Half term

I normally really look forward to half term. It is a week when I had the children home, we could plan to do all the fun things that being in school sometimes got in the way of and it meant more family time. Now I am back at work it presented a different challenge. How to ensure that the children were looked after all week which out having to put them into holiday clubs. I feel very strongly that school holidays are just that, holidays from the school setting and children need those breaks to recharge themselves.

We are very lucky in that my husband works shifts so he was home for 3 days of the week. That left us with 2 days to cover – easy, a day of annual leave each.

I made plans for my day, I wanted a day that we could enjoy especially as I do feel that I am missing out being at work full time. The weather wasn’t too good and the morning didn’t start as planned. Youngest got out of bed and we had a trip to the doctors for antibiotics for a chest infection but we made some fun of it taking teddies with us to make sure that they were ok. Our next stop was the hairdressers and once again teddy was treated to a wash, cut and dry (minus the scissors).

Next stop was back home for refuelling. Smallest being poorly meant that food was not something high on her agenda and with both children obviously tired from the long half term I suggested a rest. What happened next was nothing short of miraculous. Both children snuggled down in their beds, with no fuss and slept. Unheard of. Oldest for an hour, smallest for 2 hours – both on the promise that they could choose what they wanted to do once they got up. Oldest very quickly chose to watch the Narnia film – the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, one of his favourites and he was as good as gold watching it with me until youngest woke up and joined us.

After this it was time for tea – both children love to help so I had planned a meal that they could help with. Oldest is gaining in confidence using a small knife to cut mushrooms and peppers and smallest has plenty if fun cutting out pastry shapes for pie tops but on this day I decided that we could make burgers. Beef mince, seasoning, an egg each plus some grated onion and celery and they got their hands in making the burgers for me to cook. The next job was setting the table with cutlery, drinks, sauces, salad and bread cakes.  

 Our after tea routine is the same every day – finish eating, upstairs for a toilet stop, washing hands and face and then play time until bath time. We find that keeping the routine the same keeps the children grounded, changes can cause a great deal of uncertainty and the resulting fuss is not something we find supportive of a good bed time routine. Bath time is followed by PJs, hair dried, tooth brushing and then into a bed for story time. One of my favourite times but more on that at a later date.

Both children were fast asleep within moments once we settled them – my husband having arrived home mid-bath time leaving us to have a quiet evening but I went to bed happy that my day during half term had been as good as I could make it, not perfect but it didn’t matter.

Looking to the future there are a lot of school holidays to cover – the long one in the summer being one that is slightly scary as we have to find a way to cope and I would be unrealistic to say that we would never resort to using the holiday clubs available. We just don’t have enough annual leave to cover everything – even with the shift patterns that my husband works.