Seeing the light

Bad night. J woke up twice with ear-ache, Anna woke up with nightmares and ended up doing a bed swap with Carl. Always a terrible idea. Theoretically it should be lovely sharing a bed with Anna and theoretically the notion that she likes maximum body contact is touching. In reality having a four year old human being as a living, breathing, wriggling blanket is rubbish and leads to nothing more than a stiff back and a grumpy mother. So the first couple of hours of this morning were not pretty and should be glossed over.

Late morning headed out into the beautiful sunshine, Carl took J off to a birthday party and Anna and I went to a cafe to wait for him to have lunch. That half an hour was just what I needed to get myself back on kilter. Mainly I was distracted by the sun shining through Anna's hair. Thanks to blip I had my camera on me and, thanks to blip, I gave the sunlight through hair more than a passing glance and really looked at it and Anna and thought lots of lovely positive thoughts. Also thanks to blip we then discussed the photos, Anna's hair colour, who chose her hair and recessive genes. Lots of pictures I really liked so I let Anna choose.

I will gloss over the worst bits of the morning but I do want to record our analysis in the aftermath, who knows it might help in the future. Largely we do things along pretty democratic, consensual lines and largely this works. Occasionally though (especially if more than 50% of the household is underslept) no-one can agree and it all falls apart. Also, this regime does sometimes involve a quite ridiculous amount of negotiating and chat before anything happens and when we are tired our tolerance for engaging in this just evaporates. At these times I find myself wishing we were the sort of parents who just tell the kids what's happening and they have to live with it no questions asked. I think a smattering of this is useful for making things happen when people are underslept and don't necessarily know what they want. This morning there wasn't enough. Balance, balance, balance.

Happily we have been out and about this morning, got some useful things done and all done something fun. Everything feels a lot smoother now.

Unlike Anna's hair (nice segue, eh?) - it was not a morning for taking on the hair-brushing battle.

Chilled out afternoon at home already well underway and later there is a plan to eat pizza and watch a film.

And relax
Lesley x