School holidays – treat or torture?

Every school term I look forward to the school holidays and every school holidays I look forward to the school term.

Am I the only mum on the face of the earth that is this hard to please?

With exactly 34 days (of course I’m not counting!…much) until school goes back I’m torn between loving the relaxing lack of routine  and wanting to rip every last piece of hair out of my head.

One minute Master Sporty and Miss Princess are cuddly on the lounge, chasing each other around the house giggling, and quietly building Lego masterpieces together.

The next they’re trying to strangle each other on that very same lounge, chasing each other to maim and kill and screaming at the top of their lungs while a scratching, biting kicking fight ensues.

Surely we’re not the only family in the world that experiences these quite lulls and then raging thunderstorms?

Don’t get me wrong. I totally love the school holidays. I don’t have to commute to school two hours a day, no last-minute scrambling through the fridge for something to put in the lunchbox, no homework to fight over in the afternoon and no after school activities to run around for. And I do actually enjoy having both my children with me each day most days.

And yes we do have two lovely holidays away from home on the very near horizon where we can see some much missed friends and then spend a week at the beach soaking up what we hope to be some sun (though the nasty weather man says it will be bucketing rain).

But I’m not quite convinced that the holiday benefits truly outweigh all the squabbles, “I’m bored’s” and “can we’s?” that come with seven looooong weeks of school holidays.

I think what disturbs me most is I’ve started saying things like “if I have to tell you one more time, so help me!’, “how many times do I have to ask you to do the right thing?” and this little golden nugget “there’s going to be some serious punishment if you do that again!”

Are you seeing my problem here? I have no idea what ‘so help me’ entails, Master Sporty always gives me a ‘three more times’ smarty pants answer when I ask how many times it might take for him to do the right thing and I’ve zero idea what that ‘serious punishment’ might be. I’m flying by the seat of my pants my brain is so sizzled and there’s still 34 days to go. Help!

I want peace and harmony to reign in my house for more than five minutes at a time, I want to get a task completed without having to separate two warring nations and I’d really like to be able to go to the loo without having to negotiate a peace deal at the same time.

Maybe I could get them to do this?

Do you love the school holidays or wish for a magical fairy to fly you away to a remote quite island while the kids fight it out and may the best man survive?

Oopsiemumma xo