The ringing sound grew louder, and in my drowsy, half asleep world, it began to sound rather annoying. Suddenly it grew to such a pitch that I woke with a start, and stared into the face of my little sister, grinning knowingly, and holding up our school bell.
"You have to get up, now." She says triumphantly. "Mumum says you have to." She quickly retreats from the room, knowing that i'll get annoyed by being woken up.
"Aaaah, i'm still tired." I say, stretching and pulling the blankets up to my ears. But then I hear Mum's voice saying, "time to get up girls, there's work and chores to do."
Another normal day has begun.
I sit up and throw off the blankets, not altogether gently though. Mumbling about being woken up so early, although it's already eight-thirty, I stumble out of the room to look for my clothes. As usual, they've been left in the bathroom from the night before, and are still haning there when I shuffle in to retrieve them. After i've made my bed and had breakfast, I start the first of my house-wifely chores. Vacuuming. And, as usual, my baby brother crawls up as soon as i've plugged the vacuum in, to play with the on/off switch. Somehow, babies are always fascinated with switches, whether they're wall ones, vacuum ones, toy ones, any type, all switches have a baby magnet, which autimatically draws babies to a switch, wherever it is. This morning, my baby brother was in the definate 'switch mode'. Uh Oh.
I began vacuuming with early-morning energy, and had just finished the lounge when the vacuum stopped. I turned to see my baby brother, two pudgy fingers in his mouth, looking innocently up at me with those round, blue eyes. "No, Ben, that's naughty."
He just crawls a couple of feet away and sits, still staring at me.
Finally, just when the kitchen has nearly been vacuumed, Ben crawls around the corner again and heads for the switch on top of the vacuum.
I quickly gather him up and take him into the lounge, where three more of my brothers are creating car-ramps for their new cars to zoom down.
"watch him, don't let him come into the kitchen please." I head back into that place, where my two sisters are doing the breakfast dishes, and talking about their favorite subject: Horses.
The next thing I hear is Mum, yelling "Quick, quick, pat him on the back! Harder!" I rush around the corner of the kitchen wall and collide with one of my smaller brothers, who lands flat on his backside and begins to howl. I help him up, tell him not to cry and continue my headlong rush into the lounge to see what the matter is. By the time I get there, Mum has her finger in Ben's mouth and is extracting, with a rather sloppy finger, a little bit of who knows what from Ben's mouth, who has obviously stopped choking and is now starting to squirm and scream. Above the noise of the vacuum, still turned on, dishes clinking in the sink, loud chatter about horses, Ben squealing, my younger brother crying piteously, cars zooming up and down the ramp in the corner, Mum shouts, "Right, everyone out! Right now! This minute, before I loose my cool!"
The noise stops. The kids get up. They run outside, where a whole new cacophony of noise starts up, but I don't care. As long as everyone doesn't have burst eardrums, then everything's fine.
Half an hour later, you see us all sitting at the kitchen table, adding, writing and creating carefully. Mum stands by the table, stick in hand, and there is complete silence as we do our schoolwork.
We do noy leave that table until after lunch, where, once again, things get rowdy.
But thats what you get with eight kids!!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I'm not sure if this is in the right category, but hey. 
