Busy weekends, general tiredness, specific tiredness, Opera.

I am tired.  My to do lists are too long.

I realise this is probably a result of doing things - we are doing a lot.  Or maybe we are doing... anything? We are doing more than we could last year with 18 month old twins.

We can go for walks with both twins out of the pram now.  Someday we will go for walks without a pram.  That will be so cool.

This weekend we went to the theatre with everyone to see the Welsh National Opera perform Play Opera Live: Shipwrecked.  Clara loved the theatre.  Ezra was interested.  Lily was tired.  Aubrey mostly enjoyed the folding seats

It was a kid theme show where they also sang opera.  I would say it was about 60/40 too much opera, exposure is good right?  I am a total pleb about Opera and at the end it turned out they had sung famous Opera songs throughout.  I thought they had just done 4 or 5 opera songs over and over but it was actually... 12 real opera songs. 

The weekend was just busy,  and the weeks are really busy.  There doesn't seem to be any downtime besides anything I carve from work and 5:30-6:30am, where I am writing this right now.  Apropos of nothing, I am so behind in photo albums at this point I'm half tempted to give up.  2026 is the year that we did too many things to remember.

I realize I'm moving forward on some small and big goals, which I guess is good? But also many of these are really boring goals. 

Last week I managed to get all my passport documents together so I can renew my US passport, which expires in July.  This week the goal is to mail it.

On Saturday Andy finished a many-year-long dream of mounting a second shelf in his/our office.  And he mounted pegboards for each of us as well.  In JANUARY we bought peg boards.  Apparently we need a 4 month lead time to drill two holes in our wall

My office wall is pretty instagram now though.  So thats exciting.

Mostly I am tired.  I even got a "tiredness screen" at the doctor which is a blood test that told me I am not sick, which is great, but somehow that doesn't make me less tired.  I realize I could probablys sleep more, or eat better, or do more exercise.  Somehow I managed to train for a half marathon starting around now last year.  Right now, I am failing to ride a peloton once a week.  Two weeks ago I did 3 days of a Peloton Strength programme and then got ill for 5 days.  In addition to being tired, I am being annoyed at being tired.  

In road cycling people used to say "it doesn't get easier, you just get faster".  I feel this is somehow the opposite. Parent life of kids age 2-7 is easier than all other age brackets I've experienced so far, and I am feeling more tired than ever at the effort.

5 of my favourite moments in Portugal on a Friday

We went to Portugal for 10 days over spring break - here are 5 of my favourite things:

Quinta da Regaleria. 

It's a UNESCO world heritage site, in the town of Sintra.  It is somewhat impossible to get to, up a windy road of one way streets with no parking on site.  The internet told us to take a Uber but this turned out to not be good advice.  I will have to put a full blog post about this soon, and although it was a very hard trip for lots of logistical reasons it was also an AMAZING trip because... it's amazing! 

There were a series of caves underground

There was a giant well that we could walk down that was like indiana jones

There was a castle thing.  Everything was pretty!

I would 100% recommend a visit if you are in Lisbon.  Especially if you don't have two year olds.  But also, if you have two year olds it's still amazing.

Ice Cream / Gelato

We at a lot of Ice creams.  Sometimes two in a day.  We went out for Gelato twice - one was not as good as the other (I don't want to say one was bad, because is ice cream ever bad?).  It was fun being in a warm country and eating a midday Ice Cream.

Clara loved Gelato:

Aubrey enjoying Ice Cream by the beach

Lily and Aubrey enjoying Ice Cream at our AirBnb

Cascais

We spent a morning in Cascais.  There was a wonderful park, gorgeous views, and a lovely beach which we didn't visit.  If we do Portugal again we may stay in Cascais and do Lisbon / Cascais / Beaches.  It was lovely

The town of Cascais was super picturesque

Ambling around with 4 kids is totally normal, right?

There was a giant park/Garden with an excellent play park

Old buildings in the park

Good Food

I realize this is a bit of a cheater topic, but I ate some yummy food in Portugal! 

We bought groceries every day from the local supermarket

We also went out to dinner! At restaurants! The twins have basically eaten every meal of their lives at home, so dining out was a new experience.  Our friends brought us some dining out play things, which helped alleviate my kids-at-resturants anxiety

We also cooked some tasty meals at home.  I had a dream of doing BBQ fish, because Portugal is supposed to be famous for seafood.  For £30 we bought 4 fish and 1 pound of fresh shrimp and it was soooo good.

The store prepped the fish for us

kids kept an eye on the BBQ

Seafood dinner.  Yum!

