Last Day Of The Hols

The Easter holidays drew to a close here yesterday in pretty
busy style.  We had visitors in the shape
of my parents in law and my sister in law with her family.  Our nine year old returned from a friend’s
sleepover after having far too much fun to sleep and so was in the sort of form
you’d expect from a walking demon.  Our
teenager went to the last disco before her Junior Cert which started at 8
o’clock so obviously she had to start getting ready from 2 o’clock, (that
certain shade of tangerine they all like to be, takes a while to take hold) while
the “in between” kids played happily with their cousins without any regard for the
Department of the Environment noise pollution guidelines.
While eating we were treated to a floor show by my two year
old who is well capable of using the toilet but preferred to show the accuracy
with which he can aim at the potty , the sort of accuracy you tended to see
from the person who answered the questions on bullseye.  The five year old meanwhile imitated Dusty Crophopper,
complete with sound effects and actions from the Planes movie which was being
shown simultaneously on RTE and the seven month old looked on bemused but
definitely not fazed by the whole spectacle. It was a lovely afternoon.

When everyone was gone home and most of the kids were in bed,
all that was left to do was wait for my daughter to come home.  The baby, who doesn’t rate sleep, kept us
company and greeted his sister with a big smile as she came in the door.  It’s an almost surreal feeling sometimes to
have a child old enough to go to a disco and have a child so young he needs
propping up with cushions on the floor. It’s funny to have children who keep
you up at night for very different reasons.

Today, much to my kid’s disgust will be about getting ready
for the return to school tomorrow. 
Trying to reel back in bedtimes which have gone more than a little askew
over the last couple of weeks and making sure everything is ready for the week
ahead.  I have loved the break from the
routine, the freedom from homework and afterschool activities and the
reclaiming of our afternoons.  There has
been lots of fun had and far too many rows too but all good things must come to
an end. Now how to convince them that the return to school is not all bad……
#atleasttheresagrandstretchintheevenings #mamatude

Cousins

The Easter weekend was a hectic but mostly fun time here. Saturday, or Easter Eve as my children like to call it, involved tearing our house apart and trying to put it back together again ahead of visitors that we were expecting on Easter Sunday. Kids ran every direction possible, except towards us, hiding in the hope they wouldn’t be asked to do anything, and developed a selective deafness as we bellowed their names and most unfairly asked them to put their shoes in their rooms and hang up their coats. The mere suggestion they might do something further to help us prepare for the next day, resulted in protests of ruined childhoods, exhaustion and a general breach of child labour laws. Needless to say their protestations fell on deaf ears! In typical Irish style, I peeled what felt like a thousand potatoes and two tonnes of carrots to go with the roughly ten other types of vegetables that we had for the next day. I was almost drowning in vegetable skins but sure, you know yourself, you couldn’t have anyone going hungry.wink emoticon
Sunday morning saw excited children swap carefully chosen eggs and soon after the countdown to their cousins arriving began. When the cousins finally arrived the noise decibel levels went through the roof and hyperactivity of levels rarely seen before, kicked in. Its occasions like this among all the excitement and craziness that I am reminded what is truly important to my children. While they were looking forward to seeing what eggs they would receive, most of the excitement was reserved for the arrival of their cousins.This was what really made the day for them.
I love to watch my children together. I think they’re pretty close (that’s not to say they don’t kill each other frequently too) but they look forward to seeing each other after school and when one gets back from a playdate or an overnight stay with their grandparents. I have always taken particular comfort that they’ll have each other as they grow up but I suppose that will largely depend on whether or not they make the effort. I really believe in the “monkey see, monkey do” theory. It has come back to haunt me on plenty of occasions when my kids have reacted as I have, or said something that I have said (and definitely shouldn’t have!). The same I believe will apply to their involvement and contact with each other as they grow up, and go on possibly to have their own families. As adults they will have influences other than their original nuclear family in their lives. I hope they will remember the fun that they had with their cousins and grandparents and consider it high on their list of priorities and try to recreate the same fun for their children. I hope they will recognise the importance their parents placed on their own siblings and remember to be there for each other. Mostly, I hope they’ll still be the same (mostly) close knit bunch of lunatics that they are today.