Lets get started

As a mother of 2 small children I often find myself narrating my own life in my head, possibly as a way to stay focused but more like because I've watched way too much tv.

This narration has made me realise that I can quite easily transpose my thoughts into something useful, something handy, something like a blog

So here is my first helpful hint for the wider world

How to get through a day with Toddlers.

As soon as your husband/partner/parole officer steps out that door to go to work with the normal people you are left alone with the small ones. You've clocked on. Toddlers can drain you of your will to live so I have come up with what I consider the 5 daily milestones and how to get through them

1) Morning Tea
2) Lunch
3) Afternoon Tea
4) Dinner
5) Bedtime

"But that's just about food and sleep!" I hear you say. Don't underestimate the power of the tummy or clock watching is my response to you.

Morning Tea 10 am or 9 on a bad day......

Normally by this time you have at least 4 tasks that have been started but not completed. Half the washing is done, beds have had their doonas chucked on the floor so they can 'air', children are wearing pyjama bottoms but clothes on top and your half drunk cup of coffee has a fly floating in it because you've spent the last hour carrying your 2 year old back to the naughty corner for her 2 minute time out.
Whats the plan? Sugary biscuits - nothing keeps a toddler quite like a couple of Tim Tams, they can take up to an hour to devour! In that time you can get at least one episode of Modern Family or whatever you missed on tele last night in!

Lunch normally around 12 or once you've cleaned all the chocolate handprints off the white walls.

Unfortunately lunch can be more of a drawn out process than morning tea. There really should be at least 3 meal refusals before you relent and give them Nutri Grain again. Lunch is a time to sit with your children and talk over topics that interest them such as 'spreading the rocks from the garden all over the carpet' or 'the best way to find that screechy noise at the back of your throat'. Sometimes I like to practice sleeping with my eyes open - freaks them out and lets you catch a couple z's.

Afternoon Tea - repeat morning tea routine (if you actually remember afternoon tea that is)

Dinner One should always endeavour to have the children fed and bathed by 6pm. I think it's nice to aspire to the unattainable; it keeps you on your toes.
Dinner is a riot - literally. It's always a hard decision whether to bathe your toddlers before or after dinner. Is it worse to let them suck the sand out from under their fingernails during dinner or worse to put them to bed with a head of hair full of spaghetti?
tomayto - tomarto....
I have a rule - 'If it's brown wash it down, if it can wait don't debate' simply put - don't make more work for yourself and sheets are easier to clean than kids! I have nothing more to say about dinner - my therapist says we shouldn't go there yet.

Bed time! I always thought that kids were put to bed early because they are growing beings that need a good amount of rest. Not true - in a nutshell kids to to bed early because their parents have a nervous twitch, blood shot eyes and knotted hair by 4.30pm.
Bed time routines should be consistent. In our house they are consistently a huge fight. Where's teddy? I can't wear the Bob the Builder pjs they feel funny. I don't like that book. Read me 17 more please. I'd like a drink of water. I need to go to the toilet. Where's Daddy? Mummy why are you crying.......

Of course there is always the obligatory hugging around the neck so you wont leave the room, your top half is stuck on the bed whilst your bottom half is acting independently trying to escape out the door.
How many times should you let them get up after you've put them to bed? ZERO - tell them about the monster in the hallway - that will help them stay in their beds - it's for their own good really......
Once secured in their beds fast a nigh nighs you realise they really are little darlings, that and the fact you've left your daughter in the naughty corner for the last 4 hours......

*sigh*

IT'S OVER - well until tomorrow morning - or maybe 2am when they spew all the nutri grain and tims tams up............ I love that time of night after they've gone to bed, the end of the day, husband on his way home/should be home/should have been home 2 hours ago where the hell is he???? and all you can think of is the warm loving and nurturing embrace of a G&T.

So really I haven't helped anyone here, didn't provide any solutions, haven't come up with any groundbreaking toddler taming ideas - but hey there's always the next post....

E