After yesterday really breaking me I decided that today was about survival and retaining my sanity. Stephen is still sleeping lots so keeping on top of everything remains very hard. Like I said yesterday, doing everything for as long as I have been in the current scenario has been incredibly difficult. I’m a bit broken. I’m very emotional. And I’m very tired. So we are taking the easy way today. That means no school work and no messaging or updating everyone.
We are incredibly lucky to have the best friends and family who are all worried and all checking up on us regularly. But that has meant I’m writing the same hard things every time i.e. things are still hard. I’m trying but it’s difficult and I need a break. But Stephen is still sick and the children need looking after so I can’t. So, I’m not replying today. Sorry world – you will have to wait.
First big task of the day – get out of the house with the children and tire them out! Cue a giant rainbow scavenger hunt outside. I drew out loads of items grouped by colour for the children to find. Hopefully we’ll be able to reuse the sheets for future walks. James decided that his dinosaur would join us and, as it was dinosaur week at preschool, I agreed.
While we were out on our walk we found a giant teddy Scout so Genevieve posed whilst reciting her Beaver Scout promise.
The kids had so much fun finding the colourful items on their sheets and making dandelion wishes. James’s wishes were my favourite: “I wish, oh I wish for a dinosaur that sleeps and walks and wakes up and eats my cat’s food” and “I wish, oh I wish for more rainbows and dandelions”. Honestly, it was hard to keep a straight face. So cute! Needless to say, before we’d even finished the first quarter of the route I’d mapped out, both kids were moaning and wanted to head home. But we needed to be out so I forced them on. We walked a full five kilometres!
Once we were home and lunch had been eaten, we attempted some Lego building. James has decided he wants to rebuild all of his sets. Unfortunately he’s kindly dismantled and distributed all the pieces across all the boxes of Lego throughout the house. This is going to be a long, arduous Lego building journey but we will get there. Today we got quite far with a police incident vehicle – a good start.
Genevieve worked her way through painting a miniature tea set. I think most of the paint ended up on the tray and Genevieve’s arms rather than the tea set, but she enjoyed it so it doesn’t matter too much.
While the kids were eating dinner, Stephen was feeling able to watch them so I could get some head space. I needed to do something for myself today so I went for a walk and listened to a great new podcast a friend suggested. It was so good and made so much sense. It’s not so much about being kinder to myself, but understanding why things are so hard. Anyway, it definitely helped.
I achieved 2 things today:
1. I enjoyed being out on a walk with the kids and we had some nice photos and they made me laugh.
2. I took time for myself and went for a walk and listened a podcast.
The Smiths Family Blog 