directing them to buy something other than a torch.  I may need a threat to go with that, but I haven't sorted that bit out yet.

Today was again the annual Father's Day Stall.  I hadn't thought of the importance of this morning's chat when sending Buzz and Jessie off, all cashed up to buy something nice for Daddy.

As it turns out, Jessie bought Daddy ... A TORCH!  Oh how happy he will be.

Buzz, seeing that Jessie had bought Daddy a torch, decided to buy ... A TORCH!!!  And since Daddy already had one coming to him, the torch should rightfully go to Buzz himself.

I have no idea what The Perfect Parent would do about this.

Wee Map

I've been madly whizzing through the housework hoping I don't forget what I had to blog about among everything else this morning.  I've typed the title of this blog post first so that by the time I tell you the other stuff, I haven't forgotten what I was actually going to blog about.

I've transfigured the bathroom, laundry and kids' loo while Little Rex slept, and in the process I rediscovered some paint palettes I put in the laundry tub to soak the day before yesterday.  This time, there was a little too much paint in the palettes and so instead of dissolving and washing away, it remained hard and lumpy.  When I thought I had finished the cleanup, I was in fact left with this in the bottom of my laundry tub:

It struck me that it looks like a clown has thrown up in my laundry tub.  Pity the poor clown who horked up the paintbrush too.  It must have been one heck of a trick, though.

Then I did a quick check of Little Rex (still sleeping peacefully - what is with this baby?  Last feed at 8:30pm, breakfast milk at 7:00am and only one feed in between?  What was I doing wrong with poor Buzz 7 years ago?) and while I was there I looked in at what Woody was doing.

He had got one of our nativity sets out.  He likes playing with the Joseph, of course.  He calls the Father of Christ "Joey" and calls his crook his "wucky tick," as Woody is a bit partial to carrying lucky sticks around himself.  I was just about to come and blog when I noticed an apocryphal inclusion to the nativity set here - Ka-Chow!

I'm glad I wrote the title first, or I would have forgotten what I was going to tell you.

Toilet Training. It's said that girls get it faster than boys, but what that really means is that the average of girls will be ahead of the average of boys.  In real life though, sometimes you come across boys who say, "Okay, if you say wee goes in the toilet, then I'll put it there," and you'll find girls who think that accidents are a perfect opportunity to laugh and giggle with the poor schmuck whose job it is to clean it up.

I remember when Jessie was quite young how she would stand still while a puddle widened at her feet, laughing uproariously about wee on the floor and how funny it all was.  She didn't see it as an opportunity to berate herself but as an opportunity to have a Jolly Good Laugh.  Ha ha, says Mummy, wiping up the puddle at her feet.  But okay, laugh.  Better than berating herself.

Jessie wasn't all that late to be toilet-trained - I'd say by 3¼ she was finished, and I have a pretty narrow definition of "finished" involving Practically No Accidents Ever - but the accidents still come occasionally.

For the last year and a half, the only accidents she has had have been around dawn, just before she wakes up.  It's pretty rare, but when it happens she usually comes to tell us, and we tell her not to worry and calmly wash the bedding.

This morning was one of those mornings.  I am pretty sure I know why it happened - she has been excitedly counting down the days to her first school swimming lesson and she, for certain, would have been thinking, dreaming, cogitating and looking forward to it even while she slept.  Little wonder that by dawn, she was wetting the bed.

Mr de Elba heard her chattering to herself as she always does early in the morning and went in and sat beside her.  She was lying on her back paddling her arms and kicking her legs to practice her swimming in bed, joyfully babbling about anything and everything associated with her upcoming school swimming lesson.  Mr de Elba chatted happily to her until she said, "Dad, you're sitting in my wee."

And so he was.  She then gleefully showed him the following piece of paper.  In the half-light while waiting for someone else to be up to share her joy at the upcoming swimming lesson, she had drawn an intricate Wee Map.  If you can believe that.  She had detailed her bed with its pillows, covers and bedposts, she drew herself, and then outlined the wet patch.  It was a fantastic map, one which would have been good to show her father before he sat.

Mr de Elba stood up, sighed, stripped the bed and put the bedding, her clothes and his own pants in the wash, then showered them both.

Got Talent?

Jessie brought home a note yesterday asking for our permission for her to go in "Our School's Got Talent" where primary school kids perform a song or dance or something similar.

Jessie had some half-baked ideas of getting me to teach her piano and then teaching her a song to perform in the week we've got before auditions.  I told the poor little darling that I really am no piano teacher but fell short of reminding her that she doesn't like taking instruction from me at all.  I mean, she HAS to, being my child, but she doesn't like it and aggressively resists even my attempts to get her to write her number 3s the right way around.

She wondered if she could learn a song to sing.  She wondered if she could learn a dance to perform.  She wondered if she could learn some gymnastics ... none of these are easy to pull together from a baseline of No Prior Knowledge within one short week.

Then I said something that made her eyes light up and think that she absolutely, definitely was going to compete in Our School's Got Talent, and quite possibly wipe the floor with the other contestants.  "How about you say a poem?  A funny one that Mummy wrote?  Maybe even you and Buzz could do an act together, saying different stanzas?"  In order to illustrate what I meant to them, I suggested a couplet off the top of my head:

We have  brand-new baby, his name is Tim-o-THY
He is a little brother for Nathaniel, Joe and me.

