MODERN FAMILY

BEFORE I had children, arts and crafts, model-making and painting were all things I was looking forward to getting fully involved in as a mother.

I had this rosy-glowed image of us sitting around the kitchen table smiling and laughing as we made the most amazing brightly coloured mobiles and painted beach scenes and hung strings of stunning homemade decorations that had been crafted out of materials rescued from the recyling bin.

All those hours of watching Take Heart and Blue Peter as a child myself were not going to go to waste.

Then I had two boys and was left wondering how I had been so deluded. It is a bit like the image I had of the children going off sweetly to sleep after you had read them a story and switched off the light, or that they eat everything you put on their plate without any fuss like they do in films.

Our first attempt at arts and crafts is still very much etched in my memory as it ended (quickly as they lost interest after about a minute) with paint everywhere apart from on the paper it was supposed to be on, glitter ingrained in the skirting boards, and stickers glued to the table.

And this is how it has pretty much continued for more than a decade now.

This week is one I now dread as we have the double whammy of St David’s Day followed immediately after by World Book Day.

I still go red at the memory of the year I was the one who ended up making the daffodil biscuits basically single-handedly and overheard someone remarking on them: “I think it is really nice when you see baking that has actually been done by the children.”

This year it is a model-making competition for the annual school Eisteddfod and in order to try to get son junior interested and motivated we have followed a football concept.

It had seemed like a good idea at the time. The theme is future, so why not feature the Wales football team winning a “future World Cup”, a friend “helpfully” suggested.

Going really well so far, and as it appealed to his football obsession he loved it. Loved it so much he ran with that ball and started making some very grand plans.

Before long we have found ourselves talking him out of recreating the whole Wales football team in model form and trying to make him understand there there was no way we were going to be able to design and make a miniature version of Gareth Bale jumping in the air as he headed the winning goal in the back of the net at the World Cup final.

After a mini tantrum he finally agreed to simplify the idea, especially after our attempt at Bale melted to resemble Jabba the Hutt rather than a world-class athletic footballer.

Thankfully, it has all worked out in the end and the mini World Cup replica might be simple but is one that we are all very proud of – and, most importantly, we are all still friends.

No time to sit back and be smug though as our thoughts turn to World Book Day... does anybody know how to make a peach the size of a house out of papier mache?