Getting out of the house

Getting out of the house.

I wanted to write something beautiful and poignant about the Duxbury transition to a family of four.  When I finally got the time to sit down and write (I’m 15 weeks in- that about sums it up) all I could think about was the process of leaving the house.  Michael Macintyre has famously ranted about how difficult it is to exit the house with children but, in the words of a very good book (Ecclesiastes) there is nothing new under the sun so, with this in mind, I’m going to have my own little rant even though it is by no means the first on the subject.

As a mother of two, it is now impossible to ‘pop’ anywhere.  I realised this early on when I text a friend saying we were ‘popping’ over and it took forty minutes to get to her; she lives five minutes away.  That was a particularly bad run though - standard getting out of the house time is twenty-five minutes.

Twenty-five minutes is quite an achievement I can tell you.  Both children have to have full tummies and empty nappies before we set foot out of the front door and then there are the coats, the gloves, the shoes, and the bag packed for all eventualities.  In the midst of this wrapping up, feeding and bottom changing, I also have to assemble the double buggy (the wagon) into the appropriate configuration for our journey ahead.  This will inevitably involve collecting various sections of buggy from the boot of the car. This, in itself, wouldn’t take half as much time if I could leave the toddler in the house with the baby. I can’t. Elias likes to ‘cuddle’ Ezra.

So I take Elias outside with me and have to fetch various bits of buggy whilst fending my toddler off from the road.   Once I get Elias and the buggy back into the house ready to load up, it’s quite probable that Ezra will need a nappy change and thus the process continues. 

One particular getting out of the house experience has entrenched itself in my memory.  I booked a haircut for Elias at 4.30.  Being experienced, I started ‘the process’ half an hour before we had to leave.  It was freezing cold and dark; I put both boys in full body coats. It’s a faff but I can’t just wrap the baby in a blanket when arctic winds are blowing. It’s so cold I decide to wear him. Just as I’m about to load up, Ezra starts that head butting ‘feed me now Mother’ motion.  By this time Elias is already in the garden; it is pouring down with icy rain and he’s sitting on the wet slide, stomping in the puddles and generally doing everything he can to bring on hypothermia. I’m in the doorway, breasts out, feeding Ezra and questioning whether it’s even worth me going to the hairdresser when we’re going to be THIS LATE.  After the shortest possible amount of time, I replace boob with dummy and strap Ezra on again.  That’s when Elias announces that he needs a nappy change.  I have to unstrap Ezra, remove the full body snow suit from Elias, the wellies, the wet socks, change the nappy, re-dress, load him up, strap Ezra on again, put gloves on, out the door, lock up and that’s when I realise I’m not entirely sure of the way.  Back to the wifi range for Google maps.

We did actually make it on time – the ordeal once we arrived I will save for another blog post.  Honestly, you’d have thought he was being murdered…

To summarise, getting out of the house feels like that circle game I remember playing at birthday parties.  You know the one with the gloves, scarf and hat and the knife and fork.  Someone in the circle rolls a six and they have until the next time someone else rolls a six to put all the clothes on and hack at a mangled bar of Cadburys with a plastic knife and fork, cramming as many loose pieces of chocolate into their mouth as possible before their time is up. Replace the dice rolling with the eventuality of nappy filling, tantrum throwing or vomit.  I have to get everyone’s coats, hats, gloves and scarfs on before anyone rolls a shit – I mean a six.   Chaos.  Utter chaos.