As it turns out, we didn’t think that travelling to the UK with four small children and associated luggage was enough of a challenge, so we also listed our house on air bnb one quiet evening as a bit of a lark, except then the house rented and we spent the next month fixing things that we have been putting off fixing for the past year.
And when I say we, I mean mr tMatM, although I was heavily involved in a sort of, supervisory role.
Mr tMatM was having a blast.
I do think that one of the inevitable outcomes of having four children so close together is in fact that I am now so equipped to live in survival mode that I can’t imagine anymore how life would be if, for example, one afternoon I just decided to sit down and read a book alone, or have a quiet cup of tea with my husband.
Always busy.
Every hour of the day is filled with frenetic activity and, if we’re honest, a large part of the day’s efforts are just making it to bedtime without serious incident (not always successful).
Perhaps that is just toddlerdom, perhaps a little heightened by the number of children, but in any case, things were seeming like they might start to get a little easier so we threw air bnb into the mix and kept ourselves at just-about-at-breaking-point in the month before we went.
Anyway, the house rental was fine – more on that soon – and the trip to the UK really was lovely.
Mim’s constant request for a photo alone: the ultimate indicator of a child with many siblings?
Getting to see the children spend time with their great grandma, and meeting their two new cousins – really special.
Not pictured: Wilf, likely on a path of destruction
But also, two weeks was all a bit hurried and trying to make sure that a very rainy trip lived up to the children’s (high) expectations of an epic holiday / homecoming was a pretty exhausting task in itself, not to mention the personal emotional turmoil of feeling exceptionally at-home-but-away.
Wilf asleep in the ergo carrier, the back-breaking solution to Toddler travel chaos
Perhaps that is an expat phenomenon that I will get used to: for now, it took a period of readjustment, in both directions.
And now, Home, and finally, some sunshine!
A fourth birthday coming up – for Mim (another Mum-cake on the starting blocks); and we are gearing up to a summer of US/Canada road trips and potential camping-trailer-rv-buying. Watch this space!
tMatM x