Another week of school ticked off and I can’t quite believe we’re actually almost at the end of another school year. It’ been a bit of a blur of a week where I’ve not quite known what day of the week it actually is most of the time. Today included a trip into Exeter to pick up a few essentials. We went on the bus as Clara thinks this is a real treat and to be honest the cheap bus tickets make it more economical than driving in and parking. She did absolutely crash and burn on the way home though and fell asleep on my legs in quite possibly the stupidest position I’ve seen one of our children sleep in!

The big event of the week though was Henry’s trip to Exeter on Wednesday. He braved it and has had the big snip. He’s been feeling a bit sorry for himself but it’s all been straight forward. Of course he’s been surrounded by a loving and supportive family during this difficult time- the last text I sent him as he arrived for the op was- “Your penis is in my thoughts.” I mean that’s being considerate, isn’t it? And the kids were on top form after getting a child friendly explanation on why Daddy can’t move off the sofa and why he will cry if you jump on his lap. Polly laughed and asked “Is your penis all twisted up?” Then Seb started full blown cackling and shouted “Did they cut your bum off?” Might have to do a bit of better explanation when they actually start asking more questions. But hey at least this absolutely answers that question that has followed us around since having Clara- yes we are completely done having babies- this womb is closed and now so are his balls.

Polly has been on top form with getting words a bit mixed up this week- honestly this is one of the most hilarious and underrated aspects of parenting, Clara’s classic phrase is still ‘mick it mick it’ when referring to mixing any food or drink item. Polly however gave us a couple of howlers this week when she referred to McCoy’s crisps as ‘those McGregor crisps’ which they’ve now been re-named as in our house. She then asked for some ‘Southend chicken’ in her packed lunch- she meant Southern Fried- honestly I’m still laughing about this two days later.

I realise I didn’t do a blog last week so the tale from Clara’s birthday hasn’t been told yet and boy is it a classic chaotic Woodard tale. Her birthday was on a school day and Polly had Rainbows in the evening so all in all it was going to be a pretty quiet affair with presents and cake then a day out at the weekend. That was the plan anyway. The kids though thought that was far too boring. I was in the kitchen just after getting back from the school run making a snack, Henry was due home imminently and Clara was patiently waiting to open her presents- then I hear a “Muuuuummmmmyyyyy!” from the other room. I was walk in with the ‘what is going on now’ attitude to clap eyes on Seb covered in blood and Polly screaming bloody murder.

I asked them both to tell me what the actual hell had happened and was met with Polly screaming that he was going to die whilst hiding under the table and Seb kept saying ‘the balloon did it.’ I took him upstairs and cleaned him up as best I could, it stopped bleeding but the cut on his head definitely needed looking at by an actual professional so I got on the phone to Henry to find out how much longer he was going to be. No answer. Several texts and about ten phone calls later and he still wasn’t answering. I just needed to know whether he was going to be back with the car in five minutes or two hours. I did however get a proper explanation as to how Seb had sustained this latest injury. Turns out he was playing with a helium birthday balloon, throwing it up in the air and of course the weight at the bottom came down first and he didn’t move out the way in time so it landed on his head (insert face palm emoji here!).

Time was now ticking on though, I had three children all needing different things. Luckily the Rainbows crew came to the rescue and Polly got a lift to and from the meeting (this was actually quite a relief as she was definitely entering into hysterical nuisance mode and she needed to be somewhere else). With Henry still AWOL I decided to jump on a bus up to the Doctors at the top of town that thankfully has a minor injuries unit that is open till six. This must have looked hilarious- Seb sat in the pushchair with blood still on him and Clara bouncing around with her birthday badges thinking it was a great twist to her special day. The nurse was great and luckily it could be glued up instead of stitched. I also finally got a phone call back from Henry at this point- unfortunately he was still at least half an hour away so we caught the bus back down home. Polly and Henry came through the door at basically the same time and finally it was time for the littlest rascal to actually open some presents and enjoy some cake.

