things I didn't know I found annoying until I had children.

[BusyCee]

repetition
loud noises
things being spilled on the floor
being touched

To be fair all the above happened far less frequently before I had children. Repetition is a particular annoyance - not just me saying the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, but chanting, singing the same line of a song repeatedly, taunting etc.

Love them, but dear God for just 24hrs of peace....

Having spewed my complaints about ds on here last night, I have to share that he did tidy up the house before I got home tonight. He'd hoovered, tidied, made my bed and folded and put away the easing in the (what he thought was) the tumble drier. It was actually the dirty washing in the washing machine, so I've had to find it and wash it!

So, he CAN do it (when the Xbox has been banned)

Before I had children doors and doorways barely registered on my consciousness, and now I feel a small sense of victory anytime I manage to walk through one without having to push aside a small child, step over a dog or dodge a flying missile toy. And I have to shout "don't play with doors, they're dangerous" a lot. They've both had door-related injuries, something that is vanishingly rare in adults, to the point the "walking into a door" is a euphemism for being beaten up. Have they learned from their injuries? No!

Oh god. How did I forget this;

They've both had door-related injuries, something that is vanishingly rare in adults, to the point the "walking into a door" is a euphemism for being beaten up

The drawing out of the u in Mummy.

MUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUMMY!

Fuck right off with that, please and thanks awfully.

Having to ask "Did you wipe your bum? Did you flush? Don't fib, go and flush it. Wash your hands. Wash your hands. WASH YOUR FLIPPING HANDS."

"Do you remember when this happened?"

Yes, DS, it was five minutes ago and I WAS THERE.

I don't have DC. However my name is "Mummy X" due a reason I haven't yet cottoned on to. My colleagues conversation with me I presume is practice for when I do have children. I nearly tore my hair out

Mummy X?
Yes...
I don't like this soup
ok...
do you think it's the brand or the flavour
(How the fuck would I know)
I'm not sure
mummy X?
Yes...
Do I put it in the bin or the sink
(Wherever you bloody want!)
Mummy X?

YES?!
How do you make soup? And is it food or a drink?

I suffered a door related injury as a child. My Mum was putting my brothers to bed, I was standing outside the room, door ajar. As my Mum shut the door my fingers were still in the crack of it. To this day the bone on the most squished finger is slightly more gnarly (?) than the others.

justawater, oh yes.

Alternatively;

And then we had ice cream.
Can I have ice cream now?

The expectation that you are 'the font of all knowledge'. It never stops!

When they get older, they just contact you by phone instead.

Recent examples (both while at work)
Mum..
yes..
the train's been cancelled...When's the next one
Where are you?
At the train station..

and
Mum, there's a direct debit gone out of my bank account, what is it?

The phrase 'I'm not F**king wikipedia' may have been heard in our house a few times

Touching thing doesn't bother me.

Repetition. And not pausing for breath inbetween eqch sentence makes me want to scratch my eyes out.
I.e:
'Mummy can I have some milk mummy can I have some milk mummy can I have some milk. MUMMY CAN I HAVE SOME MILK'

Give a fucking split second to answer! At least let me draw breath! But no.
It's relentless.

Also pestering and pestering for a certain toy then not playing with it. Ever.

Assumption that I should buy them something in every single shop we go anywhere near. Tantrum and total meltdown when I don't.

Yes to the face touching. And DS sort of scrabbles at my ribcage too - we're both standing up, he reaches up and...scrabbles. It takes all my self control not to swat him off.

Both DC do a special "muuuummmyyy" where the tone does a sort of glissando up-down-up. After I've heard that multiple times, I start to physically twitch.

The incessant whining. Could we not at least start with saying whatever it is in a normal voice? I cannot understand the whiny noises, but she goes straight into them...

Toys at Christmas, why do I bother when they end up playing with the wrapping.

Oh yes reni2! The bags of random stuff. Drives me absolutely wild. I don't mind putting away Playmobil. I don't mind putting away jigsaws. I don't mind putting away dolls, or play food or cars or McDonald's Happy Meal toys from How to Train Your Dragon 2. What I hate is unpacking a tiny handbag and putting away one Playmobil hedgehog, one dolly hat, one dolly sleepsuit, one teddy, four plastic cupcakes, a book and a fragile plastic dragon with wings which fall off every 2.4 seconds. Argh!

