Being a Mum is wonderful. Don’t for one second think that anything I say in this article means I don’t love every second of being a Mum because I do.
Anyone who knows my backstory will understand that.
However.
Despite loving every single atom of both of my kids, they don’t half make life difficult sometimes. Getting even the most basic of household jobs done can be an uphill struggle, and as for time to yourself? Ha! Forget it.
You get a small window of time to yourself in the evening, but by then you are absolutely pooped and just want to stare into space for an hour before dragging yourself upstairs to bed. But you can’t. Because you need that time to plan birthday parties, or renew the house insurance, or catch up on the work you couldn’t do because one of them was off school. Again.
This creates a situation that people without kids just can’t appreciate. It transforms what may seem like ordinary, mundane, every day occurrences into little treats. Normal things that most people wouldn’t give a second thought to turn into the best moments of your day.
Here are some of them.
Going to the Toilet Uninterrupted
I won’t get too specific here, but whatever you go in there to do, if you manage to get it done start to finish alone and without being interrupted, that’s a win.
It happens so infrequently.
I have lost count of the number of times I have been watched by one of my children as I do my business. Either because I was on my own with them and had to have a baby in there with me, or had to leave the door open so I could listen out for any shrieks from my 6 year old.
When I am in there alone, it’s odds on that I get a knock on the door followed by “Mummyyyyyy? Are you nearly finished?” No child, I’m not, I have been in here for approximately 11 seconds.
Go. Away. 🚽
Finishing a Cup of Tea in One Go
A classic.
You make a brew, you take a sip, something child related happens, and by the time you pick it up again it has gone cold. If you even remember it was there at all.
I estimate that about 75% of my microwave use has been heating cups of tea and coffee.
So if you make a hot drink, and you get to finish it in one sitting, you have had a very good day indeed. Speaking of sitting, if you get to drink your brew on the sofa without having to get up it’s worthy of a diary entry. Like Bridget Jones.
“Dear Diary. Today I made a cup of tea and actually drank it, on the sofa, from hot to cold, with no one demanding more juice, no one needing me to referee an argument, and no one requiring immediate nose-wiping services. I barely dared believe it at first, but I am pretty certain this qualifies as the best day of my entire life.”
Honestly, this one really is a miracle when it happens.
An Empty Washing Basket
A house of four creates a lot of washing. Especially when the smallest two of the four go through several outfits a day due to spills and accidents, and the biggest of the four can’t use a fork without pinging gravy covered peas all over himself.
Yes, my darling man, I’m talking about you.
Every time I walk past the washing basket, with a lid that won’t close and surrounded by socks, it reminds me of the chaos my life has become. So on the very rare occasions that I actually see the bottom of it, I feel serene.
A beautiful moment of calm rushes over me and I want to tell someone: I have no more washing to do. All of the washing has been done.
Obviously, it doesn’t last more than half a day, but for that short period of time I am walking on air.
Waking Up Naturally
You might think that once babies start sleeping through the night, your own sleep goes back to being uninterrupted. It doesn’t.
Whether it’s my son trying to put a hole in the floor by jumping down the little landing stairs on his way for a midnight wee, or my daughter suddenly screaming in her sleep and waking me up, but not herself, I rarely sleep through.
That’s something I have come to accept. But it would be nice to wake up naturally sometimes. As in, waking up simply because you’ve had enough sleep. Not because of an alarm, or because of crying, or because one of your children is quietly breathing right next to your face.
Honestly when that started happening it freaked me out.
Our kids are early risers, and while my daughter is still trapped in her cot and can only scream us awake, my son can and does get out of his room and into ours. Sometimes he pounces on us excitedly and shocks us awake, other times he sort of, watches us and waits, and we wake up very aware that he is there and feeling a bit uneasy. I’m not sure which is worse, but neither option is nice.
There are maybe two or three times a year that my fella gets up without waking me and deals with the kids, and I sleep until I’m ready to wake up. On those sacred days, it’s like heaven.
I literally never return the favour, by the way 🤭
Wearing Clothes That Stay Clean
This gets easier as kids get older, but for the first 5 or 6 years of their lives you can forget it. Just don’t wear anything nice or vaguely expensive around your children.
Do you want to know why? Because children are disgusting.
They pick their noses and stuff their hands in their nappies then grab your legs, they sneeze and wipe it all over their faces then bury their face in your chest, they spill milkshakes on you, they splash you with puddles, they accidentally wipe their ice cream on you, they leave yoghurt around their mouths then snuggle into your arm to watch the TV… all of this ruins your clothes.
I am resigned to the fact that I will be, quite literally, stained most days until my youngest is at least six years old.
That said, there have been occasional days when I have made it through unscathed. Usually when I haven’t seen that much of my children! As a Mum, getting through an entire day in clothes that stay clean honestly makes you feel like the most competent grown woman in the world.
Finishing Pretty Much Anything
Including this article!
While writing this, I was interrupted three times – and my kids weren’t even in the house for most of the day. Once by my fella who had the day off and tried to talk to me about mountain bikes 🤬, and twice by my kids. The first time was when they got home from school/nursery and were excited to see me ☺️, the second was 10 minutes later because my son wanted to play Zingo and couldn’t give me half an hour to finish my work day.
But I wouldn’t change it for the world.
When my little tiny humans are big grown up humans I will have endless amounts of time to sit on the sofa in clean unstained clothes, drinking a hot cup of tea from start to finish. And do you know what I will be thinking about when I do? I will be remembering when my children were little and beating myself up for not making the most of every chaotic moment of it.
Still, it would be nice to go to the toilet without being interrupted once in a while.