Mums everywhere, brace yourselves, half-term hell is about to commence. Get ready for a week of rubbish sarnies, mixed with a splash of soft-play hell, and a dash or two of “What can I do?” type moans.
NOTE: If you’re one of those mums who positively can’t wait for school holidays and LOVES spending every waking moment with your kid(s), you might want to look away now.
1. First things first, you need to accept that the school holidays are actually happening
Hang on, wasn’t it Christmas, like, last week? Nooooo, that came around all too quickly didn’t it? Know this, you’re not alone, we can survive this week together. Or at least medicate with some Pino sneaked in to a kids sippy cup for the various outings you’ll be partaking in this week. Just don’t give your kids the wrong cup.
2. Beware of soft-play. Someone WILL be diseased afterwards
Is it just us, or within 48 hours of being in a germ infested, snot-soaked soft-play centre, does your child come down with conjunctivitis or a hacking cough and cold? Cause no matter how much hand sanitising gel you smother on your child’s sticky hands, they will catch something. And make no mistake, you know your child won’t get sick until the Monday they’re due to go to back to school. It’s the law of sod we’re afraid.
3. Everyday is a FUN DAY!
For some reason, our offspring are under the illusion that school holidays mean something fun has to happen, EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. Don’t even think about suggesting a nice quiet day at home in front of the tele. And if you actually get away with that, prepare for a chorus of “Muuum, what can we do? Muuum what’s for lunch? Muum can I have a snack? Can I have another snack? She/he hit me” etc etc. Please, send help.
4. You’re going to need a bank loan
You figure you’ll take the kids for a visit to the local trampoline park. That should fill a day nicely, and seems nice and cheap, right? But wait. It’ll cost you £25 to take you and two kids. Then you have to buy their ‘special’ trampoline socks. Kerching, that’s another tenner blown. And your kids have poo pooed any more tuna sarnie packed lunches this week, so you buy lunch for another £12. And before you know it, your one hour session of bouncing is over, the kids have already eaten a days worth of food and treats before 11am, and you’re £50 lighter, with at least eight hours to go until bedtime. Who said this was a good idea?
5. Yes, you are officially a chef/waitress/cleaner
Just thinking about the fact that you have to knock up breakfast, lunch and dinner (a bag of crisps doesn’t count as lunch, believe us, we’ve tried) for the kids every day this week (not including the weekend, cause, well, you pray someone else will feed the kids by then), fills you with dread. We’ve done the maths, and it means you have to prepare, serve and clean up after 15 meals. Minimum. 15 MEALS! What is this, the Harvester? Ain’t no free salad or tips for the waitress here.
6. Who’s idea was it to do baking?
It seemed like such a good idea at the time. Yeah, sure, lets make some cupcakes, why the hell not? Er… cause your children expect you to measure everything out like you’re on Bake Off, and either don’t want to be involved at all, or even worse, want to be involved too much. And anyway, is it really safe to let a three year old use the hand mixer (especially when they’re mixing with one hand and shoving the other in the bowl to eat the cake mix)? And the icing. Oh dear god, the icing! The sugar puffs EVERYWHERE and then of course they want it multi-coloured, so you’re forced to squeeze in half a tube of food colouring that’s sure to dye the kids’ teeth and send them sky-rocketing on a sugar/ E-numbers high. Then, inevitably, the cupcakes taste like pants, your kids take one bite and lose interest, while you on the other hand scoff seven in a row over the bin whilst cleaning up the war zone that is now your kitchen and quietly sobbing. Yep, totally winning at life right now.
7. You’ve made it to Friday! Congratulations!
It’s the last day of half term – Friday is finally here! You made it! Big whoop! And then you realise you’ve got that thing people who don’t have kids call a weekend to get through. 48 hours until you can get back to the school run (you’re actually excited to do the school-run, admit it!) and gently push your kids out of the moving car in an effort to get back for some tea and Homes Under the Hammer. Can you make it through a whole Saturday and Sunday without the words ‘farm’ and ‘soft-play’ being uttered? The goals insight people, you can do it!
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