Pride comes before a fall. I fell.

After days of feeling like I'm drowning in a sea of half-completed jobs, whilst also feeling consumed by my worries that despite my best efforts, I am failing my children emotionally by not giving them enough one-to-one attention as I am too busy trying to juggle the aforementioned list of half-completed jobs...
Today, I finally had a better day! Hooray!
This might have something to do with the fact that my day started with a pretty momentous moment in any mum's time line with her baby:
Today my husband took my two year old to pre-school AND also took my milk stuffed five month old with him. (The little monkey is not a fan of the bottle!)
From 8.30 until 9.45- (hubby didn't get lost I should add- he ran another errand on the return journey. -Extra bonus points!), I was in the house ALONE!
I had actually forgotten the sound of silence.
I'd also forgotten how much you could get done without two small humans hanging off you in some way, shape or form.
I showered.
I took time to pray and practise some mindfulness and pain management techniques.
I made an overdue phone call, without having to have the accompaniment of wheels-on-the-bus in the background, or apologise to the recipient for having to cut short our conversation due to a Play Doh related emergency!
And most importantly I took time to look my poor, long suffering Golden Retriever in the eyes and tell him that despite the chaos that is our happy but bonkers home- I do still love my first baby with all my heart.
My husband returned from his intrepid expedition unscathed and rather annoyingly unflustered.
How dare they both be good as gold, when this was their chance to show him how crazy/tough/traumatising my mornings can be with two children in tow!
Despite my secret and guilty disappointment at their impeccable behaviour, my day was still on the up as I then did another rare thing, (in fact so rare I can't actually remember the last time we did this!) I sat down with my husband and drank a hot drink!
Admittedly this coffee/ hot water and lemon break was brought to us courtesy of the ever wonderful Jumperoo baby bouncer again, and the subject of our scintillating adult conversation wasn't politics, but party food and planning for our children's forthcoming birthday and Baptism- but it was sitting and talking to a grown up (well, kind of!!), none-the-less and I'll take that at this stage of the child rearing years!
As lunch time approached, the day unnervingly continued to run smoothly.
I managed to eat lunch sat down and I made a couple more overdue phone calls.
Holding my breath, I thought to myself-
'This day's going quite well', before immediately scolding myself for daring to utter such words even within the confines of my head.
I washed up the lunch things.
Still no phone call from pre-school.
Still no rain on my washing.
Still no wheelchair breakdown! (it's happening a LOT at the moment!)
I dared to exhale a little more and it dawned on me how alien the feeling of doing so was to me.

My husband and I had decided to have our second baby, move county, leave the safety net of the military and start a new job all at the same time nearly four months ago- and it's not something we (our close friends and family no doubt included in that collective noun), ever want to repeat again!
It's been tough and only today I realised and remembered what it actually felt like to not be holding one's breath waiting for the next illness, dog injury our house drama to unfold.
I breathed.
It felt bloody amazing!
2.30pm came around and I tetatively made the pre-school run into the village.
The baby was patient as I got my wheelchair out of the van with my hoist.
The baby then continued to be patient whilst we waited for all of the other monkeys to handed back to their keepers- I mean parents!
When it was finally time to sign my own monkey back to my care, I nervously asked how she'd been.
"No tears, no tantrums. She's had a great day!" I was told.
I finally exhaled even further than I had done following the sitting down and the eating lunch.
Celebrating another small (in my world relatively large) victory, I decided we should head off to the park, dog (with bad paw which requires bathing ten times a day and donning a fiddling boot every time he steps outside!), a baby who had been awake two and a half hours without boob, toddler who was already exhausted from a full day at pre-school and me.
However this was not nervous, knackered and niggly me, (which is how I'm sure my loved ones would describe me of late!),- I decided I was doing ok. I would be confident me. A stranger from a pre-accident, pre-children life.
I thought for a second of all I'd achieved so far in the day. Ok, so I may not have landed a big deal, or solved world conflict, but I had homemade organic dinner which was sat ready made in my fridge, my washing basket was a mere 10inches deep (hell, that's so close to being empty in my world, it practically is! I don't think I'll ever in my living days know what the bottom of my washing basket actually looks like. There's always a perpetual pile of delicates and dry clean only items I'm sure will never again see the light of day!
...I was now taking all three of my babies on a trip.
The baby was behaving, the dog wasn't launching himself into the lake at the nature reserve and I even had a chance to properly engage and spend time with my sweet angel of a daughter who has had so much change in her little life over the last half a year- a sixth of her precious little life!
We played pooh sticks and laughed.
I exhaled a little further.
I felt I was actually ok at this 'Mum thing' after all.
A few more laughs, a few more special smiles exchanged between us all.
I let myself tell myself that I was actually a good parent- I was doing it. I was winning!
I felt an alien feeling.
I felt proud.
I felt smug.
I was en route to getting home in time to feed my family their homemade, nutritious dinner at five o'clock
(Full day at pre-school=potential for overtired toddler imploding if we aren't fed and in bed by 6.05pm)
My dog was being walked and I actually let myself think, 'maybe I'm not emotionally messing up my kids.'

