The 9 Stages of Getting My Life Back

My children are now both in school and I finally feel like I am beginning to rediscover the real me - not the person I was before having kids - she’s long gone - but the me I am now, who has interests and activities that are not sublimated to the needs of my kids. Looking back down the road I can see certain signposts and markers of how this process happened:

1. Going for a walk on my own

It felt like flying, I genuinely felt lighter than air because I wasn’t carrying other people’s shit around. When I was no longer laden down by the preposterous amount of toiletries and other gubbins a small human requires when they first enter the world, I felt twitchy and odd but I soon found my old rhythm, walking at the speed I wanted, stopping when I wanted to inspect something and I really enjoyed it. I felt emotionally lighter as well. I was no longer subsumed in thoughts of someone else’s well being. I could take time for me; time to stop and smell the flowers… or make a beeline for the nearest pub and get utterly mangled. I chose option B.

2. Dyeing my hair

This was a huge first step for reclaiming my own body; once I dyed my hair I no longer felt like a mobile food dispenser, I felt like a person who could make milk. Much more positive. 

3. Full depilation (shaving every part of my body, not just the ‘priority’ bits)

I’m sure there are some people raising a perfectly shaped eyebrow at the fact this comes after hair dye but honestly I’m all good with being hairy. I usually just shave the bits that will be on show; pits or legs - rarely both. Doesn’t bother me in the slightest. Nevertheless, I must admit to a surfeit of joy when I did finally apply the bushwhacker and removed every last hair from the neck down in one glorious go. Felt like a dolphin. Loved it.  

4. Ditching the nappy bag

This genuinely feels like an unshackling. Without a bag for the kids you can run free, you can leap like a salmon and spin like a top. Dance, dance in the glory of weightlessness, in the joy of only carrying what you need for today, not what you might need in case the apocalypse (or a late lunchtime) happens. If my kids want me to go on the climbing frame with them I can. I won’t, but I potentially can. My bag now contains my stuff and possibly a couple of cereal bars, oh and of course three pebbles. 

5. Reading a prize winning novel

I’ve always used reading to help me maintain my sanity and that didn’t change even after the kids came along, but i did find myself reading differently. (Personally, I think short stories are the way to go when you’ve got very small kids as the combination of sleep deprivation and unformed anxiety makes remembering anything as complex as a narrative arc very difficult.) My firstborn was five before I read anything truly challenging, he was six by the time I finally picked up The Luminaries and finished it 2 months later. I’m still damn proud of myself for that. That thing is the size of a breeze block, contains multiple time frames, different overlapping and contradictory narratives and requires a superhuman level of interest in the New Zealand gold rush. I kissed my guns and did a victory lap when I’d finished that mo’fo’. (Also, I highly recommend it, it’s an excellent read).

6. Bringing a book to the park

This looks like an add on to the previous point but it really isn’t - this signifies something different. Taking book to the park isn’t about getting my brain back, it’s about hope. It’s about believing that even on a family outing I may be able to carve out some time for myself, that I can trust my kids to behave well enough and sensibly enough that I don’t need to watch their every move, thatI am allowed to focus on something other than my kids even when they are on my watch. It’s not always perfect, obviously they do need help sometimes but just bringing a book with me means I am packing hope as well as cereal bars.  

7. Remaining seated for an entire meal in a restaurant

Even more exciting than being able to read myself is watching my children learn to read, to draw, to self-occupy effectively. We can go to a restaurant now and 75% of us can go to the toilet unattended and luckily the one who still needs some help in that area has the bladder of a camel so she rarely needs assistance. This means that we can now share a meal, we can chat and eat without any drama. No one has to wander the restaurant endlessly in the wake of a grumpy toddler who refuses to sit for more than one course, no one has to go and stand grimly in a pub garden in November whilst five children squabble over a manky see saw and a slide that looks like its giving out free tetanus on every bolt. We can stay inside, sitting down, warm and happy and engaged. It’s fantastic. 

8. Both children are dressed and I didn’t do a thing

This first happened about 3 months ago and I’m still reeling to be honest. Big kid asked his sister to get dressed ‘to make mummy happy’ and she did it. She actually did it. I got out of the shower and they were both standing there, dressed and beaming. I shrieked out such a sound of joy my husband thought I’d just discovered the cast of Hamilton practising in our bedroom. I know some people are proud to win awards for their work but MY KIDS GOT DRESSED BY THEMSELVES *instantly dissolves into Gwyneth Paltrow-style tears and sobs and smugness*. Obviously the kids got wise to the power of this act so it usually only happens about once a month or so, but my god, what a glorious day that is.

