Sausages and TV. The two things I’ve tried really hard not to fall back on these past three weeks.
But yesterday was tough. We can blame Coronavirus, we can blame the kids, we can even blame our clients. But I know the struggle was all of my own making.
What’s that horrible saying? To fail to prepare is to prepare to fail? Well, that. After a jolly old weekend of messing about doing nothing we didn’t want to do, we let that mood drift into Monday.
So by Tuesday the kids were getting a bit fidgety from having no purpose, my work work was mounting up and the house was a pit.
I know all children would be happy to play endlessly without any school work, music practice, reading - nor even any bathing or teeth brushing, given half the chance - but they still need some direction.
So by mid-afternoon yesterday I was very much paying the price for eight straight hours of “just go and play while I finish this piece of work”, “the quicker you let me get on with this the sooner I can give you some attention”, “will you please just go out in the garden for 10 minutes, I’ll be right with you I promise”. But I never was because there was always something else I needed to get on with.
Needless to say, by 4pm they had both become pretty tricky customers. Henry was wafting about picking up everything (and dropping most of it) or asking who’d come and play with him. Xander was grizzling endlessly because he was bored of being plonked on the carpet surrounded by the same toys for the 18th day in a row, and Bella - poor old Bellsy who seems eternally destined to fall through the cracks - had turned into a gremlin.
Bella is the poor middle child. Too old to be left to chew a carefully curated selection of plastic all day, too young to be set challenges such as reading her school book, playing chess online or seeing how many keepy-uppies she can do without stopping.
She excels at colouring, cutting and using up all my sellotape, but even she has her limits. Add to that she’s a girl - a gloriously opinionated and emotionally complex young lady unlike her straight-forward, what you see is what you get big brother - and after a whole day of being buffeted from pillar to post she was understandably at the end of her tether.
Which meant I blinked and “15 minutes of TV” turned into an hour and a quarter of TV.
So at teatime “the S-H-1-T hit the proverbial”, as my lovely muddled mother likes to say.
The house was revolting - not a single surface in a single room was clear (Henry’s guitar teacher enjoyed an eyeful of our clean laundry as Henry essentially sat on top of it for his Zoom lesson), there wasn’t a clean plate, bowl or mug to be found, the debris from at least three meals was variously on the table, on the floor or by the sink, and the evidence of two children being left to their own devices for a day was very clear in the playroom, the bedrooms, the garden and their relationship.
By the time we’d sat through a very tense evening meal (the wrong day to decide to eat with the kids at 6pm - and yes, it involved sausages) no one could remember that they had ever been in possession of kind words, gentle hands or indoor voices.
Like a marathon runner on the home straight I gritted my teeth and piled everyone into bed (I think we’re on day three of “just wash your face, you can have a bath tomorrow”) while Andy poured his fury into blitzing the kitchen to show home standards.
I knew full well that the entire mood was all because I’d been occupied elsewhere almost all day. Behind a computer screen, on the phone, preparing meals, hanging out laundry. Something had to change.
So, rather than crash out and watch bad TV for the rest of the evening, I set to planning Wednesday.
By the time I had finished I’d done an hour’s worth of work that I wouldn’t have to do the next day, registered Henry on Oxford Owls (a reading website) Bella on Twinkl (an academic resource for small folk) and sent our printer into overdrive churning out Maths puzzles, English worksheets, Easter eggs to colour and dot-to-dots.
This, combined with the fact I am writing this post at 7am rather than 9.30am and so will be free to give them my undivided attention for most of the morning, should ease the passage for Wednesday.
I am fully prepared - physically and mentally - for a Good Day. I might even cook a nutritious meal from scratch. All being well we will get through another day without having to fall back on too much TV. Or sausages.
Comments