I guess to start I should introduce myself. I am a proud mummy of three little girls, Paige aged 7 and twins Kaisey and Annabelle aged almost 2. I am currently 26 years old (yes I was a teen mother too) I live in the beautiful country New Zealand, and I run a business from home. I have a loving husband, though I was also a solo mother for 3 years before we met. The eldest daughter goes to her father for the usual fortnightly weekend and also on Wednesdays.
I really wanted to start this blog to be an honest review of the profession of working motherhood. Especially with all the hundreds of people telling us how to do it, and it seems impossible to keep up.
I do not intend to teach you all the way to parent, nor do I intend to slag off the ways we parent. We are all different, we are all doing our best. What else can we do? I do want to share any tips I come across that have worked for me, sometimes once, sometimes more than once, but these clever little buggars I am trying to raise kick me to the curb eventually every time. I guess all I can do is pick myself up, put a sticking plaster on my bruised ego, regroup and make a new strategy.
I am far from perfect, and to start off I want to share a day this week that just went really badly. It was Thursday morning, Paige (the eldest) had been taken to school by her paternal grandmother as usual, and it started at 6:50am when I was woken up by a phonecall from one of my work contacts. Now Tuesdays and Thurdays are my days "off" but when you are the boss (and only) there is rarely nothing to do on those days. This call was actually one I had been waiting for for almost a week so I was pleased to get it, and put on my most awake and together voice, struggled out of bed and went into the twins bedroom. Annabelle had kindly removed all her clothes and was grinning at me rather proudly, and Kaisey saw me and said "mama -up!" Kaisey does not like to be picked up and put on the floor, she likes to be carried to the living room (I should note here that Kaisey is not walking yet) so she had to wait while I continued my professional conversation and attempted to get some clothes on Annabelle, then (still on the phone) proceded to the kitchen, where I washed last nights dinner off the highchairs and attempted to remember prices and order lists. Lasts nights dinner was bloody messy! And CAKED in place... In the end I got the brush and shovel and attempted to use that. Cos that was really clever.... now I have a brush covered in sticky sauce to wash and still rather grubby highchairs. At this point Annabelle attaches herself to my leg, Kaisey lays down behind me and they both start to yell.
So there I am, on the phone, trying to sound very professional and together, with two yelling toddlers at my feet, a sticky brush in my hand and (I'm sure) an extremely panicked expression.
Needless to say I politely asked if I could ring back, hung up the phone and had to take several deep breaths to avoid screaming.
The day continued in this fashion. They twins simply wanted me to play, and I did my best, they were happy when i was on the floor playing with them, happy if I sat and watched tv with them, but as soon as I went to deal with anything else it was like a couple of very loud elephants were stampeding inside my living room, trumpeting at the top of their lungs. As the morning wore on I slowly got tenser and tenser until by eleven I was ready to throw them out of our nicely positioned windows, that have a ten foot or so drop onto concrete - ahhh silence!
Somehow I didn't throw them out the window, I threw them in the car instead, and drove to my mothers house. My elephants immediately settled quietly into mice impressions. Bloody little buggers.
My very kind mother offered to keep them for the afternoon, and I jumped at the chance, till I realised I had left the portacots in my husbands car, therefore they were at his work. Sigh.
So instead she kept them for lunch so I was able to go run my many errands at the mall on my lonesome. Any mother reading this will right now breath a sigh of relief (or envy) at the thought of driving to the mall, simply getting out of the car, locking it and walking away.
Mind you, my errands included getting nappys, we buy them from the cheap nappy shop at our local mall, they come in packs of 72, and today I was buying two of them because kindy required some more. In my infinite wisdom I parked the car on the opposite side of the mall, and had to carry two massive nappy packets which, being cheap, have no handles, and are wrapped in cheap easily ripped plastic. So I had to hug them as I walked. I'm sure I was quite the sight, I'm sure I saw a bunch of glamorous teenage girls pointing and laughing at me as I went through the food court!
So the day was fairly uneventful after that, I picked the twins up, and put them into bed for nap, then continued to work away at the big job my company has coming up next week. Meanwhile the washing sat unwashed, the dishes sat unwashed, the many many toys strewn through my living room sat untidied. And I felt guilty as hell that I didn't want to do ANY of it, I didn't really want to work either, but, cos I am a grown up (apparently) I did it. Sometimes I hate being a grown up.
And my last little thing, before I go I would like to share a tip, one I was given by a psychic I met recently, is one that has so far worked several times. They haven't figured out how to thwart me yet. One point for the mother.
If the toddler is yelling and you know its not really real, its just, I'm yelling cos I can, put your hand on the top of their head, about one or two centimetres from their hairline, and count to ten, then swap it with your other hand and count to ten. I have no idea why, but it stops the crying, I haven't had it work for me if they are ACTUALLY upset about something, so I have found its also a good test, if it doesn't work, further action is required! I have also found this is good when Annabelle gets really clumsy. Tends to kind of put her back in herself I guess lol.
Well thanks for reading my first blog entry. I hope you enjoyed it!! Till next time xx
The Ramblings of Another Mother
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