"No reading at the breakfast table"

I kicked off 2014 with such optimism .  Such a sense of control.  Finally I had cracked it.   No longer was I going to feel panicky.  No longer was I going to awake in a cold sweat at 4am.  No longer was I going to let life get away from me .  Ahh - the arrogance of it all. Last week I had to pull the pin on all my daughter's extracurricular activities.  Not just reduce.  Not just create less.  Create nothing.  A schedule of nothing more than eating and sleeping.  This is NOT the 'less' I was thinking of.  I know that I didn't want the 'more'.  But I didn't think we'd end up with nothing.  This was a hard moment for me. Over the school holidays our daughter improved a lot from her sickness and fatigue of the first three months of the year.  We saw a significant improvement in her health. She even went to three consecutive full days of school at the start of term.  She was so happy and we felt like finally our life could regain some predictabil

Happy Mother's Day to my Australian readers.   Here's an old post from my 2011 Mother's Day.  It still makes me laugh. So much is promised for mums on Mother's Day.  A blissful sleep in.  Gorgeous children collaborating with humour and joy to serve you breakfast in bed.  Beautiful gifts purchased thoughtfully from an expensive department store. OR ... it could look like this: Friday :  Tears at breakfast because we couldn't find enough $5 notes around the house to pay for my presents at the Mother's Day stall.  The 4 year old did use her own money (apparently she knows what a $5 note looks like - this was news to me) and went happily off to the preschool Mother's Day stall.  I suggested that the Tupperware measuring set looked good, but she went STRAIGHT for the cellophane wrapped pink bubble bath.  Handed over her money and happily stuffed it in her bag. She spent the whole walk home in the afternoon pestering me about when she could open  her