Sunday evening

I’m just coming to the end of a whole weekend looking after two kids myself, with Andrew working 14hr shifts Fri, Sat and Sun. It has been tough, but I think I’m slowly getting better at it. This morning I said to Andrew that I could never ever do this as full time house wife, i.e. every day. But, tonight (Sun night) I am less exhausted than I was on Sat night (when I fell asleep before Andrew came home). I wonder if I’m getting some stamina? Of course, I still don’t know how housewives do it, as I seem to have achieved very little this weekend other than look after the kids. I’ll need the time with William in nursery this week just to get the shopping, cooking, washing cleaning done (and I have a cleaner!). Poor Andrew is working more long shifts on Mon, Wed and Thurs this week, so he’ll be pretty knackered by the end of the week. I lift off my hair (a hat just doesn’t seem enough) in salute to all families and how they cope with the normal hubbub of life. How they manage when both parents work I guess we’ll start to find out in November….. I guess regular nutritious, healthy, home-cooked and tasty meals might fall by the wayside. Standards of household cleanliness will slide. We’ll all wear our clothes until they fall apart. No-one will be wearing ironed clothes (no real change there though!). Exercise will be difficult to fit in.

Or maybe I should try and be a bit more optimistic. We might be able to work out a way to get some free time. The kids will get easier - well, William should from here on, Sophie probably still has some high maintenance times ahead before she gets easier. While we're all exhausted, William, Sophie and I have done lots of fun stuff this weekend, including a tractor ride, picking raspberries and making Summer pudding, making foot prints of the kids, going to three different parks and eating with friends.

I might go and pour myself a glass of rose.

Oh darn, Sophie has just woken up, there goes my wine.