9. A child completes a homework assignment without the use of tears or shouting or hair pulling

I know this one is temporary, only existing whilst we are still in the halcyon days of primary school where homework doesn’t really matter. I am sure there will be a lot more tears and hair pulling once real exams roll around. But for now, there are pieces of work my son can do whilst I’m making a cup of tea. He can sit at the kitchen table and complete about 50% of each term’s homework tasks (he has one a week) without any direct involvement from me other than a ‘Well done, I’m proud of you.’ which doesn’t cost me much effort to be honest, especially as I am pretty proud of him and his sister. 

There is so much to miss from those early days of care and chaos, not least the knowledge that no-one will love or need you so much, ever again. There is joy in watching your child achieve those milestones, the walking and talking and growing and learning and there is joy in the fact you are there every step of the way for it. There is a lot to miss and to mourn but I want to celebrate my milestones too because, after all, I am still learning how to be human, just like my kids. 

Decisions, Decisions

Well, we seem to have hit another minor milestone. And, to be honest I’m not really sure how to handle this one. Big kid has asked to drop an extra-curricular activity for the very first time. This has raised quite a number of issues for me - questions of the right and wrong of it all as well as leading me to a bit of a reflection on how our lives are constantly altering as we grow and change together. 

My first born is no longer a tiny malleable puppy who can be led by the nose to whatever activity I think would be beneficial. He is beginning to think for himself and ask his own questions. This is exactly what i wanted for him, he is the child I dreamed I’d have. In reality, it’s bloody exhausting. I am willing to answer questions on any subject (to the best of my ability), to let him make choices on day to day things like the clothes he wear, the books he reads and where we go on days out. Well, I’m willing if there is nothing else more important to do, like get to school, or finish dinner, or go to sleep or any of those other massively inconvenient times he decides to develop his own personality. Nevertheless, in principle, I am happy to support him in questioning the status quo and making his own decisions.

Quitting an activity feels a much bigger choice than that. We are setting ourself on a path from which there is no return; if I let him quit this will he then quit everything and amount to nothing? Will he spend his life aimlessly wandering from job to job doomed to become a musician or a stand up comedian as he’s not fit for regular employment? On the other hand, if I make him stay and keep plugging away at something that he hates he might become hysterically resentful of me and leave home at sixteen never to darken our door again, or he might become trapped in over-committing to things he hates, aged fifty and trapped in a loveless marriage with someone who despises him, stuck in a job he loathes, never having left his home town… its safe to assume I’ve spiralled a bit out of control on this one. 

There’s no getting away from it, Big Kid is starting to make his own decisions and form his own opinions. He is beginning to understand and question the world around him. In theory, I love the idea of this. In practice, it leads me to want to throttle him on an almost daily basis. “Yes darling, drinking wine isn’t very healthy… no I’m not going to stop… because being a grown up is very complicated and a little glass of wine at teatime is preferable to infanticide.” He was appalled with me and my boozy habits. (It's ok, I managed to wrest the iPad off him before he could google infanticide.) His moral high ground is unassailable and his sense of righteous indignation burns strong enough to power a small village. Quite frankly, living with a self-anointed saint is not always a barrel of laughs. I have taken to looking at renaissance paintings of martyrs just for some light relief. 

The irony is my second born has been doing all of this this since she was stringing two words together. She has constantly second-guessed my every move and hell and high water cannot compel her to participate in an activity unless she wants to. It has never even occurred to me to mind. I have no fear that this child will follow her own path wherever it leads her. My role is purely cheerleader and facilitator… and trying to bring her brother up properly so she can at least learn something worthwhile from the only member of the family she respects.

I like to finish posts with something I’ve found useful or I think might be helpful but to be honest, with this little quandary, I don’t know what to do. Any help or advice will be gratefully accepted.

Parenting patterns

I have been a working mother and a stay at home mother. I hate both these terms as they imply you only work outside the home. Every mother I know works bloody hard, regardless of location. I prefer the terms 'Major mother' and 'Wonder mother'. Allow me to explain...

Being a Major Mother takes excellent forward planning and the ability to manage every contingency. You have to hold a million things in your head and keep everything on track and running smoothly. You have to plan every day like a military campaign, making sure that there are enough supplies of food, drink and clean clothes to keep everyone going. You have to duck the emotional shrapnel when you've forgotten that it's mufti day, or you didn't bring the biscuit rations to get everyone through that really important meeting.  You also require a large spy network; I often relied on my son's friends to keep me informed of what he was doing with he days as he was stunningly uncommunicative about it. It took a couple of sessions of water boarding (well, bath time) just to find out what his topic was for the term. At work you rely on stalwart advisers and dependable gophers to ensure the smooth running of every action. It is exhausting and the barrage is endless but when the campaign goes well you can lean back and chew on a massive cigar and say things like 'I love the smell of copier ink in the morning.' and try not to think about the fact that the kids were too angry/sad/excited to give you a proper goodbye in the morning.