Adventure with Friends

Ok, this is also a cheater topic but I have gone on far too long on this post already.  I love adventures with friends! Our friends traveled so far to meet us (3 flights to get there, 5am departure but only 2 flights to get home - it was rough!) and I LOVED spending time with them.  It was fun having a house big enough for all of us, with space for everyone and a garden and pool.  The AirBnB was perfect.

Kids playing in the kid room at the AirBnB

Exploring ruins at the Sanctuary of Peninha

Attempting a beach adventure before realizing that March is not actually beach weather and the Atlantic does not make for great kid beach time

Exploring the Gardens at Quinta Da Regaleira

Cabo Da Roca - the westernmost point in Continental Europe

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Lily brought this home from school. It's a report on her Easter Holiday.  This is my 6th favourite thing:

Can you read five year old?  Bonus points for translation!

Sick Days, busy weeks, re-entry report

One of my goals with our recent holiday was to not get ill after I got back.  Over Christmas we went away for a week and then had a guest the following week and then when work/school started I immediately got ill and ended up taking 2 days of sick leave.

This time I felt pretty good when we got back from Portugal.  We left on Thursday the 26th and got back on Saturday the 4th.

Sunday (the 5th) was Easter Sunday and we did a local Easter trail in the morning

We had a somewhat fractious day at home, but we also managed to make chocolate easter nests

Monday was a bank holiday so we were off work.  The kids had another week off school (Easter is a 2 week holiday here).  We met friends at a local garden for another Easter egg trail.  

This one had some pretty excellent games:

Tuesday we were back in work, and the big kids were at a holiday club for 3 days.  The holiday club is a 15 minute drive away.  I forgot how much time goes into transport when the school isn't a 10 minute walk! Drop off took 45 minutes door to door, as did pick up.  Somehow I added 1.5 hours of driving into my workday for 3 days.  

I tried to take it a bit easy after having almost 2 weeks off work but mostly I felt unfocused AND I found some errors in work I had done before I left and mostly I felt a bit blah about being in work and didn't accomplish as much as I would have liked.

I figured all was fine as long as I could really get back into flow this week.  I'm still settling into the job I started in October and sometimes I feel way more confident and sometimes way less and right now I'm in a bit of a "less" state.

3 days of work later and it was the weekend again, and my Aunt was visiting us from the states.  She arrived Thursday after work.

On Friday I dropped Lily at a play date and Ezra went to the in-laws for the morning while I took Aubrey and Clara and my Aunt to see THE MOON which is guesting at a local museum

Saturday Clara and I walked to the local library and went to a cafe with my Aunt, while Andy took Ezra, Lily, and Aubrey to the bike park in the morning.  We all got back before it started hailing.  In the afternoon we did random house stuff / arts and crafts.

Sunday we went to another local museum since the weather was a bit meh all weekend and the museum had both indoor and outdoor areas

We also went out to lunch with my Aunt.  We have entered a new world where the big kids can enjoy eating at restaurants! It's very exciting... if only there were restaurants near us that I particularly like.  But it does mean when we have visitors we may be able to enjoy future lunches and maybe new foods are on the horizon for everyone.

Sunday afternoon I went to a playdate with the big kids, and Sunday evening we had a grocery order delivered while I called my dad and then we went to bed by 10 because life is tiring.

Yesterday (Monday) I got up at 5:30, had my coffee, did my planner/calendar stuff, had my second coffee, packed lunches and snacks for the kids, got kids up, made breakfast, and everyone made it to school/childcare by 8:30.

At 11:00 I just couldn't figure out why it was so cold, and why I couldn't think.  My hands were cold.  Also, my legs were sore.  Was it the 20 minute workout I did on Saturday? Unlikely.  Around 12:30 I realized.. .I'm ill.  Waah.  I took a lunchtime nap (I would say this is a working from home win, but my office also has a "quiet room" where I have been known to lie down when I was early pregs with the twins).  I dragged through the evening and bedtime and this morning I still didn't feel great (even though I had 9 hours of sleep)

One of the tricky things with working from home is... when does one take a sick day?  If I had to go into the office I would definitely be calling in sick. But since I'm at home, is it better to work at quarter speed rather than booking a day off?  Maybe I can do some simple data tasks while wrapped up in a blanket?  

I am fairly sure what I am going to do is work at slow speed today rather than booking a sick day, but if anyone asked me what they should do in this instance I would advise them to take a sick day.  Hmm.

In other news, we have another busy weekend coming up, but then hopefully some downtime.  I realize those in the US enter MAYCEMBER and in the UK we just enter... 2 more more months of school.  I'm looking forward to the school.

Do you feel different about taking sick days when you are working from home vs. in an office? Do you have different standards for sick days for yourself vs. what you would recommend to others?

We went on a holiday!

We went on a holiday! And it was fun!

