That forgotten school project

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8:21pm on the last day of the easter holidays and we’ve remembered that the children were supposed to make some sort of space craft object for their school space project…


Children – please can you make an incomprehensible amount of mess while attempting to make rockets for school space project but actually concentrate more on repetitively asking when we will buy you a cat/dog/skateboard/shoes with wheels/etc

Daddy – please can you make an unnecessarily large and complex space rocket that the children don’t want to be involved in and which won’t go anywhere near the school gates because it’s so elaborate no 5yo will be able to claim that it’s their own.

Our nutritious family meal, fuelled by cider and space dust

Mummy – please can you facilitate all of the above by : 1) finding all necessary crafting materials that are dotted all over the house, use up toilet/kitchen roll as necessary to expose rocket shaped tubes 2) offering technical guidance to resolve intricacies of making cones, thrusters, etc. 3) actually helping the children to make their space rockets 4) cook and serve a nutritious family dinner 5) drink several bottles of cider. 

#hoveringclosetoseveralcardboardrockets #andemptyciderbottles #hoveringclose

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E is for Easter/Ecstacy

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Ok so what the actual fuck do they put in chocolate these days and why have my children turned into psychotic maniacs that hate the world?


They are finally both asleep. Just. They were both in full on tantrum mode. 5yogirl naked, kicking, punching, spitting and screaming “my want my chocolate eeeeeeeggggggg!” 5yoboy point blank refusing to clean his teeth saying menacingly “It’s all. Your. FAULT!” to me and husblurb alternately. After 10 minutes of cajoling/threatening/psychotherapising he reveals he wants the special hour-glass timer to time him while he cleans his teeth. With renewed confidence we try again but I immediately do something unforgivable (like speak/breathe/not speak/not breathe) to which he grabs his toothbrush and puts it -bristles spinning downwards -on the floor of the shower, shutting the shower doors after it with a look back at me that says “you’re next”. Back to 5yogirl: she now has the timer and is refusing to relinquish it, so even if we could persuade 5yoboy to move the toothbrush from cleaning the shower plug hole to his teeth, we …… I give up and go to the bedroom where I text a friend to say I am feeling “seething hatred/despair” ….

Then something happens. 5yogirl seems to have suddenly come down from her pill (Easter egg) has gone off the idea of more pills (Easter eggs) and decides she actually will put her pyjamas on when I ask her to for the 283rd time. Then it’s plain sailing:

I read her a story

I read her another story

I put her into the top bunk (double-taking that 5yoboy is miraculously sound asleep in the bottom after husbore read him a single rhyming couplet of Slinky Malinky in his best, most boring, low, slow monotone)

I have an argument with her about the level of the lighting in the room and whether I need to go and find granny’s small pink torch that she stole earlier

I read her another story

I cuddle her

I tell her to stop talking

I cuddle her again

I tell her to stop talking again

I tell her that she WILL be able to get to sleep if she tries for more than 1.4 nanoseconds

I cuddle her again and after 1.5 nanoseconds I leave the room with her snoring her head off

#passtheeggs #dontdodrugskids #easter #eisforecstacy #hoveringcloserthanevertoinsanity

Toffee crisps, sea life and a word on the Faraway Tree

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The day started well – husbo let me have a lie in and then I had two toffee crisps for breakfast. I then got unnecessarily cross while buying a coffee because the smalls were pestering me incessantly for cake while husbore had buggered off to look at bikes. And then they wanted ice cream … sweeties … a fishing rod(?!). But somehow we made it through the day without killing each other. 

The itinerary was: toffee crisp breakfast in our AirBNB Hove holiday house -> Troy coffee to go in Hove then bus -> Brighton Sealife centre to find Nemo and Dory and generally gaze at Mother Nature’s wateriest wonders -> dinner at Bath Arms pub to eat Mother Nature’s wateriest wonders (in a nice creamy chowder with seaweed and potato cake and other seasonal veg) whilst playing Minions Guess Who -> bus home cuddling small people waiting for them to turn bat-shit angry any minute but they didn’t -> shower for the smalls (pretty chuffed with that although it had been days since we’d washed them) -> Faraway Tree and bed. 

I mean the grown ups still bickered, I felt like I lost a week of my life while 5yo girlie decided which £4 bracelet was the most beautiful in the Sealife Centre gift shop (spoiler: they are all hideous) and there were some aim and timing issues to contend with in the toilet department from the under 6 brigade but at least no-one told me they hated me today. 5yo boy did say he didn’t like The Faraway Tree as he was drifting off to sleep, which was a bit of a kick in the ovaries, but I’m going to rise above it. And will move on to Winnie the Pooh tomorrow instead. #hoveringclosetosealife 

#winniethepooh vs #thefarawaytree 

#100acrewood vs #enchantedforest

#hoveringclose

Happy Valentines Syria, Love Me, Tom and Cbeebies

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With CBeebies already sorting me out for Valentine’s Day by scheduling in Tom Hardy to read me a bedtime story at 6:45 on Feb 14th, I’ve asked Husbanana to buy 5 Syrian kiddlings a fleecey blanket as a valentine’s gift instead. 