When you are a Wonder Mother, the little things get big. It's like you're living in Wonderland. There's no logic to what happens, you will frequently meet characters who are prone to fits of incandescent rage, engage in conversations that make no sense whatsoever and everything is as repetitive as a jolly caucus race and about as productive. CBeebies theme songs will flap their way into your consciousness and roost like a Jub Jub bird. Nothing ever stays where you put it down. Your child becomes big enough to fill your whole mind and you can feel yourself shrinking smaller than a teardrop. It becomes easy to obsess over the minutiae of your child's life; their relationships with those around them, their likes and dislikes, the exact colour of their belly button fluff. Your life is simply full of your kids. It's baffling and brilliant and often very very boring. 

It's easy to set these two positions at opposition with each other, that we are two tribes determined to prove that the path you are on is the best way. In my experience this seems to be something that mainly happens in print, not in the playground. I have been both Major and Wonder and I think both sides have joys and pitfalls to offer equally. Most mums I know understand that kindness is the only way we can all get through it. I know sometimes Major Mums might be put off by not feeling part of the close relations developing at the school gates, I know Wonder Mums sometimes look longingly at the heels and skirts and brushed hair that whizzes past them at drop off time but I also know that we all know that motherhood is a bloody hard job regardless of which camp you are in. A smile and a nod in each direction and the labels melt away and we can get on with being who we are, multi faceted mothers, women, humans. 

I blame the patriarchy. 

One thing that would make it better would be more flexible working hours for all. It would be wonderful if both parents could work 4 days (and a proper 4 days, not 5 days squashed into 4 which is what usually happens) rather than, as is typical, the father continues full time and the mother drops her hours at work and then shoulders most of the management of the household as well, thereby massively increasing her workload, not diminishing it in any way. If men spent more time at home when the children are babies, as is the case in Norway and Sweden, then they are more likely to become involved in the maintenance of the day to day household tasks and children may perform better at school if their parents share parental leave, though it's early days in terms of research to be stating this definitively.

Flexible work hours and working from home are more common but still more likely to be accessed by women than men. I do no think this is the fault of individual fathers - I no more want a men/women battle than a Major/Wonder one but it does feel that the workplace is struggling to keep up with the needs of families. Most of the fathers I know would much rather have the option of carrying out some of the child care. Amazingly, dads actually like their kids. 

I know this piece is very heteronormative and I wonder if employers should be talking to same sex couples about how they are managing the challenges that parenting offers. People who are less constrained by heteronormative standards and need to create their own rules and rhythms probably have a lot of excellent strategies to share with more traditional families like mine. Depressingly the Wikipedia article on same sex parenting doesn't even cover this opportunity, it's all about how having two parents of the same gender doesn't damage the development of children. Whilst it's nice to have a strong evidence base to support this screamingly obvious fact, this in itself shows just how far we have to go in terms of revising how we perceive families and out roles within them.

Acting lessons

All the parenting books say that routine is important for kids, that consistency and repetition will benefit your child and help them to blossom. What those books do not say is that consistency and repetition may cause you to lose your god damn mind. They also require a RADA qualification to maintain the appropriate emotional response when you are doing the same thing for the millionth time. Now we are back in the school routine these are the acting marks I have to hit as if I were on a west end stage. Every. Single. Day.

1) Bemused bafflement when looking for a child who is hiding in exactly the same place for the twentieth time in a row.

2) Awe struck wonder at the brilliance of a child who has just managed to get himself dressed... even though he has done it every morning for the last six months. (Though my gratitude for him doing this is genuine.) 

3) Worried confusion when my coffee cup/pen has moved even though the child who moved it saw me looking at them as they moved it.

4) Profound deafness when a child is sneaking up (like a giant in hobnailed boots) to say 'boo' to me.

5) Heart pounding shock when the 'boo!' has been unleashed.

6) Clammy handed horror when being terrorised by tiny zombies for the sixth time in an hour.

7) Decisive anticipation when buying imaginary ice cream from the imaginary shop on the way home from school. It must always be mint choc chip.

8) Child-like wonder as we walk past the magic fairy door and imagine what could possibly be behind it. The kids think it's fairies and butterflies, I know it's a rich person's walled garden. We all genuinely yearn to live behind the fairy door.
 
