summer

posted on July 28, 2016 by elizabeth

Surviving Summer with small children

This morning, as I trawled the internet in search of something to keep the inmates entertained I came across a few articles claiming to have ‘101 Things to do in the Summer’ or ‘The Ultimate Guide to Beat Summer Boredom’; however, thirty seconds into reading these so-called lists I gave up.

Who are these people? Do they interact with actual humans? Are they pulling these ideas out of their ass? Or the more disturbing question: am I raising little psychopaths who wouldn’t remotely enjoy ‘counting the leaves of your favourite tree’ ( An actual suggestion.)

With this in mind I decided it was time to make my own bucket list for parents at this joyous time of year.

Get Crafty: Make something fantastic from the increased amount of empty wine bottles found around the house. Wine not your thing? Don’t worry: vodka and gin bottles can work too! No need to wait for Friday or Saturday to have a tipple; if your children are driving you to the edge of sanity have a bottle to take the edge off. You can even make it a fun drinking game: every time they say ‘mummy’ take a slug – not recommended I was hammered by 11am Monday.
Don’t Neglect Their Education: School may be out but that doesn’t mean their education has to be! Get them to count the amount of grey hairs rapidly appearing in your scalp with each passing day. Keeping on top of that root touch up has never been more fun or soul destroying.
Keep Active: Didn’t have time for the early morning run you promised to go on? Don’t worry about it. Just get the kids involved. Make sure they get very little sleep the night before so they’re extra needy and spend the day running into different rooms from them until your partner comes home (about eight hours or so). If they cry harder it just means it’s working – think of those abs.
Go Somewhere New: If you feel like you haven’t got quite enough stress in your day take the kids somewhere new. Thankfully, because it’s summer, everywhere is busy so you’ll have lots of fun trying to park and keep an eye on multiple children through crowds – it’s even more fun when you’re potty training and there’s no toilet within a three mile radius. Good times.
Get Some Me Time: If you still believe this exists in the world of parenting you’re a damned fool. By all means, book that ‘free’ time and enjoy the residual guilt that follows you around like a bastarding gremlin reminding you that other parents are counting the leaves on their child’s favourite tree while yours hasn’t seen the outside world in a week. Relaxed yet?
Introduce Your Children to Culture: See how many series of woeful American TV you can get through in the next six weeks. Every time your child craves attention just throw a couple of episodes of Power Rangers in the mix to zombie them out then you can get back to your Gilmore Girls marathon.
Teach Them About Your Family History: It’s never too early to teach the kids about why their weird uncle doesn’t come to family parties or about the criminal history and alcoholism in the immediate family. Sure, people will cry and things will be awkward but that’s a whole afternoon of entertainment for everyone.
Try New Food: Get creative in the kitchen and make new dishes that your children will in no way appreciate or eat. Enjoy watching them cry and refuse to even try the food you’ve spent over an hour making just for it to be changed for cereal. Again. Embrace their competitive side and make this a fun new game by seeing who gets Type 2 Diabetes first.
Spend Some Quality Time Together: If, for some utterly bizarre reason, you don’t feel that 18 hours a day together isn’t enough then when you finally have them in bed sit and watch them sleep so you can kid yourself into thinking this parenting craic isn’t that bad. Angels.
Take a Holiday: Passport? Holiday booked? Self-loathing when you’re in a swimsuit? Great, now just give the kids to ANYONE and go on holiday for the week and look at pictures of them so it’s like they’re there.

If you were looking for actual suggestions on how to survive summer then this will be in no way helpful, but don’t be fooled: Pinterest won’t help either.

May the odds be ever in your favour.

posted on May 15, 2016 by elizabeth

The Cupboard of Shame

As I stand in my kitchen looking at the giant gaping hole in my back garden, I can’t help but thinking: ‘What in the hell have I done?’
No, I haven’t murdered my husband.

Apparently, I’m looking at a vegetable patch. Let’s back track a bit.
I’ve always loved the idea of a vegetable patch and having a beautiful garden in general. My mum has the lovelist little yard, filled with flowers and lights and chimes. She’s transformed this space into a haven and I’m very jealous. Ciara has a vegetable patch and in the summer has home-made fruit cocktails fresh from her garden (not going to lie, this was a major selling point for me).
My auntie Kathleen and cousin Bronagh are the go-to guys for gardening and also have an amazing garden – complete with vegetables and fruit growing. Even though I ask questions about how I could do something like it, I’m not really listening to the answers because I know the dark secret I’ve carried around for years:
My house is where all plants come to die. There is no exception to this rule.
So, the vegetable patch idea – like all my hobbies I take up and hide shamefully in a cupboard when I’m bored of self improvement and want to go back to Netflix – was just something I like to think about.
In my cupboard of shame I have 18 balls of red wool from the time I decided I wanted to knit a throw for my living room (after ball two, I went to IKEA and bought one which was a lot easier), a sewing machine which has never been removed from the box despite throwing a hissy fit that would rival a toddler because I had to have it. You know, for all the cushion covers and patchwork quilts I was going to make – I quit my dressmaking course after week 3 because I was left alone in the corner still trying to set the machine up while everyone else was marking out their patterns. There’s broken picture frames that I’ve yet to ‘upcycle’ and craft things for when I print out the 4,000 photos on my phone and transform them into personalised photo albums and other nonsense that I’m never going to use/do.
BUT if Conor thinks for one second I’m prepared to get rid of one of these items to clear more space in the house then he might end up under the vegetable patch, yet.