They received this as if I were Keates or Byron, or at least Roald Dahl, and now I'm done for.

I have to write something brilliant in an impossibly short time-frame, and somehow gently tell Buzz that his choreographed moves to the as-yet unwritten lines will probably not suit the piece.

It's turning out to be more of a "Mummy's Got Talent" and in between feeding and nappy changes, I'm feeling the pressure.

Introducing Little Rex

Introducing our new little boy - Timothy Flynn born in the early hours of last Wednesday morning!  In the weeks leading up to his birth I'd been on a limerick binge, and I ended up wishfully writing this one, hoping for a natural spontaneous birth, dreaming of the middle-of-the-night "Honey it's time" moment that I always thought would be nice (and it ended up being quite accurate):

I woke in the night with chagrin,

The babe sought to escape from within

We did a quick race

From our home to The Base

And out popped sweet Timothy Flynn.

Which is quite corny, but I liked it.  Our public hospital is called the Base Hospital, and it's referred to as "the Base" - I hope that makes sense.

I hadn't gone out of my way to tell my blog that we knew we were having a little boy, but it wasn't exactly a secret.  Now that it's definitely out though, I can post this one I wrote after the ultrasound:

We're having (from the ultrasound) another little DUDE.

It seems it would be prudent to start budgeting for food.

Although the food, financially, will surely be the worst,

It seems that we will need another fridge and freezer first.

Maybe I'd posted that already and forgot, and now I don't have time to go back and check.  Sorry if you'd heard that one before.

He was born the day before his due date, about 30 hours before I was booked for an induction - something the doctor wanted to avoid after a previous caesarean.  Many things were tried, but they all failed one by one: walking, hot food, essential oils, etc. In the end, a day of bouncing gently on an exercise ball did the trick - or maybe it was the Thai for lunch and Mexican for dinner - or maybe it was the psychological power of LOOKING at a bottle of castor oil that I was too nervous to actually TAKE for fear of too-strong contractions.  At any rate, by midnight we were wondering if it was 'Time', by 2am we were calling my Mum and Birth Suite, by 3am the midwife was thinking that it was certainly 'Time' ... and then things are fuzzy for me.  I guess that because he was born at 3:23am, whatever happened in those gas-hazed moments was pretty crucial.

Feeding is fun with expressed milk in a bottle! Soon this fun will be over and we'll feed the usual way (prayforus), but for the moment, everyone is enjoying this bit (and so am I, because I have chosen to do it this way BEFORE the crying and blood and countless people checking the attachment only to declare that it's right, it just hurts.)

This little superhero turned three, and we bought a proper cake from a shop, after my disastrous attempt with Jessie's cake in April which I didn't blog because - sigh. We are seriously considering buying cakes for family birthdays from now on because they are SO NICE!  This one was superb!  'Bleurgh' to homemade cakes, particularly mine because I cut corners.

And now I will get back to snuggling with this handsome little prince, as well as driving our new car (where can I unnecessarily drive to today? Whee!), fixing interminable problems with Woody's birthday gifts, driving Buzz and Jessie to and from school, breaking up fights, managing the kitchen and the laundry as best I can, trying to cap my unreasonable rage at some highly-expensive, professionally-fitted, terribly-posh maternity bras that ceased to fit me a week after I bought them (and now there's no hope), and dealing with potential depressive illness in a sadly neglected family dog.  And hugging Mr de Elba, who helps me with all of the above except the bra issue.

Happy New Year!

The first of January is a bit of an anti-climax.  New Year?  There's nothing much new about going from one holiday-day into another.  Things are very much the same.

The first day of school, however, is something else! New beginnings, the end of the oh-so-long aimless days of summer holidays, time to get back into routine!  Happy New Year at last!

Year 2, full of happy expectations for this year, because he has his favourite teacher!

Prep, and enjoying her new wardrobe so much!  

Everything swims on her, despite being the smallest size.

And hats don't fit on pony tails.

Staying home with Mummy this year! Woohoo!

Looking forward to catching up in the playground if they possibly can.

How you doin?

Looks like a friendly gesture, but really pretending to cream you with a Nerf gun.

That thing with his ear?  His Uncle WeeBro did that.  All the time.  And still does.

Wishes she could go to school, but can't.

Just pretending

I can't believe that so far this year, I have managed to blog every single day.  Amazing, for me, but it will just be a little quote from Jessie.

Me, faffing around the kitchen trying to get many things for many people, making mistakes and admonishing self:  No, don't put the hot kettle in the fridge, that's not where it goes!
Jessie:  Mum!  Are you just pretending to be an idiot?
Me:  Ah yeah, that's it.  Just pretending.

Red Cards all round

Jessie has a little writing desk in the corner of her room.  She often sits there creating lovely drawings for us, gifts of love for a family she adores ...

... on her good days.

However, she has recently started drawing us "punishment pictures" for when "people are mean to her."  This can mean when her brothers fight with her or when her parents discipline her, and now that we're one week into our six-week school holidays, that means ALL of us, ALL the time.

She gives these pictures out the way a soccer referee gives out red cards.  They involve a violently-orange, angrily-scribbled portrait of the offender designed to insult and humiliate us.  Gone are the intricate drawings of smiling family members with careful hands and feet and nice hair.  Here are some examples (I blurred out Mr de Elba's name in the top left):

We've all been red-carded.