9) Unsmiling severity when confronted by an enormously long and tuneful fart from the back passage of either of my offspring. Farts are not funny (except that they are, they really really are).

10) A casual air of 'I'm totally fine' when dropping my little one at the door of the classroom she still finds daunting and scary. I nonchalantly walk away as I see the tears brimming in her eyes. This is without doubt the hardest acting I have to do.

It's All Fun and Games...

Here is a list of games you can play to help you get through the holidays. You can do this in groups day by day or set up a league to cover the whole holiday. Winner gets a bottle of gin and some Piriton for the kids. 

Laundry Line Challenge - it's summer, right? that means the clothes will go on the line until they are dry. How many days will they stay on the line? two? three? (my personal best is 5 days of solid rain)

Caffeine Carousel - how many cups of coffee can you drink before you shout at the children?

On the Floor - Leave children unattended in a room for 15 minutes. Enter the room and measure how many square inches of carpet you can see. 

Money Pit - plan a free day out with the kids to the park or some such. Now add in surprise parking/transport costs, emergency ice creams, drinks to stave off dehydration, waterproofs/new clothes/gift shop tea towels bought following sudden downpour miles from shelter, toys/magazines bought to shut them up, apps/in game purchases to stop them whingeing on the journey home. How much did your free day actually cost? Highest amount wins. 

Treasure Hunt - Encourage the kids to join you in a thrilling game of 'Where the Fuck are my Keys?' (Bonus points for not swearing in front of the kids.) A lolly and plaudits to the winner, a lolly and commiserations to the loser. Bonus points if the keys are somewhere whimsical like in the freezer.

Endurance - decide to stay home in order to save money; say farewell to all your breakables and encourage the kids to actually play with some of those toys they incessantly nagged you to buy. How long before you break and chuck on Netflix for the rest of the day?

DVD Jenga - Get the kids to request a film then try to pull the film out of the tower of DVDs using only one hand, without knocking the whole lot across the floor. My kids excel at choosing a film that is in the bottom of the pile. Every. Single. Time. 

Craft craziness - Encourage the kids to do craft activities. Time how long it takes to set up the activity. Time how long the kids actually spend doing the activity. Time how long it takes you to clear it all up. If the time spent doing the activity is over 0.005% of the set up/clean up time you win. Drink wine to celebrate. 

Den building - help the kids to build a den out of sofa cushions, then turn on You Tube Kids in the other room with the music on high in order to lure them away. How long can you stay hidden in the den before they find you? Extra points for including an escape hatch so you can make a break for the bedroom when they do eventually come looking. 

Displacement activities for when my last born starts school

Well, the summer holidays are drawing to a close and there has been a flurry of uniform buying, sorting and labelling. (Check out Woven Labels and then send me a big bunch of flowers to say thank you.) I feel like I'm in the routine of start of term prep now, but I found myself unexpectedly winded as I got to work on my daughter's outfits. They're just so tiny. Our baby is taking her greatest step into the wide wide world and whilst I'm as thrilled for her as she herself is, I know that there is heart break to come when I walk back into an empty house on that first day, so I've come up with a few ideas to distract me...

Clear out all the toys - charity shops don't mind teddies that are sodden with tears do they?

Clear out all the clothes - so I can mainline that baby smell from her tiny outfits that will never be worn again.

Gardening -  I can initiate full chemical warfare on the slug population during my cryfest

Learn to make martinis - The salt from my tears should give a nice piquancy

Watch all of Gilmore Girls on Netflix in one sitting. Attempt to match them meal for meal*. The indigestion should make a nice distraction from my red raw eyes.

Blog. Blog like the wind. I will write up all those lovely trips we have had this summer for the Days Out section. My nostalgia fuelled brain will burn away all the hissed reprimands, the shrieking retorts, the grind of it all and leave only the three of us gambolling gleefully through a halcyon summer. Then I will cry at the loss of our perfect pre-school life. 

Go on ebay. Search 'weird'. Honestly, just looking at this stuff [warning: definitely NSFW] is enough to stem the tears... until I find a photo of a weird baby and I remember that my baby and all her weirdness (like whispering 'bye bye towel' into my ear in a creepy voice) is now in the care of other grown ups for over six hours a day. 

Reread all my old diaries from my teenage years. Realise that I was more intelligent, articulate and emotionally stable at twelve than I was at sixteen (and now). Apologise to my parents for having to put up with me. Have a panic attack about the importance of education, the oncoming teenage years and how my children are no longer entirely mine. Put diaries away before I smudge all the words by crying on them. 

Learn to play backgammon. I don't know. It seems like something a grown up should know. 

