I’ve earned a cup of tea

Stephanie C - 6 Feb 16

Husband and I take it in turns to have lie-ins at the weekend – I do the parental shift one of the weekend mornings while he sleeps, and vice-versa on the other day.  The day we sleep-in changes according to what’s going on in actual life and this weekend, because I went out with some pals on Friday night and got absolutely shit-faced, Saturday was my lazy day.  I didn’t roll out of bed until 11am which is big, big news in my world and when I did, Husband was well and truly at the parenting helm and doing a stellar job.  He and bubs had a busy morning of bottle-feeding, porridge-feeding, play-time, Skyping with grandparents and by the time I got up, baby boy had been put down for his morning nap.  A pretty productive morning, I think you’ll agree, but no different to any other morning for any other parent.

As I came down the stairs, Hubster was tip-toeing over the millions of toys on the living room floor and trotted off to the kitchen announcing he was going to put the kettle on while the boy was asleep because he’d “earned a cup of tea.”  Say what now? Earned a cup of tea?  What the actual…?

The following few seconds saw me standing open-mouthed at the bottom of the stairs working through a range of evolutionary thoughts that went something like this:

1 Does this guy think what he’s just done is work? It’s not work, it’s our life.  It’s everyday life, you don’t take breaks from everyday life.

2 My husband’s a ridiculous man, nobody else goes around making a congratulatory cuppa every time their kid nods off to sleep.

3 Yes, he’s been flat out, but is he really going to take a rest when there’s toys all over the floor?!

4 Having said that, a cuppa is always good when you’ve been busy for a while.

5 It does seem to have been a pretty successful morning – maybe he’s on to something here.

And actually, I think he is on to something.  I spend every day of every week running round like a mad woman, too busy to really notice when things are going well.  As soon as the boy has mastered something which was previously challenging, I seem to forget it had ever been a challenge.  He used to be crap at napping (seriously, how is that an actual thing?) now he naps no problem.  He used to be a nightmare to feed, now he chomps away happily every time (most of the time.) He used to cry when he had his nappy changed, now he just crawls away, arse out, mid-wipe.  We’re still kind of working on that one.  Anyway, my point is that these little victories that we’ve all worked on and achieved together, stopped feeling like victories as soon as they’d been won; they very quickly just became ‘the way things are.’  Yet, when I really think about it, why shouldn’t my husband have had a cup of tea for a job well done?  After all, they’d both been dressed, fed and had a lovely, active morning together and just because parents the world over do that every day doesn’t make it any less challenging or any less triumphant.

On the days when I don’t have much on on the social front, I assign ‘jobs’ for me to do during each of the boy’s naps; morning nap is usually exercise, shower, hoover.  Early afternoon nap varies – clean bathroom/put washing on/general tidy.  Late afternoon nap is dinner prep.  It’s organised and it keeps the house ticking over but what my husband’s jolly self-pat-on-the-back this morning made me wonder was, what stops me from taking these quiet times as an opportunity to just sit, reflect and say ‘nice one Mama?’

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t ever enjoy a moment of rest, it’s just that I never use that time to think about what has been achieved that day or that week.  Instead, I usually sit there making a to-do list in my head feeling increasingly stressed because it’s almost lunch time and I still haven’t cleaned up this morning’s breakfast mess.  It just doesn’t seem to occur to me that all the tiny little milestones we reach every day deserve celebrating.  But they do because it’s the little victories that lead to big victories and it’s the big victories that lead to joy and joy equals happy family who make happy family memories.  And if that’s the case then it has to be worth acknowledging all the little things to help make sure that when our boy’s a man, his head will be full of a life-time’s worth of delightful memories and will be a wholly contented, well rounded, decent human being.  Maybe I’m over-egging the pudding here, but I can’t help think it makes some sort of sense.

So with that in mind, my aim for this coming week is to sit down at least once a day, and mindfully remind myself of all of that morning’s victories whilst drinking a nice, big cup of congratulatory tea.  And if the house ends up resembling a steaming pile of horse shit?  Well, I won’t even care because I’ll be high on life and my own sense of success and my husband’s a neat freak so he’ll probably tidy it up anyway.

Stephanie C

Two boy mama, Irish, Londoner, secondary English teacher, runner, occasional climber, pun enthusiast, laugh-out-loud-er, insta-addict Follow me on Instagram: @seppicino Intersted in contributing to my personal blog? www.dearstupidparents.com - all writer's welcome

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