Bad mother confession #15 - the laughter of children...

...isn't always the light of the home or the bringer of happiness. 

At least, not when it's coming at you at four in the morning and the only light in your life is the landing light that's back on yet again while you drag your sorry butt back down to your two year old's bedroom for the 50th time in 3 hours to convince them that this really isn't playtime and you think 'dear all that is good and holy in this universe please get my child to sleep while I can still get three hours of shut eye if I was to fall asleep now.. right now... please... pleeeeeease you little sh*!&%""££!Argh!!'. 

Panic sets in... you might have work to go to in a few hours, the school run. Good giref you might have to talk to people. Your whole body's shaking with the need to slip into a coma. You start calculating how little sleep you'd manage to get if you were to fall asleep immediately, mid-step across the hallway. Sleeping standing up - is that possible? Surely horses manage it... can we? If I don't sleep tonight, you think, how much coffee will it take to keep me functioning throughout the day tomorrow... today? Oh shit, yes, today... and damn, there's no milk for coffee.. that's ok, you think, you can drink it black - might be better, might be stronger that way. Definitely tastes stronger. Why am I going on about coffee at 4 in the morning?!
 
You are not alone. Trust me.

There's a subculture of dreary-eyed parents across the globe, gently rocking their babies while they gently rock themselves in the corner of the nursery, throughout the night, just as they did the night before, and just as they no doubt will do again the next night, over and over into a swirling void of sleep deprivation and near insanity. I've been there, too, still am, on many nights, willing slumber to fall upon my baby, desperation kicking in... sleep, please....sleep.... and then, silently, they fall asleep on you.. and then... then... hardly daring to breathe for fear of waking this precious bundle that's puffing warm, sweet breath into your neck... then... you sit up for the rest of the night, willing yourself to stay awake, terrified that if you fall asleep you'll wake to find them squished under your colossal breast-feeding mammary mattress of a boob that's stuck itself to the front of your chest and weighs the same as a small cow. 

And then your arm goes to sleep. Still, at least some small part of you is getting some downtime. ffs.

Dear lord will sleep come again.. to any of us? Will anyone sleep again? You ask yourself minute after minute... 

Yes, I assure you, it does come, you will (all of you) sleep again, but only after several months, or maybe years, of calling your baby and yourself every name under the moon. And then you'll just have to get comfortable with feeling guilty for the rest of your life that you swore and cussed at your baby.

 

Bad mother confession #437 - How long's a piece of cheese string?

There is no cheese in the house. This isn't usually a problem in itself; no cheese in the house means less chance of a late night cheese and biscuit raid and a greater chance of my diet remaining 'clean' for a few more minutes. But preparing tonight's dinner, I realise it's the third time this week I've served up tuna and pasta. I made a vat of it two nights ago and it's still filling the pot. So I take the chefly decision that I will bake it in the oven rather than re-heat it on the hob, in the vain hope that this will dramatically alter the flavours and textures and no-one will complain too loudly. I also decide to throw over a quick homemade cheese sauce. And therein lies the crux of the problem: there is no cheese in the house. At least, none that isn't the colour it's supposed to be and doesn't smell of fish. So that all goes in the bin. I find my solution, rather predictably, in the lunchbox Cheese Strings that are lurking in the back of the fridge - vacuum-packed to survive goodness knows what and so overly processed that no microbes are likely to set up a colony on its surface. I'm not even sure they melt at high temperatures and I'm more than a little perturbed at the smell of cooking plastic as I stir them into the sauce. It's my imagination. I hope.

Anyway, there's now the sound of three munching mouths in the living room, drowning out The Flintstones that's still raging from the TV in the other room. So far, so good...

Bad Mother Confession #817: Wet trousers and socks for gloves

The title about sums up this morning. Although it's every morning. Every single morning without respite or relief. And it's driving me all kinds of crazy.

So yesterday we had an inset day and I spent the morning in the launderette (seeing how the other half live, as someone said to me - I won't name and shame). It was a generally ok experience. The manager was cheerily sexist in his commentary to me as I loaded the machines - 'You'll be wanting to turn your trousers inside out', 'Have you checked the pockets for tissues', 'Whites.. in with those... oh nevermind' and the rather wonderful 'I thought you ladies were all pre-programmed to know how to do the housework'. He did keep his bollocks... but only just. I came so close... so close...

And then I struggled home with all three kids and a ton of now wet washing to remember that the tumble drier isn't connected and we have nowhere to dry the clothes. So they sat in the basket all day til the other one came home and connected the drier. And then the drier took four hours to gently warm the damp clothes and this morning my son told me he had no trousers for school. 
And then I realised his trousers never made it into the failed first batch of drying in any case. So that's where the wet trousers came in. I usually holler at the kids for running ahead of me on the school journey - this morning I actively encouraged any opportunity to get a breeze flowing through his apparel. I hadn't realised why the daughter was screaming as I ran out the house to get the pushchair from the car at the last minute though until she explained, sobbing, that she hadn't yet got her cardigan on. I wondered why, until I understood she'd been spending precious time fixing socks to her hands instead. I still don't know why she did that.

Life with kids is rarely dull. It's certainly never quiet, either.

Bad mother confession #318 - A half-baked idea

I know kids... Let's bake some cakes! Now, go stand over there and watch. DON'T TOUCH ANYTHING!!

I hate baking with my kids. There, I've said it, that's a load off my mind now. Not least because I fear for my own calorie consumption when I finish off the remaining 19 of the two dozen cupcakes we argued over, but mostly because my inner control-freak gets unleashed. "Don't touch that! Don't make a mess! No you can't crack an egg... you know what happened last time! Get your fingers out of the butter!". My heart-rate increases, sweat pours from my forehead and my stomach twists in knots as I contemplate scrubbing the icing sugar off the floor and how I will ever clean it from under the washing machine?!

I have a reasonably ample bosom and derrière that suggest I should be the real heart-of-the-home home-maker... But I'm not. My hatred of cleaning out-trumps any feelings for realising the ideals thrown at us from every image of domestic bliss to which we're subjected. Just pass me the surface wipes, please, and all will be well.

Confession #81 - Sometimes, shoes can be resisted

Confession #81 - Sometimes, shoes can be resisted

Especially when there are only 11 days of the school year left and we're talking about school shoes.  His current shoes have massive holes in them and it's the wettest summer on record.  But £30 for a pair of shoes he'll wear for three weeks?!  I call it character building.

Confession #173 - A Mother's love is unconditional

Bad mother confession #173: A mother's love is unconditional. 


But even that gets pushed to the limits at half 9 at night when the kids are hanging over the edge of your bath after you've resigned yourself to call an early end to the day, dinnerless, having endured two and a half hours of madness and mayhem and faced with two trashed bedrooms, post-bedtime. And then they have the cheek to say they're tired in the morning. *drums fingers on the table*