School holiday highs and lows

Now I get it when parents say how excited they are about school holidays arriving and then how excited they are about school going back. This two-week break since Easter has been the first of the school holidays that we’ve had (since Elsie only started school this year). And I loved the first week. It flew by and incorporated Easter, cousins, visits, a Bruce Springsteen concert (followed by small, no longer secret, crush) plus good old school holiday activities like craft and baking (who am I kidding, baking here is as common as brushing your teeth).

But this second week, either I’m more tired or they are. There’s a lot of:

• “Why can’t I have the pink spatula? I had the blue spatula last time.”
• “What can we do?”
• “Elsie / Maeve kicked / stood on / scratched / pulled my hair / pushed me off the couch / won’t share.” {Circle whichever is applicable (you may circle more than one answer)}
• “Can we do something fun?”
• “Maeve says my eyes aren’t brown.”

And on it goes. And for a moment, I feel like writing that I’m looking forward to school going back. But that might make me sound like a bad mother. Or that I take my kids for granted.

I just don’t ever remember feeling pulled in so many directions nor offering so many lessons in sharing, compromising, communication, manners, entertainment and not worrying about what others think: “It doesn’t matter what anyone else says. If you know that your eyes are brown, than that’s all that matters.”

I’m finally on top of business orders. That’s been half the problem this week, evident by two (if not most) of the dot points above. So this weekend I plan to get on top of housework, entertainment, nutrition and a blog post.

Elsie was looking at my business card today and read, “The Bear & The Whale. That doesn’t really make sense. It should be The Bear & Whale.” And the grammar check on my word processing program would agree. I feel that I have passed down what Lynne Truss calls the seventh sense. Hallelujah.

“Part of one’s despair, of course, is that the world cares nothing for the little shocks endured by the sensitive stickler. While we look in horror at a badly punctuated sign, the world carries on around us, blind to our plight. We are like the little boy in The Sixth Sense who can see dead people, except that we can see dead punctuation. Whisper it in petrified little-boy tones: dead punctuation is invisible to everyone else — yet we see it all the time. No one understands us seventh-sense people. They regard us as freaks. When we point out illiterate mistakes we are often aggressively instructed to “get a life” by people who, interestingly, display no evidence of having lives themselves. Naturally we become timid about making our insights known, in such inhospitable conditions. Being burned as a witch is not safely enough off the agenda.”
― Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation 

Maeve’s busy counting down the sleeps til her birthday. She turns 3. That’s a pretty big deal if you’re 2; she has a large affair in mind for the party.

As an example, Santa will be there. And “Grandpa will need his work boots on to blow up the jumping castle.”

I didn’t have special visitors or jumping castles in my mind. I had cupcakes.

Just to clarify, I do wonder if she got the Santa idea from Elsie’s birthday last year when, coincidentally, the four of us went to a Christmas in July Festival in a neighbouring town and indeed, Santa was there. For Elsie’s birthday. Marcia, Marcia, Marcia*

*For those who don’t use that quote in their families like we do, it’s from The Brady Brunch, used by middle child Jan when exasperated about older sister Marcia’s perfection. Funny.

Thank you for the interest in my denim pinafore. It’s now available on the Children’s Clothing page.

Enjoy your weekend. I’m going to.

PS. I may or may not have eaten a whole Red Tulip elegant rabbit before breakfast on Easter Sunday. I have started a post-Easter fitness campaign. You make the call.

PSS. Just to make me feel better, anyone else hearing me about the school holidays thing?

PSSS. I bet Lynne Truss doesn’t do the multiple Post Scriptum thing.