Solo Parenting Week, reflections, random house things, and a new fitness class

This evening is my last evening of solo parenting the twins (assuming that flights and trains all work tomorrow).  I did have a bit of a break as I was in work Tues-Thurs. I am fairly sure 5 straight days of childcare-free twin life would have me very worn down right now. 

Avoiding the heat at the museum on Monday

I also had the brilliant plan to ask our nanny to stay late on Wednesday so I could try a new sport class with my evening gym buddy.  She really wanted to try pole fitness, which started at 6pm and was half an hour away, which obviously meant it would normally be impossible.  But with extra evening childcare I was able to try the class with her, and stay on for a flexibility class after.

I know I just glossed over the whole "pole fitness" class... because it was actually pole dancing.  I love climbing things and being upside down, and my friend loves dancing.  I hate dancing, have no rhythm, and am super uncoordinated in everything I do.  I thought this might be a fun fitness thing to try, but it was actually 100% dancing and no climbing and no being upside down.  Although I'm not into dancing, I am into having a break from twin bedtime, so overall the evening was a total win.  

Because of bed transition and some prologued bedtime shenanigans evenings have been somewhat short, but I've managed clean or tidy almost the whole house this week.  I go back and forth between "it will all be a mess again in no time" and "I just love a clean house in the evening".  I also bought myself a 4 pack of mini Haagen-Daz ice creams which have been a delight in the evening (it's been upwards of 80c each day... hot!).  

I did manage to sort the art pile:

I found art from February in there.  I know that it doesn't look like a massive pile, but when I started unpacking there was a lot there:  

Tomorrow is recycling day so I can even get the art recycled and out of the house before kids get home. I also sorted Ezra's room and emptied every bin in the house.  I found 11 cardboard boxes tucked into kids rooms and other places and have broken them all down for recycling.  It is nice to get things out of the house.

I also managed to list and sell all the twins sleeping bags as a bundle. I made £8 which more than covers my ice creams!

And I ticked a bunch of the random low priority "to dos" off my list, like writing a letter of complaint to a cafe that charged me £2 for this tiny portion of beans:

The cafe did note that it was the wrong size for the side of beans, and said I could ask for free beans next time, which is way too weird for me to actually do.  I was hoping for a voucher or a free coffee or something, but I guess acknowledgement of the mistake is good enough?

Also, in a sign of how behind on life I have been, I noticed that my wall calendar in my office was still on February

Oops.

One of the things this week of solo parenting has reinforced for me is the N-1 rule for kids.  The easy number of kids is 1 less than the number of kids you have.  

For dinner we had pasta and cheese every night because why not? I'm just feeding two.  

We run the dishwasher once a day with two, and the milk has lasted to the next grocery order, and we still have apples and bananas left.  Apparently, dishes and food consumption are primarily impacted by husband and big kids?

I am excited for Andy and the big kids to come home tomorrow.  I feel like I could have learned something profound in the last few days, but mostly what I learned is that 99% of my happiness comes from good sleep for both me and my family.  I wouldn't have written a nice post on the Tuesday evening of twenty bedtimes.

If you have kids, have you ever taken split family holidays with some kids staying at home and some kids going away?  Did you take split holidays as a kid? Do you like a holiday at home?  Is cleaning pointless or is it a gift to future me...?

Wacky Weather, Twin Sleep, Solo Parenting, House Goals, and a Weird Social Thing

Wacky Weather

Last monday the high temp was 9c/50f.  We turned on the heat.  On Wednesday, the kids sports day was cancelled due to rain and lightning.  The internet said it was going to get warm but I didn't believe it.  And then... it got warm.  Today it's 90f.

It is commonly known that British people talk about the weather all the time, and it feels like a cliche, but also I think it's a very rational approach to living in a place with truly insane weather.  How can it go from 50f to 90f in 5 days??!  If we all lived inside a monkey enclosure and then we talked about monkeys all the time it wouldn't seem odd... because why would anyone live in a monkey enclosure? And by the same token, why would anyone build a major civilization in this climate? And then why would I decide to move here 16 years ago?  

