Five Minutes Peace

We all love our kids but jeez don’t they come with noise, chaos and havoc? We’re all just hanging out for that delicious moment when kids actually fall asleep and the countdown to our bedtime begins (technically should be about half hour after the kids given how tired we are), when we all desperately try and fit as much as we possibly can into our few hours of grown-up time. Usually at the mercy of demanding V+ or Sky+ boxes or, in my case, the man insisting on watching a film because then it feels like we’ve actually ‘done something’.

This weekend I enjoyed a very rare few hours of quiet. The man and me went on an organised ghost hunt on Saturday night which mostly consisted of standing in the pitch dark holding hands with strangers. In silence. I didn’t want ghosts knocking and moving furniture around or wailing, not because I’m scared of ghosts, but because I didn’t want my long awaited peace to be broken.

From the moment I wake up in the morning (son number two pulling my duvet off me then heaving my head of the pillow with all his might) to the second I fall asleep (with the telly on to silence my screaming thoughts) it’s nothing but Mummymummymummymummymummymummy followed by whywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhy or, in the case of son number two mamamamamamamamamamama for ten hours, whilst running around getting drinks, snacks and fulfilling any number of other demands. And I know it gets worse as they get older: “Mum he looked at me.” “Mum tell him!”

The man and me very occasionally, and always regret it afterwards, sleep in while the kids sneak about downstairs creating havoc. A few weeks ago we got up to find that one of them (or possibly both I can just imagine them gleefully encouraging each other on this one) had put bubble mixture in the cats drinking fountain, creating a small but elaborate jacuzzi which could have provided one of the small mammals slain by Expensive Cats a nice pre-death treat (thankfully the kids had not thought of that and the only thing found floating in the bubbles was a Toy Story pencil).

But I can’t just blame my kids for the chaos that is our house, Expensive Cats also enjoy a spot of early morning mayhem. Every day, before dealing with destroyed boxes of cereal in the dining room (why can’t kids understand the wording “slide finger under flap”) and after crunching through a sea of coco pops (that’s another two quid down the drain) I get to the kitchen to find any number of slaughtered creatures littering my floor. Some of them have been skinned, disembodied heads lie a foot away from other random body parts and sometimes just small piles of entrails remain. Step on some poor creatures innards barefoot every morning and you quickly learn to put your shoes on before you even come downstairs.

There’s a kids book called Five Minutes Peace, where Mrs Large (the matriarch of the Large family of elephants) tries to have a bubble bath while caring for her 3 children. Quite what she was thinking even attempting to have a quiet bath in the middle of the day with three kids around is beyond me. She even takes a tray of tea with her. I mean, really? I’m lucky if I get a chance to have a wee in peace without a small child  sitting bare bummed in my lap because he needs a poo right that second. Anyway, predictably she doesn’t get her peaceful bath and the kids eventually get in with her. She then leaves them to it and gets three minutes and forty-five seconds to herself downstairs. That’s where the book ends. It doesn’t say that her penance for those three minutes and forty-five seconds was a tsunami in the bathroom, emptied out bottles of shampoo and the most expensive ‘treat for mummy’ conditioner used to “clean” the shower screen floating in the remaining one inch of water that’s left in the bath (with a foot of bubbles on top which will take ten minutes to wash away), and 3 rolls of soggy toilet paper and an emptied out waste bin floating in the flood water on the floor. Was it worth it for three minutes and forty-five seconds?

So I really enjoyed my ghosthunt, if nothing else for the peace and quiet that I never seem to get in my house. But however much I wish for silence I know that there will come a day when I long for this mayhem, and I will miss CBeebies being on at full blast and having to clean marmite off radiators, whilst being used as a human climbing frame. No, really.