noisy children?

this morning i had an 'interesting' thing happen. it was just as any usual morning in our house, i got lachlan up at about 6.30am, dressed him, put him in his highchair for breakfast and he was a happy little camper. i went downstairs to my office to quickly check on an order & instead of being in there for 1 minute as i had planned i was in there about 5 minutes as of course my printer had run out of paper! in this time lachlan had finished his breakfast and was calling out as he usually does 'mummy, mummy,mummy'. i grabbed a loaf of bread out of the freezer from the downstairs fridge for their lunches, headed upstairs and got him out of the hairchair.

i then proceeded as normal, making their lunches etc and i ducked to the toilet at about 7am (not sure i had to share that bit..) then i hear a knock at the door. lachlan is at the door saying 'locked, locked, locked' to the woman on the other side, of whom i had no idea who it could be at 7am knocking on my door. so i hurried and came out to open the door to a woman i had never seen before in my life.

she tells me she is my neighbour (who's house is beside ours but is accessed through a different street) and points to where her house is and tells me she has been awake since 6.30am from my son calling out 'mummy'. i've got to say i was completely gobsmacked and all i can say is 'right..'.

she tells me she has no children (she is about early 50's) and that i don't understand how much the noise carries out of our louvre windows and again how she has been awake from it since 6.30am. again i say 'right...'

she then tells me i really should close my windows on that entire side of my house to stop the noise. 'ummm ok...'

now don't get me wrong, she was not nasty, rude or aggressive but what the hell am i supposed to say to that? my son is 2, somehow i don't think he is going to understand (or care) that our neighbour doesn't like him calling out 'mummy' at 6.30am in the morning.

the other thing is my children are not actually noisy kids. if you have been to my house, as some of you have, you will know most of the time you can not even tell there are any children in the house let alone 3 of them, but at times kids are kids.

one thing i have always said through my parenting is that i refuse to apologise to anyone for my children being children. i am also quite strict on my children and if they are being naughty they know they will be in trouble. calling out 'mummy' does not constitute being naughty in my book.

what would you have done? have you ever had anything similar happen to you?

Nicky
xxoo