Parenting mistakes I’ve made this holiday

So the Easter holidays are almost over for us, and good golly, aren’t they unnecessarily long?

I’m sure for teachers, they’re fabulous. If I were a teacher I would live for the holidays, undoubtedly. For students, especially ones old enough to drink, they’re pretty damn great. But for parents, they’re just crap.

Now I can see you have a slightly puzzled look on your face, because obviously my children are too young to even go to school. The big one does in fact attend preschool for a glorious 15 hours a week during term time, but even before she did, school holidays were the pits.

All toddler friendly activities are now cancelled, or overrun with Big Children. The local soft play ‘under threes’ area will be full of kids who are actually old enough to read the sign forbidding them from being in there. It drives you sodding mad.

My first mistake was forgetting this, and taking the kids into soft play.

Upon the big one coming out of the youngun’s section wailing ‘mummy, that big boy threw a ball at me’ I may have been guilty of telling her just to throw them back at him which to her credit she refused to do, insisting instead that I go in there and demand that said practically-a-teenager sod off. I died inside a little that day.

Here are some other mistakes I’ve made this holiday:

Giving up drinking and trying to diet. 

After a gluttonous, childfree long weekend to Edinburgh and a stay in a hotel with very unkind mirrors, my husband and I resolved to be better examples for our children and lose the weight we’ve both packed on in the sleep deprived haze that has been the last few years. This involves not drinking at all (during the week, and bank holiday count as the weekend FYI) and not eating their Easter chocolate in one sitting.

The big one is currently going through a phase which involves questioning EVERYTHING. During her first viewing of Moana she averages about 16 ‘whys’ per minute. Last night, she asked me what willies were made of.

No preschool + less to do + all the whys – wine – chocolate = sad me.

Letting my son play naked in the garden. 

Three words: Squelchy garden turd. Oh my life. I don’t actually know who was more distressed by the whole affair.

Starting the de-cluttering process.

With the date for the demolition of the conservatory, garage and outhouses looming, and the prospect of squeezing the contents into our already-fit-to-bursting two-up-two-down for three months, I thought it might be a good idea to start getting rid of some of the shit we’ve accumulated.

Oh my god I’ve never wished I’d started something less in my life. It started sedately enough, with my underwear drawer. I literally tipped the lot on my bed, trashed anything older than my children or with holes in, and paired all the socks. I had at least sixteen socks that I had been keeping as singletons, possibly for ten years. TEN YEARS. That’s a very long time to be a lonely sock.

I then started this process with the kids’ clothes, and now I have seven large bags and counting to dispose of. I haven’t even got started on all the baby crap yet, but you know as soon as I do they’ll suddenly decide that the toys they haven’t played with for a year and a half are vital to their very existence.

The usual state of the conservatory

Of course none of this has actually helped free up any space worth talking about, at least a whole lot less than I actually anticipated, and so now we still have to empty the conservatory and just have less time to do it in and I must say that my initial burst of enthusiasm towards it all has completely waned.

Being complacent.

After 21.5 months, or 652 days (not that I’m counting), of sitting first underneath and then next to my darling boy for HOURS willing him to fall the f*ck to sleep, he has finally learned to do this ON HIS OWN with minimal fuss (albeit with maximum pissing about first, can’t have everything). No longer do I have to sit in the dark, flicking through Facebook until he succumbs – I can now DROP AND RUN. It’s near enough a miracle, and one that I am extremely bloody grateful for.

However this does not mean bedtime is plain sailing. Earlier this week, as the kids climbed into bed after post-preschool-jabs, solo bedtime fun…“Mummy my bed is wet because I weed on it this morning”.

Oh good then. Thanks. Top bunk as well. Love making up the top bunk in a hurry.

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