I am baffled by past humans and past me.

Twin Sleep

Twin sleep has gotten better.  I made some pretty fundamental mistakes last week during my "how to handle sleep transition".  My primary mistake was Googling it.  Never google! The internet was filled with people who said "my twins slept great until beds and now my life is a nightmare and has been for months" and I just gave up and figured it was all over forever.    I did not handle it gracefully or optimistically and basically nosedived into a pit of despair. 

But in my defence, I am a trend person.  I like life to trend upward.  There was an interesting BBC article recently about a person born in 1962 titled "Am I the luckiest Generation in History".  In it the author concludes

"Even though the baby boomers are not the richest of cohorts, some of us have been blessed to have lived and worked in a country that seemed to be on a growth trajectory - things were getting better. It's odd to say, but I'd wager that most of us would rather live in a poor country where things are improving, than a richer one where everything seems to be in decline."

This is a roundabout way of me realizing that I would rather be experiencing a crap time but thinking things are improving, then experiencing an unexpectedly crap time after a while of improvement, even if the current crap time is way less crap than crap times of recent memory.  The short and sharp halt to my sports routine after just restarting exercise was particularly hard for me to take.   

Sleep has improved.  The twins have been napping again.  Bedtimes are getting easier.  I am not in fear of the next bedtime/morning time.

Nora has been waking up once a night, but she goes back to sleep fairly easily.  It's all OK, and trending upwards again. Maybe I'll do exercise again soon.

Solo Parenting

Counterintuitively, many things are currently easier because I am solo parenting right now.  Andy has taken the big kids to Austria to meet a uni friend and play in mountains, and I get 5 days of twin only life.  I have currently finished my first 24 hours of twin life and I think it's going well!

Yesterday after nap we went to a local Model Train show for the last hour, and got on the trains with no queues because it was almost closed

It was very hot.

This morning we went to a park at 8am because it was already 70 degrees and I knew we wouldn't get out later and everyone had been awake since 5:30am.

Then we went for a smoothie and a tea cake at a local cafe

And then it was still only 10:30am so we drove to our local open air museum to sit on the indoor tractor and spent 5 minutes on the outdoor trampoline

No idea why Aubrey likes to lie down

After lunch (cereal and milk and blueberries because I am holiday-at-home mom!) they went down for a nap and I listened to a podcast and tidied up and in 5 minutes it will be time to get up and maybe go to the Cardiff Museum because it is big and old and has no windows so hopefully won't be too hot.

House Goals and Tidying Stuff

Last night I spent 2 hours sorting the house out because it had become chaos and I really enjoyed listening to The Girl Next Door Podcast about routines.  Why do I enjoy tidying my house while listening to someone else talk about tidying their house?  I'm not sure, but it was nice.

Maybe tonight I can get through this pile of art

Or maybe I can even do some planning, because the last thing I wrote down was train times for a work trip I didn't end up taking.  Yes, this was a failed daily plan for Thursday Msy 21st, and nothing has been planned/written since.

Weird Social Things

Okay I'm going to end this very long post with a weird social thing that happened today.  A few weeks ago I was chatting with a mom in the park who I sort of know but haven't hung out with outside seeing in the park and I mentioned my solo parenting week and she said "oh we should hang out!" and I gave a vague "yes" but then she picked a day, and then I saw her last week at the park and she suggested a place and a time.  It was supposed to be today so I texted yesterday to confirm and she said "oh sorry can we do afternoon actually, I'll text you tomorrow to make a plan" and now it's 2:30 and I haven't heard from her.  

It's fine on a personal logistics level because I didn't make a plan around her and decided to plan my day anyways, but I am mildly annoyed because I could have planned to see someone else today instead of being stood up by park mom.  And all the weirder to me because I did not instigate this play date or even really push it forward ever, except to confirm it was happening.  Anyways, people are weird.  Luckily I have full time twins and a full time job so I'm not on the friend hunt now, but I can see how making friends is not as easy as... well... an easy thing.

