A schedule of events that I'm sure you may be able to relate to and tips to help you manage your crazy weekends...

Friday afternoon/evening:
Friend of M round for play and tea. Must remember to sort out food as friend is vegetarian. Hmmm…… what will we eat? If I haven’t remembered to sort something out this morning, there will probably be a last minute dash to our village butcher (who lets you in round the back door when the shop is closed) for a steak. Chris will be given the job of making his fabulous baker chips while I’ll be in charge of cooking the steak to medium rare perfection. Evening – chat, watch a DVD, drink wine and probably get to bed later than good intentions!

Saturday Morning:
Swimming lessons for both M and F 9.30am to 11am, so Chris will be out of the door with them by 9.10am.

In the meantime, I’ll go for a quick run: Intention will be 1 hour and by the time I’ve got my act together, I’ll probably have just enough time for half an hour and a very rushed shower, then do menu planning and set off to shop for the week ahead (2 boys plus dad will be without me from Tuesday to Friday). Must also plan for dinner party this evening as we have 6 friends coming round.

Note to self - Must find a sports shop to buy gum shield for M, otherwise he won’t be able to participate in tomorrow’s karate tournament (wishful thinking!)

Saturday Afternoon:
Back home from shopping: Unload shopping and put it away. Bucket cookery (probably curry) for a crowd of adults and kids of various ages in preparation for this evening. Set the table now as won’t have time later. Try to make sure house looks semi-presentable.

At 2.30pm, one of us (to be decided) will head off to a play barn in town for F to go to a friend’s party from 3-5pm. That “one of us” will pop into Majestic Wine Warehouse (our grown up version of a play barn) for wine on the way back from the children’s party. Meanwhile, t’other one of us will take M to the school bingo (an annual “must attend” event for the kids) which starts at 4pm. Will have to duck out at 6pm to get ready for arrival of friends at about 6.30pm. M won’t be pleased to miss the final bonus round, but tough!

Saturday evening:
Open wine, greet friends, eat, drink and be merry. Coax boys into bed probably far later than intended.

Sunday morning (afternoon?):
Up at 8am (SO uncivilised on a Sunday) to take M to karate tournament that starts at 9.30 am. No idea what time this finishes or what we'll have left of the day, but hoping it's just until lunchtime.

Sunday afternoon
Whatever time is left will probably be spent:

• Washing clothes
• Putting clothes away
• Helping M with homework
• Nagging M to do guitar practice
• Continuing with the never ending work in the garden sawing down laurel bushes (husband, not me, although I have been known to be quite handy with the saw).
• Play with boys in garden
• Preparing and cooking Sunday roast for dinner
• Pack for trip to London on Tuesday. Why do I have to pack on Sunday you ask? Because Monday continues in the same vein as the crazy weekend...

Sunday evening
Family roast dinner around table. Conversation will consist of M and F’s famous stories which involve much violence, surreal adventure and toilet humour. Get boys into bed for a reasonable hour. Collapse in front of TV to catch up on current intellectual TV viewing of the moment: “True Blood” (about vampires) or “The Walking Dead” (about Zombies). Off to bed by 11pm for sweet dreams about zombies with fangs.

Monday morning
Wake up, get boys fed, dressed, off to school and nursery. First client at 8.30 am, coach clients throughout the day until 3pm.

Monday afternoon
Pick M up from school. M goes to a party (5-6.30pm) in Chester. Luckily we've got a very kind parent to take him with her son, so need to take M to her house. We’ve had to ask this because it’s parents’ evening at school tonight and our slot is 5pm. Logistically we can’t do picking F up from nursery, taking M to party AND attend parents’ evening.
Monday evening

Give M a 2nd tea (he’ll no doubt want more food after his party tea as he seems to be on a growth spurt and has hollow legs) and give F a 2nd tea (even though he’ll have had “2nds, 2nds, 2nds, 2nds” for lunch, lunch pudding, tea and tea pudding at nursery, he too has hollow legs). Try (and probably fail) to get F to bed at 7pm. Prepare for my “Mums Who Coach” 2nd group call of the month (their mentor coaching call) and dial into the bridge line at 7.55pm. Come off the call about 9.15-9.30pm, get ready for bed, check I’ve got everything for tomorrow morning and set 2 alarms to get up at 4 a.m. so I can set off for 4.45am to get to London for a 9.30am start of a 4 day course.

Note to Chris: Don’t forget: As M has missed Monday night karate because of friend’s party; he must go on Wednesday evening instead, because we’ve PAID FOR IT!!!!

2nd note to Chris: Try to give boys fruit as well as nutella on toast.

3rd note to Chris: Try not to feed them pasta and sauce EVERY night that I’m away.

Lessons, ponderings and questions on “One crazy weekend in the life of two working parents”

If you’ve read down to here, congratulations! I hope you’re not feeling as exhausted as I am having read it! So, for those of you still with me, here are my thoughts on our crazy weekend:

1. No matter how busy or crazy this weekend seems, I bet there are some of you who can compare in craziness or even beat it completely! This leads to the question: Is this a typical weekend? In our case – NO! It would be completely unsustainable. This sort of weekend is unusual in being this busy and manic and I recognise that it needs to be followed by a less frenetic weekend to allow us to recover, catch up and allow ourselves some down time.

2. If this sort of weekend IS typical for you, then I invite you to write your own crazy weekend diary and read it back to yourself. Could be a great way of clearly seeing where it’s all going a bit doolally and to help you to say “NO!” to some of the madness.

3. Having written this and read it back to myself, I’m preparing to have a “No can do” conversation with M about the Saturday afternoon bingo. Even though we’ve managed to attend every year, it is just plain daft trying to fit this in simply so that M won’t be disappointed. He’s having a friend round on Friday, he’ll be seeing friends on Saturday night, taking part in a karate tournament on Sunday and he’s going to a party on Monday. That’s more than enough fun for any 8 year old over the space of 4 days!

4. Which leads me to my next pondering: Do we pander too much to our kids nowadays? I think we do. Recent studies are revealing that today’s parenting is very child-centric. This is laudable only up to a point; our kids have to learn to deal with disappointment and they have to learn to be a little bored. Whilst as parents, we encourage and value their activities and friendships, it’s not possible to do or have it all. Life can’t be all fun fun fun and mum and dad running around attending to their every whim. If we raise kids to think that the World revolves around them, they are going to have one helluva shock when they venture out into the Big Bad World as adults. Sure, for us as parents, our children are precious, important and a central part of our lives. But we’ve got to face fact that it’s not how the majority of the rest of the World will regard them. They will have to fit in with the wider World, not the other way round!

5. What are you doing for YOU during the weekend? It’s all too easy for working parents to spend their weekends catching up on chores and running around after kids. My crazy weekend will include at least one run, no matter what. It’s one of my sanity savers and it’s “set in stone”! Another “set in stone” for us is at least one evening of pure grown up time without the kids around. This gets harder as M gets older, but we are developing some cunning ways around that. Where are your “set in stone” moments of pleasure or down time for you as a grown up during the weekend?

6. There’s a lot to be grateful for in a crazy weekend, brought into sharp relief at the moment by earthquakes, tsunamis, unstable nuclear power reactors and despotic dictators killing their own citizens. We have a family, a home, love, friends, food, fun and wine - and we’re living in a stable democracy. A crazy weekend is a privilege indeed!