My Boys: The years really do go by so fast

I have been thinking so much lately about how fast time is flying by, especially because it is May already and I still think it is 2017.  When I had young kids, which seriously seems like just yesterday  (I mean really, wasn’t 2004 only a couple of years ago) the days seems to go on and on and on.  It was like ground hog day.  The same thing day in and day out.  Wake up – early, well I thought it was early back then but these days I seem to get up earlier to blog.  But being woken early by a baby or a toddler is different, especially if you have been up during the night feeding or settling them.  It seems never ending.  So once you get up you have to feed them… so much food, then burping and washing and putting them back to sleep, or answering 10,000 questions from that curious toddler.  And don’t even get me started on the highchair.  Lucky they were so bloody cute, I am telling you now!

If you haven’t caught on already I don’t really do small children all that well.  It wasn’t a highlight of my parenting career.  Sitting there spooning food into the babies mouth in the highchair.  The day they could feed themselves was a happy day indeed.  This is my idea of the kids feeding themselves…

Kidding!  That is totally unacceptable, right?! ha ha ha.

When Tom was in Prep and Harry was about 4 I was finally in the light.  Things were good and much easier.  They could do things themselves and I didn’t have to wipe their bums anymore.  Praise the lord.  I was out of the trenches.  I was finally there.  The year was 2010.  I had done 6 long years which felt more like 26.  I was about to give all of the baby stuff away because WE WERE DONE.  D.O.N.E!!!! (Side note: check out this pic, Tom looks like he is about to spew thanks to too much soft drink and chips and Harry look like he is eating Tom’s ice-cream as well as his own #motheroftheyear)

Nek minute… Pregnant.  Yep, not even kidding.  Oh those 2 lines on that little stick.  Now I know I know I sound just terrible saying this when so many people find it so hard to get pregnant… clearly not me, all Mr Chardy has to do is breath on me… I really am grateful for my happy healthy boys and know how lucky I am to be able to have babies so easily but remember: I was done.   I remember so clearly the day that I did that pregnancy test.  I had been feeling sick for a couple of weeks.  I had been really tired too.  I would even find myself having to have a sleep during the day which is very unlike me.  On Melbourne Cup day Aileen asked if we were cracking open some bubbly before lunch but I said I just needed a coffee…. Um – hello – alarm bells.  I just felt off.  I actually thought I may have had Glandular Fever because I had been so tired.  The Doctors were coming around all of the stations the next day so I thought I would just do a test before they came to rule that out.

Anyway, as you can see from Clancy, I did have another baby and was back at square one.  Back in the trenches for a good 4 more years.  Having that 5 year break between the kids was actually quite a help though.  This time round the older boys were such a big help.  They would sit there with Clancy and rock him in his bouncer, or they would give him his bottle.  I was able to get so much more done.  I reckon Tom would have been able to change a nappy too if I wasn’t such a control freak.

So my point is this… yes the years seem to go so slow and all you worry about is if you are doing the right thing and will they survive and will they be scarred for life.  But truly my friends… they will be fine.  Why do we beat ourselves up so badly.  Who cares if they don’t eat all of their mushed up food.  Who cares if they miss a bath – it isn’t like they are rolling in mud at age 8 months old.  I was the worst when it came to “doing things right and by the book” …. literally by the book.  I didn’t have a clue what I was doing and wasn’t prepared to wing it with the first 2.  I needed that instruction manual to tell me exactly what I should be doing.  Truth be known I should have just gone with my gut instinct and not listened to any of those books.  So when Clancy came along I was totally laid back, he will be fine I thought.

All my babies were bottle fed – shock horror – and look, they turned out perfectly.  Who’d have thought.  Tom even starved for the first 9 weeks while I thought I could actually breast feed.  And look at him now – perfectly ok and doing so well at age 13.

Harry seems to survive on a diet of white foods.  Yesterday he had a sandwich for lunch.  I looked at it and said “oh look at you Harry having your white sandwich, white bread with white chicken with white mayo on your white plate & drinking your white milk.  Would you like a side of broccoli with that?

