Aah, let me take a second to enjoy the silence – my 18 month old is asleep on the sofa having worn himself out chucking his toys around the living room and my 6 year old is at school! Finally, I get some time to catch up!
This morning I dropped the balls – big time. Do you ever find that being a busy mum with loads of projects you seem to run just to stay still? Well on Friday I handed over the manuscript of my book to the publishers and breathed a sigh of relief! I’ve been working on it for months and haven’t had a weekend off since Christmas so after getting this biggie off my ‘To Do’ list, I had a cheeky glass (bottle) of Asti to celebrate. This is quite a ‘drinking binge’ for me as I rarely have a drink and can get hammered on 2 halves of lager! Anyway, major deadline met, my body decided to pack in. I’d been running on adrenaline for so long that I started to lose my voice, get a runny nose and get tired. I even went back to bed on Sunday afternoon for a few hours and still fell asleep that evening at my usual time of about 9 o clock (party animal I am so not!)
So this morning we are all getting ready for school when my 6 year old starts dragging her heels. She just got some cooking game for the Nintendo DS and wants to play on that rather than get ready so I’m trying to get her motivated with a series of tricks: gentle cajoling to start, then appealing to her competitive spirit “I can get ready faster than you”, followed by bribery, threats to remove stars from the Good Girl Chart and ending up in losing my rag! She eventually got ready and then it was ‘battle of the breakfasts’. She wanted ‘pain au chocolate’ and we had 2 left over from the weekend so they both had one each, cut into quarters. The boy happily sat in the highchair and munched away. The girl threw a strop because hers had been cut into quarters. Give me strength!
I had said earlier that she could ride her bike to school because I wanted to jog with the boy in the buggy. I have 4 stone to lose now to get back to pre ‘second baby’ weight so being a Time Management Mum, I thought i’d be effective with my time and kill two birds with one stone. Do the school run (literally!) and get some exercise. Anyway the breakfast battles had set us back so we had to go in the car instead to get there on time, prompting another tantrum! My head was pounding and I just lost it. After getting them both in the car and all the various book bags, PE Kits, dinner money, permission slips, buggy and hats, coats, gloves etc, I was still hearing whining from the back so I shouted “SHUUUUT UUUUPPPP”!
Instant silence! I should do it more often but then I think it’d lose its effectiveness.
I’d been racing round all morning, the house looked like a bomb had hit it and I still had a days’ worth of work to do. Anyway, a peaceful drive to school ensued and we must have looked like the ‘perfect family’ getting out of the car and walking to the classroom door. My daughter had forgotten what she was whining about and once she saw her mates, it was ‘social butterfly’ time! It made me think – how many of the other parents who looked ‘normal’ had been embroiled in a war just 10 minutes before! Actually, I don’t think they’d be normal if they didn’t have the occasional morning like this one. There’s absolutely no such thing as the ‘perfect’ family and people are lying if they say there is!
So one task sorted, my rest of the day looks like this: Now the manuscript is done, I have to attend to my other business areas, plus entertain the boy all day, sort out my mountain of washing and remove all the furniture from the living and dining room as the carpet cleaner is coming tomorrow (Yippee!) I used to have a showhome you know. Pre kids! I don’t know how I was so finickity – I couldn’t relax if a picture was hung on the wall wonky. I’ve had to relax my standards. A lot. But at least my home has ‘life’ now. I’ve also got to get old baby clothes and toys ready for the NCT Nearly New Sale in a few weeks (I’m having a good clear out and can’t wait to have the extra room!)
Calm reigns, for now anyway. In just over two hours I have to collect the girl from school, then the fun starts again! But I’ll tell you something – I can get more done in this two hour window that I ever used to be able to before I had the kids. They’ve trained me up – I was just organised before. I’m uber – SAS style – hyper plate spinner organised now! In fact, Once I’ve finished this post, I am getting my work blog sorted, getting my expenses paid from the BBC, making a dentist appointment, administering a new client, creating my autoresponder follow ups for Virtual Assistants who subscribe to my information feed and getting the stack of papers on my dining room table filed into my office (these were only the weekends’ paperwork). Let’s see if I can crack that in two hours…..
xx
It looks scruffy but this was all things ‘to do’ and once I’d done the job I had to scribble the task out so it didn’t distract me!
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