Tom Hardy gets valentine's day sorted

Tom Hardy gets valentine’s day sorted


I didn’t tell him about Tom, because he’s a sensitive soul and it might make him upset and/or make him question my real motives for getting into Peaky Blinders and/or think he needs to grow his beard longer, don a flat cap and read me a children’s story to initiate love making which is a road I really don’t want to go down. But more importantly he won’t be home in time to know about it anyway. He’ll just find me a little more flushed and happy than I usually am at that stage in the kids’ bedtime routine when he returns. But unless I’m also reading a copy of Ultra Light Camping Monthly or What’s New in Goretex Weekly or similar, the probability that he’ll even notice any change in my general appearance is tinier than the width of a gnat’s willy-peanuts (engineering term (of a 5 year old).

Anyway, I’ve drifted slightly from the point, which is, fuck me this girl looks chilly doesn’t she? Let’s buy her a blanket so our love can keep her warm this Valentines Day. 

It taking really really long time Mummy

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Time it takes for me to walk to nursery: 15 minutes. 

Contingency time added to account for length of children’s legs: 10 minutes. 

Total anticipated time to take children to nursery: 25 minutes.

 

In theory: children like and cuddle each other

In theory: children like, cuddle each other and walk at a normal pace


Time to get shoes and socks on feet that should already have shoes and socks on: 5 minutes. 

Time to get shoes and socks on feet again as they were ‘on wrong’ last time: 5 minutes. 

Time spent trying (and failing) to encourage small girl to put coat on: 2 minutes. 

Time to get children from one side of the front door to the other: 5 minutes. 

Time spent arguing with small boy about the fact that we’re walking rather than taking the car: 5 minutes. 

Time spent walking before small girl complains that she’s cold: 1 minute. 

Time spent putting cardigan and then coat on small girl: 3 minutes. 

Time spent walking before small boy refuses to walk any further because he wants a cuddle: 1 minute. 

Time spent walking while carrying small boy before small girl refuses to walk any further because she also wants a cuddle: 1 minute.

Time spent squatting on the pavement giving both children a cuddle: 2 minutes.

Time spent walking before small girl stops to announce her hands are too cold: 2 minutes.

Time spent empathising with small girl about her hands in a bid to get her moving again: 3 minutes.

Time spent walking before small boy stops to announce that he misses daddy: 1 minute.

Time spent empathising and cuddling with small boy in a bid to get him moving again: 3 minutes.

Time spent walking before both children grind to a halt announcing that ‘it taking really really long time Mummy’: 2 minutes.

…

Total time to walk to nursery with moaning, feet dragging, cuddle wanting children: 45 minutes. 

Time late for appointment: 20 minutes. 

Forgive me while I procrastinate….

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I feel like quitting at least 167 times a week. And right now is one of those quitting moments. I look at the pile of to do lists on my table (one of my to dos is to collate my to do lists) and nothing on them looks in the least bit appealing. Or important in fact. I’ve got that ‘meh’ feeling and I just can’t conjure up the necessary gazumpf to get started on anything today, and yet the ‘Mother’s guilt’ is making me feel uncomfortable with having some much needed down time. So the day fritters away. As does the next.

In fact in general I only seem to be able to get motivated at 10 to 5 on a Thursday, which is precisely 50 minutes before I need to leave to pick my children up from nursery for the final time each week. It’s amazing how productive I am for that 50 minutes… just a shame I couldn’t have tapped into that productivity for the previous 3 days.

Now or Later

(iStockphoto)

The trouble is that once I get back to my house having dropped the children off at nursery on a Tuesday (I say that casually, it’s usually a battle that lasts two hours and leaves me looking like I’ve just come out of a couple of rounds with a balrog*) I either feel like collapsing back into bed and sleeping for 3 days, eating chocolate (for 3 days), watching telly (for 3 days), having a loooong bath (for 3 days) or all of the above (in as much as they can all be combined) (for 3 days).

And why can’t I think of a single thing to do in that first few minutes of my working week? Even my umpteen to do lists don’t seem to point me towards the thing I really do need to do this week leaving me to realise that I need to do it at precisely 4:50pm on a Thursday.

Me post balrog

Me post balrog. I.e. approximately 9:15 a.m. on a Tuesday.

I think the issue is down to the fact that children are draining, both physically and mentally so we can be left in a state of mental and physical paralysis the minute we actually get the time to catch up. For me, mindfulness and yoga are key. In fact I was sent a useful link on mindfulness the other week. I shall dig it out and schedule 300 reminders to look at it first thing on my next working day. Unless I get distracte…

*the big fiery thing that Gandalf fought in Lord of the Rings