Unbelievable?!

Along with the boys, Lisa has been visiting her Mum and Nan for the last couple of days in an effort to enable me to get on with a fair bit of prep. that's needed to be done - and by and large I've got through it. But then this morning on the phone Lisa commented that she knew I'd been watching The West Wing! How would she know such a thing? Has she employed one of these 'detective people' to make sure I get on with stuff?! How much of a procrastinator does she think I am? (Actually let's not go there!!) Are there cameras dotted around the flat?! Well, thankfully not, it turns out she read my blog and deduced, Poirot-esque, that recent quotes meant recent watching!

Well look what else I've been doing (Lisa!)... I've been reading the chapter in the book you left for me 'Baby-proofing your marriage'.

All joking aside it's a good read with a good mix of shared experience and humour. I'd certainly recommend it to anyone with little terrorists (sorry children!), or those thinking of having children, in fact it may become a common gift from the Hanover household.

I wouldn't want to put anyone off, but be warned...

'If a first baby is a hand grenade thrown at a marriage, then a newborn and a toddler are a full-frontal assault, complete with machine guns, heat-seeking missiles, and stealth bombers.'

because...

'when you have one child, one parent parents while the other does his or her own thing. With the additional demands of more children, it gets harder to carve out any 'me time'. Not having time to recharge and feed your sense of self is, for many, the real challenge of adjusting to having more kids. Personal time is like a search for the Fountain of Youth, or the Seven Wonders of the World. It's like winning the lottery.'

The problem being...

'that when we lose the 'joie de vivre' activities we get emotionally and physically drained. What is left over, we usually give to our kids first. When our internal reserves are low, our threshold for dealing with our spouse's annoying quirks (what quirks?!) also gets dangerously low. At times, we circle each other like wolves, ready to fight over the scraps of free time that do exist.'

And then...

'When you do get to talk, 90% of the time you talk about the kids. While those conversations are necessary, when we relate to each other only as whoever's parents, it becomes pretty hard to keep the spark alive.'

Thankfully the writers don't only make plain the harsh realities, they draw upon their own experiences to suggest 'survival techniques and strategies'! Which I'll share shortly.