Talking about the imaginary vegetable patch with Mum and Martin was the topic of conversation at dinner this week. The fountain of all knowledge (ahem), Martin, had a plan of action and was off to search for a spade. We laughed it off.

Friday night dinner chaos came as usual – with added birthday cake, so I was running around trying to get the table set up and chase my sister (not the kids) away from the sweets table. The usual shouting match with Dad was going on about what was happening for dinner and as I looked up out the window to see if the kids were playing, there was Martin.

Spade in hand and digging up the left hand side of my garden. Now, I can’t remember if everyone could hear the internal screaming that was so loud my ears could have bled, but they certainly saw the crazy woman run outside towards the crime, who was also screaming.
Oblivious to any of the sheer panic that was reverberating from every part of my body, Martin explained his ‘vision’ for this patch and assured me by Tuesday all will be ready for planting. I’ve a feeling a pair of gardening sheers and Martin’s decapitated head is going to put in the cupboard of shame soon.

So, please feel free to share any gardening tips or the number of someone who can concrete the lot. If we are going down the concrete route, give me time so I can empty the contents of the secret cupboard underneath it and stare at it nervously, Brookside style.

posted on July 23, 2015 by elizabeth

Expectations Vs Reality: The Park

Earlier today I posted a picture to my Twitter account of Oliver and myself sitting happily on a wooden throne in Kilbroney Park. It’s a nice photo and through the wonder of social media I got to pretend that I was having a pleasant afternoon with my children.

In truth? I was not.

After a fantastic week away in Wicklow – without any major meltdowns – I had become cocky and thought that the ‘terrible two’s’ were something for other people to worry about. True to form, my dearest son decided to bring me back down to earth with a bump.

Thanks to my Mother, I spent manys a happy afternoon in Kilbroney Park. There were hikes up to the big stone (Cloughmore Stone), walks in the Fairy Glen, running around in the park and playing 40/40 in the forest. No, we weren’t charcters in an Enid Blyton novel, it really was *that* fun. So, you can imagine how badly I wanted to experience it all again with my own children.

Like all meltdown beginnings, Oliver hadn’t had enough sleep and passed out in the car on the journey there. I had also reached day 4 of little or no sleep because Oz has decided to randomly squeal throughout the night for no real bloody reason.

I enjoyed the quiet in the car waiting for the gruesome twosome to surface and sensing that I was relaxing for longer than thirty seconds, they woke up crying. I wasn’t too worried, the playground would dissipate any bad moods. Did it f**k.

Thus began the longest afternoon IN HISTORY.

Oliver started as he meant to go on; by being an emotional mess. The playground was too busy, so he cried. The roundabout resulted in him being knocked off his feet and lying spread-eagled on the ground, so he cried. The slides were too slidey, so he cried. His horrible mother wouldn’t set down the baby and play with him, so he cried. She also cut his sandwiches into stupid squares and forgot his juice, SO HE CRIED.

Still, blinded by unfounded confidence, I suggested we took a walk in the forest – by ‘we’ I mean my sister-in-law, niece and nephew (who were both really well behaved, while I had brought the antichrist and his insomniac brother along to the picnic).

Children were successfullly bribed with chocolate and we headed off on the Narnia trail. Well, most of us did. Oliver was 50 yards behind us, eating his chocolate and walking at a pace that would make glacial drift seem like a tsunami.

With my patience wearing thin, I adopted the ‘granny grip’ – a technique derived from how my Granny McCamley would have all grandchildren held (vice-like by the wrist). His little legs were being half-dragged around the forest – as he cried – and I tried to wheel the pram with the other hand. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?

Several hundred clensing breaths later, we were coming to the end of the trail when we stopped for the aforementioned picture. Here is it:

The picture of lies

It was shortly after this, I noticed something grey, moving in my periferral vision and I said: “Look kids, a squirr – HOLY MOTHER OF CHRIST IT’S A RAT, RUN!!”

All children were scooped up and we ran out of the woodland. The drive home was a silent affair.

The moral of the story is: don’t be fooled by the rubbish that people (me included) put up on social media,they’re probably having the day from hell, disguised under an Instagram filter.

Well, that and: be careful of rats when you’re in the woods.

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