I’m generally a “muddle along” mother, as I’d like to believe most Mums are, but every so often I get the urge to try to be a “Pinterest” Mum, as I bake cookies with one hand and craft with the other, whilst whistling a Mary Poppinsesque melody, with my perfectly made up face and immaculately coiffed hair! Yeah, right! If I managed just one of those things in the course of an average weekday, I would consider it a major achievement!

I usually get these urges when I’m feeling like I’ve neglected my motherly duties. So, for example, on Monday, Mia was off kindy, sick, which meant I was also off sick looking after her. Never mind the fact that I was also feeling like absolute codswallop, I would have dragged myself into work if she had gone.  However, I thought I would take the opportunity to recharge and get back to full health. Well, anyone who knows kids knows, that just wasn’t going to happen! Despite being up half the night with a hacking cough and temperature, little Miss Mia was “full of beans” as she so loves to tell me! Snarl! 

After we had read a few books, watched some TV, and done FOUR jigsaw puzzles, she was raring for more and I was ready to go back to bed! “Can we do some craft, Mummy?” Those dreaded words! I love the concept of craft and I encourage it…when she’s at kindy or playgroup! (Surely that’s what such places are for?!)  However, in my own home, I’m not such a fan! Firstly, it’s the mess that I will inevitably have to clean up. Secondly, it’s the fact that she will choose something that she can’t do herself, or even very well with assistance, and I will end up doing it all! Thirdly, it’s the fact that I am absolute pants at craft, so when I do showcase my final masterpiece, the cheeky madam will curl her nose up and say “Um, it’s not very good, Mummy.”, or something equally soul destroying when I’ve just spent 45 minutes of my life doing the very thing I despise! Aaarrrgghhh!

So I said no, beached myself on the couch and gave her the iPad!!! I know, I know, I know! Lazy parenting at its best, but sometimes when you feel like a bag of balls, you just have to do what you can to survive.  Pre-princess, I too cast judgement on parents who appeared to shove an electronic friend in front of a child as a babysitter and vowed that, when I was a “perfect parent” (laughable now!), my child would not be rotting its brains in that manner! I think I had similar views about plastic toys and junk food, but judging by the amount of Happy Meal toys in Mia’s toy box, I didn’t quite succeed with that ideal either…

I did feel guilty, but not quite enough to move! However, when she came to give the iPad back, (Wow! She’d clearly exceeded the “20 minute” iPad rule by a smidge! Read: an hour! Damn my honesty!) and dolefully asked “Mummy, please can you play with me?!”, I felt so bad that I quickly replied “Yes, whatever you want!” “…Can we do some craft?!”  Noooooo! Check mate to the little person! “Ummmmm…….” I quickly scanned the room for some sort of get out clause and my eyes rested on a flyer for Harmony Day at kindy this week. “How about tomorrow we make some cupcakes for Harmony Day? We can go to the shops and get all the ingredients…?” (Please, please, please, take the bait, take the bait…) “Yes!!!” she exclaimed, her little face beaming.  “And we need to do orange icing, Mummy, and I need an orange outfit to wear!” (Okay, okay, milking it slightly now!) I agreed, how could I not?! I also managed to dissuade her from dropping a hundred sequins all over the floor and managed to persuade her to do some colouring instead! Phew! 

Yesterday, as promised, I found the Peppa pig cupcake recipe that she wanted to use on my iPad, sussed out the ingredients, went to the shops and bought said ingredients and even managed to get a bargain orange T shirt for her in the sale!  Okay, it was peach, but that’s almost orange, isn’t it?! Too easy! We got home and set everything up and then I tried to access the Peppa Pig magazine app so I could see the recipe. It wasn’t there! No longer available! Bloody great! Being the furthest from a domestic goddess that I think exists, I don’t have the function to just chuck a few ingredients together and it to emerge from the oven as something delightful and delicious! Boy, are those people annoying?! My husband being one of them! I have to follow a recipe to the letter and even then run a very high risk of it turning out inedible! I have built up a small repertoire of recipes over the years, which I can follow and have practised and taste pretty good, but I wouldn’t want to inflict them on anybody outside of the family, that’s for sure!

Anyway, we found a new recipe online and baked the cakes. Sure, Mia inadvertently chucked a bit of flour around the kitchen and the dog hovered underneath trying to vacuum up chocolate cake batter that he isn’t allowed, but it was going pretty well.  Ian arrived home in time to tell me that the middle of my cupcakes weren’t cooked properly and avoided a salmonella incident and we were on to the icing! It turns out that you need a lot of yellow and not very much red at all to make orange icing, discovered through trial and lots of error! The final colour looked slightly radioactive and contained way too much food colouring, I’m sure, but there was no denying it was orange! We finished decorating them, cooled them and boxed them and I was feeling very smug! I’d never felt so organised and accomplished for a kindy event. Last year I had purchased some Cheezels from the garage on the way in! Shameful behaviour!

This morning, Mia got changed into her orange outfit, complete with orange hair bobbles, and I, smugly, got us ready.  No matter how much time I seem to allow myself in the mornings, I will inevitably end up in a rush and as I frantically threw everything into the car, I felt the smugness already beginning to wane…and yes, there were two fire engines dashing past to the shopping centre we have to drive past and everyone had been evacuated! Time sucker number one! It turns out that it was a smoke alarm in the bakery and it happens a lot and of course, it HAD to happen this morning!

Finally in the kindy car park, I unpacked the car at lightning speed and propelled Mia into the classroom, signed her in and looked for someone to offload the cakes to. As I looked round, there was a distinct lack of orange! Hmmm! Alarm bells… Mia’s teacher was away and there was a substitute who I knew, so we dashed over to her. “Oh, hi Mia! Has it been your birthday?” she enquired. “No, they’re for Harmony Day!” I replied, starting to get a little sick feeling. She looked back at me blankly and then ran off! I quickly kissed Mia goodbye and started rushing to the car, past the Harmony Day display and flyer, which quite clearly stated Thursday and Friday for the different classes and not Wednesday at all! FFS! Just when you think you’re actually getting your shit together and being a “baking Mum”, rather than the usual “grab it at the shop Mum”, something like being able to correctly read the days of the week had foiled me! I dashed back into the classroom to apologise to the teacher, who admitted that she had panicked and thought she had planned for the wrong day, so I reassured her that it was just my stupidity and left, now running very late for work! Cue the level crossing closing one street away from my workplace and possibly the longest train I have ever seen, I counted 55 bloody carriages, which also appeared to be going deliberately slow in order to get me fired!

I finally got to work ten minutes late and out of sheer guilt, stayed back ten minutes at the end of the day  and worked through my lunch to overcompensate.  Not that anyone even said anything. In fact, as a “share the shit morning story” bonding experience, one colleague had the decency to be later than me and one set fire to their assessment by leaving it on the stove!  We all had a good laugh about how inadequate we were at life and moved on with the day.  So if you’re having a shitty day, share your story and make someone smile! That’s what I’m doing. I hope it works!

Ps. I turned up to kindy this afternoon to a very disapproving look from Mia, who said “Mummy, it’s not even Harmony Day today, you know!” “I know, darling, but how cool is it that you get to do it all again on Friday?!” “Hmmm…”. Now I just need to quickly wash her only orange piece of clothing and keep the cakes in the fridge, right? I don’t need to make new ones, do I?! Do I?! La la la, I can’t hear you!