Easter holidays. Pretty much done and they have had their moments (like nearly the entirety of Thursday and Friday) but also loads of good. This was the first school holiday with two girls at home. If I just put here that C likes quiet and E likes loud and very physical, that may go some way to enlightening anyone interested as to how time at home can go for us. Especially when S is home, too. Loud, and also can be very focused on something, which is amazing from my adult perspective, but infuriating for siblings who think that even though she can play with something for hours on end and not break it or bust it or eat it or bin it or ruin it in any conceivable way, the fact that she might have done that two years ago is still apparently a strong factor in their brains or may it’s just the infuriating THAT’S MINE that maybe I’ll have on my gravestone. 

Here’s some of what happened for us over these holidays.

We recovered. Good Friday I realised was the first morning in weeks and weeks that we didn’t have to be somewhere and we were all well. Girls needed a rest. I needed a rest. I made hot cross buns for the first time in years only I didn’t do great crosses so I scored the raised eight-year-old eyebrows of doubt as to their validity. Fair. I was really frustrated that, being a very crafty person who really likes making things and who has a whole heap of Easter crafts saved on Instagram and Pinterest, nothing of the sort happened. As I said, girls were wrecked. The place was an utter disaster as I’d been working so much (I did NO work over the Easter weekend though) so I did what I could to make that less … you know. The closest we got to craft was the girls playing with rainbow clay for a bit. I was sad, but also mindful for next year. I have plans.

Thanks to Bluey, the Easter Bunny did a bit of a hunt with clues for the girls. The most talked about bit was that he left socks in their Easter baskets!!! So the next clue was where their socks go!! And it was a fridge magnet and he had hidden some Easter eggs in magnet houses on the fridge!!! And so on. Unfortunately, there were not enough clues for E so she was moaning about that all morning. We actually made it to church on Easter Sunday, also for the first time in a long time. This was huge for me, and it made such a difference to my inner being. There were so many kids in the children’s area I didn’t even count but at least 30. 

This was a holiday of park visits. We went to parks, as many parks as possible. On Easter Monday, we went to one which is a bit of a walk away but has a bus just outside to take us home. This park is big and lovely and the big open spaces and tall trees always do my soul some good. At one point, C asked me to pretend to be a fox and she was a rabbit, and it ended up with me chasing all my three girls plus another who looked she could have been my child. It turned into me being Mr Todd and they were all little bunnies and that was then the game for the holidays. Throughout the holidays, we also kept running into E’s best friend. Both girls have younger siblings still at the same daycare and we would all either collide at drop-off and then sometimes go to a park together, or pass each other on the way home… and go to the same park together. Sometimes they would have their dogs which would have C over the moon. 

E’s big request for the holidays was to go to the hose park with this friend, so we actually coordinated a double family trip (although Glenn was working. Sigh). Ferries were caught. The hose park – a play area outside GoMA with a giant hose sprawled around it on which my kids will play for hours and hours and hours – was played in and new friends were made and ice creams were screamed about and consumed and then we went to the pink park – the playground in South Bank with pink slides – for more playing there before coming home in the middle of a stupidly hot day. Girls slept well that night.

This was the holiday of the flu stab. I mean flu shot. My plan had been to take E and C on the Wednesday in the first week, slather C in the numbing gel, get them both their stabs and then on Friday, S and I would get ours done and Glenn would get his as and when he could. Great plan, except C has been working up to this for two years. Two years of anxiety over the pain that the previous two flu shots caused her. She is, shall I say, rather sensitive, but also super interested so every nurse and pharmacist and phlebotomist trying all the tricks just fails as she will pay enough attention to answer their distracting questions but still keep a very close eye on the stab site. She screamed so much while E was having hers done that the pharmacist and I bailed. C tried again later with Glenn and closer but still no, so I forked out for the new nasal spray for her and four of us had our shots on the Friday. Yay for free flu vaccines!

This was the first holiday of a holiday activity. The dance school where ballet and acro happen holds holiday workshops and C and E both wanted to do the Disney princess one. Drop off 8.30-9, pickup about 3.15, and I could actually get to do some work without E suddenly at my side to tell me, “Mummy it’s ten dot dot four six. It’s ten dot dot forty-six!” Or being asked on repeat for colouring in pages or to take photos of drawings or loom bands or whose turn it is on the iPad and can we play a game on the iPad. Goodness. I love it when they do acro in the hallway – C can climb up to the ceiling – but the screaming when someone walks underneath without announcing it, and the arguing over whether a move should be classed as a bunny hop or an L-stand or a handstand, not to mention all the thuds of young people landing nearby – it gets a bit much. We all really appreciated that dance workshop.

Since then, though, it’s just been four days of frustration and fighting. Mostly. We have a rental inspection on Tuesday and so I am busy chucking stuff and getting frustrated that, not having done well in being a good example for keeping the place nice nor installing any form of respect for our home or just don’t just drop your used bandaid on the floor, girls are trying to run and hide at most mentions of making the place look nice. Or even just less bad. I am anticipating two days of intense stress followed by about the same of ooh isn’t this nice and clear and … ahhhhh. Wish me luck.