Christmas Conscience

I'm breaking my rule about never blogging after two glasses.  By quite a lot.  Feel free to go away again.

There is a post going around Facebook at the moment which is entitled 'When your Mummy says she is fat.'.  I read about two sentences and then gave up.  For all my kids' problems in the world, they will not learn about low-self-image from their mother.  Fact.

However, they do learn a lot of shit from me.  They are tired, over-excited and we are all slightly emotional after some wider family issues this week.  This has led me at various points to refer to either of them as spoilt, selfish, horrible and nasty.  My children don't really deserve any of that nastiness.  If we were to look at it as a whole picture maybe we would see that their bordering on spoilt-selfish-horrible-nastiness could possibly be a reflection of my drunken-busy-boring-selfishness.

I even gave them a lecture on Jesus this afternoon.  What was Christmas all about?  We got as far as a baby, a King and a little bit of goodness.  I leapt on the goodness to achieve my aim of trying to instil the fact that as a family we need to be dead nice to each other over the festive period.

I feel sorry for them though.  Stu works from home and regardless of all my extra-curricular, chosen arrangements, I actually only go to work two days a week.  I'm expecting more therefore from my summer-born Year 2 and Reception Year boys after their first term than I'm willing to provide from myself.  An afternoon of Veuve drinking with a lovely, bigger family than ours has put things in persective somewhat.  Christmas is about loving our nearest and dearest as hard as we possibly can, and being grateful for what we have been blessed with.  Thank the Lord for alcohol though and as I was watching the 'Outnumbered' Christmas Special the other night, I was delighted to see the Mum reaching for the wine bottle and then being told off as it was only 11am.  She put it back for a minute and then grabbed it again saying, "Oh, it's ok, it's Christmas."

Amen.

Time after Time

I did bath and bed for both boys tonight whereas normally we do one each when Stu's around.  It was slightly more frenetic than usual as they were tired and it left me reflecting on generally how much easier the bedtime routine is now they are a bit older.  I remember when Zak was nearly two and Seb was only a few weeks old flying into a complete panic when Stu had to work a bit later one night than normal.  "But... you HAVE to be home for bath time, how on earth am I meant to do both of them on my own otherwise?!"  Somebody more sane than myself would probably have sacked bathtime off for that night, put CBeebies on and had a large gin and tonic.  I always strictly adhered to the sacred bedtime routine however and could not break it, whatever shit was going down, (and a lot of shit went down in those days)!

This all led me to wondering what people in the 'non-small kid world' filled their time with in the busy tea/bath/bed time between 5 and 7pm?  I know it is no different to filling two hours any other time of the day but it is so ingrained in me now though that I can't possibly imagine what I would otherwise be doing.  I'm slightly afraid to imagine that Stu and I may well fill that time in the future firmly in the pub.  Surely not on a no-alcohol Monday though?

I'm a right clock-watcher.  Our whole lives run to a military-style regime that is ruled over by the Great Master Time.  I remember a friend quizzing me a few years ago on what really would happen if my kids' tea was served up at 5.05pm instead of 5pm one night. I'm sure nothing untoward would happen but I doubt very much that we will ever find out.

I am fully aware of how anal this all sounds but it works for me.  Shelley can't understand how I always cram so much in and am never late.  She claims it is because I know precisely how long everything takes and can't understand how that is.  I guess you learn how long things take when you do them at EXACTLY the same time each day...

I honestly have no idea how Stu fits into all of this, normally quite cheerfully.  At least the kids have been born into it so don't know any different.  Stu had a carefree, easy existence though, fluidly not worrying about any time, apart from maybe what time he arrived at work each day.  I guess he has just been trained; conditioned; brainwashed?  It amused me when he went to stay with a single mate of his a while back and came home honestly disgusted about how dirty his house was.  A changed man from the one whose open packet of green chicken slices I surreptitiously binned from his fridge the first night I stayed over there!

Anyway, forgive me, must dash.  It is 7.38pm and the dishwasher will need emptying in a moment in the Corrie adverts.  Joking!  Or am I?