Keeping it real and telling the truth is sometimes easier said than done

IT’S funny, isn’t it, how much things change when the ‘littlest’ little one comes along?! I’ve mentioned before that I said it wouldn’t change that much... and in some respects it hasn’t. We still do everything we did before, but things do change a little. Plans seem to alter, timings are now a factor when we do things (and trust me when I say that timings don’t always work either… more on that in a bit) and decisions take a little bit more time; and like it or not, things DO change.

Not always in a negative way of course, things have changed forever and we have a little Rose in our life. A little Rose who’s already funny, tags along to all the sports, sits and watches Harry Potter with us, is feisty, loud, demanding and also screams whenever you put her in the car, but you know… you win some, you lose some! But the truth is, things change big time when the little one comes along.

I’ve always remained pretty honest and open about it all, to the point where someone came up to me in Archie’s football once and asked if I made some stuff up because she didn’t know anyone that admitted what I do.

And here’s the thing. Up until last week I’d always been super-honest and really ‘owned’ it. And I mean that in the way of, I’d always said, wow, this is hardcore, or joked about what happened to me / us on a daily basis. But on Tuesday night I popped a post up on my Instagram account, with the caption: These two (well Archie mostly in this photo) making me remember it’s all about this. Laughing and loving you two.

The juggle is proper hard at the moment… social media does not reflect the zero sleep and having to fully function on approximately four hours of sleep a night, the tears (from me most the time), the stuff that people don’t see, the plans you have to cancel with friends because of work and / or kids. The fact you feel like a rubbish friend, daughter, sister because you don’t see anyone. The endless housework, the late nights working after the babies are asleep to make dents in that ‘to-do list,’ the endless coffee with five sugars (yeah, don’t judge)…

Counting my lucky stars to have some pretty amazing people around us who ‘get it’ and who will be there, no matter what.

And for the first time, I felt vulnerable.

I felt like I wasn’t really holding it all together. I feel like at the moment I’m spinning so many plates and juggling so many balls that one will fall in a minute and it’ll all come crashing down. But here’s the thing. There are NO plates that I’m spinning that I can let go, or even put down carefully without smashing everything in sight and becoming a one-woman Greek dance tradition. It’s kind of all consuming at the moment. Not that I’m complaining… Actually. You know what? I am. We’re allowed to complain sometimes, even when we’re the ones holding it all together!

This week has been a fast speed ride into the Easter holidays, and I’m not going to lie, it’s been full on. Work is crazy busy at the moment (for anyone who works in large hospitality companies, you’ll know that the ‘menu on the calorie’ laws came into force midweek last week and it’s just been utterly hectic trying to organise new menus for over 35 restaurants, all with about five different menus in them). But anyway, work is work; then you have the housework, the kids’ activities and the baby. Ohhhhh, the baby! Little Rose is a dream except for when she’s in the car and screeching at the top of her lungs because she’s not in touching distance of me. When I mentioned that things change, and in particular timings change when you have another little poppet added to the gang, I wasn’t fibbing. So this week, after football camp Wednesday I was taking Archie and his friend Jacob up to Cardiff to go to Ninja Warrior with one of Archie’s football friends, Frankie. So, knowing I had work also and football camp, shopping and all the other things us mums do in a day to do, I spent about 10 minutes figuring out the plan in the morning. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday in work, we have a team Zoom call, which lasts for about 30 to 40 minutes from 9.30am on. So I dropped Archie to football camp at nine, and knowing I wouldn’t be back in time to race in the house and jump on a call, I took my laptop with me. Also knowing that Rose needed to sleep at around 9/9.15am (because she’d been up since before 6am and was therefore, in Archie’s own words, ‘wild’) I took my laptop so that I could time it perfectly that she’d fall asleep dropping him off, I’d drive home and then do the call outside the house with her fast asleep in the car. My plan executed and delivered well, and I thought my day was heading for the win (you know those days… where kids nap on time, eat all their food, no-one cries, the ‘find a fiver on the floor’ kind of days, you know). I woke her up after my call thinking that I’d keep her awake until 2pm when I collected the boys and then she’d sleep lovely all the way to Cardiff for Ninja Warrior and be happy days for the rest of the afternoon. Except, would you believe it, she didn’t. She didn’t sleep at all. Didn’t even close her eyes. And was actually on top form all the way there (I expected murders but she was happy… little did I know she was saving it all up for the trip home).

She laughed and ate her way through watching the boys play and try to ‘Beat The Wall’ (which Archie did with far too much ease for my liking and I worry for his future rugby opponents). And it was all going well until we got in the car to go home. When, quite literally, she wailed the worst blood curdling scream from the start of Hadfield Road all the way back to my front door. It got worse and worse and worse and worse until I thought Archie and Jacob might try and bust through the panoramic roof.

I even stopped at Mcdonald’s Bridgend to try to feed her and get her to sleep, but it just made it worse, so the last 35 minutes were so bad that even I wanted to cry. And I did. That night. I sobbed. Not for any other reason than it’s just hard sometimes, isn’t it? It’s hard trying to do it all. It’s been a heck of a week to be honest, organising childcare for Rose when I took Archie to London for the day on Thursday to see Frozen (which was amazing; and we saw my friend Craig in it too, playing Olaf, which was even more special!). But even then I found myself checking in on Rose, checking in on emails, making a few calls on the drive there (much to the annoyance of my sister who wanted to play Encanto as loud as possible the whole way there).

I guess what I’m saying is, it’s a lot, isn’t it? We have a lot of feelings and a lot to do. And adding a beautiful little Rose to my little family has meant that I’m missing out dinners and get-togethers; I’m having to cancel last minute on things if she’s not well or if Archie’s got a game that I need to take him to. But equally, it won’t always be this way. I’ll miss it, and I know I will because I do with Archie already not being so small.

But what I so passionately believe is that we can say it out loud. It’s hard. It’s hard having more kids, it’s hard having one. It’s hard trying to divide time and it’s definitely hard to try to plan naps around football, work and Ninja Warrior UK. And it’s even harder trying to concentrate on driving down the M4 when your baby is hysterical and the other two kids in the car are borderline scarred for life by the experience of that missed nap!

But, on to another week, and one full of chocolate and Easter eggs!

Happy Easter all. Be kind to yourselves and everyone around you.