I hope to God though that after him bringing the chicken pox into the house, the foot saga and now this that Seb’s run of three is finally over (touch wood!). Although he had another X-ray last week just to make sure he’s not still hobbling round on a broken foot, he has made massive improvements on walking this week. Yesterday I asked him if he wanted to try walking to school and he said no- he wanted to scoot instead. This is better than the pushchair so I agreed and we left early. Five steps along the pavement though and he was walking with his legs either side of the scooter getting annoyed with it so I offered to carry it for him. He handed it over and then started walking- almost with his foot back to the floor in a normal position. He then walked all the way down there- it’s not a big walk to school but this was momentous. In fact when he arrived at his class door with his beaming teacher waiting, I almost cried. I honestly think it was more emotional than when he took his first steps as this has been such an ongoing nightmare. He has carried on being an absolute superstar since and was rewarded with a special certificate from school and a little racing car from us. Hopefully we’ll get the all clear from the X-ray at some point and we can finally put this whole foot saga behind us- fingers crossed,- and toes too just for good measure.

Anyway that’s enough for today- I need to go and do some washing up that we are both currently ignoring plus I keep getting distracted by Harry Potter. The kids have got right into the films recently which is a literal dream come true but it does mean they ask a million questions throughout that I can’t help but answer as it’s literally my specialist subject that would undoubtedly earn me a trophy on Mastermind if I ever had a chance to do so.

Oops, I’m not really sure what happened to May, but anyway here we are in June. I was going to write out a post last week actually and truth be told it would have been a very different post based on the bits of it I had written up on Wednesday, so although I will pull some of those bits in, this blog will be a bit more cheery than that one was looking.

So, last week was half term. And out half term was definitely a tale of two halves. We did have a fab time at a family wedding the Friday before the holiday officially started- the kids missed a day of school but had a blast running around in the sun. I then worked over the weekend and the first couple of days after that were just very ‘meh’ days. The kids were being shits. I know we aren’t supposed to swear about our children as the ‘hashtag blessed’ brigade start hunting you down with a court order to have your kids taken away from you but honestly sometimes you’ve just got to say it like it is. They were fighting and whinging and the whole thing with Seb’s foot was honestly testing every last nerve. But then somehow we turned it around and the second half of the week was much better.

It wasn’t a quick turnaround though, but things started to get a bit better on Tuesday afternoon. Those who have seen us recently may be aware of the drama that is Seb’s foot or is it his ankle?- you’ll forgive me for not knowing but apparently even the hospital can’t decide which bone it was he broke (I mean you’d think they of all people would be able to give that answer) but anyway- the bottom bit of his right leg is proving to be a bit of an ongoing nightmare. He broke a bone in this region just before his birthday and had a cast on for 3 weeks. We then removed the cast as instructed but sadly there were no other instructions given. We assumed (wrongly) that he would quickly be back on his feet running around- oh how wrong we were. This is the 4th week since the cast came off and he still won’t weight bare. He occasionally does a little shuffle and drags that leg along or a little hop and drag, but the rest of the time he’s getting about on his knees. Don’t get me wrong that boy can move quicker than I can on his knees but oh my god we are very over this whole foot/ankle situation. And yes before I get attacked by a Karen we have been back to the doctors and he has an X-ray booked for next week just to check that it’s actually healed alright. In the meantime though the little Prince is still being pushed around in his sister’s pushchair and going out most places is proving to be a bit of an expedition.

