Something weird happened the other day. It was my turn for a lie in (which basically involves hiding in bed and dicking about on my phone without judgement) and it was uncharacteristically peaceful. More often that not lie ins are peppered with shouting, crying, squawking and children running in and out of the bedroom to jump on you etc etc.

At about 9.30am I went downstairs to investigate and survey the damage. Get this – there was none!

I could only hear happy children and I could only feel a strange sense of calm. I walked into the kitchen to find J sat at the table.

‘What are you doing?’ I asked

‘Sitting in the kitchen.’ he replied.

‘WHAT?!’

‘Just having my coffee…’ he explained

‘Sitting in the kitchen and drinking your coffee?!’

‘Yeh. I’ve Just been reading my book’.

‘SITTING IN THE KITCHEN, DRINKING YOUR COFFEE AND READING YOUR BOOK? WHAT?!’

I looked at him again, it was not a mirage, he was really and truly doing all of these things. They are three of my favouritist things to do in the world…

Was this some sort of fucked up, parallel universe in which being a parent allows you to do nice things for yourself?

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People always have a lot of sympathy for new mums don’t they? It makes sense – they’re knackered because they’ve been up in the night feeding, changing nappies or trying to coax a windy baby back to sleep.

We reassure new mums that it will get better and it often does, at least in the short term. But where does that sympathy go when you are stuck with a toddler who has become a right pain in the arse at night? Suddenly those newborn days seem almost preferable, because at least small immobile humans don’t kick you in the head and demand you make them jam toast whilst doing an impression of a cat at 2.45 AM.

If you were to ask me ‘How are your kids at sleeping?’ I would say ‘Hmm ok. Not great, but okish… you know, depending on the day. Actually. Often. A bit crap.’

If they both sleep through the night and neither one gets up until 6 AM then that is a big win. I cannot remember the last time that this happened. At the minute our main problem is our littlest’s habit of appearing in our room and scaring the sh*t out of us in the middle of the night (I say us but tbh his father is mostly unaware).

I know we should probably make some attempt to teach him to sleep in his own bed, take him back to his room quietly and quickly, be consistent bla bla bla but OH the tired. It’s always too tempting to just go with the quickest win.

Although even I’ve never made Jam toast at 2.45 AM whilst pretending to be a cat*

Anyway the ideal scenario is that he gets into our bed and goes back to sleep immediately. It happens. Occasionally…

Unfortunately we are also met with other, less preferable outcomes. For example sometimes he becomes Chatty Kid…

Other times he is I Want To Sing Irritating Songs Kid…

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Do you remember in the before time, the kinds of things you used to do when you went into town? Calmly walking though the shops, picking up a book to flick through, spritzing on a bit of perfume, holding a dress up to the mirror, smelling a nice looking candle just cos. I think it was called browsing?

The ability to browse dies once you have kids and is replaced by panic buying.

Even if I do get the time and opportunity to go shopping on my own I feel so under pressure to enjoy that time that I actually panic about not enjoying it enough and therefore panic buy anyway. Humph.

I still prefer it to dragging my two along with me though. I will attempt to explain why I do not like taking them shopping via the medium of Microsoft Paint…

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I see this sort of stuff every so often on social media – technology is evil, we all look at our phones too much, our kids are getting ignored and will probably grow up to be… well the direct consequence isn’t usually mentioned but I assume it’s something horrific… etc etc.

My first reaction when I read these types of posts is…

Basically I DO THAT AND THEREFORE I AM AN AWFUL PARENT!

I then make a promise to myself to stop looking at my phone so much and feel a bit better. Except I don’t feel that much better because when I have time to think about it properly, I actually get a little bit cross.

You see despite the message being a good one (yes we could all probably cut back a bit) the overriding argument, that technology is to blame for everything that is wrong in modern day parenting just doesn’t wash. My problem here is three-fold: –

1, It’s not just my phones fault. I Ignore my children all the time in many different ways.

When I’m cooking dinner, chatting to another mum on a play-date and even when I’m just daydreaming about getting smashed on Pina Coladas at the swim up bar on pre-kid holidays to the Carribbean with my friend Jane.

Ignoring your kids is not technology specific. In fact sometimes I wonder if all the bad rap it gets means that parents actually engage with their kids far more than was common in previous generations. I’m pretty sure I used to get ignored frequently as a child, as did we all, because banging on about the ways parents were letting their children down just wasn’t really ‘a thing’.

To be fair to my dad he never actually told me to f*ck off but I’m pretty sure the sentiment was there. I remember crawling around on pub floors making towers out of beermats and do you know what? I bloody loved it (and still do).

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There are two types of parents in this world, those who go to play groups and those that don’t.

Personally I opt in. For a couple of quid you get coffee, perimeters, mess that is not yours to clean up and a pink wafer biscuit or choccie chip cookie if you’re lucky. Yes maybe you might have to make a bit of small talk, but I don’t mind that. After all it’s still talking to other adults, and that is usually preferable to discussing why I am a stinky bum bum face (for the 100th time).

Playgroup is good. Playgroup can be fun. You just need to know how to navigate through the various obstacles to get out in one piece.

Obstacle one – Biscuits.

The other name I like to give playgroup is Biscuit Stalkers Anonymous. If you have ever tried to reason with a toddler that they can only have one of something that they REALLY like then you’ll probably understand what I mean by that. On your average session you will see between 2 and 5 small people raising hell around the refreshment counter.

Obstacle two – THAT TOY!

There’s always one isn’t there, a specific toy that every child wants. In my experience it’s usually a ride on – my heart sinks every time I walk through the doors and see a lone Cosy Coupe with a fan base of 30.

It can be pretty stressful. Spending ages explaining to your child that they have to wait their turn – then when they finally get it, they are SO EXCITED that they got it, that they run over to show you that they got it, whilst someone else climbs in and drives off in the sodding thing!

GAH!

I can’t be the only parent out there that has dreamt about breaking into playgroup at night and burning THAT TOY in some sort of ritual to the gods of parental sanity.

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Drive to the south of France they said, it will be fun they said, the kids will be fine watching their DVD players they said…

THEY be bloody idiots.

It’s one of those running jokes isn’t it… kids in cars constantly pestering their parents with a tirade of – are we nearly there yets?  But you don’t quite realise how true it actually is until you have kids and you find yourself in that very situation.

And you reason… well of course they are going to ask, they get bored, their sense of time is all out of whack, 5 minutes is like 5 MILLION GAZILLION YEARS in kid world. But you don’t quite envisage them asking it 10 times whilst you are still loading up the bloody car…

I don’t mean to be funny guys but…

WE ARE SO FAR AWAY THAT THE DISTANCE HAS MANIFESTED ITSELF AS A PHYSICAL PAIN IN MY CHEST!

But it’s going to be ok, because like I say, we have those DVD player headset things which are going to make everything fine. And no, before anyone asks if I’d rather engage with my children by playing games like eye spy, I would not. I don’t want to play eye spy because they can’t play it properly yet and I get pissed off spending 15 minutes trying to guess something beginning with ‘L’ which turns out to be ‘Mummy’s orange handbag’ that I haven’t even got with me. Gah.

(Although I must admit that the littlest saying ‘I spysy with my spiedsey eyseys’ does almost make it worth it.)

So anyway the DVD players were to provide the perfect solution, or at least they would have…

If they could just make their fricking minds up!

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