Kids. They never ever shut up.
From the second they wake up, at 100mph, they are wittering. Not saying anything specific much of the time, just making noise with their mouths.
We’re in the middle of a conversation and they wander in with a pressing question. (How far off the ground is a car? Were you ever a baby? Do burglars believe in God?)
Or while you’re listening to the radio they run in and shout one of two requests at the bloody Google Home (I loathe it). American Pie for Henry and “Happy-ana-narna If You Feel” for Bella (which is her interpretation of Happy by Pharrell). I used to like both those songs but I’d be happy to never hear either of them again.
Or they’ll press the demo button on the keyboard and then walk off.
My new favourite is that one of them has hit on the idea of giving Xander an empty biscuit tin and something to hit it with. So that’s nice.
And then there’s the statements that I suppose they want me to act on and even after all this time haven’t worked out I have no intention of doing so, because they are all issues they should be able to resolve by themselves. ‘I’m thirsty’. ‘I’m cold’. ‘I can’t find my shoes’.
Occasionally we get ‘I need a wee’. But with each one they have needlessly interrupted either a train of thought or a conversation for maybe the 100th time that day.
And they're waking up a good hour earlier than they do when they're at school. In what is a really odd yet precise phenomenon, Henry and Bella can be all but guaranteed to sleep till after 7am on a day they are going to school. Often 7.30, on occasion 7.45am.
But at the weekend, or from the very first day of the holidays, they're up and at it by 6.30 latest. Sometimes 6am, occasionally 5.45.
And, apparently, home-schooling doesn't fall under the 'going to school' requirements for a sociable start to the day.
Xander will be up any time between 5.30 and 6.30 so it means there are some days - more common than not now - where whichever one of us is on earlies doesn’t even get that sacred 45 minutes of peace with the well-behaved, question-free baby. The only child who doesn’t mind if you watch the news over Shawn the sodding Sheep.
Instead, from the second we force our eyes open and wrench ourselves out of bed, we have all three of them buzzing around until bedtime.
As I type, Henry is singing a version of Frosty the Snowman but replacing the word Frosty for ZooZoo (his vaguely annoying pet name for Xander) and replacing the word Snowman with Poopoo. He's been doing that on repeat for 10 minutes.
He has come into the kitchen, where I am hiding out of sight but in earshot, and asked what the time is (firstly he can tell the time, second I have no clue why he needs to know. Quite what he has planned at 6.45am on a Tuesday I'm not sure).
What adds extra stress to the situation for me is that I have to remind them approximately every 30 seconds to keep the noise down because Andy is still asleep in the room above.
The thing with children is they can't remember anything you say from one second to the next, unless it's in their interests. For example, if you were to say they could watch TV after dinner, in maybe six hours time, they’d hold you to it. If you ask them - as they head for the stairs - to be quiet and not go into our bedroom because Daddy is asleep, they won’t be able to retain that information in their brains for the time it takes to get up there.
Case in point, as I wrote the preceding paragraph Bella went upstairs to ‘get something important’ and came back pulling a very bleary-eyed Andy behind her. Apparently she was overcome with an urge for a cuddle and climbing into our bed was the obvious solution. Meaning the aggressive shushing I’ve been doing for the last 30 minutes was completely in vain because his lie-in was never going to happen.
Basically with three children there is not a single moment in any 12 hour period that you can get two consecutive seconds of silence.
Last week a friend messaged to say she had spent the first half an hour after getting her kids into bed just lying on the floor of the living room. I know exactly how she feels. I have taken to coming downstairs and just sitting in an armchair, staring into space.
The thing is, the longer this goes on, the more I will miss them when they are back at school. Even as the lockdown has progressed, I find my attitude changing. They are no less annoying, but my tolerance has improved and my expectations have lowered.
I no longer wake up and think ‘maybe today will be a calm day’. I wake up and brace myself for another day of questions and requests. Of ear worms and nonsense talk. Of bickering and telling tales. Of being intensely cuddled and covered in kisses so wet I have to wipe my cheek when they look away.
I sit on the side of the bed, take some deep breaths and head into the fray. The other morning I caught myself muttering ‘ok, let’s do this’. It’ll be strange when ‘let’s do this’ applies only to getting them into uniform, sorting breakfast, and marching them up the hill to school.
They may be noisy little buggers but they’re my noisy little buggers, and I wouldn’t be without them.
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For those interested in Day 21's revelation that Andy doesn't look at this blog, he has just read that post. He claims he's too busy to do so ordinarily. That is, too busy reading about Tesla and playing chess online. No sign of my cuppa yet, mind...
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