Perpetual motion

Childcare has been, as usual, prominent on my mind this week. Due to a medical emergency, my mum, who normally does Mondays and Tuesdays with the baby, has been understandably unable to help out. This has meant that I have had to somehow or other work round the baby – a baby who is in perpetual motion. The baby has discovered cupboards…and the tv cable box. Uh oh, as he would say [and does continually all day long].

He is particularly fond of cupboards full of things like china and, for some reason, onions. He can spend hours looking at red onions in the vegetable cupboard. Unfortunately, our kitchen is kind of open plan, which means there is not a gate big enough to shut it off to small people. I will have to get those cupboard latches. However, this will not stop him getting into the brooms, brushes and buckets or attempting to pull over the flat screen tv which he spends much of his life waving at or trying to sing to. The Wii microphone is attached and he is a bit of a music buff. He positively jiggles any time even an advert comes on.

I am not sure how anyone works with a toddler in tow. They are constantly on the alert for the most dangerous stuff. I have had to work round any help I can get from friends and my partner. This has meant turning nights into days and trying to get a lot of things done in the evening and early morning. Unfortunately, daughter three has also chosen this precise week to be ill. In an ideal world, she would like to have been cuddled for the entire 48 hours that she was sick and certainly during the night-time hours. However, the baby occupies half the bed currently and seems to roar rather loudly if I even move an inch, thus waking the entire household. So I freeze in one position. This meant daughter three had to insert herself on the five centimetres between bed and floor under my right arm while I attempted to pour Calpol into her mouth. My partner managed to sleep through this whole episode, of course. If he does wake up, it takes him hours to get back to sleep and then he is comatose for the rest of the week. I, on the other hand, have developed a remarkable ability to go from wide awake to deep sleep in seconds. 

And I will need this ability to have enough energy to recover from the current childcare dilemma and confront the impending childcare mountain that is the summer holidays… 

• Vote  
• 0
• 0
• You already voted!

• Tags:
• Mum On The Run