As we watched the three little angels beat the shit out of each other one night we realised they don’t have anything to look forward to. We’ve been shielding the girl for months. They’re sick of the sight of each other, they’re sick of the sight of me, they’re sick of their home, they’re even sick of watching POP (just kidding, they’ll never be sick of POP).
They’ve forgotten how to talk to people, they’ve forgotten how to behave in public and if meal times are any indication they’ve forgotten how to eat, therefore we shall never go to a restaurant ever again. But we desperately wanted to give them a treat, something to look forward to. So, what did we do? We got them all hyped up about our wedding anniversary with promises of actually leaving the house and everything.
Last year we celebrated our 10 years of wedded bliss by popping down to the local Italian. The husband had a beer, I breastfed the kid while the waiter peppered my seabass. It was great. Promises of spa days and trips to Amsterdam (not for that) were made for the following year. He wanted to go to the Moto GP, I wanted a luxury hotel with a pool. We were so on the same page it was out of this world. Then an unprecedented global pandemic took place, you know the rest.
Suddenly breastfeeding in the local Italian wasn’t the worst way to spend an anniversary. Self imposed lockdown, well that’s a new one. Next year though, next year we’ll be onto a winner….
So, how did we celebrate our anniversary in self imposed lockdown with the kids…
- Firstly, we needed to get them really excited so we spent three weeks explaining to the kids what an anniversary is then gave up and called it a birthday. Whilst the objective was to give them something fun to look forward to we actually succeed in getting them all hyped up so they consequently made a birthday list and expected a shit load of presents on the day.
- We sat and said ‘no’ to all the ways they thought of to celebrate because we were now an anti social family.
- Then we had the brilliant idea of making a deal that if the girl goes to bed without shouting ‘Dad’ 405 times before actually falling asleep, we could go to……..the beach. But not one where there will be any other people. Obviously.
- Woke up at 8.50 am on the day and nearly fell out of bed. 8 fucking 50 am, that’s like dinner time for us. It was unbelievable.
- Not only did they let us have some actual sleep they also cleaned up and laid the breakfast table and made decorations. After all of our ‘wow‘ and ‘thank you‘ and ‘this is amazing‘ comments they then asked for their reward.
- Of course it was pissing down on the day, which was even better, obviously no one would be at the beach today. So off we went.
- As with any family trip to anywhere, we spent it repeatedly asking the kids to stop clapping all through the 40 minute journey then realised they were just excited and then felt bad for stopping them from having fun. Consequently, this one was put on the parent guilt list to cry about later that night.
- On the now drizzly beach we let the first born wee in a cave, then spent the entire time there ensuring that no child swept out to sea. Since they now have no concept of danger having been in their house since February.
- Parent guilt round two landed as they finished their car bound picnic only to declare they never wanted to leave.
- Went home, ordered pizza, argued about who will go and collect it. Watched ‘Inside the World of Lego’, then commenced the ever exciting ‘time for bed’ routine before falling asleep while watching a film and waking up just as it finished (are we programmed for this or something?)
- The end.