I promised I would not become a daily blogger... and I did not.  We went away to Portugal last week and I suddenly felt weird about live blogging a holiday so sorry for the bloggy silence.

But also, the holiday was super busy.  There really wasn't much down time, and the down time was way better used catching up with our friends who joined us from America for the trip.  (FYI, they called it a "trip" and not at "holiday"... which was apt)

Anyways, it was great.  We flew to Lisbon and stayed at an AirBnB in Colares which was about 45 minutes from the airport.  I need to figure out how to both blog it and what to do with my 1,000 photos of it.

Our friends have a 2 and 5 year old so the kid game was strong.  My friend learned to say "I would like a table for 10, 6 children and 4 adults" in Portuguese, which helped to get tables and also to realize what a crazy number of kids we (I) have.

We booked flights on Easyjet, and paid for 1 checked bag between the 6 of us.  

Packing cubes are great.  We had to shuffle a bit to get it to the right weight (23kg/50lbs) but we just managed it.

We each got one small carryon item (under the seat - no rolly bags or overhead bags).  We mostly used this allowance for bags of sandwiches and food.  Big kids and grown ups had backpacks.

We also get 2 "child items" per kid.  This has to be a pram or baby backpack or travel cot etc.  We did make use of this allowance:

I'm not being lazy - I had Aubrey in a pram.

• The IKEA bags had our carseats (4)
• There are also 2 travel bedrails
• And the backpack Andy is wearing
• And the pram I am pushing.

We looked like a circus, but we made it to our rental car (7 seater, and we barely fit)

We spent 8 days in Portugal with 2 days of travel either side.  I will have to do a bigger post on that later, but it was definitely one of the best trips we've ever done.

We somehow managed to explore the famous Quinta De Regaleria in Sintra

My friend and I took our "big kids" (5, 5, 7) to Pena Palace

Mostly I made traveling with two year old twins look casual and easy:

Just kidding.  The trip was great, but two year old twins are not the easiest travel companions.  However, they loved it.  

And I am not too tired to function. I am just normal tired, and have had an awesome trip.  Traveling with friends is the best.  Especially ones who put up with 20 hours of flights (Portland to Lisbon is not Direct) to hang out with twin two year olds.  

Also, less importantly, I managed to get a new jacket on the day before we flew.  Marks and Spencer came through!

Weekend Family Fun, Marty Parenting, Grumpy Saturdays, and more Coat Conundrums.

I promise, I'm not becoming a daily blogger.  I have been getting up earlier (5:30am) and blogging appears to be the easiest thing that is both nice for me and OK to get fully interrupted by the chaos of potential kid mornings.

During our weekend planning Andy and I intentionally made this weekend a "family fun" weekend.  We have had a lot of family arguing and not-fun recently and we decided it was time for some fun.  On Saturday morning Ezra had his last tennis lesson and I was planning to take the girls to the library and park to ride bikes, then we could all meet up for coffee.

One of our children threw a massive wobbler about this. There was probably over an hour of crying by 8:30am.  One of our children was late for tennis, and instead of meeting at the park I dragged the twins out of the house at 10:30 (this is late to leave for stuff) and we went to a local museum to look at animals.

I was catastrophically annoyed about the morning.  I am not a martyr mum but we are basically becoming martyr parents.  Nowhere on our weekend plan was there anything resembling intentional grown up fun for Andy or me. No gym, no bike, no personal time.  Yes, kids at parks is "fun" but my exercise is basically 0 these days and it seems like it should be possible to fit 90 minutes of individual sport into a weekend.

Something to look into.

The afternoon play date went well, Lily's friend came for crafting and girl play and then her mum invited Lily over for Friday of school half term which happens to be the day I have all 4 children myself so now I have only 3 for some of the day and it should be so much easier!

Kids doing crafting is very cute, I forgot to take a photo.  There are easter stickers on everything now.

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 My non-progress on Jacket Audit is not ideal.  The only casual and put-together jacket I own is my denim jacket.  Which is great, except most of my trousers are denim and I start to look like a cowgirl.

I am going to be classically British today and go to Sainsburys to buy some clothes.

Maybe this one

Or maybe this

But also, maybe I need a fleece vest?

I probably just need to spend some time on Jacket project and wardrobe project.  It is a 2026 goal (to dress better and wear my clothes better).

What a playdate with me actually looks like // Maybe "stay at home" is made for people like me.

I feel like on this blog I do a fair amount of cute photos and then some "oh this is hard" chat and then more "we went to france!" chat. 