Since Tom went away to boarding school last year I have realised just how fast the years really do go by. Harry will be gone next year and it will just be Clancy left.  I feel like I have been such a bad Mum over the year (and I probably have been), I feel like I haven’t done all the fun things with the kids that I should have over the years.  I still feel guilty because I am not that horsey Mum who can teach the kids how to ride – I am the indoor Mum who could teach them how to blog ha ha ha.  The guilt, oh the guilt, it could cripple us if we let it, couldn’t it!

They seem to be pretty good kids though.  I was speaking to Tom on the weekend and I realised he has a boarder free weekend coming up.  This is were they have 3 days off to head home mid term.  But when home is a 25 hour drive away things aren’t that simple.  I said  “Tom, I have just realised you have a boarder free weekend coming up, what would you like to do?  Would you like me to organise for you do go out for the weekend, or do you have a friend who you could go home with?”  He said “Oh it’s ok Mum, I can just stay in, its really ok”.   Oh my god, are you kidding me, I nearly started crying.  He is THAT kid.  The one who stays in the dorm over the weekend when most other kids will be collected by their Mums or Dads and taken home for the weekend.  He is THAT kid that doesn’t go home for 10 weeks.  He is THAT kid who doesn’t attend parent teacher interviews because Mum lives 25 hours away.  I have never seen him play a game of cricket or footy and it has been over a year.  I haven’t met his teachers and have never been to a school function.  And he is happily telling me “it’s ok Mum, it is actually pretty fun.  I have some friends who aren’t going home, so it will be fine, they do fun stuff with us and take us to Macca’s”…. what a great kid.  I said to him “Are you serious… god aren’t I Mother of the Year” to which he replied “Mum, you can’t help it if you live 25 hours away, you can’t just pop down and get me, it’s fine”.  Wow!  What a kid.  I am nearly crying just typing this.

And this isn’t just my story – this is the story of me and all of my remote friends who live up here at Bum Truck Nowhere.  We are all in the same boat.  I am not some sort of unique case.  We all just think it is so normal but lately I have realised that it is a bit crazy.  We all think normal is driving hours and hours to town to catch a plane to fly down to see our kids.  We all think that normal is never getting to see our kid play footy.  We all think that normal is paying a gazillion dollars each year to fly our kids to and from school, not to mention the cost of us as parents to fly down and visit.  And I only have one away at the moment.  What is is going to be like next year.  Clancy is going to be so lonely when Harry leaves.

So there you have it.  This is what is on my mind most days.  Looking at my happy (well happy most of the time), very healthy kids (even if they do have a strictly white diet) and realising that they really are ok.  They are good kids.  But boy they years seem to have disappeared since 2010.  I feel like it was just yesterday that Tom started school.  You feel like those though years are it, that is what life is going to be like forever, but in the blink of an eye they will be gone – off to boarding school.  Just like that and you will have missed it all.

I can tell you this though my friends… I really am enjoying the kids so much now that they are older and we can chat and do fun stuff together and they aren’t clinging to me or whinging.  Well, Clancy does still whinge but nobody listens.  They can actually do stuff and help out and they are actually really good at it too.  Who’d have thought.

So if you are in the trenches of toddlerville hang in there.  Before you know it they will be 10 and then 15 and then 20 and gone and oh god, I can’t even think about it.  I need to go now and try and get my head around it all.  I need to stop worrying so much about everything and realise that one day very soon they will be finished school and I will wonder why I worried so much.

We are all in the same boat, you are not alone.  We have all been there.  So hang in there.  The kids will survive and they will be ok.

So tell me.  Do you feel the same?  Did the years just slip by and you wonder where they went?
Or maybe you are in the trenches, tell us all about it, we will listen to you rant.

Now if you will excuse me… it is 4.01am am and Mr Chardy is rushing me out the door, we have to do a quick day trip to down to pick up the prime mover… oh they joy.