the things not said

I realised last night that I was actually looking forward to my appointment at the dentist for two fillings.  I now know I was a fool as my entire mouth is numb, there is an ache in my jaw and the sound of drilling is still ringing in my ears.  Plus there is a dent in our bank balance that I would rather have spent on shoes.

Bearing all that in mind, what kind of a week did I have that made me look forward to such mouth violation?
My week contained  32 hours of work, visitors in the house who weren’t keen on children (eat my food, sleep in my house and wash your clothes in my machine – like my children peoples!), ferrying my children to various lovely friends houses to look after them while I did many hours of work with visitors, husband working 12 hour days and PMT like you wouldn’t believe.

Highlights were…

Minnie announcing for the tenth time that she doesn’t want me to be her mum anymore and me blubbing like a three year old getting bullied in the playground.

Having to wear selotaped up glasses because Jackson pulled the arm off them earlier in the week and my contact lenses still haven’t been delivered.

Walking 30 minutes to the Post Office, pushing my grumpy children with me.  Asking for stamps and picking a card to send, only to realise I didn’t bring my purse, so having to walk back 30 minutes up hill, get in car with even more grumpy children and return to Post Office for stamps – mainly so I had achieved one thing that day!

My week was always going to be tough with all that needed to be achieved but it is the overwhelming feeling that I am not a good enough mother to my children that crushes me in a way like nothing else I’ve ever felt or will ever feel.

So I write this to share with all my friends who read this and probably have had weeks like mine, to say as messed up as it sounds, sometimes it’s preferable to endure a drill in your mouth than spend an hour with your children.

My little girl’s middle name is Hope.  This is because when I had no hope, Minnie gave it back to me.  This person, when she was only five cells big, was my gift of hope.

I will always be thankful to my daughter for that gift.  The Bible says, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life”. And I think if Minnie hadn’t been the little embryo that could, my heart would have been very sick indeed.

I’ve been overwhelmed by how much I love Minnie this week.  Which is odd to me because she has been a right little madam, pushing boundaries, telling me she wants another mummy, being rude to visitors in our house, generally looking nothing like the daughter I would like to see as the result of my parenting!  I’ve had to discipline her so much, setting her boundaries and not letting her go over them (the harder part of the boundaries!).  I am exhausted.

It has made me wonder about where we will be when she is an adult.  What I want is to have a really close relationship with my daughter, to be intuitive with her, know her inside out, have her trust and respect, to know I have helped her be the best person she can be, that we will not only love each other, we will like each other. 

At the moment she wants to switch mums because I don’t give her sweets every day (I have explained that if it’s sweets she wants, she should stick with me!).  But when she is 14 will she want to swap me for a disappointment far greater?

Parenting is scary. I know I will love her with all my heart for all her life because she became mine at five cells big, everything after is irrelevant to how much I love her.  “Everything after” isn’t irrelevant to our relationship though – there is much to bring us close and much to push us apart.  My hope is that I will recognise which is which.

This week was the first week in the New Year that I am officially a working mum and Gareth is back to his day job.  We knew that my squeezing in 24 hours of work into an already busy week and only gaining 8 hours of total child free time was going to be somewhat of a challenge.  We warned ourselves that it would take a month of seeing what I needed to hand over to Gareth to find those productive hours at home and this week gave us the first glimpse of where I lack in available hours!  Thankfully it is halfway through January and the majority of Christchurch don’t go back to work until Monday or even later so it’s only me (and our bank balance) that’s noticed how few hours I’ve worked.

I love working from home and working on a freelance basis.  I know it will be the best option for our family once I have work established and we’ve all got ourselves into the rhythm.  Gareth let me have the office when we moved in and whilst it doesn’t look or function quite how I want it to yet, it’s perfect.  I can dart in there at any time of the day or night, shut the door and I am ready to work.

Each day of the week is different; Monday I have only Jackson from 8.30am to 4pm so at lunch time, if I am quick on making dinner when he is napping I can grab an hour of work. Tuesdays I have the morning ‘sans enfan’t so I get a straight three and a half hours of work in and then another hour when Jackson comes home for his nap. Wednesday and Thursday are full time mum so I sneak an email or phone call here and there but nothing much gets achieved in the day. Friday I have a child free morning so I get that three and half hours but Minnie comes home midday and Jackson’s nap time is my time with her.  So last night we talked about how to tweak our routine so I find the extra hours.  Gareth puts them to bed alone every other night so I can sign off from mummy duties as soon as he walks in the door, giving me an extra hour to my evening. Cleaning the floors has once again gone back to his list of domestic duties, giving me another hour.  I’ll still plan the menu for the week and cook the meals but Gareth is going to do the shopping, that probably adds up to two hours.  Finally the biggest change, I get five hours on Saturday afternoon when daddy day care takes over and I get to work.  I haven’t done the math but hopefully with a couple of evenings of work that will give me all the hours I need.  Phew.

