So I’ve been doing the whole two kids thing for about two and a half months now. So with that in mind I thought it was about time I did a little post and let you in to what life is really like on the Stanbury household with our two.

Our day typically starts anywhere between 5.30am and 6.30am. 7am is a pretty damn good lie in and if she’s slept in until 8am my anxiety is telling me that she’s probably not breathing anymore and I’d better have 999 ready to call when I go in and try and wake her. Fortunately that never happens, both the stopping breathing and the laying in until 8am. So yeah Clea calls the shots when it comes to our day starting.

She hops her little bum into our bed and usually brings bunny with her usually shouting some gibberish and normally waking Fletcher up in the process. Daddy goes downstairs to make her a bottle and make us both a well needed coffee meanwhile I lay in between a toddler and a baby fending said toddler off from trying to get in the sleepyhead with Fletcher, usually she doesn’t like me doing this because Clea likes to do what Clea likes to do and if she doesn’t get her way then she normally has a tantrum... until her milk turns up for her anyway and then all order is restored.

I used to stick the news on first thing in the morning but these days I’m not allowed. It has to be Bing on iPlayer instead so I couldn’t tell you if Trump was still president or if there has been a breakthrough in the Brexit deal. I am no longer clued up on current affairs but I can tell you all about how Bing, Sula and Flop played in a paddling pool with no water. They had a bloody marvellous time I tell ya!

By about 7.30am Clea has finished her milk and is bored of Bing although god forbid I turn the bastard bunny of the TV - she will go into meltdown mode and so I usually get us all dressed with Bing playing in the background for the 147,000th time. Getting dressed in itself has its challenges. I’m not so sure I’ve even been 100% successful in getting us all totally ready before heading downstairs for breakfast. Usually either the kids are missing socks or cardigans or I’m missing my sanity. Hair will be in a mom bun because let’s be honest who has time to do anything other than that? And so we make do. Clea’s normally trashed her room by this point and I’ll either tidy it up with her or leave it and think ‘fuck it’ because she’s being a little madam and I just can’t be fucked with the battle.

Downstairs and Fletcher has a little play on his mat whilst Clea and I unload the dishwasher. It’s usually a race between us, a fun little game if you like of who can grab the sharp kitchen knife first. Normally I win. Normally. Anyway once we’ve unloaded the dishwasher I make Clea her breakfast, she’ll take it over to the tv bench where she likes to eat some and feed the rest to the DVD player not before beeping people’s noses on the TV and pressing the green buttons with her mucky breakfast hands. By this point Fletcher is normally fed up and wants some attention or some boob. And so the likelihood of me getting any breakfast is pretty much slim to none. On the occasions I do get lucky, I have to share. I mean obviously OBVIOUSLY my breakfast is way better that Clea’s so she has to eat mine too... chances are they are the same.

By about 10am we are usually ready to do some kind of activity or go on some kind of outing. This will vary from day to day. On Tuesdays I take Fletcher to baby sensory and someone in Elliott’s family takes Clea out and we did have a music class on a Wednesday but all this has now stopped as it’s the end of summer. We fill our days with other things such as soft play, the gym, rhyme time, a visit to a National Trust place, the supermarket (who doesn’t love going to the supermarket), just basically anything we fancy or need to do. Fletcher just slots in and is fed and changed as and when is necessary. I breastfed Clea so I really don’t have a problem feeding Fletcher wherever I am. I’m fairly confident with breastfeeding. Most of the time Fletcher is pretty good too although we had a little incident the other day where by he unlatched mid feed and my milk shot over my shoulder somehow and I think, I think, it might just have caught the man sitting behind me in the National Trust cafe. Mortifying. He didn’t say anything so I’m hoping he just didn’t realise what it was.

By about 2pm Clea is usually ready for a nap. She will usually sleep for a good 2-3 hours and that is my rest time... well it was before Fletcher came along. Some days we get lucky and he naps at the same time and other days he doesn’t. Either way I don’t really mind. When I was pregnant I really needed that time to rest but I have much more energy now and so I quite enjoy the one on one time with Fletcher without having to try and stop his sister from sitting on him or smothering him with kisses of trying to feed him quavers.

When Clea wakes I can usually get away with plonking her in front of an hours worth of Bing with a bottle of milk. That will usually take us right up to the time daddy gets home from work. When he gets back he plays with the kids while I get the dinner on and then with the exception of Fletcher who’s not quite mastered his fine motor skills, we all sit down to dinner - usually between 5.30pm and 6pm. I say we sit down, Clea’s favourite game at the moment is to climb down from her chair and Fletcher’s is to see how long he can scream through dinner. Dinners are fun. Really fun. Can you sense the sarcasm?

By this point I’m not ashamed to say I am counting down the minutes until bedtime. We normally hoover downstairs after dinner to get rid of any evidence that dinner was far from smooth sailing, daddy with the new dyson and Clea with her you dyson - she loves playing ‘grown ups’. Clea then watches either the Simpsons or CBeebies bedtime hour and by about 6.45pm-7pm she’s ready to go to bed.

We all head upstairs and Clea fetches her pjs from under her pillow, gets her diaper and moisturiser out of her drawers and puts it all on mommy and daddy’s bed. I fetch Fletcher’s bits. On the nights that we bath them we do so together. Clea finds it hilarious to pour water over Fletcher’s penis and is very good at helping wash his feet and his belly. On the odd occasion that they are not bathed together she gets upset and really misses him. We all bundle onto the bed, dry off, change diapers and get pjs on. Clea picks who she wants to take her to bed - either mommy or daddy, kisses the other one and ‘cha cha’ (Fletcher) and then we walk to her room. She hops into her bed and I pass her bunny and she hugs her tight, I tuck her in with her duvet and turn her slumber buddy on to green light and water sounds. We have three kisses and say goodnight. She says ‘bye’ and waves me out of her room. I shut the door behind me and that’s it, we don’t see her again until at least 5.30am the night morning. She really is so good at going to bed. It took her so long as a baby to sleep through the night but we are definitely reaping the rewards now she never puts up a fight and only on the odd occasion has she woken in the middle of the night and then it’s usually from having a bad dream.

After Clea is down Fletcher gets swaddled and put on the boob. He has a nice long feed until finally drifting off to sleep. Some nights this takes longer than other nights. Sometimes Elliott and I get an evening together and other nights he takes too long to settle and I end up just staying upstairs with him until I go to sleep but he’s only young still and he’s already doing much better than Clea did at nighttime sleeping. He usually wakes at 1am and 4am for a feed and does straight back to sleep after. Some days he wakes a bit more but on the whole he is really good and I am really proud of him.

So there you have it a typical day in the life of the Stanbury’s with two kids. Nobody ever said it would be easy but it will be 100% worth it. The good times outweigh the bad, my babies have best friends for life and I have double the love in my heart.

Two kids is just simply our beautiful chaos and I wouldn’t change it for the world.