I’m in Europe in the middle of a heatwave with preschool twins and a preteen, which I know doesn’t sound promising. But honestly it’s been wonderful.
We houseswapped with a friend, so it’s a two week break for the price of a (cheap) flight. We’re eating all the ice creams and easy meals we want, which they love. Every evening I spend five minutes looking for another water park, paddling pool, museum or similar, book it, job done. There’s no needing to pander to ex’s shit ideas or have to explain to an apparently experienced parent why a 1h30 commute across the city to a slightly nicer pool isn’t worth it.
There’s less crying at home, because my ex has a way of misreading or winding the kids up that I just don’t. I’m not Mary Poppins but they go off, play, bit of tv, generally listen. It’s been fine.
When we were together ex had (possibly inadvertently) a bit of a monopoly on planning, travel etc, with the effect that I didn’t have confidence in doing it myself. Actually, shock horror, a functioning adult with a smartphone can manage just fine. And the transport here is amazing and air conditioned.
There is no quibbling over cooking (I always did all of it anyway), or how long it takes to sort the kitchen in the evening (ten minutes, I’ve no idea why my ex made such a production over it, daily, for a decade). I don’t have to listen to him using every other country as an opportunity to complain about how much he dislikes the UK.
We’re at a pool this morning that has a 45cm of water bit for the younger two and a deeper bit for the older one. On the way here we stopped at a supermarket and they each chose whatever they wanted as a snack (€3 of jelly beans, it turned out). I bought an iced coffee. We’ll be here for an hour or two, then home on a short bus ride, sandwich lunch, rest in the hottest part of the day, then out to a playground later. I have genuinely never been happier.