Alice, Alice, quite contrary...

"There are three ways to get something done: do it yourself, hire someone to do it, or ask your kids not to do it." -Malcolm L. Kushner

This is pretty much the way of things in our house at the moment. 

Granted, Stu is being very helpful when he's not off lunching (Cafe Sydney two days in a row?  Hello?!), but in terms of the other two methods:

Alice has shown a notable appreciation of hired help over the past few weeks.  Car dirty?  "Get the man to clean it", she suggested.  Arrive home from work/daycare to find the cleaners still hard at work? "Hi, Man! Are you cleaning our floor?"  Mummy can't stay and sing another lullaby at bedtime, using the excuse that she needs to make dinner? "Get a man to bring it", she proffers (like last week when the snot clearing curry was delivered, prompting another round of. "Hi, Man!).  I suppose at some time we should address this tendency to think that money fixes things - the morning at Bondi Beach a couple of weeks ago when her spade could not be found was slightly marred by the continual demands to, "Buy a new spade now?" - but I can't imagine that a new baby's arrival to a family without family support is going to see us using any fewer paid resources.

Ho hum.  I think that I wrote earlier this week about the current phase of general contrariness.  I genuinely think that I might try asking her not to go to bed and see what happens.  This morning we sat in the car letting ourselves be corrected/nagged, "Not music", "Don't sing, Mummy", "Daddy, don't talk" and then, upon deciding to ignore her completely, could hear the odd snatch of whinging as she tried to disagree with any overhead snippets of conversation, "Not with what you say disagree try to"....  *Sigh*