Solo parenting and spiralling demands

I had just returned to work at the start of the month and Tim was on a work trip so was parenting solo. I had a lovely afternoon with Harry just me and him playing games, painting together beautiful. Then its time to go to nursery. Journey there - great- singing along to George Ezra - loving life. Then there are 4 and it starts with a big argument about who sits in the middle. The loser of the argument refusing to put her seatbelt on. Me chucking her out of the car and pretending to drive off which does persuade her to wear her seat belt though tears most of the way home.

When we get home more tears because Harry wants to get Connie out of her seat but Sophie wants Mummy to do it. Sophie then can’t stop crying as I try to make dinner which was meant to take 10 minutes, however there was a pressing matter of cutting out a paper butterfly then comforting a child for cutting a little bit of the butterfly wings off, trying to console an inconsolable 2 year old. Grab the 2 year old as she shouts she needs a wee, wish I’d left the 2 year old to do her wee on the kitchen floor instead try to clean up a trail of wee as Lucy is now distraught that her sparkly unicorn might have wee on? Thankfully it doesn’t! Dinner on table phew few minutes peace and no complaints about food - win. Pyjama time – wrestle 1 year old into a new nappy unfortunately after she had weed on the carpet. Help a child with a bad bout of constipation while other child is upset at the attention being on someone else. Get everyone milk. Argument about where everyone sits for story time. Decide maybe lets put wriggly baby to bed first. Story time at last about half hour later than I meant. O no another poo required. Back to stories. Everyone into bed. Lie on the floor and wait for sleep as Sophie will not let me leave the room. Finally seems I can escape. Just have a little check of work emails as I’d had afternoon out with Harry. Harry comes running out saying there’s a spider on the ceiling. Address spider issue and pray please can I be left alone now?!

Every little issue on its own is quite addressable but when you get everything at once its over whelming. Sometimes you just need to congratulate yourself for getting to the end of the day! There’s an album we used to play a lot to Harry when he was a baby called ‘into your dreams’ (https://open.spotify.com/album/2xJH2MRg72N9zYfVOS4mGV) and one of the songs says ‘Your mercies are new every morning’ I like to remind myself of that on days that have seemed impossible.

And these wee faces...