Probaby grumpy and complaining sleep thoughts about twins, a short Evening in the Life, and some grumpy golden hours

I'm fairly sure I have sleep PTSD.  Now that we are a few days into twin bed transition, I have basically immediately reverted to sleep survival mode. This isn't fully necessary as current sleep is a lot better than newborn sleep, but sleep uncertainty is high now and I do not like it.  

It turns out, I now have an exceptionally strong "Sleep Uncertainty" mode, which instantly triggers the following sleep protective behaviours

• Cut out all evening socializing
• Go to bed as close to 8pm as possible
• Use work (childcare) hours for productive work only
• Sleep as long as possible in the mornings
• Lower all standards for house cleanliness
• Lower all standards for family food
• Delay all house/life maintenance hobbies, such as budgeting and photo albums

These things all took me a long time to embed when twins were born, but I now immediately jumped back into them and as a result, I am not sleep deprived.

I am very grumpy in other ways, and the house is yucky, and I don't know how I'm going to survive the 4 day weekend, and I really miss my (only newly rekindled) love of exercise.

The other newborn twin adaptive behavior I am good at is patience. Not in the immediate kind (I'm not good at being patient with the kids) but in the longer term kind.  I am telling myself that they will sleep again when they are 3 or 4, and I will only live like a joy-less sleep stressed and hobby-less human for a few months or years.  (also, I told you this post was complain-y right? I feel like using the word "joy-less" when talking about kid stuff is really harsh, because perhaps I should find joy through all this precious kid time, but I find joy through kid time when balanced with periods of non kid time)

Are these really good adaptive behaviours? Not too sure.  They certainly don't make me fun to be around right now.

Laura Vanderkam is working on a book about the "Golden Hours".  I like this premise.  In life, the "Golden Years" are the time after retirement and before death (I guess? That sounds morbid).  In the same way, everyday we get hours between Work and Sleep that should/could have the same golden quality.  

Here are my golden hours from yesterday

5:30 Finish Work
5:45 Pick up kids from after school, child A throws massive wobbler about how he wanted the other parent to pick him up.
6:00 Family dinner (pasta)
6:20 Clean up family dinner while kids play downstairs with Andy

6:50 kid with most transition difficulty struggles to transition out of games, go upstairs with said kid
7:00 Andy works on twin bedtime, I work on Lily bedtime (Pyjamas etc) and Lily has milk downstairs
7:20 Read stories to Lily, Andy works on twin bedtime
7:45 Lily goes to her bed, Andy works on twin bedtime
8:00 Say goodnight to Twins, Andy says goodnight to Lily
8:05 Say goodnight to Ezra
8:15 Twins awake and happy, I finish tidying downstairs and reply to some emails
8:40 Twins awake and unhappily yelling
8:45 Lily awake due to unhappy twins
8:50 Tell twins goodnight again
9:00 Try to plan week with Andy but fail because we are too tired
9:10 read in bed
9:30 Sleep

In 4 hours, we spent 2 hours actively putting kids to bed.  That is too many hours.  For reference, bedtimes used to run from 6:45 (twins) to 7:45 (Ezra) and I could usually leave the house at 7:30 if I wanted.

Perhaps there is a reason Laura is writing about golden hours now that her youngest is 5 years old. I will also have golden hours again, someday. 

Or maybe the 20 minutes of reading and 20 minutes of emails are the golden hours I should be looking for?  I guess that is 40 minutes of gold, amongst an otherwise rather tiring 3hr 20minutes.

For now, I'll just squeeze my golden hours into my 20 minute 6am morning coffee and blog post.

Twin Life - it Gets Harder As It Gets Easier

A few months ago I was listening to Girl Next Door podcast and the host said "it got harder as it got easier" about a rather stressful medical situation and that phrase stuck with me about twins.  Now, I'm not trying to compare twins to a stressful medical situation, and I acknowledge and appreciate how lucky I am to have two healthy toddlers (2.5 years old now!) and a generally uncomplicated pregnancy and involved husband and good home life etc.  

But also, twins are hard.

