With 3 boys under 5, there’s never a dull moment. Certainly never a quiet one… Buggy Blogger mum to J (4), B (3) and S (1) finds her sense of humour has dried up.

The sun has got his hat on. Hip hip hip … humph.

At the time of writing the sun's beaming, as should I be. You've seen the ads. By rights I should be smiling smugly as my blond and sun-kissed brood gambol happily in the garden. My washing's flapping satisfyingly on the sun-drenched line. The powder's done what it says on the box, all grass-stains having miraculously vanished. And the boys, by dint of fresh air aplenty, are eating like horses and sleeping like those mythical soundly-slumbering babies.

But hang on, somewhere we've gone off script. OK, so the sky's blue, the boys are full of it and the rotary line’s groaning with laundry. They're all fine. It's me who's gone off kilter. Have I just heard 'crikey, I'm morphing into an old fart' warning shots as I realise I'm deriving satisfaction from my washing? Or is it that I'm tetchy at hearing myself turning into an old nag, badgering the boys into hats and lashings of sunblock? Or am I cross when I look at the zillionth pair of mud-ingrained trousers and realise no amount of Vanish will genuinely save them. (Or am I just annoyed at realising that I actually care?)

Well, none of the above as it happens.

The truth of the matter is that my joy at the early onset of summer's been dampened by finding myself on the wrong side of the divide in a game of boysy high jinks. No sooner had the sun begun to blaze than half the family developed a new-found fervour for water bombs. Daddy's in cahoots with the big boys (fortunately, the baby's not fussed) having all developed a wicked pash for those horrid little balloons that look and smell like vile-coloured water-filled condoms.

Now my knowledge of the French letter market-place doesn't stretch to whether or not you can buy them in lime green or fluorescent pink. But if you can and you're familiar, then you'll be well placed to imagine these 'something for the weekend' look-alikes that keep my lot amused for the weekend, Mondays, Tuesdays and so on….

Because of this watery blitz, you can forget that ad-happy Sunny Mummy. I'm tending towards Moody Mummy at the mo. My shoes are slightly squelchy, I've developed an unbecoming 'don't even think about it' glare and I'm frankly pole-axed that daddy's defected to the enemy. It's just me and the baby versus the rest. What larks.

It wouldn't be so bad but for the fact that I'm the only one with fingers nimble enough to tie the wretched things. So … gallingly … they plead with big puppy-dog eyes for me to knot a couple, only then to run off and lob them straight back at me, the imps. To add insult to injury, I’ve also developed paper-cut like abrasions on my fingers as a result. A lesson that I need to trim my nails like the rest of them I guess, but surely also a contender for the annual weird domestic injuries list?

And then there was the time a water bomb found itself posted down the front of my top. Perhaps that was when I had my first real sense of humour failure over this … tee hee hee … hilarious game. Laugh a minute eh?

But aside from the sodden cleavage affair, I really should do my best not to grumble. Soon enough these impish little boys will sprout into grown lads. Water fights will be a childish thing of the past, the idea of getting too close to mummy's chest will fill them with horror and they'll be obsessed with real condoms instead of pale imitations.

Crikey, I'd better just buck up and enter into the spirit then before it's too late. I suppose if you can't beat 'em, join 'em eh? Mind you, let's just make this clear. If anyone hits my billowing washing with one of those evil little bombs, then that's it, I’m not playing any more OK?

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