The Holiday

Wounded, weary and carrying the scars of our battles, the Reids have returned from holiday.  

We came.  We saw.  We were conquered.

Here is a tip.  It is worth EVERY PENNY to fly to your ski holiday.  Flights at arse o' clock and fog delays notwithstanding.   We drove.  It was a bad choice.  The trip there was not too bad, although it involved a couple of days of getting up way too early for Harried Mum.  The trip back was disastrous.  One of the main roads out of Chamonix was closed.  Our friends sat in standstill traffic for 5 hours.  It took us 12 hours to do a 7 hour drive.  The next day there were problems at the Chunnel, and we sat in a line for 4 1/2 hours waiting for a train.  As I sat in the Maidstone services, scarfing McDonalds at 10:30pm, with my forlorn and unwashed children asleep in the back seat, I felt bad about the state of my life.

So, to and from was mildly stressful.  Although we did have a lovely time in Luxembourg with our friends, and we didn't trash their house too permanently one hopes.

This holiday was Lunatic Child's first experience of ski school.  He took to it just as he has the British education system, that is to say, not at all.  It did not go well.  My baby.  What are we going to do with him?  We gave up in the end.  It was only making both him and us miserable.  Instead, he had a special day out with both mum and dad where we shouted contradictory instructions at him all day..."NO!  LEFT!"  "TURN.  NOW!" and Harried Mum (accidentally!) knocked him off the button lift.  It was a good positive experience after ski school, and he had a grand time.  He has no fear, which is a worry. He just points the skis down the hill and hopes for the best.  

Trouble had a nice nanny who took him sledding. He was suspicious about this and was never quite sure whether he loved it or hated it.  He had a great time with all the other children and is probably the least traumatized member of the family at the moment.

Harried Mum and Fun Daddy did have a few lovely days of skiing. The skies were blue.  The weather was warm.  The snow was a bit meh, but we had a fabulous time just messing about with our friends. The food was good.  We ate and drank way too much on the pretext that we'd been exercising all day.  Harried Mum has probably gained about 3 kgs.

The second to last day was rather icy and Harried Mum wasn't feeling it.  I slipped and had a really nasty fall.  It hurt really badly, and I was pretty shaken up.  It felt like I had a massive charlie horse on my hip and my whole leg was cramping up.  And, I am telling you, this is a true story.  No word of a lie.  I got up from lunch a few hours later, and the pain was so bad that I passed out on the floor of the restaurant.  I woke up flat on my back thinking, 'WTF?'  Fun Daddy was not particularly chivalrous and basically looked completely horrified that Harried Mum would do something so stupid as pass out because she'd  bruised her arse.  But I did.

So I spent the eleventy million hours in the car the past 2 days only able to sit on one bum cheek.  The bruise covers my entire arse, so it is, as you might imagine, absolutely massive.  Fun Daddy had to drive the entire time, and I am eternally grateful.

We are now home.  Everyone has the lurgy.   Everything hurts.  But Psycho Cat is really happy to see us.

We will be re-thinking the logistics of the ski holiday next year.

So....are you thinking of having children?

Excuse Harried Mum's long silence.  We've been busy!

Anyway, I felt compelled to post, as a lovely friend appears to be contemplating children.  Whilst she is doing that, I thought I would share some vignettes that she might find illuminating.

- Lunatic Child drew an enormous 3-eyed alien on the hall stairs.  In sharpie pen.  Because 'paper is boring'.  Of course it is.  Prior to confessing the crime, he tried to blame Trouble.

- Lunatic Child refused to practice his lines in the school Christmas play.  Instead, he used only the words 'fart', 'bum' and 'poop'.  As in...'The farts told the poopyheads that the bum was born at last.'  The teachers literally had steam coming out of their ears.  The times.  They were bad.  Harried Mum had to sit on a small children's chair in the classroom at a crisis parent/teacher meeting and receive a stern talking to for being a deficient working mother.  I note that on the day, however, he rose to the occasion and 'The angels told the shepherds that the saviour was born at last.'  A teacher was hovering about one inch away from him at all times.

- Trouble knocked over the TV and broke the screen in what I can only assume was an attempt to change the channel to Peppa Pig.  We are now on TV number 3 since moving to the UK.  The one we brought from the US didn't work.  Number 2 is a casualty.  We're hoping the 3rd time is the charm.

- Our sofa is basically a hazardous waste zone.  At any time, you can expect to find: a desiccated apple core, peanut butter, cracker crumbs, jam, snot, chocolate and/or sticky puddles of dried juice.  Perhaps we should clean more often, you say in a superior tone...Yes, well.  You can just bugger off, Judgy McJudgy-Pants.

- The cat has Stockholm Syndrome.  She cannot stay away from the children, even though she is constantly subjected to all that you might imagine a 5 and 2 year old boy would do to a cat.

- On the other hand, there is nothing better than when Trouble throws his arms around you, gives you a huge hug and a sloppy, open-mouthed kiss, looks at you with his big hazel eyes, and....smacks you across the face as hard as he can.

- Or, when Lunatic Child crawls into bed with you in the middle of the night because he's had a bad dream...and then you spend the rest of the night trying to sleep while he starfishes in the middle of the bed, you get prodded by his bony arse and elbows and receive a face full of skunky 5 year old breath.

I love them so fiercely.  They make me so crazy.  We are always tired.  They are our joy.  They drive us to tears.  It's not for everyone, and I can really understand that.  But, for us, we don't miss (too often...or at least, not every day) life without them.  Besides, if I didn't have kids, I'd have nothing to blog about but my boring lawyer job and Fun Daddy's annoying habits, and who would want to read about that?