The Mummy Blogger: Boundaries… What Boundaries?

Written by Sheree Echlin

There was a time when I thought I had complete control. Over anything and everything. I always turned up on time or actually early for appointments, catch ups and just about every other gathering.

Leaving the house was simple. A night out was easy and rather quick to organise, even at the last minute. Planning was….well there was no fuss really…to me anyway!

And then….I had children. Everything changed. Not all necessarily in a bad way but I have definitely altered the way I do things. Leaving the house tends to happen in a mad, yelling rush about shoes, nappies and of course running late! Organising a night or even a day out, with or without the girls in tow, generally happens months out from the event itself. And anything impromptu, well it’s usually a higgledy piggledy mess, but you get that.

More often than not, these days I’m left thinking what the hell have I done?! Life really was uncomplicated before. It wasn’t really that busy either. Lucky I love my girls right?! More than life itself, most of the time, haha! On a serious note though, aside from their father, they are, hands down, the best thing to ever happen to me (awwwwww!). But I will never repeat that statement on a bad day, which is pretty much every second day at the moment.

Catching mummy in frazzled moments is what my cheeky girls seem to do best.  I swear the minute I step outside to hang washing out, all hell breaks loose. Emptying poppers all over the floor, climbing on top of and then falling off coffee tables, running into walls…and that is just the one-year-old! As for Miss-I-Know-Everything (also known as Izzie), she’s a little more, shall we say daring, when it comes to testing Mummy these days. She likes to hide herself or hide things, thinking I won’t work it out, but Mummy knows, Mummy always knows, or at least pretends she does for the sake of appearance (haha!).

There are so many parenting styles and everyone has their own way of dealing with things. I think I like to call mine “crazy mummy who sucks at everything and makes it up as I go”. Yep a bit of a mouthful but I’m sure you get the picture. At the end of the day, as long as the kids are still alive that’s the main thing, right?! I can’t always say the same about my own sanity!

I had one of those moments recently where I had to be serious and try not to laugh. I had to adult, for want of a better word. It was 6pm, which in our house means it’s time for a bath, but just as I was about to turn the big square box off, Peppa Pig comes on. Those who know me well, know I’m not a huge fan of young precious Peppa. Even writing about that show makes me twitch. But to add insult to injury Miss Izzie points her finger at me and says “Don’t you turn Peppa off, Mummy”. I was gob smacked. Torn between wanting to yell and then laugh, I had to walk away and compose myself. Needless to say, both Miss Izzie and Peppa won on this occasion.

That’s not the end of animated characters taking over in our house. We have also now discovered Frozen, oh yay! By discovered I mean “we” have to watch it every single day, usually multiple times if I’m willing! Yes, I know I’m lucky we have made it this far without enduring the madness that is the icy world of Anna, Elsa and friends. But like many other parents, I’m happy to oblige if it buys me a few minutes of peace! I just wish that I could now let it go (haha!)!

But despite the disruption, chaos and unpredictability that my beautiful girls have brought into my life, there are many things they have both taught me. I just wish my brain wasn’t so scrambled so I could remember them all. Maybe one day when I walk into a random room, they might come back to me…

I guess more importantly we…well me then…really shouldn’t stress the small stuff (I really need to remember that when I am losing it at 2am and 3am and 4am for the hundredth time) they really are only little for such a short time. Then we have to deal with hormonal, crazy teenagers, I don’t think I’ll ever be ready for that freight train! For now, I’m going to keep enjoying those spontaneous little hugs, they make everything better.

It’s always fun, entertaining and sometimes just plain silly in our house! For more of our adventure head over to my page shereeechlin.com