Andy recently noted that the optics of twins is great - it is adorable! two little people! they talk to each other and sometimes play together.

We look insanely cute when we are being cute doing stuff as a family. 

If you want an instagram life, you can definitely craft one with twins (as in, you can definitely make it look good for instagram with a #MajorFilter)

When the twins were babies people helped us because we were helpless.  A neighbour walked the big kids to school because I couldn't manage to leave the house.  Friends came and watched the 5 year old at times.  People dropped off food.  None of it was enough to make having newborn twins not basically awful, but it did make having newborn twins basically survivable.

And then things get easier.  Twins sleep at night.  They actually slept better than my daughter did at almost any age.  

When the twins could climb into their own Tripp Trapp chairs it was so much easier than when they were babies.  No lifting.  They can eat at the table with us.  It got easier! But also, because there are two of them, sometimes they finish at the same time and climb down and I can only wipe down one at a time and I just hope I pick the stickiest one before the other covers my house with grime.  It's harder.

We switched carseats from rear facing bucket seats to the sitting 5 point harness seats.  I didn't have to lift 30lbs of toddler into the seat and they could see out the window and we could actually fit things into the car finally without giant seats taking up all the space.  But also, they can both climb in and out and sometimes refuse to get in and sometimes mess with seatbelts (not their own, the one seatbelt that isn't attached to a carseat).  Getting two toddlers in the car is more than twice as hard as getting one in the car because one is always roaming or doing something chaotic while I'm helping the other.  It got harder as it got easier.

Yesterday Clara discovered the joys of climbing out of her crib.  Over and over she ran out of her bedroom laughing at naptime.  She also wanted to practice climbing in, and for the first time ever I was worried one of my kids would break their leg on the crib.  My other kids never climbed out with this much joy, or with this much physical awkwardness.  We "decided" (ie, it felt inevitable) to embark on the next challenge... beds:

Aubrey is very excited for her bed

They generally slept 7pm-6:30am.  Last night bedtime went on until 8pm.  They were up at 5:30am (although they are still in their room, 20 minutes later).  I am not sure how naps are going to go today, or if they will happen at all.   With one kid, we never had trouble keeping naps while in beds.  With two, they mess with each other.  Aubrey would be so good at this change.  Clara is a troll (or, more kindly, Clara is a future disrupter and innovator!)

Things that got easier with one get harder with two.

I annoy myself with the following thought: If the twins stay up to 8 and wake up at 5:30 and don't nap then how can I fit every household responsibility and grown-up joy into that 9.5 hours?  And also put my other two kids to bed? And clean up dinner? And read? 

Yesterday, after twins failed to nap, and therefore I failed to workout, I noted that I just needed to figure out how to fit my 45 minute peloton workout into 15 minutes.  

That basically feels like my life.  Expansive time with two year old toddlers, ever diminishing time to be a human adult.

But I know it will get easier. And harder.

5 on a Friday - Oven Update, Wacky Weather, WhatsApp & Phones, and a Reading Update

I am currently posting from Friday twin naptime. I have a list of things to do and the house is chaos and also... it's time to write a blog post.  All the other stuff can be done later (probably).  So here's some random Friday updates for you all

Oven Update:

Start with the most exciting - we got our oven cleaned!  I loved all the replies about my cleaning adventures.  I am so curious why my oven gets so so gross, or whether everyone's oven is gross and other people just aren't bothered by gross ovens.   I've never been bothered by anyone else's oven so maybe I need to lower my oven cleanliness standards.

Either way, a clean oven is nice.  Here is before:

And After:

It turns out the glass window can be see through. Who knew??!

May Weather

I almost wrote March weather because yesterday it HAILED!  It's been so cold recently that we've started turning our heat on again, overnight temperatures around 40f/5c and the house is 60f/16c.  It really feels like February and I am not cool with it. (I mean, I'm literally cold with it)

The kids were very intrigued by the hail though:

Whatsapp

Well after 4 years of not using WhatsApp I decided to sign up again.  No major reason why...  I think primarily I felt like it would be easier to batch my texting if I could use the web to send texts.  I basically feel Whatsapp is a new iteration of email threads, which is why I think everyone hates email and then just uses email adjacent things and kind of hates those too.

