What I’m doing while the children are away

Short answer: not very much

We are very lucky to have not one, but two sets of grandparents who are happy to have the children stay with them for a few days. So this week the children are having a holiday, and I am too. Last time this happened, in a rare moment of clarity I wrote down the things I wanted to do while they were away. Not the things I ought to do, or needed to do, but the things I knew would actually contribute to a restful and enjoyable break. The list proved so accurate that I kept the scrap of paper it was written on, and turned to it again this week. And here it is, in all its unimpressive glory, in case you ever get a short break and don’t know what to do with it.

• Tidy up

This ideally comes first. I’m not one of those people who finds housework soothing and enjoyable. But I do like the after effects, and I especially like them when there are no children around to undo all my hard work within a matter of minutes. If I do a super-quick tidy the moment the children leave, I have a nice place to spend my time until they return (at which point it immediately reverts to its normal state). I also take the opportunity to quietly dispose of a few things the children won’t miss, because our space is finite, but their appetite for accumulation is not.

• Exercise and/or yoga

I like to stick to a regime of 20 minutes, 4 to 5 times per year. After each of these times I note how good exercise makes me feel, and what a nice person/attentive wife/patient and loving mother I would be if I did it more regularly.

The exercise and yoga has to come after the tidying, because I like to exercise at home and when the children are at home it can be a challenge to find a spot with sufficient space for anything more than tree pose.

Very much not what I look like doing yoga at home. But this is a lot what I feel like. Photo by Yannic Laderach via Unsplash.

• Walk

I like walking with the children but in their childlike wonder they like to stop and look at things a lot, and what I really like to do is just keep walking. So my husband and I walk around our local area, and walk around other bits of London using these books. I walk until my legs hurt, and I love it.

• Read

Sometimes when the children are away I go to a bookshop and buy myself a brand new, full-price book, and then read it cover to cover in a day or two. What luxury! But this time I was already immersed in David Olusoga’s Black and British, which is huge, so I am enjoying being able to read hundreds of pages and will hopefully finish the book in a week instead of a month. I now want to read everything else he’s written. By the way, he’s published a shorter version for teenagers (which I might read next), and an illustrated version for younger children. We borrowed the illustrated version from the library and I read a few pages to the children on the train journey to Granny and Grandpa’s house. We all said in unison that we wished we owned a copy because it’s so good.

• Plan

This time I actually have all the planning for the year ahead done (my planning is very light-touch, you can read my post about it for more details), so I will just reread it and remind myself of what’s ahead. I’m also going to look through my Wild Math Curriculum to refresh my memory on outside maths activities. (If you’re very quick, Wild Math is offering 15% off with discount code goldenrod, but only until 8th August.)

• Cook

Cooking with the children at home is a task to be completed rather than savoured. By the time it comes to eating food myself I can’t really be bothered and I’m lucky that my husband cooks the evening meal, or I would subsist on cheese and chocolate. Sometimes when the children are away I want to spend quality time preparing a delicious meal that the children wouldn’t eat, but this time I’m not in the mood. Instead I will batch cook a meal or two so that when the children are back there’s a store of easy meals ready and waiting in the freezer. I’ll do it with a podcast or TV programme in the background and then get out of the kitchen as fast as I can.

And that’s it. My husband (The Common Reader, if you’re new here) keeps asking if I want to go and see a play, a movie, an art exhibition. I don’t. All I want is to tidy up, walk, read, stretch, plan and cook a little. Oh, and also try to ignore the feeling that I am missing a limb until the children come home.

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Once the children are back, we shall be returning to How We Homeschooled Today. I miss it, and some of you have been kind enough to tell me that you do too. Thank you!

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