Tell me about your non-instagrammable life with a toddler

[LemonLemonLemon]

Let me start by saying I know I shouldn’t pay too much attention to Insta-mums, but we all get sucked in. It’s easy to see the home cooked meals and perfect nurseries and feel inadequate, so let’s cheer each other up?

Tell me about the meals you feed your toddler and the house you live in. The bits that would never make it on the ‘gram.

Here’s mine: today for dinner he had a cheese omelette and beans. Yesterday he had fish fingers with waffles and beans.

His room currently features a large basket of clothing to put away and mismatched furniture. There’s no wall stickers or cute murals. His toy storage is a repurposed changing table. I bribed him to get out the bath today with a flap jack because he refused to move.

We bought a new kallax unit to go in 4yo DS's bedroom, so DH decided today was the day to rearrange the bedroom. So the bed is now the other way round (head and feet swapped around against the wall), it has been pushed into a corner and DS now has a bedside table.
DS loved it, liked having his little corner for his bed, liked being able to reach all his books on the kallax (toys to be added at a later date). He even led in bed and got comfy at lunch time because he said he liked it.
Well at bedtime he decided he doesn't like his pillow being in the corner as that's not like it's always been and "it's SILLY!" So his pillow is now at the foot of the bed and all his soft toys are at the head of the bed because as he says "it's the right way round!!!"

2.5 year old had a raging temperature yesterday and declared all food ‘yucky’. Including pancakes with Nutella, which is when we decided to take her for a PCR test. Spent the rest of the day lying on the sofa watching Paw Patrol. All fine if they’re ill, right?

Fast forward to this morning. PCR test still not back so DP and I not allowed at work until DD gets her negative result. DP immediately claims that walking down the lane to our new house to do some work there won’t infect anyone with covid, so buggers off at 7.30am. I’m left to frantically email back and forth with a cover teacher to get my class sorted, while DD refuses all breakfast food offered apart from ‘Mummy’s biscuit’ (Belvita cocoa that I’m desperately trying to eat to stop me puking - am pregnant).

I decide to avoid wasting a day and so begin decluttering DP’s wardrobe in prep for house move. DD - now fully recovered - spends the entire time running off with Daddy’s clothes and ‘playing hide and seek’ with them so now I have no clue which box is for charity shop and which is to be moved with us. I give in and give her my phone to play with.

I then attempt to get some planning done for next week. Set DD up with a variety of toys, colouring etc. DD spends 20 minutes climbing all over me trying alternately to ‘help with the pooter’ and to get me to come and play with her. I then give in and hand her the kids’ tablet, allowing her to spend the next NINETY MINUTES playing on ‘educational’ (ha!) games just so I can get something done.

Am halfway through feeding her lunch (all she will have is Daddy’s leftover Fathers Day chocolate cake and orange juice) when the negative test result comes through. Am ashamed to admit that I whipped her off to her grandparents with chocolate crumbs still round her mouth and escaped to the relative calm of a room full of 30 eight year olds…

We've just bought a tablet for DD(4) which we're still pretending to ourselves that we're barely going to let her use.

I was trying to persuade DS2 to go to bed tonight and he just leant over the edge of the bed and slowly pooed at me. In his nappy, thankfully. But still, lovely :o

When my kids wouldn't get out the bath, I just pulled out the plug, oh no, water's ran out!

I've loved reading all of these! Such a funny, truthful thread.

I love this. Currently DS hates the bath. Needs major encouragement just to dip his toes in. So much food has been dropped under his chair that the carpet there seems kind of sticky no matter what.