This ‘try and see’ week has had it’s teething problems (two toddlers in, I now understand the discomfort meant by this phrase) It didn’t help that as I was working late on Tuesday night I knocked a glass of water over my laptop. 

By Friday the week was land sliding and it didn’t look likely that I would come out on top.

It was a morning where I needed to get up early and be ahead of the children if I had any hope of getting us to nursery drop off at 8.30am with packed bags, sun hats in hand and sunscreen  already applied.  I forgot the sunscreen but otherwise the drop off went smoothly. I get home and start working on my back up PC (blurghh). By 11am I start to wonder if the courier that was scheduled for this mornings pick up of MacBook is going to appear.  I make my first of six calls that day to the insurance company to tell my sad story of no courier.  The first call resulted in a bogus trip to a techy company’s Christchurch office that is shut due to really long Christmas holidays (it’s their summer so they take a few weeks off, fine if you’re a teacher when your “customers” are also on holiday but three weeks for an IT company…seriously?) After a very long call telling my now even sadder story of woe, I get promised a courier for the afternoon.  My working hours have ended and I go off to pick up the children.  When I arrive at the nursery I can see Jackson is happily sitting in a highchair munching on something so I treat Minnie to a pick up with a full armed hug as I have no brother in the way.  Go back into Jackson’s room to be told that he’s just got up from his morning nap…WHAT???? My son hasn’t had a morning nap since he was nine months old and our whole daily routine is built around his two hour nap from 1pm.  Apologies and excuses are made but what I am left with is a sprightly toddler who hasn’t really eaten any lunch (because he was sleeping when they served up) who by about 4pm will lose the will to be reasonable and yet refuse any more sleep, can’t wait. So I’ve just paid for four hours of child care but only got two and a half hours of actual care and I need to provide lunch – I admit it, I lost it a little in the car.

I then decide as there is no chance baby boy is going to sleep that now is the best time to pick up groceries, which takes an hour and a half to two different shops during the hottest time of the day.  All the while I’m thinking the long awaited courier will arrive when we’re out.

I get home a sweaty mess, relieved to see that the courier hasn’t been (I later find out this isn’t a good thing).  I unpack the bags as a hungry boy screams at me and I give in to little girl’s high pitched nagging for Dora because at least then one tiny person is quiet. Unpack, feed boy toast which he mainly smears over already filthy window and then wonder at what to do with still awake child. By 4pm my little one has refused my attempt at him taking another little nap and decides to just make my life a misery with his incessant requests for a carry everywhere (he loved walking a month ago).  I call insurance company and tell my long, sad story to another agent who promises to “get to the bottom of this”.  I go back to distracting my toddler with water and start filling up the paddling pool.  Whilst I am doing this I find out why I have a ridiculous fear of wasps.  Because when you stand on one they sting and it HURTS!

I hop around the garden a lot with a lovely little girl telling me it will be alright and an entirely unsympathetic little boy screaming at me to be carried.  I apply ice to sting whilst cuddling upset boy.  Another call with the insurance company to find out over the screaming of my baby that they have no idea where the courier is.

Get through dinner, and little boy cheers up.  Just in time for daddy coming home and I get to ring the insurance company one last time and speak with another agent so I get to tell me really long sad story once again.  I get informed that the courier will not be appearing so Monday it is and it may be that I have to take another trip to the re-opened Chirstchurch branch. I mention that this is all very frustrating as I need to get work done and get informed that there will be a cap on the payment if the computer needs to be replaced as it is a “home office” computer.  The fact that I haven’t been paid for any of this work is apparently irrelevant.  The irony is that after this long, sad story there is a good chance it’s only the battery that is broken, the price of which will be below our excess so we won’t even make a claim anyways and we’ll  just have to pay $200 dollars for the nightmare that has been spilling water on my laptop (let it be a lesson to us all, don’t eat or drink whilst working….yeah right!)

