"Shattered, Shattered, and Even More Shattered"

So we've been back home in London, England for nearly two weeks now, and what do I have to show for it?  A nasty chest infection, a plethora of packing boxes (which I swear are multiplying when I'm not looking) and two housebound monsters going crazy and subsequently making me crazy.

It looks like my worst fear is to be realised.  Egg, Dumpie and I look set to spend the next three months together...in our home...sans school.  Great.  They've already discovered the joys of dismantling every sofa and bed in the place and turning the front room into one almighty 'Fort'.  This means that every night before I go to bed I have to dismantle their days work and clean up a room which looks as though a band of chimpanzees have had a go at interior design.

The boys have also found their old toys and have been quick to take up sword fighting, fencing and Star Wars battles again.  This has resulted in the breakage of not one but two vases this week and I'm waiting any day for our big dining room mirror to come crashing down.

Now being that this is Britain, despite it being June it has rained nearly every day that we've been home.  Shockingly I've even found myself retreating up the haven of the family bathroom upstairs for a few warm baths to fend off the chill in my defenceless bones.  What's going on?  It feels like November!

Anyway, suffice it to say that I haven't even had time to process what it means to be back, or even mull over how it feels to have come 'home' after 16 month away.

Our first day back was a cushioned re-entry into sunny bliss and catching up with good friends.  One of my delightful sisters (Auntie Mo) kindly/foolishly volunteered to take the monsters to her place for the weekend and the husband and I were treated to the kind of bliss parents rarely ever get to experience once they breed:  a lie-in.

But then reality sunk in, and as the husband dashed here, there and everywhere on his bicycle, hustling for work, I found myself housebound with two very bored children.  A typical morning would involve several hours of back-breaking work in one room, only to discover that they had opened the contents of several of the boxes in another room and had turned the place into a plastic toy tsunami.

One afternoon Dumpie surveyed the kitchen and smiled at me with happiness in his twinkling eyes:

"I like this place Mama...I like the ice machine, the cookie maker (he pointed to the oven) and the smoothie maker..."

I like this place too.  But I'd like it a heck of a lot more if it didn't resemble the inside of a skip.  I'd like it more if I somehow knew that it would not look like this for the next two months.

I despair.  And on top of that, tomorrow is Eggie's 7th birthday, and in an effort to compensate for not supplying our eldest with a 'proper' birthday party, I've gone out of my way to make and bake all his favourite treats and decorate the place like the inside of a bouncy castle.

What's a little more mess eh?