My Daisy chain

So here we are, me and my gang. As you can see from Lily's artisitc offering, I have two children, a lovely pink t-shirt, a husband with a bad haircut and an immensely happy, if somehwat stoned-looking family.

Lily is four. She'll be five soon and is well on the way to securing the position of Head of the Family. Poppy, who currently holds that title, is 2, and pushing out molars at the moment - hence my inability to write two days ago due to tiredness. And there's Bill, my sweet William - tall, blue eyes, and that picture was drawn before his visit to the hairdressers, as in reality he has beautiful hair, honest.

As for me - yes, I have got long legs and do sometimes feel like my left arm has a slight kink in it caused by the permanent attachment of Poppy to my hip, but apart from that I'm not sure it's an entirely accurate reflection of me. I love the smile though - that must be the prozac kicking in.

It's half term! Wow! I can't believe I've got a child old enough to have me caught up in the mania of school holidays already. They don't really fit around work so well though, do they, these half terms? God only knows how we'll cope in the summer. When I first returned to work after Lily was born, I sort of felt it was a rest, a time to catch up on sleep (the beauty of having your own office!), and an opportunity to get away from the constant call of 'Mummy!' (did anyone see that episode of Doctor Who..!).

But then when they get to school, just when you thought you'd got some kind of routine set up, they go and close the place down and send them back home for a week. Now when do I catch up on sleep? Trying to have an afternoon nap with Lily is like trying to fall asleep whilst wrestling a small antelope, a mass of wriggling legs and arms, squeals and farts.

I see Mother and Baby magazine published some research this week that says mothers of young babies get an average of 3 and a half hours sleep a night, compared with 5 hours that our own mothers enjoyed. My mother was staying with us this week, and her, Lily and Poppy averaged something between 8 and 12 hours sleep a night each. But their combined nocturnal routines - involving sleep-singing on Poppy's part, banging into the wall by Lily, and frequent toilet trips for my mother, left me with, you've guessed it, something nearer 3 and a half! So even when our 'young' babies grow up, it seems we continue to lose out to both generations. The Mother and Baby report concludes 'life is much harder for today's parents'. Mmm, I had a sneaky suspicion it wasn't all wine and roses!