school holidays

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.

Dear parents of before,

I get it now. I’m sorry.

That is all. Except my remorseful self needs to vent and explain.

When I was a kid, I was quiet. Like, really quiet. The sort of quiet that always gets “She’s really quiet” and “When will you come out of your shell” comments. Holidays for me meant as much staying in my room and reading as possible. I remember getting all enthusiastic about violin practice, and would sometimes set a goal of learning a particular work over the holidays. I didn’t fight much with my brothers because I wasn’t interacting with them. We would usually go away somewhere for a week or so, which meant I just had a different place to read a book. There would be a day of stationery shopping and then the delight of covering books without any bubbles in the contact. In short, I don’t remember there being much happening that my parents had to be involved with and it was all pretty quiet.

Fast forward to being an adult and hearing the moaning about school holidays. Moaning about school holidays which would come hot on the heels of moaning about school terms and busyness. I was one of those child-free adults who wondered, don’t you like your kids? Isn’t it nice to have them around more and not having to worry about lunches and drop-offs and friendship struggles and homework and assignments and teachers and events and sports? Why do you complain about all those things when they’re on and then complain about the absence of all those things when they’re not?

Fast forward some more to the summer just before C started school, where we screamed at each other I think every day in January. Only near the very end did I realise she was nervous about school, even though she was saying she was really excited. Once she’d started school, her summer holidays had a bit more sister time, as work is mostly suspended for me so I reduced the daycare days for E and S. It was stressful having them all around more because of the fighting and the bickering and the constant need to make sure they are active enough so that they don’t fight so much and so that they will sleep. Hahahahaha.

Fast forward to this summer. Deep breaths. It’s been a challenge. Thankfully, one for which I was marginally more prepared and financially better able to cope. That is a factor not at all to be underestimated. Money can’t buy you love, but it can buy craft supplies, and that’s priceless. This has been a summer that has brought me inspiration in the form of a desire to write a handbook for summer. Yes, mostly so that I can do better next time and also, crucially, have more skills for the following summer when S will be about to start school.

There were two main elements for this summer for us. One was that I felt I actually had to get ready for school. The other was all the up-in-the-air-ness and not-usual-ness and change of the situation of having E finishing daycare and starting school.

Getting ready for school didn’t mean just going stationery shopping and covering books. In fact, the school made that rather easy by having a supply levy for prep-2 and by sending a booklist for year 3 for us to do online ordering and then it was delivered and I had to stick name stickers (ordered last year) on and that was it. Other things that weren’t so obvious but necessary were things like actually delivering the stationery supplies to the school last week. Buying proper school shoes. Wearing in said school shoes. Practising wearing the uniform and hat. Haircuts. Getting a lower railing for the wardrobe so that uniforms can hang there and be accessible by girls. Reminding them of drop-off and pickup routines. Packing lunches – I mean, starting weeks ago – for lunchbox practice and also what on earth will E eat at school?! Baking. Trying new products to see if they work or don’t work for lunchboxes. Paying all the dancing fees. Practising morning routines and hairstyles. Naming all E’s things and all C’s new things.

Although a lot more involved than what I remembered from being a kid, that bit was easy. It had to be done. It was done. Yes, I was sticking name labels on lunch containers after 10pm Monday, but it was all done. My To Do List was nicely filled with green ticks.

Then there was the other side. The other side that had me going ohhhhh I get it now. The side that is dealing with two personalities. It’s not so much the two people thing, but two conflicting personalities. Needs quiet. Likes loud. Can sit on her bunk and imagine things for hours on end. Will lie on her bunk and delight in annoying her sister by pushing her toes up against the upper mattress. The side that is dealing with the emotions of however many children are at home and everything that is in the moment and therefore crucially important as well as everything that is to come and all the worries and fears and insecurities that brings. The side that feels the guilt for letting girls be on screens for hours on end so that I can do some work and earn some money.

The side that, as the home parent, means no break not at all no none. This mental image of lazy summer days just is not true for the parent at home with the kids, the one doing all the upfront parenting. This might be possible in a few years but it decidedly is not the case just yet. And this miss, that expectation of relaxation and the possibility of doing other things that is then not realised, is so incredibly frustrating. Like watching the Relaxation Train go by. I really desperately want to be on it, and yet… there it goes, chugging away while I cradle a child on my lap to calm her after a sister fight or to talk through the what-ifs of school or as I work on what do I actually need to do this year in order for our family to function and try to declutter which also I can’t do because even though I want this immensely and our family needs this immensely I can’t seem to get to do it because children either play with what I’m trying to sort through or they kick off with yet another fight.

The side that is so draining that I am a blob at the end of each day, the “end” of each day really meaning when all three girls are all finally asleep, so sometimes 8.30, sometimes 10.30. So draining that I can’t muster energy to contact the people I love, the grownups and the support network who reach out even when they get nothing back. So draining that I can’t organise playdates or catchups or anything that will probably actually help the whole situation. So draining that the end of the day becomes precious, as I am determined to do something for me every evening, even if that means staying up past 11 cutting out bits of felt or material while watching snippets of a show that doesn’t require concentration on a plot line, sacrificing sleep for some insistence that I am still me and still deserve something for me.

I get it now, parents. I get it.

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