My weekend alone with the kids

A week after we got back from the Netherlands, I spent my first weekend alone with the kids...

7.40am - awake, and regretting going to bed at midnight. It's going to be a long day.

9.45am - Jacqueline and Rogier leave, Pepi sobs at the window for ten minutes. After some cuddles on the couch the two of them get distracted by the TV.

10am - I leave them watching TV and go to clean the baby bottles. Pepi comes in and declares that he will do it. "This is great" I think to myself. 15 minutes in and already he's doing chores for me. Five minutes later, the kitchen can only still be called 'clean' if covered-in-dishwashing-liquid-and-water counts!

11am - By now we've played 'going on holiday', pulled out every toy and dumped it on the floor, and lost Pepi's new pet snail 'Tren' somewhere in the living room. The place looks like a bomb went off and we've only been at it for an hour.

11.30am - The kids are obsessed with drinking my coffee, but hate the taste. Hot chocolate seems like a resonable solution, until a disagreement is caused by me wanting Ollie to drink from a spill-less sippy cup and him wanting to drink from a big-boy cup. Ollie wins, and ten minutes later he is wearing his third change of clothes for the day. I think about the ironing I'm causing for myself and contemplate letting them run around in underwear all day.

12.30am - Ollie asleep so I try to restore some order to the house. Pepi follows me around the room making a mess everywhere that I've just tidied. I quit trying and we watch some weird Australian mermaid soap opera instead.

2pm - We've been out on the trampoline and I'm beginning to fade, so we come in for some food. Pepi has already eaten lunch but sits on my lap and eats half of my pasta as well. 'One fork for me, then one fork for you'...who would have thought this was the kid that hated me for the whole 'corner incident' only a couple of weeks ago.

2.30pm - After a week of grey and rain, it's sunny and hot, like 26 degrees. I'm pooped from a game of "you be the dragon and chase me and I'll be the pow-pow" (??? said waiving a big stick around), so we fill the paddling pool with water. Ten minutes later the water is full of sand and Pepi is running around the backyard stark naked with a tennis racquet and ball. Nothing like nude tennis.

3.30pm - Ollie is awake, fed, and we head back out to the backyard where follows his brother's example and strips down. He doesn't seem to grasp the concept of playing inside the paddling pool rather than just with the water from it, and starts fulling up a small container and running around depositing it in different locations. This turns into a huge thing with the two of them and they spend ages pouring water down a pipe.

4pm - they begin an epic water battle - albeit a very one-sided one, poor Ollie doesn't know how to fight back and spends the whole time running backwards and forwards getting soaked by Pepi. I'm caught between my fear of Ollie drowning in the paddling pool and my terror of either of them slipping on the tiles and hitting their head, and pretty afraid of wasps on the grass too, so I run around like a headless chicken trying to be everywhere at once and still snap a few photographs of all the cuteness!

4.30pm - cuteness turns into Pepi getting more and more carried away and I can see someone is going to get hurt. He pees in the water, so I declare the fun over and carry them up for an early bath. The bathroom then gets covered in muddy footprints and grass clippings - is there any room in the house that will survive the weekend intact? I then cut my finger on the plug (who does that? Its a plug!) and its pouring blood all over a white towel while I run around with two naked and wet kids trying to find a plaster. When I go to dress Pepi he declares I've got it wrong, its time for bed so he should be in his pyjamas - I am really tempted to go along with that for a minute!

5pm - Pepi and Ollie are making drawings for their parents. Ollie decides the orange pencil looks tasty, so I rinse his mouth out with water while Pepi attacks me from behind for 'hurting' his brother. I calm him down, and go to change Ollie's clothes, but halfway through realise it's unnaturally quiet downstairs. I wrap Ollie in a towel and we go down to find Pepi missing. I completely freak out, I don't think I've ever been more scared in my life for the two minutes until I work out that all of the doors are closed and he must still be in the house. I find him hiding in the basement.

how is there lasagna on your forehead my dear?

5.30pm - Feeding time at the zoo over, and now it's 'witching hour', the horrible last part of the day when small people are tired and misbehaving and bursting into tears at the tiniest thing, and big people are tired and grumpy and yelling mono-syllabic commands as they count down the minutes until bedtime or their spouse comes home.

7pm - In the middle of me putting Ollie to bed, Pepi declares that Mama and Papa are never coming home and bursts into tears, waking up Ollie. Two screaming children.

7.30pm - I get Rogier to ring and say goodnight to Pepi. He cries down the phone for ages, but once they hang up he calms down and I manage to get first Ollie and them him to sleep easily this time.

10.30pm - Cleaning the house has taken literally hours, but finally it is pretty much back to normal. Hopefully the weather is fine tomorrow so I can keep the kids outside and the house tidy until Jacqueline gets home.

1am - Pepi comes and gets into bed with me. I can't say I've slept much anyway, the cat is driving me mad and I'm lying awake worrying because Ollie hasn't woken up yet!

3am - Ollie wakes. Bottle, clean diaper, back to bed again.

8am - Pepi wakes me up, and the three of us snuggle in bed watching TV for a little while. Then they're crazily full of energy again and we have to go downstairs. It takes about five minutes for the house to become messy again.

10am - Ollie asks for 'ei' or egg, so I cook us each an egg and we sit around the table. I get distracted by taking photos am not quick enough at cracking the eggs and Ollie tries to bite into his whole, opps.

10.30am - Ollie spills juice all over the formerly clean floor. I decide it's definitely time to get out of the house. We head to the local playground for a short while, but it really looks like rain is on the way. We get halfway home before the thunder and lightening strike, and get soaked by pouring rain.

2pm - Ollie's been asleep for a couple of hours and I've tried to clean up a little bit again. Pepi and I are just hanging out when I go to the bathroom and return to find him gone - my second heart attack for the weekend! But luckily Jacqueline is home and he's run downstairs, through the garage and out onto the road to meet her! So phew, my weekend alone with the kids is over with all three of us and the house intact! Success!