🤯 Mornings: A Symphony of Chaos
Or is that just me?
👋🏻 Hello, I’m Anna 👋🏻 An adventurer, author of six books and Restless Mumma to three small humans. Each week I write about adventure, travel, daily chaos and the inner workings of my noggin’ 🧠⚡️
✌🏻You can check out past posts at the Restless Mumma homepage here.
Hello Restless Ones,
A hearty THANK YOU to everyone who filled the survey last week. Sometimes writing feels like shouting into the void but I was blown away by all your lovely comments.
And also, I learnt a lot. Isn’t it amazing how you think you know… but you don’t know at all. That’s a lesson for life right there.
There were some great points made and a lot of questions that you have in common, so I’m going to take the time to digest everything (maybe armed with chocolate Digestives?) then answer some key bits in the intro of next week’s post.
🏆 The winner within our Restless community of the £50 of vouchers for an outdoorsy shop is… Lisa Thompson (wahooo!). Back slaps and high-fives all round for Lisa.
To the post! Enjoy and catch you next week,
Big love,
Anna xx
Mornings: A Symphony of Chaos
It’s 5.30am when I hear the first stirrings from the bedroom next door. The twins are practicing the words they’ve learnt this week, and so I drift in and out of sleep to the sounds of ‘Bat!’, ‘Squirrel’ and ‘Booty-booty.’ At 5.50am the shouts for ‘Mummy!’ begin.
I get the twins up, stealth-style, speaking in hushed tones and doing my best not to wake Storm, who is still asleep in the bedroom down the hall.
It’s important to keep Storm sleeping this morning because I’m flying solo. Jamie’s away for a few days and the mission is (as it was yesterday morning) to survive until 9am — when the cavalry, Nanny Annie, will gallop through the front door.
I’ve done my best to be organised, and to pre-empt any points of friction. There are pre-made peanut butter breakfast flapjacks waiting in the fridge, which have with dark chocolate chips in them (to up the chances of the kids eating them vs lobbing them on the floor).
I’ve cleaned out the cafetiere and I’ve even pre-ground the coffee beans — because if I don’t get a morning cup of coffee, the world may just end.
The first half an hour of wake-time passes with no drama. Storm stays asleep for a while. The twins glug down their morning milk. And when Storm joins us downstairs, I’ve got the chocco-flapjacks ready on the table.
Come 6.30am I’m feeling empowered - something which happens often when I have the kids on my own. Because there’s an extra zing of a challenge to being massively outnumbered. The bar of expectation is low, therefore anything except total bedlam feels like a triumph. And it’s nice to feel you’re exceeding expectations rather than falling short of them for a change.
After approximately eleven minutes of breakfast-eating calm, during which I’m able to get a coffee down me (winner), I think about the steps that need to happen between now and getting Storm to nursery.
But as I get the twins out of their highchairs and ‘release’ them from the table, the energy shifts…
At 21 months old (1 and 3/4) Rocky and Jupiter have firmly entered the phase where they are into EVERYTHING. Well, when I say everything, I mean everything that they shouldn’t touch or play with. The buttons on the dishwasher. The oven dials. The large broom in the kitchen, which Rocky likes to take into the living room and use as a weapon from time to time — sweeping things off of tall shelves with its satisfyingly long handle.
Jupiter has a penchant for the bin. She loves to pull the lid off it to see what she can find in there - which is exciting when you think about it, because the items change daily. It’s like a self-generating treasure chest brimming with old food, dirty nappies and dark-roasted coffee grounds.
In a world where we’re trying to raise dedicated, determined kids, I have to give the twins credit for their efforts — they go at each task as if it is their life’s purpose.
And when I try to steer one of them away from the thing they shouldn’t be playing with, the protests are loud and long. So loud that it provides an ample distraction for the other twin to embark on a new quest. (I think they’re in cahoots, you know.)
I’ve just about cleared the breakfast things away and got Jupiter dressed (one out of three kids down) when Rocky scales a chair and sits on the breakfast table.
This is not unusual.
Many a morning I have walked into the room to find him in the middle of the table with his fist plunged deep into the open 1kg peanut butter tub — just like Winnie the Pooh with his paw in a hunny pot.
Thankfully, on this occasion Rocky hasn’t yet made it to the tub, so I quickly pluck him from the table, give him a kiss and put him back on the floor.
Then there’s a shout from the kitchen.
Popping my head around the door, I see that Jupes is standing in front of the fridge. She’s looking up and shouting at it. And I mean really, at it. As if the fridge is a person.
‘Open! Open!’
‘No, Jupes we’re not opening the fridge’ I say gently, crouching down beside her and now looking at the fridge too.
‘OPEN!’
‘No Jupiter, we don’t need to open the fridge right no—’
‘Mummy, open!’ she screeches.
‘Okay, okay.’ I relent and open the fridge. ‘See, there’s the stuff in the fridge. Milk. Butter. Chees—’
‘Cheese! Cheese! Jupe-ter Cheese!’
‘No, no cheese. Cheese later.’ I shut the fridge.
‘Have it! Cheese Mummy! Open.’ She says. I hear a clatter and some shouts from the living room and know I’m needed back there. So I quickly open the fridge again and break off a tiny of bit cheese, handing it to Jupiter.
‘Okay now?’ Jupiter nods, satisfied. ‘Tank yoo’ she says in a tone so cute that it absolves all her demands, as she toddles into the living room.
The clattering sound in the living room is coming from Rocky, who has pulled the semicircular guard off of the fire and is using it as a rocking horse. Storm has decided that this is also a fun game and is now encouraging him and I’m feeling like I’m loosing my grip.
It’s rare that all three of them gang up on me. In fact, they haven’t done it yet when I’m home alone, but if they choose to, I know I’m screwed and wholly outnumbered. I glance at my watch. Only 7.30am. Ninety minutes until the backup arrives. I need to change tact.