So, the sudden dash up to the doctors on the bus last Tuesday afternoon did seem to break the whinging children syndrome for a short while as an impromptu bus trip always cheers up any child, even if it’s left us hanging in more foot related limbo. The half term stresses weren’t fully wrapped up yet though thanks to the whole ‘getting them anywhere’ problem. On Wednesday (the second crossover day from bad to good) I felt very brave and took all three kids down to the cinema. Although Polly has been a couple of times it was the first time going for both the little two so I had no idea how this was going to go down. We saw The Little Mermaid- it’s actually pretty good, a bit scary in places but all in all I was pretty impressed. Seb provided entertainment by describing Ursula as an evil octopus and Clara carried on her brilliance of not being able to say ‘fish’ properly yet and declared ‘bitch’ multiple times throughout. The problem was I got a bit full of myself and thought I’d squeeze in an errand at the Post Office after this as things had gone so well- too well. The entrance to the Post Office was my destination of downfall. Clara decided she didn’t want to queue up and wanted to wait outside- this obviously wasn’t happening. Now the problem that’s been created by the whole foot/ankle saga is that Clara has come out of the pushchair for big chunks and her little legs aren’t quite ready for this, her stroppy little toddler brain thinks she is ready though. So one minute she wants to walk and then her legs remind her brain that she’s tired but her sassy alter ego has been unleashed and she mustn’t resort to going in the pushchair as she’s ‘not a baby anymore’ so the result is if you put her in the pushchair during one of these meltdowns she will hurl herself forward and come close to throwing herself headfirst out the pushchair. Even strapped in on the tightest setting she’s still an absolute danger to herself. On this occasion though when I bailed on the errand in the Post Office, she couldn’t go in the pushchair anyway as the little Prince was in there so I had no choice but to scoop this screaming wild little fireball of anger up and carry her under one arm all the way home. It was not a highlight of my ‘parenting journey’. She screamed. She hit. She scratched. She even bit me. Each time I set her down to try and talk reason into this little screeching ball of fury though she tried to run back in the direction of the Post Office as she thought they were missing out on something fun by us leaving there. Instead I sucked it up and carried on marching on with this hilarious set up of Seb chatting away in the pushchair, Polly skipping around my ankles and Clara in full blown rage. We obviously got plenty of stares from passers-by and we live in a town with a high proportion of elderly folk who love to chime in with really helpful comments like- ‘Oh someone’s not a happy bunny’. No fucking shit. Good job on your observation skills, would you like a gold star for pointing out that the screaming toddler is clearly not happy. This comment is so incredibly pointless I’ve now reached the stage in my ‘parenting journey’ that I don’t even acknowledge the moron uttering these words anymore and just carry on dealing with the clearly not happy bunny who actually needs my attention at that time.

Anyway it was that evening that I wrote about my slightly more sweary and slightly more rage fuelled post as I was feeling a bit shit about how the week was going. I’ve always been a mum who just loads up the pushchair with kids and a bag and heads out to toddler groups, the park, the beach, wherever and I’ve never really put too much thought into it but now I was starting to doubt my whole parenting capabilities as I couldn’t even run an errand to the bloody Post Office. So I had a bit of a cry and felt a bit sorry for myself. But then I snapped out of it.

I worked all day Thursday, but this meant I had two journeys in the car by myself to recharge. It meant I didn’t see the kids all day but peeking in on those sleeping rascals after a recharge gave me the push I needed to go into Friday with a very different mindset. Friday was a very different day to Wednesday. I bossed it which was just what I needed. The kids had the dentist first thing in the morning and we actually arrived on time to the appointment. They were all superstars in the room (our dentist is an absolute legend which helps a bit too!) and even the feral little one let her look inside her mouth which she’s never done before. We then met up with Pirate Laura and caught the bus to the theme park for a day of fun with her.

Then Saturday arrived and this was a really good day too. It was Polly’s 7th birthday- this has me full of emotions anyway as I can’t quite believe that my first baby is 7! We went back for another day at the theme park with Daddy this time though and he caught me off guard when we were eating some lunch. He said a couple of things about my parenting (unprompted which made it even more special!) that almost made me cry and that was honestly all I needed to complete the reverse from wound up, sad and stressed out Mum that started the week to just normal Mum me who finished the week.

We finished off the weekend with a trip up to the farm where Henry works so the kids could see the cows and we all got an ice cream. It was very impromptu as we were meant to doing Clara’s birthday day out but the place we were going to now doesn’t open on a Sunday (thank goodness I checked before we went!), but that made it all the better and it meant we could squeeze in a little visit to Nanny and Pops’ for a chilled catch up in their garden too.

So, all in all a bit of a mixed bag, they probably ate too many sweets and they definitely watched too much TV, we now have Britain’s Got Talent to thank for Polly naming her cuddly toy ‘Cowell’ as the winner Viggo was their absolute favourite, closely followed by the pants man who is to blame for the kids now shouting “I’m wearing pants” continuously at each other. But we also had a lot of fun and a little epiphany for me just for good measure. Anyway time to sign off now as the big two need picking up from school, I’ll try not to leave it too long next time!