Rubbish holiday

[LorelaiVictoriaGilmore]

I don’t know why I am posting really - just stuck in bed and feeling so miserable. Dh and I were worked so hard last year and our relationship has really suffered through the pandemic. I booked three weeks in the UK with our two children just so we could be somewhere else and reset a bit. And it’s awful. During the first week, I had some work stuff to wrap up and DH had to job interviews. Kids decided about a week into the holiday to start going to sleep at 10pm. We are now at the end of week two. Dh and I are exhausted. I have a stomach bug or food poisoning and I am stuck in bed. Dh got rejected from one job but the other one really wants him - he just had to get through a psychometric test. He tried to do it this evening while I was sick in bed. Naturally the kids played up and he got locked out of the test. He is now stomping around and shouting. The toddler is in bed with me. I would just go home (dh wants to) but it’s ds’s birthday on Wednesday and everything is organised here not at home - so we really can’t. I can’t believe the holiday has gone so wrong. We’ve had some nice-ish times but we are both so tired and have to go back to 50-60 hour working weeks. I feel like it might break us. 😢

I think @NakedAttraction is right actually. You said earlier about picking up while on calls and ushering the children into cars etc. I know I have been guilty of being present but not present if that makes sense. I’m hoping to reset some boundaries over the summer.

I’m finding this thread interesting because we have been having so many of the same conversations about balance. I just honestly don’t know what the right thing to do is.

Calls while picking up is crazy to me

A nanny doing this really will make your life easier

@NakedAttraction I agree - I am there but my mind is elsewhere or, more often, I am too tired to be parenting well.

@GoldBar I am excited about the cake! Ds already had a shared class party so this is his ‘real’ family birthday. He has chosen bacon sandwiches for breakfast, a pub lunch and then burgers and paw patrol cake… hard to say which of us is looking forward to his birthday most! 😂

@Bunnycat101 I think all this balance stuff is such a big issue for so many working parents. But I honestly have never met anyone who makes me think ‘That’s it! You have it right!’

OP it helps me to aim for balance across a period of time. You will never achieve balance across each and every day. Some months I totally fail, others I do pretty well.

I think if you work in M&A there is a certain amount of making hay at the moment. Who knows if the current level of activity is sustainable?!

OP my holiday budget is way above an average budget but we spend 20k a year (income 190k) on a few holidays per year. I’ve never had a bad holiday and I spend quite a bit of time researching them. As I said upthread when my DC were younger I went on Mark Warner holidays, to Center Parcs and booked lots of fun activities as well as all the extra services they offer. As my DC got older I started booking UK mini breaks in hotels with a pool and we’d play cards in the bar after dinner and go out and about to local attractions in the day. We then went to the Caribbean or the med for our bigger holiday. This then progressed to places like South Africa and South America and I have taken taken my DC on 11 cruises. We chose to spend our money on holidays, days out, eating out rather than on private schools. For us life should be fun.

I’m in a similar role in that I am a partner in a top 10 accounting firm.

My kids are older (17/14/10) and when they were small we had a nanny/nursery part time and Granny who lived with us half the week.

I also find it hard to get away. In-house counsel and I are both off from Friday for 2 weeks. I will check emails every morning as I’m up first and it doesn’t interfere.

Counsel set up a call with my boss 3 times a week while away. If they had chosen mornings I would have been prepared to be available, but my boss chose 5pm uk time so I will be at the beach or the pool!

I’m away for 2.5 weeks, 3 weeks is banned by my firm, I’m fact, I proved that I have been allowed 2.5 weeks as a matter of course for my firm to permit it (I was acquired ) .

I work long days, but I work in compliance so no billing needed, regular hours 8-7, no commuting any more. DH is in entirely differen5 field but thinks i am taken advantage of.

@Jerseygirl12 I think a large part of the problem is that I was brought up by parents who were sent to pretty hardcore boarding schools from the age of 7 while their parents were working abroad. I was very much brought up with the idea that life is hard and earnest and that the focus should be on work and self-improvement. There was certainly no enjoyment permitted until you had suffered enough for it! 😂 I exaggerate…. but only a little!

I am getting a lot of insight from this thread!

@NakedAttraction I think that’s a good way to look at it. If you look back 12 months from today, October 2020 was good, February and March this year were good, April I was out post surgery and May was pretty much ok because everyone was scared to give me too much work in case I had a relapse and ended up back in hospital. Not really winning?!

When does DH do childcare?

You seem to be doing the pick ups / drop offs when it isn't the nanny but it is DH who wants to step down his career.

I think we are sold an ideal of holidays being 2 parents and children having a wonderful time all together but that isn't true for all families.

My childhood holidays seem to have consisted of trips to France, spending a lot of time in the car, then looking round a village, having lunch, then another village or old church and back to the hotel via a wine tasting.

I was bored shitless and as soon as I could stopped gong, my parents continued with these holidays for decades.

You need to find what works for your family, that might be seperate holidays either occasionally or more often.

Where do you all want to be in 5 years?

@sashh I only do drop offs and pick ups twice a week - dh doesn’t do any! His job is a bit different than mine - he has to be very present during core hours so 8:30am to 6pm. But then he usually gets to switch off. Well, he’ll be checking emails a bit some evenings but he isn’t stuck at his desk until 3am like I am.

Dh does want to step down his career but I suppose I am a bit sceptical as to whether that would actually translate into him doing more childcare such that we wouldn’t need a nanny. I think he has a rosy idea of what stepping down your career looks like which probably wouldn’t be born out in reality.

