Oh my God/dess.  I’ve never been so tired in my life.  I hadn’t quite realised until late this afternoon while standing in the queue at the supermarket with my 3 year old that I’m aching with it. All over.

The Dung Bug (my three year old daughter) is just brimming with enthusiasm for life and asks a dozen questions a minute (when she’s not announcing her hunger, her thirst or directing me to the next object of fascination to examine – “I want to go THERE, Mama!”).

My gratitude to the team of carers at our daycare centre is beyond words.   I don’t know if I could ever do a better job – for one thing I have no idea how to make an erupting volcano.  For another, I have no patience for collecting caterpillars and feeding them until they become butterflies.  Oh but I wish I did.

And I wish (today) I had patience for repeated requests for lollypops in the supermarket checkout queue, and trying on ten pairs of shoes just for fun, and looking in the cake shop window for twenty minutes.  *sigh*  I LOVE this stuff.

My seven (almost eight) year old daughter, The Chipmunk, is the son I never had – she’s more likely to bounce around a room than sit delicately reading or drawing like her older sisters. She really needs to be outside, with a stick and a bucket.  She is always On Safari.

I collect her from After School Hours care each afternoon and she’s covered in mud, has chewed fingernails and a collection of things in her hair.  I’d like to say I’ve given up trying to neaten her up – the truth is she looks like that within moments of emerging from the bathtub each morning – but I still chase her around the kitchen shortly thereafter with a hair brush and face washer.  Never give in to dirt is my motto.  (You should see how much washing I do every week – I probably should give up.)

This week, my ten year old Darling – who is never any trouble at all  – was a little off-colour.  It was one of those situations where I felt pulled in all directions (mostly between work & an important deadline and wrapping my child up in cotton wool, spoon-feeding her chicken soup and renting enough dvd’s to see us through two days of tummy-aches) and relied on the kid’s determination to help me out.   I’m ashamed to say that I bribed her into going to school instead of staying home and resting.

To the  little trouper’s credit she rose to the challenge and held me to my word.  I took her out for icecream and waffles after a day of holding it together (there was no way she was going to miss a trip to Bracegirdles no matter how poorly she felt).  She collapsed into bed the minute we got home, and I kept my commitment to both jobs (parent and employee).

Well, I kept my commitment to my employer, and my Darling let me off the hook as a Mama in exchange for chocolate.  Bad Mama.  Bad.

The biggest challenge of all this week (aside from just keeping it together) came from my fourteen year old.  She’s a beauty, she’s smart and she’s talented - she can really SING – but she is going through some strange stage of caring more about what others think and say than how she feels.  It pains me, although not as much as I can see it pains her, to witness her refusal to take part in life but to sit on her bed and do nothing.  I can remember being similarly immobilised at various times in my life, and now I feel powerless to help her.

At least my seventeen year old girl is doing well – I really NEED her to be. Proof that I’m doing ok, you understand.  Proof of the pudding – here I am doing the work with these less-cooked ones (and sometimes feeling like the batter is all wrong, the souffle is failing, and that I need an assistant) – and here’s one I prepared earlier.  See?  Here she is, all brown and sweet and gorgeous and doing all the things she’s supposed to.

*sigh*  For tonight, the kitchen’s closed, and the cook’s going to bed.

Zzzzzzzzzzz Mamas xxx

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