On highwaymen

Family, LearnerMother, , , ,

What’s that Sinatra song – ‘Love and Marriage, Love and Marriage, Go together like a horse and carriage’…cute song, full of the joys of love, and, er, marriage. But like all good love songs, it seems to end before the kids arrive, doesn’t it? Just as well, I suppose – ‘Love and marriage and kids, go together like a horse and carriage AND DICK BLOODY TURPIN’

Not that I would wish to compare children to rampaging highwaymen. I mean Dick Turpin by all accounts was single minded in pursuit of his plunder, creating chaos to ensure he got what he wanted, and leaving dire consequences all around him if he didn’t. Nothing like kids at all…oh. Come to think of it, Dick Turpin actually comes out of this looking bit better – after all, he only wanted your money OR your life.

Seriously though, how the effing eff are you supposed to maintain any sort of grown up relationship with young children? If you google the top ten tips for a long lasting relationship  (I haven’t googled this by the way, and if I were to google it, it would TOTES OBVS be for a friend) but just say someone were to google it, while researching a blog article or something, and I bet the top 100 search results would be all spaff like  ‘Make quality time for each other’ and ‘When you talk to each other, make eye contact and listen carefully before responding’ and ‘Have a sexy weekend away’ and ‘Don’t forget the romantic surprises, how about a note in the fridge to tell him you love him’ and ‘Do a relationship MOT once every few months’ and ‘Make sure you have time away from each other with your respective circles of friends’ and blah de bloody blah.

Are you having a LAUGH, internets? Quality time? When, exactly? We used to put the kids to bed at 7 and know we’d at least have a couple of hours to do something together, even if it was only the VAT return…now they are bigger, bedtime is later, and our ‘us’ time is squeezed – and at weekends it’s non existent. Eye contact? We could probably do that, if we slept facing each other and propped our eyelids open – would that count? Romantic surprises? Do you mean the ones that appear from nowhere when you just might be having a bit of cuddle that just might lead to something else and – oh. SILLY ME. Hahahahdebloodyha. What’s next – ah yes, a relationship MOT. Right. So if it’s anything like the car MOT, you remind each other for weeks that it’s due, fail to book it, blame each other for said failure, finally book it, and then wish you hadn’t because you get a whopping great bastard bill to get the stupid car back on the road for another year, oh and a sheet of advisories just to tell you that despite all the cash you’ve just thrown at it, the car is probably going to die in the next 12 months anyway…Nah, not feeling the love for the whole ‘relationship MOT’ thing. And finally, make time away from each other…what the WHAT? If we don’t have time FOR each other, how on this earth are we supposed to make time AWAY from each other? And in all this time making, what do we do with the kids???

Admittedly this is made more tricky by the fact that we mostly work different hours to each other. We worked it out like that so that one of us could always be around for the kids before and after school, but the flip side is that one of us is working at least one evening a week and often two, and one of us is always working on Saturdays and sometimes Sundays. Throw in Welsh classes another evening (which are essential as the kids go to a Welsh speaking school) and weekly admin for the business, and it’s not unusual for us to go weeks without having time for a proper conversation. Weeks? Possibly months, come to think of it…

So, oh grown up ones who are out the other side, how does it work then? Is it just keep your head down and get on with it? Does it get easier? And when? Are we the only ones who are finding that our kids, desperately wanted and loved as they are, are Dick Turpinning things?

As always – pearls of wisdom welcome!

…16 months on and this remains as true as ever, so I’m linking up with ‘The Truth About’ over at Sam’s blog ‘And Then The Fun Began’…pop over for a root through truth, truth and more truth from some fab bloggers!

And then the fun began...

On homework and hand holding

Family, LearnerMother, , ,

Do you ever get that thing where you are so sick at the sound of your own voice saying the same sentence over and over again that you start to want to cut your own tongue off? It was bad enough when I just had one inattentive husband to contend with. Now I have three selectively hearing kids as well….my vocabulary has reduced to about 20 words, which I seem to repeat over and over again. Annoyingly enough, though I have lost ALL the words which used to make me sound reasonably well-read and intelligent, I seem to have kept the sweary ones and there’s no bloody selective hearing when it comes to that, I can tell you. They just can’t WAIT to repeat a lovely juicy swear word on the bus, or in front of the in-laws…anyway I digress…

This weekend, it was the homework chat on repeat. Number one son had quite a nice homework this week – to design a front cover for a project on their new school, which is being built for them ready for September. That’s a pretty fun task for a seven year old, especially as they can use the iPad or computer to design it. FFS, these kids don’t even know they are BORN, doing homework on kit like that…not that my boy saw it that way. I mentioned it to him on Friday, and on Saturday, and then several times on Sunday, and then again (and again, and again) on Monday night. Funny that – mention homework to them, there is a thousand more interesting things to do, and yet at 7am on a Sunday, they just can’t find a SINGLE THING to entertain their little brains with so you can have forty winks or even some rare – um – action – in peace and quiet. FFS. Again.

Anyway, I mentioned the homework so often that even the cat was getting bored of hearing it. In the past, if this situation has come about, I’ve just put on my firm-but-fair face* and enforced it. Because they are kids, and they have to learn stuff, and I’m the boss, innit. And also because I want them to do their best at school so they can have choices in later life. And, just a teeny bit, because I am a secret authority fearer and the thought of someone not doing homework, even though it’s not my homework that needs doing, makes me twitch slightly.

This time, I couldn’t face the battle. There’s so much going on for us at the moment – work is full on, we’re in the middle of a shop move, I’m job-hunting, we’re trying to get our house reconfiguration project off the ground, two of the three of them have birthdays coming up…I am run ragged right now, even by my standards, and I just did not have the energy for a fight. So I told him it was fine by me if he didn’t do his homework, but he would have to explain to his teacher why he hadn’t done it, and left it at that. Well, not quite – I also wrote a note to his teacher explaining that there were NO extenuating circumstances AT ALL for the lack of homework this week. Because I’m a Tiger Mother. Grrr.

I’m stressing about all this a bit now. Should I have insisted he do it? You know, with the firm-but-fair face? What if there is no comeback in school on this and he thinks he doesn’t ever have to do homework again? Is nearly eight too young to start taking responsibility for this? Was it a terrible thing to effectively grass my son up? HAVE I RUINED HIS LIFE? AM I BEING OVER-DRAMATIC?

Pearls of wisdom to share? Be my guest!

 

*yelled

On getting some of it right, some of the time

Family, LearnerMother, , , , ,

LearnerMother

I spend a lot of time stressing about all the stuff I do wrong. Too much rushing, not enough enjoying. Too much shouting, not enough playing. Too much cheesy pasta, not enough broccoli. Too much advice, not enough advice, the wrong sort of advice.  And I still feel horrendously guilty about the time when they were all very small and I was lost in the tunnel, and it was all I could do to get from one end of the day to the other, let alone be a Good Mother. Looking to the future, I worry a lot about the fact that my relationship with my own mother growing up was, ahem,  extremely tricky from age 11 till a very few years ago, (though much, much happier now) and that this pattern will repeat itself with my kids.

So finding the picture above tucked in the bottom of my daughter’s lunchbox one day this week brought a massive, HUMOUNGUS, grin to my face, one that hasn’t quite left it for a few days. Look, I’m smiling! And holding my arms out for a massive hug! And surrounded by hearts! Normally I’d assume that she has drawn a picture of one of the vastly more fun adults in her life, but she’s actually labelled it ‘Mam!’  – it’s definitely ME!

I hope this means that I am getting some of it right, some of the time. 🙂
Linking with Magic Moments at Oliver’s Madhouse – pop over and read more heartwarming stories!