I probably should write a bigger reflection post on what 4 years of no whatsapp has taught me, but like my travel blog posts and recipe posts this may never happen.  The main thing I realized is that I like seeing people and hanging out with people and the rest of the stuff that happens on phones is just... stuff.  I didn't lose anything social by not being on it, and I'm hoping I won't lose anything social by actually being on it either.

If you want to read lots of thoughts on my complicated relationship with WhatsApp, I've got a lot of posts here

Phone Stuff

I still feel like my use of phone is too interrupting.  As in, I don't spend a lot of time on the phone, but I use it frequently during the day as a distraction device.  I've been at about 2 hours a day for a while now.  I know sometimes that's google maps or taking videos or facetime... but I also pick up my phone 70 times a day. That's 4 times an hour, every 15 minutes of my waking life.  Not ideal.  It will be interesting to see if the addition of whatsapp increases or decreases this or has no impact at all.

Reading Life

I just realized that the Modern Mrs Darcy Summer reading guide is out soon! And then I checked and it's out today! I am excited to flip through it and start crafting my summer reading life.  I have slowed down a bit on my reading recently, however I've really enjoyed some recent reads.

Katabasis by R.F. Kuang

I felt this had mixed reviews but I LOVED it.  I loved the characters. I loved the smarts. I feel like this was written specifically for me, and also Rachel who comments on this blog, and also anyone who went to Reed College.  I mean, it's a book about smart people thinking that being smart is the best, while also generally being unhappy about their entire lives, and especially the bits related directly to being smart.  It's a book about social awkwardness.  In my opinion, it's a book about neurodiversity.  I loved it and I also feel all the criticism I read about it is valid and I can see why many people would not love it.

How To Read A Book by Monica Wood

This was a Lisa recommendation and I loved it.  Very different than what I normally read, but I super enjoyed reading perspectives of multiple characters in lives very different than mine.  

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

This is for book club and I am really enjoying it.  It would probably be even better on Audio.  Plus the main character is a blogger! So that's extra fun.

Have you had any great reads recently?  Is it annoyingly cold where you are? Is being overly interested in our phone use still a thing or is that something of the bygone 2024 era?

Sports Mojo, Peloton, Work Lunches, Getting back into it all

I'm not sure how much it's come through on the bloggo but I've been on an exercise slump.  Since I got back from France in Feb I have totally lost my movement mojo.  I was kind of "holding on" in December and January as well, I remember a night of listening to a Peloton meditation trying not to lose my exercise week streak.  

Well, the week streak is long lost, and in March I felt just BLAH:

I mean, I went out and did stuff and had fun, but I could not motivate myself to exercise.  I did exactly 3 things on Peloton that month.

I also started to realize how tired I was... as in, when I would try to lift weights my arms would scream NOOO THIS IS NOT RIGHT STOP IT NOW which was also kind of new for me.  So I took all of this "hmm" and made an appointment with my GP because I thought I might be low in B12 again.  

The good news was that my tests were all normal, except Ferritin, which I guess is part of Iron?  So I started taking some easy iron, which I hate because I think it makes me bloated among other gastrointestinal effects, but I am feeling better in other ways and suddenly I've got my a bit of my sport mojo back.

I've started enjoying my friend gym time more (I have two gym buddies and workout with each once a week), and I've been riding the Peloton and enjoying it again.  I'm definitely not as strong as I was last year when I did the half marathon, but I'm not as tired as I was when I wrote this post about being tired.

Also, I was a bit blog-spired by Kae who posted a workout! When I am not super tired I am usually up for any kind of workout and hers looked hard.  So I gave it a go! It was hard, I did about 75%, with lighter weights, and swapped out some of the exercises.  Squat thrusters with Bulgarian Split Squats was hard... lunges after was impossible.  It was fun to try something different and remember how much I enjoy random workout things.

