Togetherness at The Gallery

Week nights at DG Manor are often tough, and by this hour I am usually counting the minutes until DH walks through the door by this point in the day. Being self-employed, he doesn’t have conventional 9-5 working hours (who does these days?) so there is no guarantee that he will see The Girls before they go to bed. Sometimes, despite his best efforts, a few minutes of delay for South Eastern rail is the difference between being able to read bedtime stories and having to kiss sleeping babies.

He has made an extraordinary effort since we started our family to be home and help with bath time, particularly when I was heavily pregnant and afflicted with SPD, then trying to juggle a newborn and a two-year-old. But as his business gets busier and our babies get bigger, togetherness at bedtime is not a definite anymore.

Ladies who lunch

Which is why weekends are so special. We spend a lot of them on the Kent Coast, separated from The Great Commute by physical and mental distance, and able to really focus on our children, our love, our relationship. We each get a lie-in, we have all our meals together, we share the nappies and the tantrums. And we give our attention to Threeva and Dimples. It’s not big showy stuff, but walks on the beach, or making cakes, or dancing in the sitting room. We relish our chance to eat out as a family which continues, despite our recent experience, and were proud as anything when a diner went out of their way to tell us how wonderfully behaved The Girls were this weekend. Because they are: Threeva chats with us about all sorts of things and Dimples smiles and babbles, happily joining in. We Girls regularly fall asleep together on the sofa whilst watching Hairy Cats (Aristocats) after a long walk. Then, once they are bathed and in bed, there is a chance for DH and I to have supper together and watch a movie, or read books silently, side by side on the same sofa.

What I especially love at the moment is the journey home: listening, at Threeva’s request, to audio books in the car. Our current favourite is My Naughty Little Sister, which has lessons which carry over into our life quite well. But when she’s had enough, and is getting tetchy, on come the songs, and a voice orders from the cheap seats: “Join in Dad!”. I’ve no idea what others would think, looking into the car at us all singing madly to Old MacDonald, but it never fails to make us smile. So the weekends really are a special time for us all to enjoy being together, a time which I often have to hold onto throughout the Witching Hours during the week.

Now go over to The Gallery and see what others have posted for this weeks’s theme of Togetherness.