Today ended on a good note (phew!), but was not the easiest of days. After not having attended church for so long due to sleep routines, and actually also just ending up playing in a back room anyway, we decided to get going to our old church in Braunschweig. So with good intentions we all started getting ready. Now as any parents with very small children will know, it takes several hours to get to a state where you can actually leave the house and know that someone's not going to cry out for food on the way to where you're going or fall asleep or need this or that. When I'm on my own at home, I bargain with 2 hours to prepare myself for an outing, even if it's just to go do grocery shopping or the doctor or whatever. Anyway, coming back to the point...we started getting ready for church the moment we awoke. Breakfast, some playing in between, brushing teeth, getting each one dressed (pulling over a shirt while they're on-the-run), preparing snacks and drinks and some distration toys for the car trip.... It's exhausting. Oftentimes in the week I decide to rather stay in for this very reason. It's like swimming upstream. Josephine only wants to play. While she's interested in reaching the destination, she doesn't care to brush her teeth or get dressed let alone Evie or I taking our turns.... "Mamma, maybe you can play with me?" she asks in her sweetest voice. So for each task that needs doing, once it's done it is rewarded with a short play time. Doing it differently is easier said than done, I find. Anyway, today I just blew my lid when she had a massive tantrum as she didn't want me to brush her hair. She wanted Pappa to do it. Pappa is a man. Men don't have much experience in brushing long hair. So, the job was...well, there were still knots that needed brushing out. During all the performance, I had just had enough and time was running out. I just flipped. Evie had already started crying - she was tired and actually needed to already be in the car so that she could have her sleep on the way there, etc, etc. So everything started backfiring. I got really upset and turned up the volume on Jozie who wasn't helping us get her ready and marched Evie downstairs. I gave up as there was still a whole lot of other things I didn't have ready yet in time. I put Evie down to sleep and asked Michael to please take Josephine out for a bit as I needed some "space". So, we never made it to church. We'll have to try again next week. Or maybe I'll even see if they've got some activities for mothers and children during the week that we can attend. Let's see! I hope there's something!
By the way, after we had gotten ourselves past this point, we ended up having a very nice afternoon with Janet, Lutz and Sophia coming around for tea.
And now with both kids in bed...we're exhausted!!
