So today I unexpectedly found myself in tears.
I was watching ABC2 with Mr 5 (aka ‘The Banana’) while he waited for his mum to pick him up after school. Arthur (apparently the world’s most famous aardvark according to the ABC2 voice-over bloke) came on. As the music played, I found myself singing along, my eyes closed and I was transported back to the early 2000s, probably the most chaotic time of my life when I had four little people at home.
We spend so much time hurrying them to grow up, so busy making school lunches, dealing with emotions, cleaning up after them, that before you know it, they’re adults, or well on their way to it.
If there was time-travel, I’d go to 2002, and sit in the front yard as the four of them created yet another water-way/fortress/dam/chicken-house with rocks, bricks, wood, sand and anything else they could find. I’d sit in the bathroom on the floor next to the four of them in the bath together and sing songs with them and dry off their fat little bodies and watch them run around the house naked instead of getting dressed. I’d sit beside their beds and make up fanciful stories, like I used to do before life became too busy.
I know it’s romantic. I don’t care.
I know it’s easy to focus on the good bits (the bits of life that are captured in thousands of family photographs) and forget about just how hard it is to raise four children under five years of age. I just don’t care today.
Today Im going to let Arthur take me back.