At the beginning of the summer, I had so many grand plans. Even though we weren’t going away (new boiler and kitchen re wire put paid to that!), I’d thought of heaps of activities for my DS to do.
Unfortunately; 1 week into the holidays my Grandad passed away, and as they live at the other end of the country, it meant several trips up and down to get things sorted and arranged. My mum normally helps out with childcare; but it was her dad who had passed so obviously that put paid to a lot of activities as she didn’t want to come back to DS during this time (understandably so!).
My MIL has helped out but obviously she could only manage certain days, so my DH and I swapped onto nightshift alternately (we work in engineering and they all take turns providing overnight cover, he volunteered to do more shifts so we were popular with our work mates!) so that I could work in the day, and he could work at night and still take care of DS across the day... and vice versa.
None of this is an ideal situation obviously but we basically worked night and day to basically ensure DS was taken care of. We’ve tried our absolute hardest to keep him occupied and entertained, and not let on how stressed we’ve been. We’ve hosted play dates several times per week, taken him out swimming, gone to activities (karate, football, museums) and taken him out and about... he’s at least been to the park every day for a scoot round. We’ve tried, but a lot of days it’s been fairly minimal.
Now we both have 2 weeks off, and had planned to go out and about with DS in lieu of a holiday... but we’re so bloody tired, and there’s so much that needs doing after juggling absolutely everything pretty much for 6 weeks with barely any help (which I’m not complaining about by the way, it’s just the way it is and we’ve organised a better, much more sustainable childcare situation going forward!)... well. It’s not been amazing for poor DS, put it that way.
We have both been burning the candle at both ends for 6 weeks, we’re absolutely fucked. I just feel like this summer has just been shite for DS, and I feel awful about it. Every morning he’s asked ‘what are we doing today?’ And if I’ve said something not particularly exciting (chores/back to school shopping/food shopping/whatever), he just goes ‘oh, okay’ and has a bit of a sigh and goes and plays for a bit. Like I know he’s disappointed. We’ve tried our best and I know it hasn’t been good enough.
This morning he said he couldn’t wait to go back to school. What’s worse is, I know all his friends will have had amazing summers (from the look of social media they’ve all been on holidays, loads of days out...) and we’ve barely been holding down the fort and keeping everyone clean, fed and sane.
I don’t know really why I’m posting. I just wanted to vent I guess. Here’s to a better summer next year 