a day of fun!! (even if it's raining)

I know this should come as no surprise, but life really is so much easier if I don’t try to do anything else other than look after the kids, sort the meals and do the basic amount of essential clearing up. Today has been a wet day and we have stayed in all day – potential for a very stressful day, but so far (don’t want to speak too soon or anything!) it’s been fine. The reason for this, is that I’ve done loads of stuff with the kids and nothing on the house! We started off this morning by painting some pottery from a little paint your own tea set, then the girls painted a load of pictures, after lunch we all watched High School Musical 3 (luckily, this time, Hannah and Georgia pottered around and played a little secret game behind the sofa! Earlier in the week, when I watched HSM 1 with the older girls, Hannah and Georgia amused themselves by taking the lids off every single pot of glitter from the craft cupboard, emptying it on the floor and spreading it around - I knew they’d been too quiet for too long, that’s always a warning sign of mischief making!) After that we had a manic, crazy dancing session to the HSM soundtrack – I tried to keep out of view of the window, so no-one else would have to witness a 36 year old mummy going wild and dancing like a loony with her kids and music blasting out (not a pretty sight!) – but it was really good fun!! The floor still needs vacuuming, the kids bedrooms need tidying, there are a couple of loads of washing waiting to go on....but hey – we’ve had a fun day together!

Having watched HSM this afternoon, my six year old has now turned into a total teenager! She is at the moment wearing a pair of sunglasses (in the house), her HSM cardi (that she keeps throwing off at appropriate moments) a pair of HSM sandals and she is shouting instructions to the others while ‘performing’ to the HSM soundtrack! She has set herself up a little ‘dressing room’ with a mirror and a chair, where she keeps going to check herself out! Oh my, she’s now on her third outfit change! I’m not sure if this ‘show’ is actually ever going to start, or if it’s just one long rehearsal, with loads of outfits, important accessories and shouting........

(I have just found out that Hannah and Georgia’s little secret game behind the sofa this afternoon involved paper and a pair of scissors; clearing up the hundreds of tiny bits of shredded paper is no problem – I am just so relieved that they haven’t re-designed the curtains.....phew!)

A rare day and night off! yay!

Rob and I managed a night away together last weekend – what absolute bliss! We are, of course, hugely grateful to Rob’s parents who bravely came to hold the fort at ‘chaos with kids’ street for us. (Anyone who gives up their weekend to take on four young kids deserves a medal! Fortunately for us, even though both sets of our parents live quite a distance away, they can be persuaded to come and spend a bit of time with their ‘adorable’ grandchildren, and since they need to stay for the night when they come, Rob and I can regularly be seen running for the door once they are settled in!!)

We went down to London on the train, went to see U2 at Wembley and spent the night in a hotel. Rob booked the train, so we left at 9.00am on the Saturday morning and arrived back home at 5.30pm on the Sunday – he obviously wanted to get the most out of the rare opportunity to enjoy some freedom and some time together!

We had a brilliant time, wandering round the shops (with nobody demanding to be bought things, maybe I should have given that a try?! And nobody hiding in the clothes isles or moaning about having to walk), we sat and ate cake in the park, (with nobody arguing about which bit was bigger or moaning that they wanted more, and nobody getting incredibly sticky and needing a mountain of wipes!), we went to the pub for a beer and nice lunch sat outside in the sunshine (and I didn’t have to take ANYONE for a poo!! – (check out July blog – Poo...poo and more poo!) On the Sunday, we went to Camden Market, (again, nobody moaned about the distance we walked) and when we were sat in a bar, enjoying a beer and reading the paper in the sunshine, even though Rob and I were both tired from our late night at the concert, neither of us found the need to cry and roll around on the floor!

I wondered if I would feel guilty about leaving them, or feel a bit lost without them, but do you know what? I didn’t! I love them to bits, but they are so constant and I spend so much time with them, that I actually found I was ready to start the next week with them after having a bit of time off. Time off - now there’s something that I am no longer familiar with! Motherhood is such a full-time job that you never get any time off from, so that’s why we appreciated a bit of time so very much. In some ways though, it has made me miss time for me and Rob even more. I know that we come as a family now, and that they’ll get easier (hopefully) as they get older, but it just made me miss a day off from how constant it is once in a while, does that make me a bad mother? I hope not! It definitely did me and Rob a good to spend some real quality time together. I hope it’s not too long before the next time...... pass me those train times someone...!!

following through your threats!!

