Almost the end of week one of the school holidays, and so far (aside from stopping WWIII breaking out at times between my two) it’s been great.
The 5yo has been happy just at home for the most part, almost craving the downtime – spending endless time drawing, writing sentences, and picking up books and attempting to read them without my encouragement. It’s so nice seeing how he can now spend long periods of time being creative, and stay so focused.
We haven’t done any big trips, but have had a playdate with kids for a couple of hours most days. Playdates with kids that my kids like, and with mums that I like 🙂 What’s also been brilliant, now that the boys are old enough, is turning playdates into mini-childminding sessions: we have a good chat, one of us heads off for a quick coffee and supermarket run, then the other has her cafe trip, and the kids are happy playing the whole time.
Today was really wonderful with my two. We spent a good two hours at the park with one of the 5yo’s school friends..the boys ran about, while we had homemade cake, and a Thermos of plunger coffee..perfect! Then we spent the rest of the day at home. Didn’t really do much, but in another sense, we did: we looked at every country’s flag and talked about the continents, analysed footy cards, read a mountain of books together, did puzzles, drawings, looked through car magazines..
I know some mums outsource a lot during school holidays, even those who don’t work – send the kids off to intensive swim class weeks, or basketball school (school-length days), or use vacation care. Some kids are kept as busy as if they were at school, sometimes more so. While I get that some kids are more active than others, everyone needs to be able to wind down for a little bit.
Sure it’s not always joyous catering for your kids for twelve hours a day, thinking of things to do, and stopping and just being with them, when you have things you want to do. I have a pile of work for my business I can’t wait to get stuck into, but for these two weeks, the door to my little office remains shut, with the exception of evenings.
It’s two weeks where you can have pyjama days, movie and popcorn afternoons, and pizza delivered if you want to, without having to worry about making the school bell or packing lunch boxes. Time to spend just hanging out together, instead of rushing about.
One of my favourite things while I’m with the boys is getting right up close and watching my their faces while they concentrate on something, like making a picture or a writing. They probably think I’m some sort of weirdo doing that, but during the school term, I don’t get to watch them as intently as often..and I learn a lot by observing the expressions on their little faces.
Why on earth would you want to outsource all that?
melbourne mumma 