Last Tuesday morning I woke up to the sun shining and the sky blue. I was instantly energised. 

I heard the whisper of a idea forming in my head.

“Why don’t you take the kids for a picnic” it said. 🧺 

We are emerging from lockdown pretty slowly and I knew that my 3yo would rank this pretty high on the adventure scale. 🌳 

I felt a little bit smug for coming up with something fun and small scale that would eventually give us a break in the routine.

I was feeling excited. 😄

All I needed to do was grab some food and shove the bikes and frisbee in the boot of the car.

Wrong.

My 3yo didn’t want to get dressed. Or eat breakfast. Or brush his teeth. Or put sun cream on. 😐

The baby cried and wriggled and struggled to get out of the sling while I tried to make sandwiches. 😕

I then discovered there wasn’t anything to go inside the sandwiches. 🙁

And as I stood deliberating the baby knocked a cup of milk all over the floor which my 3yo then walked through. ☹️

Just as I thought we were going to make it out the door my 3yo started asking for his winter coat. It was already over 20degC outside. 🤯

Oh, and did I mention that it was now 10.30am, after we’d gotten up at 7.30am. 

Needless to say my smugness had disappeared, replaced by flushed cheeks, a raised heart rate and a fair bit of sweat. 🙄

But you know what the most annoying thing was? This is exactly the sort of situation I told myself that I was going to avoid after lockdown. 

And once this realisation dawned on me I made a choice.

TO STOP.

I took a breath and chilled out. I reminded myself that the time wasn’t actually important. That we were out of practice at this. That multitasking never works. And that we could just have crisps in our sandwiches. 😂

By setting the intention to be calm and relaxed we made it out of the house with everyone smiling. 

And that was the key for me, to stop and notice, rather than powering on through unintentionally getting more and more flustered. 😊

When do you find yourself needing a breather?