A trying weekend

There's something about the first term of the school year that seems peculiarly, and unjustly, exhausting. Is it because the children are thrown into a new routine and worn out by it? Is it because they've just had the long summer holiday and have got out of the habit of getting up and concentrating five days a week? Or is it just because it's cold and dark and we all feel tired and miserable?

Whatever the reason, this weekend has been particularly emotionally draining. For all of us. LittleBear even calmly and happily accepted that it was time for an early bed tonight as he was too tired. This has happened perhaps twice in his entire life. I am planning to do much the same.

Friday was a slightly atypical variation on our normal Friday. A normal Friday involves bringing LittleBear and BestFriend home, getting them both into their football gear, feeding them biscuits and taking them to football training. Getting a small boy into football gear is not dissimilar to how I imagine it would be to try and get a squid into a onesie designed for a goat. Full length, skin-tight lycra underclothes, shin pads with velcro straps, long socks that snag on the velcro and (insult of insults) lace-up boots. Getting two small boys into football gear is about four times as hard as getting one small boy into football gear, due to the tendency of small boys to get sidetracked and start slapping each other with their socks, or trying to juggle with their underpants.

This Friday I'd rashly volunteered to take three small boys to football training. Knowing my own limitations however, I had declared that I would pick the other two up from their homes, leaving their own mothers to undertake the squid-wrestling. I did manage to get them all there, and back again, and only one of them got injured, and only one of them left his coat behind. Look, I never said I was good at this childcare stuff, OK?

Because it's that time of year, the football club then had a party almost straight after training, whilst I had volunteered to babysit for the Piglet family. No Piglets were injured or lost their coats, so my skills were clearly improving through the day. I did, however, have to abandon BigBear and LittleBear at the football club party; both looking somewhat shell-shocked and as though they'd rather be anywhere else. LittleBear still bears all the hallmarks of his younger years, and doesn't cope well with arriving at a party that's both loud and already in progress. And BigBear doesn't really like parties at all. So there they stood, hand-in-hand at the edge of the hall, my lost bears.

Apparently, however, LittleBear did enjoy himself, ate pizza, met Father Christmas and was given chocolate, so all was well.

Meanwhile, I didn't return from my babysitting duties till sometime after midnight, filled with rage at the swines who'd closed the road home (and with myself for having forgotten that they were doing this, despite the fact that they have done so nights for the past year or more).  So I stayed awake wittering at BigBear for rather too long, so neither of us got enough sleep, and before we knew it, the diligent all-weather builders were hard at work hammering the roof. Not that that mattered overly much, as we had to be out of the house by 9 o'clock for LittleBear's football match.

As per the rules of the FA, the score or result of an under-7 match may not be publicised, because it is strictly friendly and non-competitive. So I will draw a discrete veil over the event and say only that every time the opposition scored, my little boy wilted into tears, and on at least two occasions I broke with convention and ran round the pitch to give him a cuddle. He's only seven after all. And by 11 o'clock he was a very, very tired seven, who was adamant that he hadn't enjoyed playing at all.

I have spent a large portion of the weekend feeling desperately sad about how easily his confidence is bruised, and how easily he turned from my confident little torpedo, shredding a defence to canon a ball into the top corner into a hesitant, nervous defender, hanging back, dropping off the ball, shying away from the tackle. As always I find myself wondering how I can help him build his resilience. How I can persuade him that winning or losing a game is not a judgement on his worth as a person. How I can convince him to keep picking himself and trying again if things don't go his way first time. And then I remember he's only seven, and it's asking a lot of him.

A morning of exhaustion and heartbreak set us up perfectly for going to a spy-mission themed birthday party in the afternoon. It may not come as much of a surprise that my LittleBear spent three-quarters of the party sat on my lap doing a word search while his little friends undertook the spy mission. He was too scared to want to join in. Fortunately(?) two of the other little friends were in similar state, so he wasn't plagued with the self-doubt of being the only child who didn't want to join in. And, by his own admission, he enjoyed the party. Funny little soul.

Today, which could have been restful, was punctuated instead by the screaming of a huge circular saw in the building site, as the diligent all-weather builders sliced up massive quantities of insulation to fit into the new roof. They elected to do this because it was going to be "quieter for us" than hammering the roof to put the rest of the slates up. They have a funny idea of quiet. But they are utter perfectionists and have done a beautiful job of fitting the insulation to my peculiar-shaped roof. So there's that.

BigBear was tired. I was tired. LittleBear was tired. IdiotCat was probably tired. He was certainly stressed, as the moment the rest of the bear family had finished breakfast and disappeared upstairs together, he voided his bowels on the carpet. It really improved the day. Again. He even chose a different patch to the one he'd just peed on and I'd already cleaned earlier in the morning.

One of the few high points of the weekend had been that our Beloved Burnley had finally won a match, so I installed my two bears on the sofa, watching Match of the Day, while I ripped out a vanity wash-basin upstairs (that has the eccentric outflow pipe). Before having any breakfast. Because tiredness had led to poor decision making.

Then we all shouted at each other a bit. Had I mentioned we were tired? And I was hungry. Hungry and tired is always a winning combination. Eventually, we had some food inside us, and I took LittleBear off to the garden centre to acquire a small tree for Christmas. We generally have a large tree, but inconveniently someone's pulled down the room we usually put our tree in.

Eventually, after two garden centres and a trip to see Father Christmas, we were home with the tree, and a bottle of cat-calming herbal spray, that we all hate the smell of. So we had a jolly time, with the windows open trying to clear the stench of valerian root and swapping affectionate comments like,

"Why does nobody let me make any suggestions?"

"I don't even like baubles"

"Do you have to put that there?"

There were two verified instances of tears while decorating the tree, because that's what Christmas is all about.

Eventually it was bedtime, and all was well.

The cat is calm and snoring, apparently enjoying the valerian root more than the rest of us did. There is a box of lego on the chair beside me, that LittleBear received from Father Christmas at the garden centre, that he would like me to wrap up so he can have it under the tree for Christmas. The lights are twinkling on the tree, and there are three little penguins hung on it in a row. I made them six years ago, one for each of us, and every year we hang them side-by-side on the tree. This year, LittleBear wanted them facing the door so they could welcome people into the room. So those are the three thoughts I shall take to bed with me. Not the yelling, not the tears, not the aching muscles, not the dust and the dirt and the soiled carpet, not the anxiety and insecurity of my boy and me. I will take to bed the thoughts of the loving, considerate, compassionate little boy who melts my heart.