The last weeks of the school year seem to be flying past, but the next 3 weeks are absolutely rammed and my brain is like mush so I thought I’d do a post now as I’m likely to not get another chance till the kids actually break up.

There is so much to juggle in the next couple of weeks and this might be why so many mums right now look ready to collapse. Our last weeks include: (technically) 3x sport’s days (the big 2’s is split across a whole day with various different timings to remember), 2x school trips, a summer fun day, a folk festival afternoon, a family picnic, a teddy bear picnic, a water play afternoon, a home visit from Clara’s new teacher, new class day, a non-uniform day (with tombola prizes to bring in), 2x dentist appointments, dance classes, Brownies, toddler groups (these are the last ones which as per my last post are going to be a bit emotional), work, half a text book to read and somewhere in all that I’ve got an essay to write. I honestly think if I get 1 more email from the school I might just run off into the hills and not come back.

Talking about emails from the school, Monday was the day we found out what new classes the kids will actually be in come September- always a tense moment. This meant that whilst driving home from work my phone went so mental I thought someone had died- I had about 40 notifications from various group chats as well as the half a dozen emails from the school. When I got home and then joined in on these conversations my brain struggled to keep up- 11, I actually counted 11 conversations on the go at the same time as well as trying to work out what classes mine were actually going to be in (I think I can put this on my CV as another example of the extreme multi-tasking skills parenting has given us!). The good news is mine seem happy with the choices and the new class day they had a couple of days later was met with general positivity. Seb did have a bit of a meltdown when he realised he would be leaving some of his friend’s behind to go up to the bigger site, but he’s been reassured knowing that they’ll all be together again next year anyway and some of his friends went up last year so he’ll see them in the meantime.

I had another successful big walk with the kids last week. I’m trying to get them a bit more resilient so I’ve been taking them on some bigger walks up the various hills that surround our little town. On Saturday we went out adventuring for about 3 hours and they were absolute troopers- Clara only needed a little 5 minute piggy back. We did have a bit of a drama when we got home though. We knew there had been ticks about as we’d had to brush them off us a few times whilst walking through the woods, so when we got home we did a full strip and found we’d bought 3 little fuckers home with us. Polly offered to get the one out my back, which I politely declined and told her I’d wait till Henry got home! Clara had 2 on her, the one on her back came out fairly easily but the one in her armpit proved to be a rascal like her. I tickled her by accident with the tweezers whilst trying to get it out and she flinched so only half of it came out. We took a little trip down to the chemist who said not to worry too much as it should work its way out, but luckily after a second attempt an hour later the little sod’s head came out and she seems absolutely fine.

We’ve carried on our thing of watching some more different films, they loved watching The Parent Trap and laughed so much at Dr Dolittle. We’ve also worked our way through most of the Pirates of the Caribbean films. This did trigger a hilarious conversation between Seb and Polly when watching the third one. They watched in pure horror at the last scene where Will and Elizabeth are finally enjoying a raunchy night on a desert island and Will kisses her leg and we got treated to comments such as- “Eeeewwww he’s kissing her leg!” “Urgh why does she like that?!” Eww would you like someone to kiss your leg like that?!” Henry and I had to look away from each other as we were both howling with silent laughter- please tell me this hilarious innocence lasts for a few more years!

Anyway time to sign off as I’m meant to be doing the washing up whilst Polly ‘teaches’ Seb to play chess and Clara watches the new episodes of Unicorn Academy for the 16th time. This chess game definitely needs loosely supervising though as I can see the board being tipped over monopoly style as she is blatantly screwing him over.