Caitlin (10) and I woke
up this morning at 6:30am. I ate my breakfast in peace and got myself dressed,
all by 7am. James (2) got up so I got him dressed then I caught up on my fb for
a few minute. Every morning I have to push Caitlin to hurry up with each task
she has to do because if I leave it, she will spend 3 unknowing hours doing her
hair. So every 10 minutes I remind her that there is 30 mins untill we leave,
then 20, and so on.
7:30am - I wake up Mary
(4), my child who could sleep for 14 hours straight. I start dressing her and
while doing so, reminding Caitlin that she has 5 mins until we leave, she
starts yelling at me that she has no food and ‘oh well thanks, guess I’ll starve
then’. She had told me about an hour earlier that there wasn’t anything for
lunch so I said make a salad sandwich, take an apple, a muslie bar and cut up
some carrot and have dip and carrot. So I ask her what she had made in that
hour. She hand selected a muslie bar. So naturally while then trying to tackle
James to the ground to get his shoes on, I began to yell at her. ‘Stop having a
go at me for not getting you food when your too bloody lazy to make any!!’ I then
told her what there was to eat again, I found a muffin for her to take, I went
to hand said muffin to her and then I realised that I’m talking to thin air! She
had walked out and sat in the car back somewhere between ‘fine Ill starve’ and ‘stop
being lazy’. I threw the muffin at the couch, stormed outside and said FINE YOU
CAN STARVE!
7:40am – Getting the
kids into the car is tedious. It’s really not that bad but for me, the door is
opened, I sit down, I turn the key, change the gear and I’m gone. 30 second
job. Anything longer annoys me. The worst is when I’m waiting for a car park
and the person digs around for their keys, slowly unloads their shopping,
checks their mirrors, adjusts their hair, checks Facebook, takes a phone call
and then reverses out of the spot at a snail’s pace. Mary generally stands at
the door in the way of her brother who needs to get in first (only one of my
back doors unlocks, I need to get it fixed), and she’s somewhere in lala land
because she’s woken up 10 minutes beforehand. I asked her to move, her brother
jumped in, over the centre console, and into my seat. Mary always climbs in in
a way that can only be described as someone with two broken hips trying to
climb a stair case. It takes FOREVER. She gets buckled in, James laughs at me, I
yell at James and eventually he sits in his car seat. Now I get into the front
seat, lean across the console and try to strap James in while he argues with me
that he wants to do it himself. Which also takes FOREVER.
7:45am - We sat in silence
until I realise I forgot my phone! ‘CRAP’. What if day care needs me? What if the
school needs me? No one has my work number because I’ve only just started and
honestly, when do I have time to call everyone and give them my new emergency
contact? Too bad. I have just enough time to do the drop offs and get to work. James
usually kicks up a huge stink when I leave him and I usually hang out for a
little to wait till their settled but today, I just didn’t want to. So I didn’t.
And he didn’t even care. Winning!!! More car silence until we got to school. I said
goodbye to try to break the ice but I was frozen over when she just shut the
door. What really annoyed me was that I had given her $20 just before the
whole, I’m a crap mum who starves her children incident happened, so that after
school, she could go buy a matching top with her best friend. I really wanted
to run after her screaming and take it back but I figured her starving for the
day was punishment enough. And I didn’t want
to embarrass myself. And ain’t nobody got time for that.
There was an incident
with a truck, a ditch and a lot of dirt on the road so I had to wait in traffic.
Thank goodness I didn’t go back for my phone! But the whole drive I just had a
bad feeling. Like maybe I should try to call the school and daycare from the
work phone to give them my work number.
8:30am - WORK –
waitress, barista, all round good person. (Didn’t call the school or daycare)
2:55pm – Roughly 1.5
hours before I finish work, I get a phone call on the work phone. ‘I have Caitlin
here in sick bay throwing up. We’ve been trying to contact you. We have
contacted your second emergency contact and they gave us this number.’ Clearly my other emergency contact doesn’t want
to look after my throwing up kid! Like gee it’s just vomit which may be
contagious but you’ll be right lol. I had 20 mins until school finishes and my
work is 30 mins away. But I’m super mum.
3:20pm (5 mins late) –
Me: ‘How are you feeling babe?’, Caitlin: ‘Yeah fine now, can I go to my
friends?’ Me: ‘Are you serious?’. Lucky for her, she started to feel poo again
as soon as we got in the car.
4pm - Food shopping,
pick up kids. I get told by James ‘I want daddy’ (daily occurrence), then he
folded his arms and I had to bribe him with icypoles to leave the day care with
me. The kids had a bath while I cleaned the kitchen and then James and I cooked
dinner together. He’s really into cooking so I try to involve him as much as
possible. Having my 2 year old standing at the stove stirring strips of beef is
probably a very frightening picture, but he’s been doing it for ages now. He’s basically
a chef. We had souvlaki style wraps so the kids built their own, but then James
refused to eat anything else except cucumber. And Caitlin was feeling much
worse so she didn’t eat at all. The poor thing wanted cuddles but I was like ‘sorry
mate, I don’t want what you got. Have a wet face washer and a bucket instead’.
6:30pm - I got a
request from James for cordial so I started to pour, then James began to scream
and cry. He had changed his mind. He wanted milk. Mary wanted cordial. Caitlin
was still yelling out to me to lay down with her. For the next hour I just
floated around. A bit of YouTube here, a bit of cleaning there.
7:30pm – BED TIME!
Mary asked me if its bedtime yet. That kid loves her sleep haha. They’d been
naked since bath time because it was super hot here today so they went and choose
their own pyjamas and I dressed them. I popped them into bed and in doing so,
discovered that James had pulled everything out of his drawers when choosing
his pyjamas. Yey, now I have something to do in the morning. Mary has been
having night terrors the past few nights so she started crying saying she was
scared. Mind you, it was still daylight because its daylight savings time. I decided
tonight I would go the tough love approach, I told her she would be ok and I just
walked out. James ran out, turned on the hall light and went back to bed. It’s
the end of the week now so they went straight to sleep. The start of the week
is a different story! They get 4 days off day care and that’s enough time to fully
recharge the batteries. By Monday they jump on beds, kick walls, giggle ect
ect. But tonight, I get blissful peace, followed by a moan from Caitlin every
now and again.
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