Two excellent things are to happen next week. The first is that, after several months of badgering the human resources department, Knox finally goes on to his new part-time working pattern; it will mean quite a hit (hopefully temporary, at least until he gets another job) in terms of income but he'll be able to be here for four days a week. The second thing is that my parents arrive for the entire summer; four whole months.
I don't know quite how to convey my relief; indeed, my absolute jubilation, at the prospect of having another couple of pairs of hands around here to help out with Botany and with the daily grind in general. I really don't want to sound like a whinger, but my god. I am so goddamn tired so much of the time- and if I am being completely honest, just a little impatient and a tad burned out with the single parenting gig. It probably doesn't help that Botany's demands on me can sometimes seem endless, relentless, unceasing. From the minute she wakes up, she is a little bundle of need.
Read, mummy! Boob! Porridge! Sippy! Milk! Sit, mummy! Cuddle! Wear the pretty dress? Want pretty dress! More porridge? More boob! Croissant! Juice! Ants! Monsters! Ants and Monsters!
That last one is particularly problematic; no amount of explaining can convey the concept that you can't have two different movies on at the same time. There is also some difficulty with the notion that in order to provide some of the things she has asked for, I do need to move to a different room occasionally, for example, to get the carton of juice out of the fridge.
Given that the litany of things Botany desires or wants begins at roughly 5.30 am every morning and finishes at about 7.30 pm, I find the days that we are home alone together to be particularly...long. She is quite easily bored- or at least, she seems to be less fractious and hard to manage if I aim to provide an endless stream of amusing and stimulating activity. Unfortunately, my energy levels as well as my finances are finite; I simply don't always have the resource to come up with the goods.
Some days, we've already been to the library, the park and the grocery store followed by the reading of "If you Give a Pig a Pancake" approximately 9,000 times and she's had her nap and then I am aghast that it is only 2.30 pm and there is still all this time to fill. By some unfortunate chance, most of my mother friends work opposite days to me, which usually rules out playdates. I'm about to try to sign up for a local playgroup but I gather there is a waiting list so it's not clear when we'll get in. I find myself wondering with guilt what we all did before the invention of the television. Then I feel even more guilty that here in front of me sits my heart's desire, my precious most wanted child, and I am unable to enjoy it, so overwhelming is the urge for a half an hour of peace to sit in the bathroom reading Vogue magazine.
When she finally goes to bed, I often just collapse. On a bad day, I find myself mentally whimpering that I can't, I can't, I can't do this anymore- but knowing I have to get up, make her lunch, order the groceries, find something clean to wear to work tomorrow, do the laundry, clean the bathroom, sort out the tax credit thing, and plan a wedding.
I think, most of the time, that this is a very normal developmental phase that we are going through and eventually we will come out the other side relatively unscathed. I delight in my endlessly inquisitive, loving, amusing, bright spark of a child. And then, at lower points in the day, I am convinced I have spawned an all consuming whirlwind, whose thirst for life is, quite literally, sucking me dry.
Is Botany harder work than other children her age? On one hand, I very much doubt it; all kids come with quirks and foibles and I'd be very surprised if most toddlers didn't ask a lot of their parents. On the other hand, I do sometimes suspect that Botany does fall on the intense end of the spectrum. She's never, ever been a placid child, not since the moment she was born (or trying to be born, even). There's a such a streak of strong will in her- and coupled with what I suspect may be her considerable intelligence, it means that I have to work that much harder to keep up with her. What I keep telling myself is that I was never meant to be doing all of it on my own.
It'll be so much better when there are other pairs of hands to help carry the load, pick up the slack, make the pancakes.