Half term is over, and we had no trips to A&E. I consider this a huge success.
One year I had to deal with a two-year-old who got her finger nail ripped off when it got slammed in the door (her sister swears she didn’t do it) AND a three-year-old who broke her arm climbing out of her cot.
In the UK, kids seem to have time off from school every few weeks. I’m lucky as my children go to state schools. It’s worse at the fee-paying schools. The more you pay for your child’s education here, the more time off they get off school (I guess it comes in handy if you have a chalet in Chamonix and want to get full use of it).
Other mothers do not seem to get as stressed about having the kids at home. They all appear to enjoy the time off, and do all sorts of fun things like taking the kids to fly a kite, or dimming the lights to create a home cinema, serving Malteasers, and showing Annie on repeat.
I am not so inventive. I’m lucky if I get the kids fed and dressed and out of the house to the play park.
The week started off fine. A friend had emailed me about a drop-in tennis camp, so I could delay my decision to send them until the last minute in case there were gale force winds and a torrential downpour. My Scottish husband has rubbed off on me and I loathe paying for activities that my kids don’t actually attend.
So while the older two chased balls around the tennis court, my Belgian cousin, who is visiting from the land of chocolate and beer for two weeks, spoke French to my youngest (who had missed her last two French lessons). Perfect.
That took us to about noon.
“I’m bored mummy”.
So I brought out the coloring books and magazines for cutting and pasting, and some “Shrinky Dinks” my mother had brought from the US that I found stuffed under the last year’s phone book in the back of one of the drawers in the pine kitchen cabinet.
All this lasted 20 minutes.
“Now what mummy?”
The only thing that came to mind was the park. I looked at the girls, and they were wearing a combination of ballet dresses, hula skirts and witch costumes from the dress up box that lives in our cloakroom since there is no other place to put it.
I shout orders to get dressed NOW or we are not going to the park.
15 minutes later and still no one is dressed.
We finally make it out to the car. HM won’t budge because she wants the middle booster seat. Emily won’t get into the back. Alexandra is sorting out the car toys, picking the best one for herself, and this causes another round of arguments.
HM was starting to complain, “Mummy, I’m cold”, when suddenly the sky turned black and everyone went quiet in order to hear what was going on. It sounded like someone was throwing buckets of sand at the car. We looked out and it turned out to be hail the size of peas and it quickly covered the car and everything around us.
OK, we aren’t going to the park.
Back in to the house.
“Mummy, can we make cupcakes?”
I spoke with one of my friends this morning. She has four children (including a boy) and every time we speak on the phone she carries on about three different conversations, in addition to the one with me.
She told me her nanny walked out this break because the children were so badly behaved.
As I said, I think this half term was a huge success.
Photo credit: Karolus Linus