The inability of a child to find anything. Mummy, where are my cycling shorts? In your PE bag. PE bag? Yes, that red string bag you've been using for PE for 4 years. Mummy, where is the PE bag? Somewhere near the door. Mummy it's not here! Yes, there it is, on top of the school-related pile. Oh, THAT bag. (only one) Rummages. Mummy, they are not in here. You must have left them at school then. Never! Here. Oh, there they are! Well, they weren't in there before!

Do your kids have an answer why they do that, Damn? I am truly intrigued and mine don't know

reni2 I have asked. "We were going on holiday," is a popular explanation, and has the benefit of internal logic. If you're going on holiday, you obviously need to pack a bag. I've never received a satisfactory answer to the follow-up question: "Why is Toothless going on holiday?"

They also do it when no holiday game has been declared. Sometimes it's a school game. Sometimes it's a picnic game. Sometimes it's a collection (these bags often also include leaves and acorns and toilet roll tubes). Sometimes I shake the bag violently upside down until all the things come out (even the spikey things which get stuck in bag linings) and demand that everything gets put away. Then later I have to pick it all out of the Playmobil box because it has been incorrectly filed.

Would any of that apply to yours?!

Yes- the collections, I have heard that. A collection of an apple core, scrap paper, lego bricks and jigsaw pieces, mixed with some of my clothes . My argument that collections are compilations of things vaguely alike was met with blank stares. I would just bin the lot, but so often they contain stuff that is mine. Maybe it's some ancient gatherer reflex.

ancient gatherer reflex

Must be, mine have it too.

DS was/is a collector. When he was very little, he used to fill all the very many pockets of his cargo trousers with little sticks, stones, conkers, the swords from the Pop Up Pirate game, Playmobil people, etc. In secondary school, I'd come across little rubbishy things in his blazer pockets that he'd found on the playing field.

As he grew up he had a special collection unit on his wall. This is STILL filled with 'valuable' tat. A putrified newt wrapped in cotton wool in it's own little box, little plastic toys from ice creams bought on holidays abroad, old coins, bits of pebble, flints and driftwood, various souvenirs. And I'm not allowed to throw any of it away (I have tried, believe me! I have tried on many occasions).

Now he is grown. One evening recently, his cousin came into the house, in the very early hours of the morning, absolutely drunk as a skunk. DS was more upset at Cousin knocking over his collection of trinkets than the fact that he woke all of us up!

I am quite certain DS will one day be that Hoarder Next Door

Lego. Found in various places over the house somehow when it was initially tipped out in one room. I hoover bits I find sometimes when I've decided if it's a crucial part to a certain model or not.

Jenga. Just finished stacking and start to play but toddler takes the first turn and the whole thing falls over. Already. The noise.

Toy soldiers. I picture the injured soldier in Toy Story every time I accidentally tread on one!

When DS turns pages and creases them by rubbing his hand across rather than picking the corner up!! Argh!

After a bedtime battle, it's a wrestle to brush teeth, then a painstakingly looong wait for DS to just. Pick. A. Book. at bedtime!
Line them all up then decides that he doesn't want to read any of the ones lined up! He wants to read that bloody Disney book that I have read 476748393 times.

I try and hide all the too-long-for-bedtime books!

Yes Lego. Stepping on a well-placed Lego brick is painful enough to make me want to throw the lot out of the window, even though I am well aware that would be a fortune chucked away.

Oh. Play-Doh!! Play-Doh anything.

I sometimes leave it out on purpose so it dries up.
Or is that mean?

Playdoh is fun! Salt dough that makes permanent sculptures OTOH... We have tons of cack handed pieces of salt dough art that cannot ever be disposed of...

Oh yes, the nursery-manufactured salt dough Christmas tree baubles, that each weigh a ton and look like a small glitter-covered brain. Dutifully we hang them on the tree every year. They weigh the branches right down and clonk the cat on the head as she walks past.