When I had my kids, I had always known I didn’t want them too many years apart, I remember trying to have my second baby when her sister was only 3 months old partly because I didn’t want to have different fathers for my babies in case things didn’t work out, some may call it a silly reason but today I have 2 girls aged 10 and 9, and a son going onto 7. And yeah I am with their father.
The interesting part is their dad stays over 9000km away, I am in Botswana and he stays in the UK but he gets to visit twice or three times a year or whenever he can and that’s the only time I get to have some breathing space and a little more sleep.
Most of the time it’s just me and my three bambinos. I do not have a house helper, which means it’s all me having to deal with the morning chaos getting the kids ready for school, and getting ready for my seven-thirty to four-thirty job. After work I rush home, I can’t be 2 minutes late to knock off or I will get stuck in traffic. I get home and get to prepare dinner while assisting my kids with homework.
My God, I am literally back in primary school with these kids, imagine each of them gets to bring two to three homework every day and a reading book that I have to sign. Thereafter I have to clean the house while they pack their school lunch and the little brother takes a bath, I only bath him in the mornings. The girls help with cleaning the dishes. When I decided not to have house help I needed to teach my kids and get them involved in house chores. You see when you have kids there really is no manual on what to do what when, but I felt they were ready to do a bit of some responsibility around the house, and the only way for them to learn was not to have house help.
The first three months were a nightmare, the whole thing drained me I would go to bed without eating dinner because I would be exhausted. There are days I would cry by myself, I would get angry at my partner for not being there, I was losing myself, sometimes I would get so mad at my kids for leaving dirty dishes in the sink or for not making their beds properly, I was forgetting that they were only kids and they needed patience, besides who said it was all going to be easy, oh I know social media said so; the picture-perfect families that made everything look so effortless yet the truth was behind the scenes.
Today, six months later I am such a much better person, I learnt that with time everything will fall into place, soon they will be grown up and I am going to miss their mess. We just have to try one day at a time.
