Parenting: if it feels too easy, you're not doing it right...

Wise words from my friend; ever the voice of reason, she sagely pointed out that things worth having are meant to be hard. If things had started to feel easy, my alarm bells should have rung! It's not that parenting should always be tough; in any relationship there should be a natural amalgamation of love and support and it shouldn't feel like work. But, a caveat when it comes to raising kids is that if things seem OK, they are not always OK. I have to keep re-evaluating how I am living and asking questions of myself. I figure this is just the stage I am in right now; a stage of flux that means that I can't rest on my laurels.

via un amore per sempre

So - things have calmed down but are accompanied by a pensiveness from me and many plans afoot. I have regained my peace of mind and best of all, my husband is back from a long trip away so I am not alone anymore. There is no question that when it comes to parental life, having two of you is easier than one. My hat goes off to single parents and I am full again of admiration for my Mum who brought my brother and I up on her own. There is not a thing harder. Thank you for all of the kind comments and emails you left to my last post - I was really touched.

I feel like I have spent too much time thinking and not enough time doing; so that has to change now. I had assumed that as my children grew older, they too would enjoy slinking about the house having chill time whilst we span around them like satellites, watching TV, making food, going to the gym - whatever it was. We had this little glimpse of what life was like with older kids who ostensibly took care of themselves. The demands of those younger days when you simply had to be with them every minute of the day had ceased.

I often thought of our scene like those vintage dolls houses you see; cross-sectioned down the middle with each room filled with an activity. But fundamentally all the characters were apart from each other - each in their own room. Our house resembled that  - I'd be reading a book upstairs, one child on a gadget somewhere else, one child watching TV, my husband doing emails. The fact is we had drifted and I see now that it wasn't such a healthy drift. My craving for the uncomplicated strayed too far.

I love how life can give us a chance to change - to take the alarm bell and use it for the better. So even as we hurtle towards teenage hood I am planning activities and elements of our lives that will hopefully enrich and occupy and draw us together. It's the only way. I'm not gonna lie, I would love to lie in every Saturday and mooch til lunch, but that would be the easy option. To me it's a case of making sure that the influences that my kids are open to come from us and our family and friends and not from strangers on the web. It's my job to manage that. So here goes...