HOLIDAY FROM THE SCHOOL

Driving home from a long day at Seaworld on Saturday I overheard this from the backseat:



 
Jack (4yo):                     I’m famous
 
Sam (8yo):                     No you’re not, you’re ordinary
 
Jack (screaming)            I AM FAMOUS!
 
Sam (8yo (quite calm)    No, you’re just an ordinary kid with,  from what I can see, no acting ability whatsoever.
 
Jack: (still screaming)    I AM FAMOUS
 
Sam: (half smirking/still calm)   You my friend are a Dreamer
 
Jack (cryscreaming)    I AM FAMOUUUUUS

 
REPEAT, but, with a variant in the topic.  It could just as well be about whether Tom would defeat Jerry in a UFC smackdown or if cold Milo is better than a hot one.  The topic is irrelevant.  The winner is not.


Welcome to school holidays people.

 
To be fair, I usually don’t stop working over school holidays and don’t do the solid two - eight weeks of hard core 24/7 parenting.    But this time round, the Easter Holidays, at least in Queensland, have been a bit screwy and we find ourselves with some time off.  Good thing I didn’t throw out the bedazzler.

 
So far, it’s been five days of school holidays.  It’s been raining pretty much the entire time. Cabin Fever doesn’t even BEGIN to describe the situation we have here in this cripplingly tiny house.  So, in the spirit of all things lists, I present the PROS and CONS of the school holidays

 
PROS

• My bedazzler gets a workout.  Oh yes, it, along with Monopoly and the Wii Fit get pulled out and rewelcomed into the family.  Sure, it’s isn’t long until one of the kids does a hip trying to catch a hoola hoop or one of us puts a rhinestone through our fingernails, but it starts off with so much potential.
• There is bugger all traffic on the road.  No seriously, you know where you usually get banked back to Ayres Rock every Monday morning?   School holidays are like one of those tollbooth advertisements where everyone just flows right on through. 
• School lunches are suddenly redundant.  There is no need to explain this to anyone who has a school or kindy aged child.  A little piece of your soul dies each time you cut carrots into a million tiny pieces.  School holidays temporarily give those teeny tiny pieces of your soul back.
• Sleep Ins – Sure, Jack the 4yo old human alarm clock with no Snooze button still wakes up at 6:30am on the dot, but I can shoo him back into his room to play, quietly for at LEAST another two hours while Mummy sleeps.  At least.
• You become the master of empty threats.  Especially when you’ve told them in advance they are going to see friends/to a theme park/to the movies.  One foot wrong and it’s all over red rover.  Those empty threats will get you through any getting milk/bread meltdown scenario at the local shops.  A simple “If you do not behave, we will not be seeing Rio tomorrow” brings them back into line quick smart.

CONS

• Your solo time on the toilet reduces by 80%.  And that’s a pretty shit statistic if you started at having that place to yourself only 20% of the time in the first place.  Get ready to say goodbye to your happy place. Just for a bit.
• You may or may not spend inordinate amounts of time attending to green ant bites.  Not sure, this might be a Queensland thing, but without fail, within 2 minutes of us going outside, one or all of my children have been bitten by a green ant.  Often times, it sounds like they are on fire.  I am quite adept at my icing skills now.
• Expectations.  See kids’ associate holidays with fun.  Funny that.  Thing is, even though we live in one of the biggest tourist destinations in Australia, everything costs a bomb.  To go to a theme park with the five of us costs almost the same as an NRL clubs yearly salary cap.  Yep, even when we try to pass the four year old off as being two.    This doesn't take into account the overpriced lunches you invariably buy from some dodgy hot food stall, because apparently Vegemite sandwiches will just not cut it.  Here’s a tip, when a kid throws up on your shoes after a go on the corkscrew, it doesn’t matter if it was a hotdog or homemade sandwich, it’s still rank. Bring it in from home.

Seriously though, I know I sound like a Nanna, but it just doesn't feel like our parents had the job we do of entertaining our children over the school holidays.  Pretty much, we hung out, swam, rode or lay on our beds listening to music and reading.  And from memory, that was pretty rad.  Or am I romanticising?


 
Feel free to add your pros and cons below.

It starts with so much promise.