Once daddy has eaten his dinner and I have finished with my last wholly dissatisfying call with the insurance company (which by the way I can’t even threaten to leave as insurance companies don’t want new home and contents clients from Christchurch because of the earthquakes so I should actually be thankful I have insurance at all!), I go for a bike ride.  Which is very nice until a car of goth twenty somethings (seriously you really should have grown out of dressing like dead people by now) drive by and make a rude gesture at me!  I shudder at the thought that one of my children might decide to take that route – please God no.

I get home to children in bed and husband doing washing up. I take a shower, pour myself a bourbon and coke and switch on Graham Norton from about four weeks ago.  Okay so I lost on many levels today but I’m not sulking and we’ve made a plan to conquer next week.  I will live to win another day.

One of the very many things that changes when you have children is your experience, and therefore expectation, of holidays.  I categorise it in the list of changes that you hadn’t 100% signed up for when you decided to have children.  Sure you knew from friends who had gone before you that holidays wouldn’t be the indulgent luxuries they had once been but I hadn’t realised just how much holidays with children looks almost exactly like normal weeks with children!

There are some subtle, and very welcome differences though…you get a sleep in until 8.30am every other day, which in turn gives you freedom to stay up past 10pm a few nights in a row.  When one or both of your children have their daily tantrum on your local supermarket floor there is another with you to share the humiliation and in fact will carry out said child so you can finish your shop in peace.  You get to be more imaginative with what you do in the day and can pack it out with not one but two trips out of the safety of your back garden, although this can still be too much for your little munchkins as we learnt yesterday on our afternoon trip to the beach!

So we as I prepare for the first back to normal life tomorrow I look back on the last two weeks with fond memories and here are just a few of my favourite things…

Minnie hanging out with her buddies.

Jackson determined to have fun no matter what the weather.

Exploring beaches.

Spending time with daddy.

My children learning to have fun together.

Getting to relax when my children are around (instead of putting them in front of the TV so I can cook dinner).

One thing holidays do still do…remind you how much you love being with your family.

I find being mum to two small children really stressful, I think more than the average mum because I am a certified control freak and a nearly three year old and 16 month old will not be controlled, some days they won’t even be gently guided.  I’m finding it doubly hard this week so thought I’d share a couple of funny stories from the past few weeks.

First of all, the quick wit of Minnie:  I often treat her to a juice bottle that is covered in garish pink patterns and Dora the Explorer on, you know the type, allegedly water but really highly flavoured and full of trash.  I buy her the bottle as a treat and then for the rest of the week I fill it with water – how clever am I.   Anyways one dinner time I thought I would educate myself on exactly what’s in it and picked up the bottle to read through the ingredients.  My suspicions were right, seriously no natural stuff in there.  Minnie starts screaming at me, she’s afraid I’m going to pinch her not really pink fruit juice.  I say, “It’s OK Minnie I’m just reading the bottle”, to which she replies, “It’s not a book Mummy”. Sarcasm at nearly three, that’s my girl.

This is more amusing at the expense of my son but hey he gives me enough grief to deserve it! We were at a play park and they’re both climbing all over the place, threatening death defying jumps at opposite ends of the climbing frame (see why I’m so stressed).  Then Jackson starts crying for no reason and from then on just won’t snap out of it, not for all the sugary snacks in my bag.  Eventually I give in and take them home.  Jackson still being really grumpy, fidgeting through lunch, screaming at me when I try to distract him with play, nothing will cheer him up.  We make it to nap time and I lie him on the floor to change his nappy and suddenly it all becomes clear, there, stuck to his little pink testicles are two brightly coloured hair slides – ouch!  Needless to say, he cheered up once he had a fresh nappy on.

Then there’s the long list of daily deeds my children do to bring a smile to my face.

• the way Jackson giggles when you rub your head on his belly
• the sight of my two children hugging each other on the bean bag
• Minnie lying on my lap and demanding I scratch her back (sound familiar mum?!)
• Jackson squeezing his eyes shut as he goes head first down a tunnel slide
• Minnie telling me James (a boy in her nursery) is no longer her best friend because he wears trousers (never trust a three year old in trousers)
• my little girl belting out the Annie classic “Tomorrow” at the dinner table
• Jackson shaking with excitement when I let him push the plunger down on our cafetiere
• sharing a “turn” in the car

They are a delight and I’m glad I get this time with them.