Pride comes before a fall...

I fell.

Firstly, upon my return to pick up the poo sticks, I picked up one that had clearly just been wee-ed on. Abandoning the poo sticks game, I distracted my daughter with a playground promise- the enthusiasm for this peaked at sky high levels, my monkey dashed off up the hill.
Before I could catch her, I realised she and I and the dog had all just run and wheeled through the deepest, most extensive carpet of goose poo I had ever seen.
Daughter then freaked out and jumped on to my lap, (where baby was also sat) and smeared goose poo all over my new dungarees in the process.
Negotiating around the shag pile deep poo car sodden path I chased after her, only to be stopped in my tracks by my darling doggy doing a dump!
Did I have a bag in my pocket, or were they all back in the changing bag I had optomistically left in the van??
I was only 'popping around the lake' with my well behaved charges anyway, right?
Small mercies, I found a bag.
Once I'd finally made it past the goose toilet, I tried to regroup my party- one, two monkeys on my lap and the third had waded right through the poo and joy of joys had left his protective boot back in the middle of the goose shit carpet!
Once boot and Retriever had been retrieved I attempted to put the protective boot back on one-handed one handed, (the other was holding my five month old on my lap!)
After a number of attempts the task proved  impossible.
I resigned myself to the fact that I'd have to lay my thankfully waterproof all-in-one clothed baby on the grass whilst I readjusted the dog boot, all the time praying the little monkey would stay put in the one patch of poo free grass I could find
He didn't.
He rolled.
He covered his suit in goose crap.
Meanwhile, two and a half year old had realised that her desire for the playground was greater than her disgust of the goose poo and she dashed off again in search of the promised playground.
I shouted, (not for one minute thinking she was likely to listen!)
She stopped.
She listened.
She was running back...
Maybe I was still winning?
Wait, she was shouting something.
Did she say wee?
Not a wee!
Not now!
Yep, she needed a wee.
Both realising the only option at this stage of the walk was what is known in our family as a 'nature wee', she started to follow instructions to pull down her pants and leggings.
I was still juggling a poo caked baby and dog.
Before I had a chance to help with pulling the clothes out of the way of 'the flow'
... Come on, you know what's next...
Wet pants.
Wet leggings and of course no Mary Poppins bag of spare clothes and wet wipes with me.
Of course there wasn't.
 I was just nipping around the lake and I was winning for goodness sake!!!!!
Of course she wasn't wearing dark jeans where it would stand a chance of not showing- she was wearing pale pink leggings.
I racked my brain, were there spares in the van?
I didn't think there was.
Should I disappoint an emotionally exhausted toddler and tell her we had to go home immediately, or should I let her play on the playground avoiding all swings, slide and sitting apparatus and hope that the other mothers (because of course the park was packed!) would think she'd sat on a wet bench?
I went for the latter.
They knew though.
I knew that they knew, but hey my daughter was happy and completely absorbed in her make believe play of pirates and princesses in the playground.
Despite the stares, the pain from the excursion of the dramas and the tense stench of poo which was covering me and my monkeys- my little girl was blissfully happy and oblivious to my worries and woes and that's what this parenting lark is all about isn't it?
Life is never going to run smoothly all the time, or even it seems for a whole day, but as long as our children are happy and unaware of this, what does it matter.