Also, do you know what the most random workout thing (in my mind) is right now?  Hyrox.  That stuff is so crazy and also... I'm a little intrigued:

100 wall balls would probably take me an hour but hey, I paid for that hour!

Or maybe I just need to enter that half ironman I've always dreamed of.  except for the road riding on open roads with cars.   Also, in no way do I have time for (or maybe in no way can I prioritize) training for a half ironman now.

I'm not entering anything after a week of solid exercise, but I am happy to be feeling better about moving around and doing stuff.

Also, possibly because I am feeling better, I am also eating better.  I have packed myself my work meals for a few days and it means I come down and eat things that I like rather than whatever random bread thing is in the fridge or bread box.  I prep my meals while I do kid school snack

My two favourite work meals are

• Yogurt and Seed bowl (much fruit, chia, hemp, and flax seed, yogurt, and cacao nibs because yum.)
• Salad (ie box of stuff with some veg) with all the things (ie anything leftover, yesterday it had roast potatoes and salmon and also normal salad.  Bread with the salad.
  

Todays foods.

I am fairly sure I could eat the same two meals every day, or even the same 3 meals every day.  Also, I don't want to look overly healthy here, I also snack and eat chocolate and other things.  

I basically eat most of my food during work because dinner and breakfast can be chaotic with 4 young kids such that it's better that I don't expect to feed myself during these meals - I try very hard not to show up hungry to dinner.  This is a habit I would like to drop someday soon because eating a meal when hungry is nice, and eating food to prevent hunger at mealtimes is... less nice.

Anyways, I am hoping this sports and decent food mojo continues because being tired and feeling blah was super lame.  

Also, Ezra has got the Peloton bug!

He did a 2 mile ride on Tuesday after school.  In his school uniform.  It was cute.

What's your favourite work lunch?  Do you like random sports or no sports or one sport?

Cleaning Conundrums - Car, Oven, Fridge, House, Windows...

This is likely the most boring blog post ever but here we go!  A round up of recent cleaning wins, losses, and in-progress results.

Car Cleaning

A few weeks ago we had our car professionally cleaned by a mobile valet person.  I've never had this before, we usually don't clean our car or just hoover it ourselves but after 3 years of ownership it was getting a bit... grim.  In February Lily had a vomiting bug which unfortunately landed right in the back seat of the car. I googled what to do and the top answer was "Burn your car" followed by "take it where the taxis go" and then finally some mom blog websites said to clean it with baking soda and so that's what I did.  

On the plus side, the car did not smell like vomit! 

On the minus, there has been a lot of baking soda in our car since February.  That stuff is hard to get out of fabric.

Anyways, the mobile valet guy came (I did pre-warn that it was a very family used car!) and he managed to get most of the baking soda out and also all the grim stuff that driving a car for 3 years with 4 kids will do.  It was £75 and he spent over 2 hours working on it.   We only did the inside to save money, but I bet it would have looked super nice to do the outside as well.  Next time!

Baking soda slightly visible behind Ezra

Oven Cleaning

About once a year we get our oven professionally cleaned.  I started doing this after I accidentally splashed oven cleaner in my eye while cleaning our oven on the day we moved in.  Luckily I remembered how to flush my eye out (thanks Chem 101!) and then I brought the box of oven cleaner into A&E where they numbed my eye and then flushed it out more and then charged me nothing because the NHS is free (or taxpayer funded) and so I walked out with eye drops and also colored numbing dye dripping down my face while I took the bus home (Andy was turning in keys to our other home so couldn't get me... plus I probably still wasn't the weirdest person on that bus).

Since then I've paid to have our oven cleaned.  Every year I think "this is the last time I"ll get this oven cleaned, because there is no way this kitchen can last another year!" and after saying this for 6 years I messaged our oven cleaner and... he retired.

I googled how to clean our oven naturally and again the internet moms suggested baking soda and then I decided to save £60 and do it myself.  And that was 3 months ago and I have not even tried.  So a new oven cleaner is coming on Wednesday to clean our very gross oven.  That has lasted another year.  And currently looks like this.  Yuck.