I don't really see many families with 4 kids in our age range that I can compare(?) myself to, so maybe I'm just doing it badly, or maybe I'm doing it well, or maybe it's like a tough mudder race and there is no bad or good because who would even want to do that? (lots of people... but it's morning and I can't think of a better analogy)

There is a mom at school with 3 kids, girl (8), girl (5), boy (1.5) and she always seems so calm with her kids walking next to her and not being chaos.  Other than that... I don't know many 4 kids families or even 3 kid families.

Anyways, let me invite you to join my play date yesterday!

A friendly aquantence had asked to meet up in the park after school.   I like her and haven't seen for a long time.  It was Friday, it was sunny.  Why not?

3:00 Twins were not happy to be up from nap, Aubrey was very sad.  I threw snack and drinks in the pram, got the twins in the pram, picked up the kids from school. Walked to the park. 

3:45  Got to the park. There were lots of kids there. Aubrey was still sad. Clara was curious.  Ezra and Lily ran off and I couldn't see them.  Friend showed up!  Friends mum helped push Clara on the swing.  Aubrey was sad.  

3:50 Lily said she needed a wee.  Friend and Lily went off for a wee in the woods.

3:55 Aubrey started yelling "wee wee potty" and I realized she had pooped AND I had forgotten the nappy bag.

I asked a stranger for a nappy and he said he didn't have any.  

I saw another friend with a 1 year old and managed to squeeze Aubrey into a size 4 nappy and clean up her teeny tiny poo while she stood on a bench at the park.

I caught up with friend's mum for 2 minutes.  

4:00 Lily and friend came back and Lily said she needed a poo RIGHT NOW.

I asked friend if she wanted to come back to my house so that Lily could do a poo.  She agreed (probably because this play date had literally lasted 15 minutes so far)

4:15 We got back to my house and Lily did do a poo, and then Aubrey was sad and vomited on the floor.  I tried to clean it up quickly while friend's mom was outside

Lily went to find friend to show her the giant poo.  Because... kids.  I didn't catch this because of aforementioned vomit.

I told Lily and Friend to go outside and play.  They did.  Friend's mum watched everyone outside while I cleaned up Aubrey and got her new clothes.

4:20 I noticed our neighbour I've never met had a girl who was looking through our garden and wanted to come play.  I invited her in.  She played with the kids in the garden while I tried to talk with friend's mum.

4:25 Clara fell down and broke her plastic bike in two and started crying.

4:30 All the big kids ran in to neighbours garden.

4:40 Friend said she had to go (which was the right time) so we yelled into neighbours garden to get kids back.

4:45 I couldn't get over to say goodbye because Clara had gone to the back of the garden and was trying to climb in neighbours garden and I was carrying Audrey

I managed to carry both Clara and Aubrey to the gate to let friend out and say goodbye.

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So that's probably the end of that acquaintanceship right?

I do really value being social and so have tried to keep different friendships and acquaintanceships going throughout these young kids years, but I'm thinking maybe it's just not a good idea.  Maybe my family in its current state is just not world ready, and the best thing to do is just not try.  Maybe 4 kids is just not something that people should have to engage with so closely.

Chat GPT drafted me this nice text I can send to the remaining few people who have invited me/us to do things:

When we had twins we said we weren't going to travel untill they turned 2.  Maybe we need to commit not to have a social life until they are... 4?

The Sun has come out... today! some randoms on a Friday

I have felt good this week.  The sun came out.  It might literally be that all my mental ennui is due to cloudy weather.  Would I be happy all the time in a more temperate climate?  Maybe I need to move to the South of France?

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Today I have 2 extra hours of childcare.  I decided not to make plans for the time, but to just do whatever stuff I wanted to do.  I spent some time working on photo albums - Aubrey and Clara both had 7 photos in Feb so their updates were easy.  I am saving Ezra and Lily and Family album for later since it includes the France trip and there are A LOT of photos.

While in snapfish I decided to order the 2025 Album I've never finished/printed.  I added some missing text and then bought it! And I got the best discount I've ever seen - 60%.  I thought 50% was the best, but now I'll know to hang on for 60% in the future

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Photo albums are a good reflection of how much things change between summer and winter.  Winter just... sucks.  I am not sure what can be done about it... Hygge is all well and good but it's not enough to carry from October to March.  I realize Fall is in there too... but I feel like fall is about a month long and then winter is 5 months.   I think bears have it right and next year I should plan to hibernate for all of January and Feb and come out on the first sunny day of March

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I can tell other people are also coming out of hibernation now, I've had texts off people I haven't seen for ages inviting us to play dates, which is nice.  This afternoon we are meeting up with a friend of Lilah's who I haven't seen since October.  It sometimes feels that our October Pumpkin Party is the closing ceremony of our social life.  Maybe we need an Easter themed Opening Ceremony?

Whats your weather? Is spring here? are your winters awful?