A friend once advised me to be very careful what you threaten to do if a child continues a certain behaviour, because you need to be fully prepared to follow it through. For example, if having driven for three hours to get to a friend’s house where you are staying for the night, then unpacked all your stuff and sorted everyone sleeping arrangements and settled down for a chat with your friends, you then say to your child (who is being a bit of a pain, having been stuck in the car for three hours previously) “If you do that again, then we’ll have to go home!” Just be aware, that if they do it again, you either need to pack everything back up and drive the three hours back home, or you need to not follow through your threat, therefore giving the child the idea that it doesn’t matter if they continue doing something because you don’t mean what you say anyway. In this situation, it might be prudent to use a threat such as “if you do that again, you’ll have to go and sit on the step, or in another room for X amount of minutes” I think this has caught me out on a couple of occasions in the past, so I do try to think carefully before I issue an ultimatum, although sometimes I can feel myself regretting the words as they are coming out of my mouth in a cross moment!

This happened to me on Friday. Abbie was due to go to a friend’s house to play in the morning. However, before she went I wanted all the girls to have a bath, as Rob and I were going away for the night at the weekend, and I wanted to get the usual Sunday night bath out of the way on Friday so we wouldn’t have to come back to it on Sunday (not sure if that actually works, as they were grubby again by Sunday, but still) So anyway, Abbie is adamant that she is not going to go in the bath, and I hear the threat “If you don’t go in the bath and have your hair washed then you’re not going to your friends house” coming out of my mouth before I can stop it (I really want the visit to the friend’s to go ahead, as it would be so much easier to get beds ready and things sorted for the weekend if she does go). So now it’s out there.....she’s still refusing to go in the bath and I am faced with the prospect of phoning my friend to say that she can’t come (and therefore disappointed her little friend in the process and making my morning harder). All the others have now been in the bath, so now it’s just Abbie, who is hiding behind the sofa in a strop. I decided to go for one last tack, before I cancel the play date. I act like I don’t know that she is behind the sofa and I make a ‘pretend’ phone call (that I know she can hear) to her friend’s Mum, saying something like, “Oh Hi, I’m not sure if Abbie will be able to come today as she won’t go in the bath, listen... I’ll get back to you in a minute, if she goes in, then I’ll bring her round in a bit, but if she doesn’t then I afraid she won’t be coming,...okay, thanks, bye” (I am frantically hoping the ‘phone call’ was enough to clinch it!) Fortunately for all involved, she is up like a shot after I’ve ‘hung-up’ the phone and gone back upstairs, and she has a bath without a single murmur of fuss! (I breathe a huge sigh of relief!) When I drop her at her friend’s house, I find the same battle has been raging there too, her friends Mum had threatened that if her little girl didn’t go in the shower and have her hair washed, then Abbie wouldn’t have been allowed to go and play!! It seems we all have these constant battles and play these mind games to achieve what we need to!

chaos and spillage!

Why is being with kids always so chaotic? Chaos and my kids just seem to go together! (maybe it’s just me) Tonight I was trying to cook tea, when Abbie decided she needed to paint her nails (to make herself “beautiful”!!) so she appeared in the kitchen armed with two pots of nail varnish (that she’d been into my drawer to get). So I think, this won’t be too bad (she is six now) and I sit her down on the step into the kitchen and put some newspaper on the floor and let her get on with it (the other three are playing upstairs, so I’m hoping she’ll get it done before they notice!!) It’s all going okay, she’s made a bit of a hap-hazard job, but at least any mess is on the newspaper. Then the others arrive (don’t you just know this is going to be trouble?!) It starts okay, Millie paints her own (I have never seen so much nail varnish up anyone’s fingers and toes, but at least any drips are on the newspaper. Hannah and Georgia have theirs done by Abbie, who speaks to them as though she is a beautician in a salon!! Then the doorbell goes, as I head to the door I hear a shout from the kitchen. Georgia has taken the nail varnish back down off the side and dropped it, of course the lid hasn’t been put back on properly, so it has splashed over the floor and over her clothes. I rush back (shouting “I’ll be right with you!” to my friend behind the door) and frantically run back to the kitchen and wipe up the varnish, strip Georgia off and throw her clothes in the washing machine. I make it back to the door and open it to my patiently waiting friend.