(Roasted carrots and chunky chips for dinner)

Fridge Cleaning

I seem to be the only person in this house capable of recognizing when the fridge needs cleaning.  I generally wipe out the veg drawer when it gets super gross, and I also wipe the crumbs off the bottom when they annoy me enough.  However, when we went to Portugal and stayed at an AirBnB with an actually clean fridge I came home and realized that our fridge was just... gross.   

We arrived home on a Saturday, put the kids to bed, and while waiting for our grocery order Andy and I started properly cleaning all the shelves and drawers.  It was as empty as it's ever been and was the perfect time for a deep clean and I am so glad we did, because now it's just normal dirty and I am unlikely to clean it again for a year.

Standard fridge situation

Window Cleaning

We pay someone to wash our windows on the outside every 2 months.  First we had a person who did it for £8 but he was odd and unreliable.  Then we had someone who did all the windows for £15 and used a squeegee and it was so clean! But then he stopped showing up.  Now we pay a very nice guy £25 and he turns up regularly and does a great job.  I also use it as a reminder to clean the inside of the windows because toddler prints are everywhere.

House Cleaning

We don't currently have a house cleaner.  I have given up on the search. It's probably better financially.  Maybe we can do a one-off clean once a year.  Maybe our house will just be kind of gross until the twins start school.  

How often do you clean your car? Do you pay for it or do it yourself?  What about your Oven?  Anything else in your home you outsource cleaning? What do you hate cleaning or love cleaning?  Have you ever had a ridiculous cleaning related injury?

Busy weeks, kid life, a chaotic plan is a plan for chaos.

On the train home from the airport the kids used one of my planner pages and my planner stickers to make this party scene, and I love it.  

This week felt BUSY.  I guess maybe every week feel busy... but I keep feeling like if I could just have a day to catch up I would be less chaos.  

We got back from Rennes on Monday night and the kids went to school on Tuesday, however I had a day with the Twins on Tuesday as our nanny is on holiday now.  I took them to Gymnastics, which they loved

Toddler gymnastics is something I'll miss when I don't have toddlers anymore.

Over their nap, instead of cleaning the house and doing dinner prep, I decided to do a Peloton workout.  I haven't been exercising at all because it just doesn't fit into my life, but I realized I need to make it fit into my life or I will never do sport again.  The house was a mess, the laundry was stacked up, and I needed to chop chips for dinner... but instead I did a 30 minute workout.  It's possilble!

Then I picked up the big kids from school and brought one of their friends home for a play date and it was CHAOS.  The twins were chaos, the big kids started fighting, I needed to chop chips for dinner, the twins were fighting, Ezra made them a dangerous slide to play on... I'm really not sure my afternoon workout was worth the chaos that ensued.  At one point Ezra and Lily got in a fight and the friend asked to go home... honestly I would have gone back to five year old friend's house as well if I could have... our house was not nice.

Somehow with the help of afternoon TV we pulled it together and kids calmed down and friend stayed for dinner, but I once again thought that I really shouldn't be trying to have play dates at this point in my life because sometime I feel my life is a basically a sausage factory and no one should see the inside.

On Wednesday I was in the Bath Office all day and it was... busy.  I had to leave early and got home late.  On the train back I talked to Elisabeth (YAY!) to help plan her stay in Wales and then I had a lot of fun making a Wales itenary for her.  If anyone wants a Wales holiday itenary I will make one for you - it was so fun to think of all the things I did as a backpacker and all the things I enjoy doing now and make recommendations.  Nothing says FUN like a good spreadsheet!  Also, I learned that the way to avoid people sitting next to me on trains is not by seat hogging with a bag or by manspreading or by looking scary... it's by talking on the phone.  No one wants to sit next to someone on the phone.  Sorry Kyria (although I was talking on the phone to my ear, not on speaker)

