🤹🏻 Finding Balance: A Journey from Lots of Help to... Less.
Hello Restless Peeps,
I hope you’re having a cracker of a week.
I’m eagerly awaiting the delivery of that bike that Joy made me buy last week and spending many hours pouring over maps on where to take the beautiful thing (it’s yet to be named, but name it we shall).
As always, this week’s post started about one thing and ended up being entirely about another. It’s amazing what happens when you put your fingers on the keyboard and just let them type.
After reading it, I would love to know about where you naturally sit on the help-o-meter? Whether you’re a batten-down-the-hatches kind or a put-the-hand-up-and-ask kind. Or somewhere in between the two. Let me know in the comment box at the bottom. I read them all.
As always a Voiceover is there for the paid peeps - with much less dodgy audio this week. Wahey!
And a big thanks to ALL of you, free or paid, for being here and letting me gatecrash your inbox again.
Much McLove,
Anna xx
It’s 8.30pm and we’re thundering down the A417 in our Midnight Blue people carrier. It’s pitch black outside, a white noise machine is blaring, and all the kids are asleep. There are three empty milk bottles laying at my feet and, in a seat in the boot of the car, I’ve been drifting in out and out of sleep myself.
We’re nearing the end of a two and half hour drive back from visiting my parents in London, but now we’re ten minutes from home and I need to have all of my wits about me — for a great mission lies ahead of us.
The mission is to transfer three sleeping children aged three and under from the car and into their beds with no one waking up.
If even one wakes, experience tells me that this will lead to a domino effect — and soon all three will be awake and screaming, leaving us outnumbered.
‘Anna!’ Jamie whispers from the driver’s seat. His voice has to carry a long way, so it’s a theatrical whisper, and I decide that he might as well be shouting.
‘Yes?’ I whisper-shout back.
‘What’s the plan?’
‘OK. So… let’s leave the twins asleep. I’ll get Storm out first. Get her settled in bed and then we can take a twin each.’ I say.
‘OK.’ He gives me a thumbs up. We are now primed and ready for action.
We rumble onto our gravel driveway and pull up outside the house. Jamie winces as he turns off the engine. All kids remain asleep. Phew.
He cracks the driver’s door open and winces again.
Still asleep.
He crunches around the side of the car and comes to let me out of the car (via the boot). The moment he touches the boot lever, Jupiter wakes up.
When his face appears from behind the boot door, I silently mouth the words ‘We’re screwed!’’
‘Grab her, quick!’ He whispers in a panic. I unclip Jupiter and extract her from her rear-facing seat and pull her towards me.
We then we complete a series of moves that are akin to a Super Bowl winning play. With Jupes as the American football I pass her to Jamie, leap out of the boot, he passes her back to me and I turn and dash towards the house — soothing her as I go — stopping only briefly to dodge the block (the locked front door). My feet are lighter than air as I whip her up the stairs and into her bedroom.
I put her sleep-suit onto the floor, lay her carefully down, zip her into it, pick her up for a cuddle and, when she’s calm, plop her into her cot.
I leave the room and shut the door, waiting for the cry. But it doesn’t come. She’s asleep again. Wow. ‘One down!’ I think.
As I make my way back towards the car, I pass Jamie in the hallway — he’s carrying Rocky, who is still fast asleep. Brilliant. ‘I’ll make some milk, just in case’ I say, thinking it’ll be good to have a secret weapon if we need it, and Jamie nods in reply.
I move into the kitchen and I’ve just got the milk warmed when I hear a thud on the stairs. I go back and find Jamie sprawled on his back halfway down the stairs, still clutching Rocky, who is (thankfully) still asleep.
‘What’s going on?’ I whisper, my brow furrowed and wondering why Jamie would be falling down the stairs with Rocky when I last saw him going up them.
‘I think he’s he’s done a poo,’ Jamie says.
I lean in and do the sniff test and am greeted by a waft of rotten fruit. It’s a ripe one.
‘Oh yes, he has.’ I affirm, always in awe of our son’s ability to shite when he’s fast asleep. It really is a skill, although not one I’m hoping he’ll carry into later life.
‘Take him into our bedroom. I’ll grab the milk.’ I say, before dashing into the kitchen to grab the bottle of warm milk. Stopping on the stairs, I glance out the window and check that Storm is still sound asleep in the car — she is.
I make it to our bedroom just in time as Jamie lays Rocky on his back and he wakes up and BELLOWS.
I shove then milk bottle in his mouth and set to work on the nappy change like a frenzied mechanic. With a few flicks of the wrist and a double-wipe to get rid of an extra stubborn poo-piece, the nappy is changed in record time.
I pull Rocky’s pyjama trousers back up and zip him into his sleep suit. ‘He’s done! Go! Go!’ I say and Jamie whips Rocky out of the room and transfers him to his cot.
Again, we wait for the cry, there’s a little yelp when Jamie takes the bottle away but then, there’s silence. Rocky’s gone back to the land of Nod.
Two down.
We transfer Storm with no crying or unexpected discovery of poo. She stirs and looks around for a moment on the stairs, but stays drowsy enough as we put her into her bed and snuggle her up with a Tigger cuddly.
Downstairs, in the living room, Jamie and I turn the baby monitors on and flop onto the sofa. There’s a moment of silence.
‘I’m not entirely sure what just happened.’ I say, staring into space.
‘Me either. That was intense.’ Jamie replies.
‘And some great teamwork.’ I say, leaning over to give him a kiss.
And I meant it. Much as car journeys with three little have the potential to be stressful, I felt such a deep sense of satisfaction for us having made it ‘all the way’ home from London.
And that satisfaction was even greater because we had done it as a duo. With no outside help. I know that might not sound like something to celebrate, but let me explain…
I’ll level with you that, often, I don’t feel old enough, nor responsible enough to have three children.
There are moments when I watch life in full flow and I have to remind myself that I am in charge, or rather that I should at least pretend to be in charge until I get rumbled.
Somewhere, deep inside, I’m still a kid myself. Actually, I don’t have to dig too deep to find that kid — she tries to fight her way to the surface daily. Sometimes that’s a good thing — because it’s a lot of fun. And other times it’s less fun because I feel overwhelmed.
Now that the twins are 15 months old, I’ve been reflecting on the amount of help we’ve had in getting to this point. Because it has been A LOT.
And with good reason. When Rocky and Jupiter were born, Storm was just 2 years and one month old. We were only one month off having three kids under two. That’s bananas.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m an independent woman (all ma ladies, who truly feel me, throw your hands up at me).
There are many, many pluses to being so independent, but in the past I’ve really struggled to ask for help. My default is to batten down the hatches and go the ENDS OF THE EARTH to figure something out for myself before raising the white flag of surrender.
Being in a relationship with Jamie has been a real eye opener on this front, because he is at the other end of the spectrum when it comes to reaching out. He does it easily, and often. I mean, there may or may not have been an occasion a few months back where all the kids were being unruly, and I left the room for a wee, then came back in two minutes later to discover that Jamie had called his mum and she was on her way over to help. (He has given me full permission to tell you that).
As the kids change month after month, we’re always working on finding that balance. And I’m always trying to untangle what is my inability to ask for help. What is Jamie’s tendency to ask for it, lots. What’s good for the kids and where we can push things and stretch ourselves as Team Parent.