We’re almost at the end of the school holidays, which is to say that we made it through this insane week. I will just take a moment to congratulate myself for a bit before I continue.
Here’s pretty much how my week went.
Early Monday morning, I woke up to cuddles from all my babies and thought to myself, “school holidays with 5 kids? I got this! I’ll just spend the whole week with these angels soaking up the love, how hard can it be?”
The snuggles lasted for about 3 seconds and clock wipe 10 minutes later, I’m standing in the living room with messy hair and an exhausted, crazed look in my eye because I haven’t even had time for coffee and somebody’s already spilt chocolate milk everywhere, someone else is yelling for more “BIG, BIG BREAD”, and everyone is talking at me demanding to know what special activities we are having today.
What special activities?? How about the special activity is you guys get to do assessment books quietly for the next 3 hours?
This week has been challenging – it’s already Friday and I feel like I haven’t had time to stop and catch my breath. But it’s also been kind of fun.
We went to the Punggol Safra water playground, tried out a new meatball recipe (it’s like playdoh except edible!), hung out at the library, did a few grocery runs (because you forget things when you’re trying to stop your 5 children from destroying the supermarket), tried some experiments from Truett’s new library books (YEAH SCIENCE!), went pokemon hunting at the park, stopped by for cake (I’m sorry the lady next to us had to experience my family during her quiet afternoon tea break).
We could probably have done more. Educational museum trips for the big kids, some fancy Montessori type activities for my 2 and 4-year olds to pour stuff into other stuff, maybe some elaborate craft sessions to develop their artistic flair instead of “here’s a piece of paper and some colour pencils”, quickly followed by “here, just take the iPad and watch veggie tales.”
During bedtime yesterday, the kids were feeling a little bummed that their school holidays were almost over.
“I’m sorry we didn’t get to do all the things we planned to do, mommy will try to make the next school holidays more fun ok,” I told them.
If there’s one thing I want for the kids, it’s that they can look back on their childhood and remember that it was a fun one filled with good memories but a lot of the time, I’m not sure if I’m succeeding at it. There’s a lot of scrambling involved in our day to day. A lot of just doing what needs to be done from moment to moment, which leaves very little time for creating special memories.
“Thanks for spending time with us mom, it was actually very fun,” Truett said.
“Ya, we don’t need to do special things all the time. Even normal things can be fun,” Kirsten added.
What did I do to deserve these kids? And they’re probably right, even normal things can be special if we get to do it together. I think as long as they look back and remember their days to be filled with love and laughter, those are good enough memories.
My favourite part of the day, you guys.
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