Six sweet hours

So. Now that both small people are at big school, I have one day a week to myself. Well, I say one day, but it’s really only six hours. Still – six sweet solitary hours. Oh, how I dreamed off such a thing in the noisy depths of kid-wrangling days. Stuffing little arms rigid with rage into cosy coats to try and outrun tantrums with a buggy ride in the fresh air, or reluctantly sliding their favourite Wiggles DVD into the player for the 78,560th time that week. Six sweet solitary hours. So, what to do with them? Well, being a lover of decluttering, organising and cleaning, of course I have an epic list to end all lists, jostling with all those jobs I never quite got round to. Cleaning the greenhouse; backing up photos and videos; filing all those digital shots in some sort of system; tidying out the Scary Drawer where everything gets shoved when it doesn’t have a home. You know, the one Michael McIntyre talks about, full of old keys and old mobile phones, and instructions for toasters you haven’t owned for at least 10 years. When I announce to other mums, including my own, that this is what I’m looking forward to now that I’ve got some time, the fleeting looks of confusion mixed with pity are not lost on me. ‘She WANTS to shred old payslips and re-organise the attic? Poor love, she’s forgotten what life was like before kids.’ Don’t forget to do something for yourself, they say. Enjoy your ‘me time’. Sit in the garden with a book, have a look round the shops! Go for coffee and cake with friends! I understand their pleas. I do. I know they are well-meaning. And of course I’m not going to spend every Friday knee-deep in six years of paperwork. I promise. But let me explain. Ever since the children arrived, I’ve mourned the fact that housework, or any little job that needs doing, can no longer be done quickly. When they were babies, every time I started up the vacuum I was convinced I could hear them crying or, as they got older, kicking seven shades out of each other. Dusting the living room takes three times as long when you have a little ‘helper’ insisting on smearing Pledge over every individual piano key. If I had a pound for every time I have yelled ‘just a minute’ from the kitchen as I tried in vain to finish writing a shopping list, or clean the floor, I would be writing this by the pool of my Spanish villa. That’s why the idea of whipping round the house like Mary Poppins after six cans of Red Bull is so appealing. No distractions, no creeping fear when it’s time to turn the vacuum off. No fights to referee halfway through scrubbing the toilet, or Lego Batman to rescue from the toilet while folding the laundry. I fully intend to make another list, one that’s deliciously full of things like spa days, trips to IKEA (another thing that’s better done not only without kids, but also without husbands, who always seem to lose the will to live somewhere around the cushion department), walks on the beach, practising the saxophone, actually getting round to reading everything in the New Yorker for once… And, it goes without saying, coffee and cake with friends. And I will enjoy all these wonderful things even more, because I finished the housework in an hour and still had times to put all my photos into folders.That’s how I roll. PS: The photo of the tasty-looking cake and the wonderful view is from Jessie’s Kitchen in Broughty Ferry, my cake-and-coffee venue of choice. Here’s their facebook page https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jessies-Kitchen/189114634450256?sk=timeline

New beginnings

I’ve taken rather a longer break from the blog than I had planned, but summer’s over now and things have changed quite a lot in my world.

A few weeks ago, my son started school. The baby of the family, all grown up and ready to start his journey into the world of learning.

Boy, was he ready. Five years old, with a big sister he looks up to and longs to be like – reading and writing and just, well, knowing about stuff.

Since I’m pretty sure we’re not having any more kids (that’s what happens when neither of the ones you have learn to sleep properly until they are two), it was with a heavy heart that I started the preparations for school. Uniform, school bag, lunch box, tiny little school shoes…I had to try very hard to keep the emotions from rising as we enjoyed our last few Fridays hanging out together.

I’m not the sort of mother who hates to see her kids grow up and wishes they would stay babies forever. Far from it. As I’ve already mentioned, neither of my babies particularly liked being babies. They’re far, far more fun now they are up and about in the world, throwing themselves into everything at great speed and volume. And, if truth be told, I didn’t really like being a mum to babies either.

If only I’d known as I lifted them screaming from their cots for yet another night feed how wonderful, beautiful and amazing it would be to answer their wide-eyed questions about birds and clouds and supermarkets and biscuits and banks and cartoons and farts and record players.

If I had realised when they refused tiny spoons of time-consumingly prepared goop that they’d soon be eating pakora and pineapple and home-grown tomatoes and hummus and candy floss and popcorn and asking for more stovies with beetroot, I wouldn’t have been so anxious for the food throwing to pass.

I thought I was simply not cut out for motherhood. Too controlling, too desperate for order and calm to ever enjoy these little creatures that I grew. I felt disappointed. Muted and muffled. Subtracting the misery of early morning rises from the joy of a night out to see if the remainder was worth the effort.

I felt I was not living my life, but someone else’s. Clock-watching my days, these tiny little bosses demanding yet another hour of overtime in exchange for nothing more than fifteen minutes of snatched sleep in front of yet another episode of Thomas the Tank Engine.

But, sure enough, they passed through the breastfeeding, teething, weaning, screaming, pooping, tantruming and began talking, walking, sharing, laughing, playing, asking, singing, wondering and marvelling.

Those looooong days at home together began to get shorter as we filled them with baking and making and building and finding things out. I began getting back more than I put in. The balance was restored.

I know now that I am a good mum. In fact, I am the best mum, because I am their mum, and we all belong, we fit together like a perfect puzzle.

I will miss my days with the bundle of noise and action that is my little boy. But I look forward to sharing all the joy he has ahead, as the world opens up to him with every letter he learns.