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.
----
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).
Ok, sorry, but my stomach did a literal little flip flop when I read about your morning and an hour of crying and then dragging littles out and about... Oof. Been there, done that!! Also have to be real, yes, it's truly a wonderful time of life, but also, I think I'm okay that we're past that part now!! ;)
ReplyDeleteI also hear you on the denim jacket thing. I have a jean jacket that I love (and wear often on vacations) BUT I agree, it's tricky if you're planning to wear jeans! The cowgirl vibe is real, lol. 😅 I tend to wear mine most on warmer weather vacations where I'm wearing like drawstring pants or shorts in black or green or another color, for the same reason. I love that first green jacket in the pics! I think vests are super handy for travel, too. I wore one in Nova Scotia that was perfect for changeable temps- keeps you warm but not TOO warm. Obviously vests only work in certain weather, but I think they can be great to have! Good luck. :)
Kids not cooperating with fun things planned for them is definitely one of the more annoying aspects of parenting.
ReplyDeleteCanadian tuxedo! That's a great look! I like the green jacket but I am also in the phase where it has to work with multiple things and so I would probably opt for black. I know, so boring. Good luck with your easy day on Friday! Yay. *Sarcasm...
ReplyDeleteI can’t log in for some reason, or even use my name and url. This is J from jellyjules.com
ReplyDeleteOh, days like these are ROUGH. My daughter is an only child, so it was easier, but for sure there were still days when plans went awry and what we thought was going to be fun turned out to be crappy, and time for yourself can be RARE indeed.
I love the green jacket, I hope you bought it.
Dear Rachel, if I were lucky to find a balance, i would given you a nice advise then. But i don't. If it makes you feel any better, none of my working mom friends have any balance. You have to pick and choose what is important, and choose to ignore the rest. My best friend has 4 kids under 10. She has chosen to scale down to 30 hours (4 days), and still keep her manager's title. When she has a Friday off, she says she is doing "life maintain" stuff - loads of laundry, cooking, cleaning, etc. So do I when I work from home on Fridays. Its un-avoidable. The one thing that was very hard for me to understand was that the social media does not talk about it at all. It gets neglected. Totally communicating the wrong image of how easy it is to be a working mom. It is not easy. You are doing a fantastic job. Be kind to yourself. Prioritize sleep and rest whenever you can. Sending hugs! Sorry for cutting short, i have to go!
ReplyDelete