A successful trip to North London (mostly)

Another week has flown by and my eye is all healed thankfully. We had a good weekend visiting friends in North London, although taking our children to a well organised, tidy and sophisticated home was a bit of a gamble. Luckily our friends were very patient but there was a fair bit of bribery, screens and Kike and I hurriedly tidying every 45 minutes or so. (Even with that, they did completely redecorate their daughter’s room with chaos…)

Next time, they can come to us.

The louse

Monday was a bank holiday and it was falling into our usual pattern of everyone on separate devices not communicating with each other so I declared we were all going out. We were out of food anyway (of course) and we needed hairbands, as good a reason as any to go on an outing.

We walked up to our local shops with not much enthusiasm coming from half the family but we made it. A walk round Tesco somehow always proves harder than it should be. Summer and I dipped into Primark to buy some hair accessories. Quick stop at the pound shop for a toy to please you know who, Spiderman slime and a Frankenstein brain squidgy for Summer. Both items already no longer exist, hence the purchase from the pound shop.

We ventured home and I’d planned to put a film on and relax for the rest of the day, but then I spotted it. The thing I had always been dreading. I couldn’t ignore it, it was there, crawling.

There was a louse.

The sigh was loud.

I told Kike, he didn’t want to believe it but after an inspection he found one too.

So the next 3 or 4 hours were spent de-lousing the house. Treatments applied to everyone, all bedding stripped and put in a pile with the towels. All hairbrushes and hair ties into a hot soak. The four of us taking turns with the sharp lice comb like monkeys grooming each other.

I would say (and not to brag) that I was the easiest. My hair is pretty straight and a lot thinner than it used to be. Now if we were going on hair type, River should have been next but let’s come back to him.

Summer’s hair is beautiful, it’s a mix of mine and Kike’s so it’s not quite as dense as his but it is very curly and thick. It had to be separated into so many layers and the combing took well over an hour. Kike’s hair… well, let’s just say he broke his comb.

Now back to little boy.

This was why I had always dreaded it. I’ve written before about our fun at the hairdressers. We tried to explain, we let him hold the brush, comb my hair, daddy’s hair and play with it for a little while. We let him hold the water bottle and spray us all in the face which he loved and tolerated getting wet more than usual. The conditioner was tolerated less but we had two screens playing, Kike and I armed with a comb each and we went in.

It took quite a while as there was lots of stopping when it became too much but we eventually managed it.

We’ve had to do it every night since just to be on the safe side but it looks like we’re clear.

The GP

So, after my not very calming ‘day off’, I unsurprisingly went to work feeling less than refreshed. The same feelings were there, the tiredness, the feeling that I can’t just keep going.

I finally decided to speak to the GP properly. We talked about antidepressants, burnout, hormones, work, stress, all the things that apparently become impossible to separate after forty.

He was very sympathetic and as I listed all the separate things that are currently going on in my life he said,
“That sounds like a lot, for anyone.”

We’ve come up with some initial helping strategies and I’m going back so we can talk more and see how I’m doing.

The colour run

Then there was Friday.

I made it to the end of the working week again (never a good sign when you’re counting your life away) and I was looking forward to an after school event at the kids’ school: The Colour Run.

It’s not directly linked to the Holi festival but that’s basically what it is. The children (and adults) wear white T-shirts, put on colourful sunglasses and throw powdered paint at each other while running round the school.

Last year it was so much fun and both children had a great time. River declared,
“I love running with colours!”

So I was optimistic for this year. Summer and I had told him about it and he screamed,
“YES, I LOVE COLOUR RUN!”

I finished work and rushed up to the school as quickly as I could. I collected their bags filled with paint, glasses and streamers, then collected them. Changed River into his T-shirt and we headed to the event.

Summer asked if she could run ahead and meet her friends. I said yes.

First mistake.

River was very upset that Summer had left him. But I knew she had run off into the part of the playground with the most people and most importantly the microphone. He would never have coped.