I got home and despite all of the above, got the food on the table before the point of no return with my toddlers behaviour.
We ate the homemade pesto with spiralled courgette... well, in truth, my husband and I did, whilst my daughter picked at the animal pasta I'd reluctantly cooked as a back up! But hey, the pasta despite it's animal shape was organic and fruit and yogurt was consumed for pudding, so that's a partial win on the feeding front right?
Teeth were cleaned, pyjamas adorned, prayers were said and Beatrix Potter was read.
Lights were permitted to be turned out and 'cuddle' was requested.
As I lay there sniffing the back of my baby's neck I said my own prayer.
I thanked God and Jesus for not just today with my babies, but everyday the difficult and the not-so.
Despite the drama today had reset me.
Before the chaos of real life resumed I got to breathe and I foolishly let myself feel proud.
I've realised, I'm not proud, I'm not winning, I'm just existing.
It's a crazy, draining, chaotic existence but it's mine with my babies and I wouldn't change that for the world.

You may have realised from the fact that it's about 100 degrees outside so my baby would not be wearing a waterproof suit and the fact that it is still the school holidays, that this post is a little late in being uploaded!

I wrote it before the end of term, but then my world went crazy as my husband and I decided to hold our baby's Baptism on the same weekend as our daughter's birthday so that family and friends wouldn't be travelling for two events. With so many lovely peeps in our life travelling so far, we decided we should throw in a house warming for good meausre and before we knew it we ended up planning and catering one of the most crazy weekends of our lives.

Thankfully it turned out to also be the most wonderful- "it bloody needed to be, for that amount of effort and money!" was the sentiment of my everso eloquent husband, and thankfully it was- for my marriage's sake as much as our own personal sanity!

So that is why despite my mini Facebook and Istagram uodate things have been a little quiet on here and this has taken me so long to upload, as having two kids makes your world crazy!
Juggling that with my pain and disability issues makes it a little more tricky and deciding to throw the world's biggest weekend of celebrations surely makes me it about as bonkers as it can get!

Bonkers but brilliant.

About sums life up at the moment.

I posted this anyway as...

 A.) Fitting in time to write this shit is hard enough in the first place, so even if no one opens this attchment, I had to upload it anyway so my time wasn't complete;y wasted!

and B.) The sentiment of this is still relevent today.

Pride comes before a fall.
Sometimes we do have those very rare 'winning' moments. There's no bloomin' point in being smug when we get them, as before we know it the car will fail it's MOT at the same time as a chilkd needs to be somewhere and a pet needs another flippin' vets appointment, (despite the £100+ insurance I pay for him each month!!)

Instead, I will  now on just try and breath and re-set and prepare myself for dealing with the next dramatic disaster or dilemma. Parenthood is full of them, hell, LIFE is full of them and you can't avoid them, so best just to find something that works for you to get through them.

For me it's my faith that despite my wobbles, gets stringer with each curve ball that is thrown my way and that coupled with taking those moments to look and womder and sniff the back of my babies' necks when they fall asleep (eventually! This is the holidays afterall right?) can get me through most things!

Take the time fr whatever you need when you can to steady yourself for the next storm, thats what I am learning the most from this journey I think.

Have a good one folks.... and don't forget the wine! That's pretty important too!



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