I have a confession

I am not a fan of the summer holidays.  I know I am not alone in feeling like this but I am also aware it can sound a bit like "I don't like having my children around".  The reality is I LOVE having my kids around but I often feel a little overwhelmed by the idea of occupying them with stimulating, not overly expensive activities for 6 or 7 weeks.  Pile on top of that the fact that I am growing another one (I'm now more than 22 weeks) and that my kids are too young to put to a lot of the summer activities like sports, church clubs or play schemes and I have a lot of time to fill up and limited energy with which to do it!

With this in mind I have decided to make sure we do one "fun" thing (for my eldest this means messy) every day but am ok with the fact that at 3 she can come up with some things to do for herself as long as I can provide a few toys, her little sister loves to join in too, and also for sunny days we have an amazing garden for the kids to play in.

I thought I would share with you the "things" I come up with so if, like me, you are feeling a little overwhelmed I might be able to inspire you to do one or two things.

Today we started the day with our sand and water table, it is the first time we have had it out all summer so the first activity was actually cleaning it ready to be used but the kids enjoyed the basin of bubbly water almost as much as they enjoyed the actual sand and water when it came!

I am also trying to do something with my eldest every afternoon while the little one naps, today we have taken inspiration from this blog and are making some footprint toadstools (although we don't have any paper plates so I cut some shapes out of an empty cereal box instead).  Currently, while I write this blog, the three year old is learning a lesson in patience as we wait for the paint to dry,  It's definitely a lesson in progress.

Reality Mothering

Yesterday I posted this picture to Twitter and Facebook with the caption "It is possible I have fallen a little behind in putting away our clean laundry"

I received many responses which all loosely could be summed up by "My goodness, you mean I am not the only one? This makes me feel so much better".

Some people have this pile on their kitchen table, some in their bedrooms and some, like me, have it on their spare beds, but it would seem that more of us have this pile than would care to admit it.

One of my favourite responses came from one of my friends and neighbours, she said

We should all have "reality mothering" days when we open our homes in their true state to our friends without any frantic pre-visit tidy ups, sweeping into cupboards or closing of spare room doors. I think we'd all feel a lot better about ourselves! I think I've pretty much got to that stage with a lot of my friends now.

I LOVE this, so in the spirit of the motion, I am hereby opening up my home with all it's blemishes for you to see

Here are my children, watching Peppa Pig while toys lie, unplayed with on the floor and the post nursery-run coats are discarded

Here is the play area of my living room being ignored because I put on a DVD and haven't tidied the toys away or made the children do it either!

 Here is my kitchen complete with broken egg shell lying on the work surface from making lunch and various bits of dirty crockery and such like...

Here is the washing machine, complete with washing that has been sitting clean but wet in it since yesterday evening

Here is the juice *shock horror* that I fairly regularly put inside my children!

Here is a large bag of bags that used to contain fresh milk that I have been meaning to take to the recycling point for about three weeks

Here are the chips I will feed my children tonight because I am too knackered to make something else!

And before we move upstairs, here are the curtains I haven't bothered opening all day and now at 4pm probably won't get round to opening today

Oh and the wet (not dirty) nappy I forgot to tidy up after I changed M earlier!

Here is the very disorganised bedroom of my children and an odd sock collection that I'd love to know if it can be rivalled (especially when you consider it is about half the odd sock, those belonging to my husband are elsewhere and I wear odd socks every day in order to deal with the problem another way)

My very disorganised bedroom

And my full to bursting wardrobe that I have been meaning to sort out since I found out I was pregnant (about 15 weeks ago)

This is my book shelf that for some reason also hosts a now empty chocolate tin, some hair detangler, shoes that fit no-one in our household and some nappy cream, not to mention the fabric and what might be the insert of a washing basket!

And finally we have the computer desk I am sitting at now to write this! (while the children watch more Peppa Pig).