A Guide to Life With Under Fives

I’ve been thinking a lot about this recently…

My days with two children under school age is drawing to a close. My daughter is off to ‘big school’ in September, and the boy seems further and further from a ‘baby’ with every day… (mainly due to his colossal turds and ability to take out older toddlers with his own home-made weapons at most groups we attend now.. *coughs and hides the spoons*)

There’s things I love, loath and laugh about on a daily basis finding new and exciting ways to entertain them both whilst keeping my sanity and resisting the urge to actually punch myself unconscious as they ask for something to eat every 4 or 5 minutes of every bastard hour they’re awake… *takes a few deep breaths*

So, here’s my guide for parents of under 5’s:

1. Monday to Friday is generally made up of a rigorous schedule of toddler and pre-school groups. Around half of which you call in sick to on alternate weeks… (sorry – ‘text’ in sick to. You don’t have real life conversations with actual adult people now. That would be fucking mental. Your life purpose is to be ridden and provide snacks.)
2. Wednesday is your day to not get dressed. Let’s call it an all-day-pyjama-party. Where Paw Patrol is responsible for doing the parenting and you’ll mostly be on Facebook and googling holidays trying not to cry.
3. Every so often you forget yourself and ask that fated rookie question… ‘What shall we do today?’ *shudders* knowing the answer will only ever be soft play… and never the nice one 10 minutes drive away… oh no. Only ever the scab-infested shithole over the road which has the ‘actual eighties’ dwelling in its crevices and where you’re fairly certain you once saw a turd jiggle to the top of the ball pit…
4. Weekends are an endless stream of kids’ birthday parties… which your children attend looking spotless, while you just about have time to wipe the actual human shit off your face as you enter, and pretend not to be hungover. (And wearing pants.)
5. Homelife is mainly about open jars of pesto, mouldy bread and realising on a Sunday night that you are out of twatting milk. Again. Like every twatting Sunday.
6. You’ve become an expert at hiding happy-meal toys in the car so you can remain in denial… and popping the ‘balloons of shame’ that accompany them before they make it into the house. #skills
7. You’ve now solved the mystery of the missing breadsticks – they’re powdered into every piece of furniture/carpet you own, and there’s some in your change bag that have fused with what you believe to be raisins, and begun evolving into a new life-form. You manage this with alcohol.
8. 90% of your sentences start with “When you go to school…” and end with you wiping their arse/doing their shoes up. Or both. (Always both.)
9. You now know that the secret to happiness is keeping one of EVERY colour plastic bowl and cup in rotation, never running out of chicken dippers, iPad, ice-cream and wine.
10. OK. Mainly wine.

#GuidetoLifewithUnderFives

 

p.s. Crazily enough, my little blog has been nominated for two awards! If you’ve got a few seconds to vote for Just a Normal Mummy I’d be so grateful! You can vote for me in ‘Best Preschool Blog’ (3rd down) here:

http://www.tots100.co.uk/vote-in-the-2016-mad-blog-awards/

and ‘Best Family Blog’ (category 13) here:

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/BiBs2016Shortlist

Thank you! xx