A little later (with the smell of freshly applied nail varnish still lingering in the air) I put tea down in front of the girls and start clearing up the kitchen. Then Millie gives a shout, she has spilt her milk all over the table. Fine, deep breath, I get a cloth and wipe it off the table, her chair and the floor. I head back to the kitchen for all of two minutes before the shout comes that now Georgia has accidently knocked her milk over too (do they have some sort of agreement for a milk spillage night?) Hers has gone all over the table, the floor, her chair and her clean clothes (her last lot have nail varnish on!) and she is crying because she is wet. I get everything cleaned up – again, when Hannah drops her spoon on the floor for about the fourth time, spreading even more rice all over the floor. Then I look round and Georgia is smearing yoghurt up her legs (honestly, why can’t they just eat tea??) Luckily I have given up on clean clothes for her for tonight and she is just in her nappy.

I send them all upstairs after tea, to watch a bit of the bedtime hour in the spare room while I try to clear up the devastation from tea! When I get upstairs I find that they have decided against the option of watching TV, and gone for the getting every card game they can find in the cupboard and spreading them all out on the floor option. They have also all changed their clothes, leaving the ones they took off on the floor exactly where they dropped, and been in Rob’s wardrobe to help themselves to a tie (Millie is being a ‘Daddy’ in the game!!) Then I feel bad about feeling cross about all the things they’ve got out when they are actually playing nicely! (Millie makes a really cute ‘Daddy’ in her tie too!) I just wish they wouldn’t choose to do all this five minutes before bedtime! So with a bit of nagging from me, they help (a bit) with the tidying up and all get their pyjamas on and clean their teeth relatively nicely! Phew!

injury & A&E!

We are back now from another camping holiday. The weather was brilliant this time (let’s face it; it couldn’t have been any worse!) However, it was the trips to A&E that were the ‘highlight’ of this trip instead of the rain! Georgia managed to climb up the slide the wrong way and just as she got near the top, a little girl came down and knocked her off. She was ever so good in at the hospital, she had an x-ray and she had broken her arm. They put a little half plaster on to wait until the swelling had gone down, so it was hard on the top and soft bandage underneath and only went up to just below her elbow. The consultant came out with a great comment, the conversation when something like this,

Him “How old is she?”
Me “ She’s two and a half.”
Him “Any brothers or sisters?”
Me “She has a twin sister and two older sisters.”
Him “A twin? Really? And how old is her twin?”
Me “Eeerr....she’s two and a half as well!!”
I think he realised as soon as he’d said it!

Anyway, so we spend the rest of the holiday desperately trying to keep this plaster cast clean and dry. This is not an easy task on Whitby beach, when she is jumping in the waves in her usual two year old unsteady way! Well, we manage to keep the cast intact for the rest of the holiday, with no more injuries, even though she seems to trip over everything in the tent (maybe we just notice it more because we are trying to get her to be careful?) Then we come to packing up day, towards the end of getting everything sorted, Georgia asked if she could go and sit in the car. She was tired and might go to sleep, so we strapped her into her seat and carry on with the packing up. When we have finished and start of load the others in the car, we notice that Georgia has pulled her cast off her arm (obviously the swelling has gone down, and she’s had too much time to fiddle with it!!) When I said, “Oh no Georgia, you were meant to keep that on!” she just smiled and said, “All better now!” So off we set again to A&E, this time with everyone in the car and all the camping stuff loaded. Fortunately, they fitted the proper one this time, hard all the way round, that goes above her elbow – I don’t think she’ll be able to pull this one off, but I wouldn’t like to set her the challenge!

The day after the first trip to A&E, we were given an out-patients appointment in the fracture clinic to have the cast checked. As we were on our way out for the day and both Rob and I wanted to see the x-ray (they didn’t show me the night before) we all went to this appointment. I felt that we made such an entrance when we walked into the waiting room, six of us, all a bit hot and sweaty from camping, four very grubby little kids in tow (the play park at the campsite was particularly dirty and sandy!) one child with her arm in a grubby plaster cast. Then there was all the fuss and arguments about who was sitting with whom, who was sitting in which chair and who was sitting on whose lap in the waiting room! Everyone knew we’d arrived! On the plus side, we were seen relatively quickly...maybe someone had realised the potential struggles with the situation if we were made to wait any length of time?!! (either that, or they just wanted us out of there!)

