Saturday morning, I wake up in a grump... in a terrible grump! The kind of grump that makes me swear and curse. You see which grump I am talking about, don’t you?! Ok, maybe it is PMS grump I am talking about, I give you this.
Anyway, I make my way downstairs and find the 3 boys spread across the rug. Of course as a rule when I am the last one up I am always greeted with toys everywhere, bread crumbs all across the floor, because when we are with Papa, it is allowed to have toasts in the lounge. Papa is fun, unlike Maman who is boring and won’t let us smear blueberry jam all over the lovely wall paper, SHE LOVES SO MUCH!!
The day was meant to fail! C for a start was AGAIN going to rugby! And when did he tell me he was going? Yesterday! Did I need more notice than this? YES!
I tell you one thing guys out there, women need notice, I NEED notice! I need it because I have to get my head round to the fact that not only I will spend my WHOLE week with THEM, I am also going to have most WEEKEND with them! And to be a good relaxed mum, I need a plan to survive the extra hours on my own.
If I have enough time, I can plan a visit to a friend or a shopping trip day out with the boys.
When I don’t have any notice I am NOT happy!
So OK I did show a bit of resentment (why are you the one having fun at the weekend? You are already having fun all week at work!), OK I did have a little bit of tear... oh well this is what happen when I don’t get notified in advance of the possibility of having another day spent on my own.
So he left me... at 14.45... He left me with one child teething all his teeth at once (if I judge it from the amount of drool, runny nose and screams coming from V) and the other one was supposed to be sleeping for at least another good couple of hours since nap time was delayed today. So at least I could watch something else than “finding Nemo”
But NO! Just 20 min after C left, E wakes up screaming asking for a cuddle.
Now the question is: how do I manage going upstairs with V fast asleep on me, without waking him and give a cuddle to E, bring him back downstairs and all of this has to be performed without falling down the stairs, dropping one child or WORSE waking V?! Impossible you will say... well you are right... impossible!
V wakes up as soon as I move and cries his little eyes out when I put his bum on the floor (in those circumstances I would have cried too).
Then E cries louder and louder wondering “where the HELL are you MUM?!” “In a minute darling, I just finish my manicure and I’ll be with you... WHERE DO YOU THINK I AM, HEY?!! I am trying to calm down your brother and explain why life is so unfair, that mummy only has 2 arms and hands and consequently cannot do 3 million things at once, and that I had to sacrifice his peaceful sleep, for the sake of soothing his selfish brother!”
So here I enter his bedroom and as silly as it may sound I thought I had a chance to send them both back to sleep. No, there was no chance at all.
So after a good 20 min of having E now lying on me, having his cuddle and watching V balancing himself on everything, including the dog’s head, while praying that he won’t injure himself or add to the countless number of bruises on his face (because I can’t move right now to save him from a fall and that lately he has been bumping into lots of things. So I just have to hope that we won’t need a trip to A&E anytime soon, or we might end up with social services on our case).
So after this almost peaceful time we decide to get some fresh air and go to the garden. After all, I have my new decking!!! And I haven’t had the chance yet to sit on my lovely deck chairs facing the sun, reading a nice book, that would make me laugh and forget about my misery... Instead each and every single outing we had to the garden could be summarised like this:
Elliott, stop burying the strawberries with soil!
Elliott, stop stepping on the strawberries!
Victor, will you keep your hat on!
Elliott, DON’T YOU DARE climbing on the top of your playhouse!
Victor, stop eating stones!
Elliott, stop throwing stones!
There is more, do you want to hear about them? No, I thought so!
This was just a garden experience like any other... This time I thought I could make good use of that time outside and plant flowers that I recently bought, that were still living in the original plastic pot. This was without counting on the help of E, who thought that the game of moving soil from one pot to the other was brilliant! So he helped and as soon as I turned my back he was moving the soil from the good pot back into the plastic pot, to the disadvantage of my lovely plant, which is now missing quite a few of its branches... but then! he found a snail and his attention quickly shifted from the soil to the snail... the next thing I see is this snail and his tongue in very close contact!!!! WHERE DID HE GET THAT IDEA FROM?!!! Ok he is half French, but no one told him that he should eat RAW snails and I couldn’t think of anything worse right now!! But at least while he was eating snails alive he was leaving the strawberries and my plants alone...
After a bit of a gardening, organising snacks, changing nappies, saying NO in every direction (including to the dog) and when things started quieting down, I thought that maybe, just for 5 min, I could sit down (on my deck chair) and start reading the book from Charlotte Moerman, our fellow mummy blogger “Instructions not included”, that I had received this morning.
I have to say that I love the cover, with its cartoon type characters and Elliott did too. He actually thought it was a story for children and kept pulling it from my hand going “Mummy read story” to what I answered “Yes Darling, I am reading a story. It is a story for mummy. Go back to the snails”. His HNOICJJHJJhhjjHe replied “NOOOO Elliott ’story!!!” pulling the book. So I think I can honestly say it took me a good 15 min to read 2 pages. So I gave up and decided to keep it for when I had my own time...
The rest of the day went on the same way and I cannot tell you how elated I felt when I closed their bedroom door for bedtime and ran away!!!
Guess what I am doing now... I am blogging with a glass of wine and then it will be bedtime for me with my new book that I can’t wait to read!!
This post was written by Peggy who blogs at Perfectly Happy Mum. And she is, perfectly happy that is. She is mum to two energetic boys and is an Antenatal and Postnatal coach.
Photo credit: alexbolt
My husband is an expert seeting expectation settings.
Glad you survived!
Posted by: A Modern Mother | 10 July 2009 at 08:09