We stayed round the edge at first and he calmed down and stopped crying. He refused to wear the sunglasses but put the armband on and found the paint which made him very happy.

We opened the paint and I should have been prepared for this, he obviously threw it at me. (I was not wearing a white T-shirt.) It made him happy so I shrugged it off, threw some back at him and he seemed ready to go.

The countdown had begun and the rest of the children started running around the school and there was paint everywhere.

He wanted to run, not with daddy (that would have been too easy) it had to be mummy.

So off we went.

We got to the first bend which was right by a speaker. The music was very loud and it caught him off guard. He stopped and some paint came flying at him. Of course he had refused the glasses so a tiny bit went into his eye.

Disaster.

I quickly blew it out but it was too late, he was upset.

“I want to go home.”

The problem, River, is we’re on a one-way track and I can’t transport you out immediately. We had to keep going.

He refused to move. More and more people running past us, so much paint and the music felt like it was just getting louder and louder.

I managed to get him into a corner.

“No more colour run, but you have to follow mummy.”

No words but the crying stopped.

I took that as a yes, grabbed his hand and steered him through. I think most of the staff know or have heard of River so they paused before throwing paint at him when they could see it wasn’t going well, which I was grateful for.

A few children ran past shouting,
“HI RIVER!”

Which unfortunately made the screaming start again.

I managed to get us to a bush where we could stop again.

“I WANT TO GO HOME, GO HOME, GO HOME!”

“I know sweetheart, I’m taking you home but I have to get you out of the gate. Last bit, one more little run then no more colours.”

I waited till he was calm again and then we jogged the last few metres out of the school gates.

I turned to head home and he pulled my arm.

“River, we go home?”

“No home! Pub!”

Well, it was Friday and I’m never going to argue when someone suggests the pub.

We couldn’t go our usual route as it was full of colour runners but after yet another round of explaining we walked the longer quieter route and found ourselves in the garden listening to the soundtrack coming from the playground.

With River happily drinking his juice and watching his cartoon, I was left sitting on the bench on my own thinking how did that all go so wrong, so quickly.

The pity party began.

Why does everything have to be so hard? Why can’t we just enjoy the same things as everyone else? He loved it last year, what changed? Should I have come earlier? Maybe I should have talked him through it more, practised wearing the glasses?

It didn’t matter. It was over.

The music faded and I heard the man on the microphone declaring the colour run officially over. Summer and Kike joined us along with a lot of other colourful children and parents. They all laughed at each other and took photos.

Kike took a photo of River and posted it online with the caption:
“Colour run done.”

And I got upset.

River didn’t really do the colour run. He had five happy minutes throwing paint at me, followed by ten minutes of complete overwhelm that I had to steer him through while people threw powder paint over our heads and music blasted all around us. Then I had to sit with him quietly while he processed it all, surrounded by happy families talking about how much fun they’d just had.

When coping stops working

And that’s the part I don’t think people always understand when they look at our life from the outside.

None of these things are huge disasters on their own. Nits happen. Children get overwhelmed. Family events go wrong. Parents end up in pubs on Friday evenings questioning every decision they made that week.

But lately it feels like my ability to absorb any of it has disappeared. Every noise feels louder, every setback feels heavier and every difficult moment seems to stay sitting in my chest long after it’s over.

The GP asked me what had changed recently and the truth is, not much.

The same work, the same parenting, the same juggling, the same constant calculations about everyone else’s needs.

I think the difference is just that I’ve finally reached the point where I can’t keep pretending that I’m coping with it all as well as I used to.

This morning I woke up still feeling sad about yesterday so I decided to take River for a walk.

As we walked I asked him about the colour run.

“Did River like the colour run?”

He stopped walking and quietly said,
“No… too loud.”

Then immediately shouted,
“I WANT THE TOY SHOP!”

And skipped off down the road.

He very rarely answers direct questions, especially about something that happened in the past, so that actually felt like huge progress.

I bought him a bubble gun and he happily skipped all the way home. He’s now in the garden covered in bubbles, happy as always in his own little way.