So today Hannah has fallen over and banged just near her eye, she ran into the hall, slipped and went head first into a wooden box; she’s got a cracking bruise and a little cut. I think it’s looking okay, I’m really hoping it won’t need a trip to casualty, I can just imagine us all trouping in, one child with a black eye, one with her arm in a cast....!

how much stuff??

Why do kids today seem to come with so much ‘stuff’? (I’m sure I didn’t have so many belongings when I was growing up – maybe my Mum and Dad would beg to differ?) Our house is full of it, from the four plastic water bottles, (plus the two extra ones for the basket at school and the three or four extra we have been given by other people at some time) and the six coloured Ikea plastic cups, plates and little bowls, to the coats, jackets, fleeces, jumpers, caps, pencils, pens, colouring books, stickers, glue, bags, toys, crazy bones (one of the crazes at the moment) notebooks, sunglasses, sunglasses cases....and the list goes on...and on. Don’t even get me started on the shoes, crocs, trainers, wellies, and other footwear, we could probably make a line from London to Newcastle if we were to lay them all out end to end! I know that we (as parents) are to blame, and while we try to limit the amount of things we buy for them, it just seems to be the culture these days. I guess you don’t want you kids to miss out in any way. Although, I’m glad to say we do hand things down when we can and we often have things handed down to us from friends, we also try to recycle things where ever possible. Also, we try to be careful about how much we buy for them.

So that brings me to my next point, where do you put it all? I guess being a family of six, all with our own bits and pieces; we are always going to be quite a full house! Today, Georgia lined up, in the hall, all the shoes she could find, she matched them all up into pairs and they stretched from one end of the hall to the other. When I walked past, it just made me think – Really? We’ve got that many shoes? (and she’d only put out a fraction of them) Maybe part of it is the cost of some things today. When we can buy Hannah and Georgia a pair of croc type shoes for £2.49, it is easy to think, yeah, they’d be great for the summer, let’s get them. Maybe there just wasn’t the amount of easily affordable gear around when I was growing up.

I know I’m not the only one who struggles with the amount of stuff and where to put it all issue. I was talking to a friend the other day who was saying the same thing and how when she would come to lay the table for lunch, she could barely even see the table under the paraphernalia of the latest activity!

Well, I’d better get back to it and take the next armful of stuff upstairs and try to find somewhere for it to go......

forever tidying up...

I wonder if kids have any idea how all their stuff gets back to where it should be. I wonder if it ever occurs to them, when the go to fetch something from the place it should be and they find it there, that actually, they left it dumped on the floor somewhere, but now it’s miraculously back where it should be. I wonder if my girls noticed tonight, when they went upstairs after their tea, to go to bed, that all their pillows, duvets and pyjamas were all back on their beds where they should be, even though they had left them all over the floor in various rooms as part of the game they were playing earlier? I wonder whether Abbie was surprised to see the mirror back in the bathroom, when she wanted it tonight to look at where her wobbly tooth has come out (very exciting!), even though she had left it in another room from an early viewing of her ‘gap’? I sometimes worry that I do too much tidying up for them and that I should insist that they do more themselves, but most of the time it is just so much easier and quicker to get it done myself. Especially at bedtime, I find getting them all ready for bed and sorted out enough work, without having to manage everyone trying to be involved in the tidy up. Maybe it’s time to make an effort to get them more involved. The trouble with Abbie helping with tidying up is that she’s a hoarder, so every little scrap of paper, wrapper, old packet, picture, cracker toy from years ago has to be kept! So rather than actually sorting things out, we end up just finding places to put all the important scraps that she just can’t part with! (Abbie so doesn’t get that the fun is sometimes in the making of the thing, not in keeping the cardboard box with a few things glued on for ever and ever!) Millie is good at tidying and can be persuaded to get rid of that old bit of broken plastic toy, but her idea of tiding is lining up all her toys along the window sill and on her bedside table.

Also, why is it that when you try to get rid of some toys or games that no-one ever plays with, if any of them happen to see it happening, suddenly that toy is the very special to them, the most important toy in the world and they just have to keep it. They haven’t touched it for months and months but they couldn’t possibly part with it, as it is just so brilliant and they love it sooo much.

Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to keep on with the never ending task of tidying up after them for now.... I wonder at what age I can leave them to sort out their own rooms? Maybe I’ll just keep the door shut and pretend it’s all not there and they’ll just have to climb their way into bed each night!