Well, I finally decided that trying to work, look after three kids and run the house was not working out for me so I quit my job I still haven’t finished serving out my notice but it feels great to have made this decision.
I have been busy trying to work out what to do next. I am definitely going to enjoy spending some time at home with Mr Goo but I have decided that what I really want to do is set up my own business.
At the moment I am exploring different possibilities. So far I have had plenty of ideas but none of them have stood up to a closer inspection. Feel free to share any suggestions you might have as I am looking at everything at the moment.
As for this blog, who knows? For some reason, I still seem to have a fair few visitors but I don’t really know why because nothing has been happening!
PS It is 4am and Mr Goo has been awake for the last 2 hours - the joy of motherhood, heh!
OK, so I do have all these great ideas for articles but I just haven’t found the time to put any of them down on paper. Things have been rather busier than I had imagined, what with work, household stuff, sorting out Christmas, going away every weekend not to mention looking after 3 kids! Still, it is all good.
However, the long break (alright, it has only been one month!) has got me wondering: should I go on or bring this blog to a happy close?
One of my friends was telling me how outraged she was at her mother’s behaviour when she recently took her son to stay with her. The problem was that my friend’s mother would shut the door very loudly, right next to the room her baby was sleeping in. When my friend asked her mother to close the door more quietly her mother said:
a) it was her house and she would do what she wanted; and
b) she had never worried about tiptoeing around her own children when they were small and she wasn’t going to start now!
This raises the question of parenting etiquette. How do you behave in other people’s houses and what do you expect them to do for your children? For example, will the host provide food or should you bring your own? Where do you put dirty nappies?
I think much of it depends on who you are staying with. If you are staying with other families with children of the same age then, in my experience, everyone just mucks in.
However, if you are staying with parents/in-laws then there may well be a few issues. How do you cope with priceless nick-nacks being strewn around the house at toddler height? Can you ask for the new puppy, that chews most things, to be put in a separate room from a newborn babe?
Then, there is the rather unrelaxing (in my view) experience of staying with friends who do not have children. Are they prepared for the early morning start? How do you explain that you can’t really read the papers over a pub lunch when the kids are in tow?
It is all a bit of a minefield. In the end most people muddle through pretty well and if the experience is truly awful, you just don’t go back. You might not be invited again anyway
No matter what your experience of staying over at other people’s houses, I think it is always a relief to arrive home and get the children back in their own beds and their own routines.
I still haven’t finished serving out my notice but it feels great to have made this decision.
