Oh my word, the summer holidays
I’ve pulled out my laptop about 15 times to try and write this newsletter, but each attempt gets interrupted almost instantly by the kids. Often it’s the baby waking up from a nap, sometimes both children demanding food again or, as it’s school holidays, my daughter constantly asking me to play with her (the current favourite game is vets. Yesterday I tried to declare myself the animal so she could just cover my body in plasters while I tapped away, but alas, more interaction was required).
I was cheered then by the arrival of
’s latest Substack entitled ‘Summer holidays are work’, because this year is my first experience of the proper six-week summer and OH MY GOD. Already I want to go back 30 years and apologise to my own dear mum for the complete ball-ache that entertaining me every July and August must’ve been.We’re two weeks into the summer holidays now, a fortnight which, in my head, was going to be spent plonking the baby on the floor with some Duplo while I watched the Olympics, my daughter wafting in and out with dandelions from the garden. In reality, my day starts at 5am when the baby wakes up, and from that point onwards it is non-stop work. It’s not the glamorous type of work either, like those #9to5 Instagram shots of Macbooks perched on desks alongside scented candles and Stanley cups. No, this is the hands-and-knees, physical, repetitive type of work, interspersed with trying to be the most fun parent ever because, as we’re constantly reminded, school holidays are very much the stuff of formative childhood memories.
You have to embrace the madness really, because otherwise you would just go mad. Take breakfast time at our house. Picture me in mismatched pyjamas and an unhinged topknot, already sleep-deprived having been up since dawn with the baby. My daughter swaggers in with the hair and attitude of Mick Jagger, demanding a very specific breakfast and then crying when I get some element of it – the bowl, the milk pouring, the ratio of marmite to butter – incorrect. Meanwhile I’ll spoon Weetabix into the baby, squatting down to pick up his sippy cup once every 15 seconds. Afterwards, he’ll scream in frustration at being left in his highchair while I race around trying to clear up the breakfast things, stack the dishwasher, wipe Weetabix off the walls and inhale a piece of toast. At the same time, I’m trying to respond to yells of ‘more raisins please’, ‘I need a poo’ and ‘why are spoons called spoons mummy?’ from my daughter. And I don’t even get a break afterwards!
I can cope with all this, because it’s just the essential stuff of parenting and always has been. Along with the joy and wonder that is having children comes the phenomenal workload. But what I do struggle with – more so since having a second child – is not having enough minutes left in the day to do my things. Going for a run, writing this newsletter, reading all the talking point journalism I should imbibe for my job – it seems impossible without a tonne of additional help, even though I split the load with my husband.
The school holidays represents the absolute apex of subsuming your life to childcare, and I’ve realised my only route forward is to accept this, rather than rally against it. Just as summer will – please god – eventually turn to autumn, there are plenty of seasons to life and I probably need to make peace with the fact that in this current one, my personal shiz must remain on the backburner. My current job is wiping Weetabix and picking up cups. It’s pushing swings. It’s being the best damn imaginary vet I can possibly be. So be it.
Recommended:
I bought the new, slightly bigger, quilted version of the famous Uniqlo sling bag and oh boy, you can fit so much more in it. The perfect mum bag, I must say.
This is what I keep in my Uniqlo bag to stop me ageing like a prune - La Roche-Posay facial sunscreen, much better for spraying over make-up than the Garnier one, and currently on offer.
My mum recommended Poor to me and I’m glad she did. Katriona O’Sullivan’s account of growing up in grinding poverty is a must-read (and not as depressing as it sounds).