A Break from the Usual

Routine? What's that?!

If you'd seen us this morning you'd have thought I'd never even heard of such a thing.

As a rule, our day is highly structured. It's not that we have particularly strong views as a family about keeping a ridged routine but that we have a very complicated working pattern. My husband works from home full-time as a writer while I juggle some freelance work with a job I do outside the home. It's literally like running a never-ending relay race, constantly passing batons back and forth.

I get up in the morning and head to work before anyone else is awake, I get home in the afternoon and the childcare baton is passed to me while the work baton is passed to my DH. Then I spend the rest of the day looking after the girls and the household and trying to keep everyone out of my DH's way so he can concentrate until the girls are safely tucked up in bed and either I get on with my freelance work or we abandon our work for the night and relax with a horror movie and a nice hot drink.

A normal Sunday would involve waking up, getting the girls their breakfasts, getting breakfast for my DH and I and then chilling on JM for an hour while the girls watch their shows and my DH does some work. Then it's hair, teeth and washing for myself and the girls before a trip to the shops, getting back in time to do lunch for everyone, including the furry members of the household, and finally getting the girls down for a nap just after one. It's a bit like a military operation. Even just getting ready to go out is like a production line of coats, hats and shoes!

This morning everything went kaput. For a start, the clocks went forward last night so we lost an hour of sleep. Add to that the fact that when I woke up I started coughing and spluttering with a raw, scratchy throat, I wasn't in the best frame of mind to face the usual routine. Aside from anything else we were way behind - the girls didn't know the clocks had gone forward so I did at least get a little lay in but that knocked the whole morning off.

Just this once, I conceded. Without my DH here, quietly working in the corner, I decided it was a day for vegging out and throwing the schedule out of the window. We watched TV. We made lots more dens and tunnels. We sat munching toast in bed. We laughed and played and enjoyed the morning.

I still feel pretty rubbish but I'm sure I'd be feeling a lot worse if I'd launched into the usual Sunday stuff. Don't get me wrong, routines are great when you hit upon the right one and goodness knows we wouldn't function without one - but even mummies need a day off sometimes, and today was mine!