Today was another bad day. I wonder if they’re naturally cyclical as our patience ebbs away, or if they will come more frequently as time goes on, until such a time as there are no good days. I can’t even think about that right now.
Andy went back to work, which essentially only meant he disappeared from the kitchen for an hour at a time before reappearing to bang some heads together (and, at 4pm let me escape upstairs for a precious half hour - I took a magazine but ended up just sitting on the bed and staring out of the window), so his absence wasn’t all that traumatic.
In the interests of the diary-keeping aspect of this blog, the only event worth noting was the cross country walk we embarked upon without any regard for which were public footpaths, which inevitably ended up with us clambering over barbed wire, through gaps in hedges and over locked gates to try and get back to the road. Thankfully there was no farmer with a shotgun in sight, and we managed to act all breezy when the kids asked if we were lost...
But aside from that it's a depressingly familiar mood round our way, I'm afraid. We're tired, we're fed up and the kids are getting on the last shred of nerves we have left.
For example, Henry cannot sit on his bottom. At one point he was doing his online maths work standing on a chair with one foot on the table next to the tablet. I can’t begin to fathom what is happening in their brains to make this a logical or comfortable position to choose.
And, like every child, you ask him to lay the table/get on with his work/wash his hands/get ready for bed and he doesn’t hear you the first five times. You ask (from a different room in a quiet voice) if he wants a snack and he’s at your elbow before you finish the question.
I am so bored of the sound of my own voice. I hate how snappy I am and how shouty I’ve become. (Who am I kidding? I’ve always been a shouter but usually only when we’re late for school - which is every solitary day - or someone is practicing cage fighting moves on their sibling and I can see we’re only seconds away from a broken neck.)
But then in amongst the irritation and defiance, you get these bizarre conversations with the kids that remind you how much their brains are still working everything out, and how little they really are.
Today Henry asked what the NHS was and as we were explaining Bella started remembering (sorry, ‘merembering’) about a time she had been to hospital (she never has). I asked what she was talking about and she very confidently began reminiscing about the time she got her shoulder pierced. (She hasn’t got her ears pierced - I don’t know where she has even heard the word before.)
When I was clearly confused and gently pointed out nothing had ever happened to her shoulder and she’d not been to hospital she started to get upset. Her bottom lip quivered, her eyes filled up with tears and she very quietly said ‘You do know Mummy’. It was so adorable and also so sad because she thought I was being deliberately obtuse. But I still had no idea what she meant. Apparently it was in Room 3 and she was very brave.
It seems so obvious now but she was, of course, talking about the vaccinations she had back in the summer. Thanks to Henry for translating. I had no recollection because it was only two days after Xander was born and Andy had taken her. But, God love her, she was so sure and I was so quick to tell her she was mistaken.
I need these moments to remind me how frustrating it must be for them to be navigating a grown up world, more so now than ever before. They have no playmates, we’re getting increasingly short tempered and we can’t understand their logic. And when we're together all day, every day we have increasingly less inclination to try and do so.
But they’re only kids. And tomorrow I am going to make a bigger effort to remember that and cut them some slack.
(I'll save you the collective raised eyebrows because we all know that by 10am tomorrow I will be back to where I am now.)
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