Aviva Stress Less Challenge – Week 3

Three weeks have passed, and with them, half term.

Three kids, on my own, all week.

I know it’s not unusual. There are plenty of parents out there who do it all the time. But it’s still pretty unusual for me, and more kids than arms is still sometimes a bit daunting – especially with the inevitable half term tiredness that turns the kids into shrieking, whining banshees after about 4pm every day…

How does that fit in with the tips I’ve been given? Well…it does, and it doesn’t.

I’m up to seven tips, and here they are:

1. Plan chores into manageable tasks – allocate days and stick to them.
2. Plan – what we are having to eat, what I need for the next day and time to do something I love.
3. Allocate a day in the week / every other week to cook in bulk
4. Schedule me-time into the diary
5. Try something new or different
6. Exercise, even if it’s only a little bit – and set a goal
7. Eat green or red food

Last week, I said we were well underway with planning chores and meals.

Happily, the planning has pretty much gone to plan! Having ideas ready and the right food in the fridge and freezer to realise them has meant that meals and mealtimes have been a lot easier. We’ve been able to have more ‘eating together as a family’ moments which feels good and eating at a reasonable time each evening has made bedtimes less rushed and therefore less stressful too.

Chores – well, they have been happening but my plan didn’t really take into account the extra work generated by having three kids at home all day every day. The house looks like a bomb has hit it (a big one made of sand, random plastic things, clothes in various states of decay and random small painful-to-step-on unidentified objects) and I do feel a little like despairing of ever having a clean, tidy house BUT at least I do feel like things are slowly getting done. I remembered to plug the vacuum cleaner in to charge. I’ve sorted out the MASSIVE pile of post that has needed filing for probably at least a year. And I have been through the kids wardrobe and removed three bin bags of stuff they have grown out of.

And the bathroom is clean.

Therefore, although there is stress about the fact that the front room is basically a giant trip hazard and you can’t see the floor in the bedroom, it is nowhere near the stress that it could have been.

So – on to the rest.

Well, I’ve failed miserably at cooking in bulk. I cleared freezer space, I bought a big bag of mince – but then, about to begin I realised that I didn’t actually have anything to put the bulk cooking in to store it! So, we had our nachos (with added peppers and courgettes – green and red, see?) and I mentally rescheduled the bulk cooking attempt for next week instead.

One day it WILL happen!

Conversely, we did do rather well with trying something new, and exercising. First off, I took the Wee Man and Little B to a blogger event, and we made a concerted effort to talk to someone new. Or in fact, lots of someones. Two hours later and this had gone so well that we were off having lunch with four other bloggers – so much fun and lovely to have some grown up chatting time with people who appreciated the requirements of small taggers-along too. The Wee Man was so excited about it all that he invited them all to go bowling!

As it worked out, I did take just him bowling – and that was definitely good exercise for me as I had to help him whilst having Little B strapped to my front. The bowling staff (and many of the other patrons) looked at me as if I was a little bit mad but we were having fun, and he was happy which made me feel happy too. The day flew by and I actually felt really relaxed by the end of it. And good about meeting new people too.

 

The days passed pretty quickly: a trip to the beach, a bus ride on a new bus, and a playdate with friends in our clean(er) house – and then it was the day of the Bliss Buggy Push. A 5km walk in Battersea Park with three kids, two pushchairs and a scooter.

Battersea Park is two tube lines and a bus away from our house, and the buggy push was starting at 9.35 in the morning! So on top of practicing pushing, I also had to make sure we were well organised and prepared the night before or we’d never have got there in time! I stayed up an extra while getting organised – and I’m incredibly pleased to say that we got ourselves and three children ready and out of the house in 20 MINUTES in the morning. That’s got to be some kind of record, right? It even left time for accidentally going the wrong way a bit on the tube (whoops!).

We made it right on time, and by 11am we had walked and walked and walked… I felt exhausted but happy, watching the kids enjoying the post-push entertainment from Sharky and George and their giant parachute.

It’s been a busy three weeks but I’m really glad that I’ve been able to take part in the Aviva Stress Less challenge and putting the tips into place has definitely made a difference – I feel a lot more relaxed which is saying something considering it was half term last week too!

I’m not sure that we’ll be able to continue on with all of them, all the time because things change quickly with a small baby and there are changes coming up with the bigger ones too, with Bubby D starting preschool in September and the Summer Holidays looming. But we will commit to one of them – and that’s meal planning. Most probably combined with a bit of planning in general. The biggest difference in our lives seems to have come from eating proper, well thought out meals that are ready at a reasonable hour and enjoyed together as a family – and I think that the small time involved in planning is more than compensated for by the resulting stress-free mealtimes.

Oh, and that me-time thing? Well, this happened:

I’m pretty keen on committing to a bit more of that too!