Play No Man's Sky. Basically this represents rekindling my interest in things my husband likes. We are going to need some common ground once our chicks have flown the nest. It's probably best to make a start now. 

Watch some MTV. (It's important to keep your hand in with this stuff. If you take time off from watching the constant parade of gyrating human flesh then it's nigh on impossible not to shriek about how terrible it all is, in a voice akin to Hyacinth Bucket, when you do encounter it in the hairdressers or a clothes shop you over-optimistically thought might be 'for you'.) I will use this time on my own to fully express my sadness at the hypersexualisation of performers and thereby steel myself for the videos (vimeos?) of the future so my kids don't mock me for saying it in front of them. 

Do some exercise. I'm pretty sure I'll get whatever piece of equipment I want if I wander the floor of the gym weeping. At the very least I'll find another mum or dad going through the same thing and we can at least spot each other or wipe the moisture off the equipment for each other at the end. 

See my friends. I am lucky to have quite a few friends who are weathering this shit-storm at the exact same time. Grief shared is grief lightened. I am grateful to have so many people to support me and who I want to support. We can leap over this milestone together. See you on the other side x

* Though on second watching I have noticed that although they order a lot of food they only seem to ingest pop tarts and popcorn. That's why they're so bloody thin. 

Metrics

We are balls deep in the summer holidays now and I am up to about fifty no's an hour, frequent use of 'Will you just go to separate rooms!' and the occasional smattering of fuckssake's. There are three weeks of the holidays left. I am excited to discover the heights of poetry I will have to resort to the release my pent up invective by the time school rolls around.

It has been a proper grind this week (oh god, it's only Tuesday isn't it?). I am so bored of my children and their inane prattle, their psychological warfare and their constant harping need for shit like food, drink and lego. Today I asked them to eat dinner in silence, just to give me time to collect myself. They gave me a majestic 10 seconds. Now, I know that the request itself was wildly unrealistic but I thought just asking might somehow convey how worn out I am. I am a fool, a very weary fool. 

It is not all the fault of my children. We have had some redecoration done which has led to piles of books looming like stalagmites throughout the house. There is a very real concerns that one of them could topple over and crush the four year old. Art History is very heavy apparently. Therefore it has been a race against time to safely house these books in a way that won't damage them or the occupants of this house. At times I have been considerably more concerned about the welfare of the books rather than the children, but then I have known them longer. 

The problem with all of this is there is literally no time to regroup. If the kids aren't around (god bless all of you offering play dates and activities) then i am frantically dusting, sorting and tidying until I'm knackered, leaving no time for basic necessities. I had birthday cake for lunch today, eaten one handed as I drove to collect big kid from one activity and take him to the theatre (that's for another post). I know I'm meant to allocate time for basic nutrition and hydration but the image of the four year old half buried under Norton Anthologies with the Tale of Genji sticking out of her eye causes me to reprioritise. 

Also, we have just come back from holiday (so I think feeling this wound up and ground down is slightly preposterous) so there is no food in the house. I lieu of the weekly shop, I've had to spend time getting special stuff together for my husband's birthday because, quite frankly, he is the best one out of all of us and deserves a day when we show him this. However, without the discipline of school, the children seem to have forgotten what constitutes acceptable public behaviour and are both behaving like deranged baboons whenever they are in a shopping centre.  They are climbing the displays, swinging from stairwells and generally careening around the place and shriekingly terrifying passers by. I cannot be the mother who lost her shit in Sainsbury's as well as the mother who lost her shit in the Intu Centre, the high street and the car park so we still don't have any food. 

Therefore I'm hangry and thurst out (that's stressed out caused by dehydration - neologisms aren't my thing, ok?) and I'm not coping. On Sunday I burst into tears and it took me a full five minutes to realise it was because I needed the loo. Big kid is baffled by my mood swings and is expressing this by demanding more lego almost constantly and small kid is becoming the very definition of recalcitrant toddler with a death wish, which is mainly expressed by obstinately standing behind of reversing cars in a car park whilst I scream at her to move. Basically all three of us have regressed to a horrid form of toddlerdom. But hey, I get to drink wine in the evenings so that means I win, right? Right?

Of course, it is not all that bad. There are the hugs that literally and figuratively take my breath away, the casual kindness of big kid getting me a drink without being asked, the silly dance small kid does because she knows it will make us all laugh. My day is peppered with these moments too. My children can be incredibly sweet. They are affectionate and passionate and they try so damn hard. If I am really honest I know that it isn't as bad as I've painted it. For every 'no', there are at least two 'I love you's. For every 'fuckssake' there's an 'I'm proud of you' and for every act of public disorder there is one of kindness. Sometimes it's what you measure that makes all the difference.