In the evening Andy and I had a FLOM.  During FLOM it was noted that these meetings keep the logistics of our family running but the lack of any grown up fun or hobbies is kind of annoying.  It's great that we keep our kids fed and clothed and we don't leave them places accidentally because we are operationally excellent at having 4 kids BUT it would be great to include some fun into our own lives again if possible. This weekend Andy is going to try and get out for a bike ride on Sunday morning and I am *hopefully* getting 3-4 hours of Rachel time this afternoon.

on Thursday I was working from home and Andy watched the twins.  I finished early to go with Andy to a school fundraiser, where the kids had a good time until one of my kids noticed they were selling sweeties and wanted sweeties and I wouldn't buy any (because we already had cake) and said child had an epic meltdown.  We made it home, had dinner, did bedtime, and then I went back to work for 3 hours because I had a deadline on Monday.  It was not an ideal day.

Picnic at the fundraiser, before the crying started

Friday twins went to their 2.5 hour nursery and I had a pedicure with my mom as an early US mothers day treat.  In the evening I went out to dinner with a friend, we tried a new mexican restaurant however it was expensive and not very good and I think I am giving up on trying mexican food in the UK.  It's just not good!  Perhaps mexican food needs to come from places that have mexicans and also ingredients for mexican food.  Wales has neither.

Ezra really wanted this photo at school pick up.

And now it's the weekend.  I'm excited for my Rachel time this afternoon - I would like to do about an hour of sport, and then do a big planning session for this month and maybe even some sort of meta-planning for how I actually want to approach the logistics of my own life.  Right now I'm definitely in a reactive stage... things *are* getting done, but it would be great to have a bit more intention with what I'm doing when because right now I randomly pick things to do every day/hour and while everything eventually gets done it's just not.... nice.  And also some things don't get done... after 5 years of monthly photo album updates I am now 4 months behind on all of them.

Twins are chirping, time to start the kid-day.

To Rennes and Back - Weekend Adventures with RachelinWales

When I first moved to the UK I thought I would take weekend trips to Europe all the time.  There use to be flights for £20 from Ryanair and I was so excited to go everywhere! Then I realized I had to get a job to go to Europe, and also they don't have £20 flights from Cardiff.  The £20 are from London, which is far away and costs far more than £20 in travel to the airport.  I don't think I have taken many weekend trips to Europe at all.

So, finally, a weekend trip to Europe!

My brother is currently living in Rennes, which is in Brittany, France:

I had never heard of it before but I am so glad we visited! We flew out on Friday at 2:15, but unfortunately they only direct flights were from Gatwick.  The train to Gatwick cost 1/2 the price of the flights, but it also took 3 times as long as the flights (3.5 hours!) so I guess value for transport time is OK?  

I was worried about timings but we got to Gatwick at 11:30 and had a leisurely wander through security and a picnic lunch at Starbucks before boarding the flight.  I cannot stand being stressed for time when kids are around (I don't like being stressed for time without kids, but with kids is 100% worse) so getting to the airport super early was the right call.

We stayed with my brother and spent most of the time wandering the city. 

Unfortunately after two weeks of great weather we visited during a lot of rain, but the kids were pretty resilient about it and my nearly-trash umbrella survived:

The old buildings in Rennes were SO COOL

Cardiff is not a olde-world-y European city.  It's fun to visit old and interesting cities with wonky 16th century buildings.

We also went to a Boulangerie every day. Ezra likes pain au raisin and Lily likes pain au chocolat 

And we visited a lot of play parks.  I am aware that British play parks enable more risky play than US ones, but this French play park had this structure which basically looked like a concussion maker.  It swung at all kinds of crazy angles and the kids loved it.

Another highlight of the trip was Le Grand Huit a really odd hipster/family indoor/outdoor carousel and fairground themed event space in an old train station depot.  There was an indoor carousel:

Wacky mirrors

And a ROBOT that made drinks for kids

We stayed 3 nights, and everyone was super exhausted for the return trip.  I have eaten my bodyweight in cheese and patisserie, I drank delicious 6 euro wine, and I had a great time catching up with my Brother and exploring Rennes with the kids

They are turning into excellent little international travellers!