I also think we went on the same holidays as kids! I rebelled as a teenager and would sit in the house with a book and refuse to go! 😂

I think that I have realised that shorter holidays more often would work better. I was planning a long Christmas break but I always find the Christmas holidays exhausting! I think I’ll do a week in October and then a week at Christmas. And a weekend away with just DH for his birthday - although everything looks really expensive!!

LorelaiVictoriaGilmore I really hope you can get to enjoy the rest of your holiday.

The UK is super expensive this year, it isn’t normally quite as bad.

You should try to see a psychologist.

If you find Christmas stressful then in September start thinking how you can make it less so. Are your expectations too high, is it because the DC are out of their routine, do you have to be in too many different places at once, etc?
I wouldn’t do an October and Christmas holiday, I’d just do one of them and pick somewhere good. You may not fancy October if you’ve been on a September mini break with your DH.

Well, we can only go in October and/or at Christmas because of school holidays. We’d only go away in October. Christmas is always split between grandparents. One set of grandparents up to boxing day then the other set of grandparents for a few days after that!

I’m just always exhausted by Christmas - Christmas shopping, all the school stuff, work stuff etc. The seasonal extra things to do and remember… but I still love Christmas!

@sharp51 I think at this point, I have seen allllll the therapists… I partly grew up in the US where having a therapist was the same as having a dentist or an optician…

I think we are sold an ideal of holidays being 2 parents and children having a wonderful time all together but that isn't true for all families

This is a good point. We actually do a lot of separate holidays. DH will take the boys away to do their hobby (cycling obvs!) I might take one of the DC on a city break; DH might take 2 DC skiing; me plus one might travel to see friends.

We do also have holidays together but I’ve got much better at doing what I want rather than just suiting the DC.

Re stepping down career I think it’s extremely unlikely that’s a workable solution if he stays in law.

He could give up all together and be a SAHD and depending on his approach this might be a good option for you - DH was a SAHD for a while and that really took the pressure off re juggling but added a different kind of responsibility.

But taking a more junior position tends to add to the lack of autonomy. Harder to say no to the boss; less control over diary etc.

Dh does want to step down his career but I suppose I am a bit sceptical as to whether that would actually translate into him doing more childcare such that we wouldn’t need a nanny. I think he has a rosy idea of what stepping down your career looks like which probably wouldn’t be born out in reality.

That's what I was thinking. There used to be a daytime TV show where they sent mums, mainly SAHMs to a spa with a video to watch the dad cope.

All the dads had plans for grand things that didn't work out, one that stuck in my mind was the dad taking his child round the supermarket on his birthday, the child wanted a particular cake but dad was going to make one - you can probably imagine that the child ended up with no cake.

It seems to me that you enjoy your job more than your DH does so it would make sense for him to take over some childcare, can he drop to 4 days?

I also think you are right about shorter holidays, plan three a year, one for you, one for DH and one for the children.

Obviously one or both of you have to be there for the children (unless they want to do a children's holiday when old enough) but your individual holidays could be solo or as a pair.

As for Christmas. I don't do it. I buy two presents and that's it. I'm usually solo, except for one year when I sat with my carer and we watched a marathon of 'make over home edition' and cried at every one.

Scale it back, there is no reason for you to host, and I bet it is you who hosts.

You don't need everything.

I think Christmas is like living in North Korea, everyone pretending to be happy, all the music is about the great leader and how wonderful things are, eating food you may not actually like, spending money on things you may not use, having to have certain people to visit.

Write down what you love about Christmas and dump the rest.

@sashh I also think you are right about shorter holidays, plan three a year, one for you, one for DH and one for the children. I honestly think that is one of the most sensible things I have ever read! I am 100% thinking of holidays like that now. I think part of our problem is that we try to please everyone and end up pleasing no one!

Absolutely ditch hosting Christmas and less is more. DH needs to pull his weight!

I don’t host Christmas! Well, I do a children’s party for our NCT group every year - but it’s one of my favourite things! Grandparents host Christmas so it’s just a case of buying all necessary presents!

Ah well perhaps now is the time to say you are going anti Christmas Consumerism and do they either want to put all adult names in a hat and buy for one or just stop buying adult gifts??

Life is too short!

Except for on this holiday when life feels very long indeed!!

😂

At least you have a great sense of humour!!

OP, I really recommend a book called I Know How She Does It by Laura Vanderkam. She has some really good suggestions, some of which have already been made on this thread - focus on the things that only you can do at work and at home, and dump, delegate or outsource the rest so far as humanly possible, make sure the load at home is fairly shared between you and your partner, the more senior you are the more flexibility you can have - but I think the thing I found most useful when I had a small child and a full on job was to think in blocks of a whole week rather than day to day. OK, so on Monday and Wednesday you didn’t make it home for bedtime- but on five other nights you were there, and the late evenings at work on Monday and Wednesday give you focused time to get on with work without distractions. Multi tasking is very rarely efficient unless one of the tasks is pretty much automatic.

I don’t have very useful advice of my own because DH cut right back on work while DD was small, but I did long ago make the move from private practice to in-house (not law, another profession). I’ve made my peace with not earning megabucks, and the trade off is that I love my job (senior public sector). And by any normal person’s standards I’m still very well paid.

We opted for state school, by the way, partly so we can have more and better holidays. My top tip is a really nice hotel with a pool , somewhere with interesting things for everyone to do, and if we’d had more than one child we’d have gone for kids’ club too. As we had just the one we tag teamed - one of us got to relax and the other had DD for part of each day.

@DrRamsesEmerson I have bought the book - and not only because I love your username! Funnily enough I was re-listening to the audiobooks while on this holiday and stuck in bed with food poisoning!