An “Extraordinary” Ordinary Day in Parenting

The alarm clock ignites the day with a sharp clear shrill. It’s six o clock, groggy and still full of sleep I roll out of bed. Listening to the peaceful silence resonating within the house, I linger over those precious moments before my children awake and all mayhem breaks out. They loudly clamour down shouting for toast and Nutella despite all my good intentions at trying to feed them anything healthy. Radio blasting in the background, the kitchen is a buzz with loud conversations from every corner, the older two doing a dance routine to a Katy Perry song, the middle one sneakily indulging in the bottle of Nutella, unnoticed, and the baby screaming to be let out from her feeding chair. This is the start of my “extraordinary” ordinary day in parenting.

Do having children make people any happier? According to many points of view, the general agreement is that even the stalwart of children haters are eventually won over by these miniature wondrous creatures. So yes, children do make us happier. Women feel contented, despite their most advanced views on the equality of sexes, they as women have accomplished what they were initially wired to do, give birth. The assigned fathers are filled with a sense of pride mingled with fear at the sole responsibility on their hands at caring for their new family, but pride and joy often softens the harshness of the blow. Mothers are filled with a maternal love, slowly giving away to that constantly burning, unconditional love that streams through them as their first born are placed in their arms. Children do make people happier, they heal wounds, salvage broken hearts and bind people in love for a lifetime.

Life with children though is not for the faint hearted. It is a constant upward battle against piling laundry, scribbled walls, tantrums at the drop of a hat and the sad reality of the loss of one’s personal space and property. In retrospect this sounds atrocious, who in their right minds would commit themselves into such a hopeless situation. Day after day of constant routine riddled with an emotional roller coaster ride of anger, frustration and perpetual bewilderment. Are we such gluttons for punishment to be led willingly by hand into this picarious state of affairs, the answer for this is simple…it’s all for the sake of the children.

Children are miniature works of art. They are the most wonderful, awful, selfish, beautiful, giving, kind, cantankerous creatures in the world. To have a child in the house, is to blessed. They will push you to the verge of a breakdown only to reel you in with a sticky hug and kiss that says that they love you for eternity. They play cartwheels with your emotions, but at the same time fill you with a sense of immense pride all because they spelt the word “cat” correctly. What would life be like without children. Endless days of quiet calm, spontaneous trips and conversations NOT filled with bodily gas noises at the end of each sentence. Is that how you want to look back on your life, it was ordered and calm or do you want to look back and say I RAISED children, it was hard, it wasn’t easy, but it was full of love. I braved adventure and had the time of my life.

Coming back to my “extraordinary” ordinary day, it continued as nosily as it started. Riddled with petty arguments, claims on the unfairness of my love because I said she could have the last chocolate milk rather than he, a wonderful heart to heart with my oldest daughter on the complexities of playground politics, all of course coupled with the chitter chatter of my beautiful toddler, who just learnt the word “why?” and repeats it constantly after each request. Soraya eat your breakfast, responds with “why?”, “Soraya take a nap” here comes the response “why?”. I cannot put into words what these beautiful moments do to my heart and soul. Yes I get frustrated, yes I get angry, yes I threaten to leave the house and leave then to the care of their nanny if they do not behave. But in my heart of hearts, these are my children, my life is extraordinary because of them, my world is bigger, brighter and always sunnier because of them. No I will for some time not have a tidy house or  free time to properly read a book or have to every night wander through a perilous trail of thrown toys, but the reality is that with children in our lives, our days as parents will never be ordinary, instead always extraordinary.

By Mayuri Jayasinghe