The Wonderings of Wibble: First day of freedom

Tomorrow I will have my first child free day in a long time. It's not just a one off day, it's 3 child free days a week for hopefully ever. I love my kids and everything, but imagine the things I will be able to do! I'll be able to poo ON MY OWN. I'll be able to think. I'll be able to sit on a sofa without someone sitting on top of me. I can make a lunch without having to make 2 extra lunches, I can listen to the news on the radio without having to translate it into the language a 5 year old understands and answer questions on it. I will be able to hear the glorious sound of silence!

Percy starting Year 1 today (Eric starts nursery tomorrow)

He came home from school saying "It was a great day! We didn't learn anything!"

I remember way back in the dawn of time, (2015) thinking this baby will never sleep through the night, and that I will never get freedom until he's in school and by then I'll probably have another one, but finally I have reached the sacred time of free nursery hours!

It's not like I've completely not worked since having kids. I went back 2 days a week after having Percy and that was ok for a while, and then I managed to find some other projects after Eric (I do art projects in schools). I had a good few months of work which meant I was able to pay for nursery, but then those projects came to an end and nothing else came along, so unfortunately I had to take him out of the nursery that he'd just settled into. From them on I just did comedy and airbnb for money, because that fits around looking after a toddler in the day.

It feels like a whole new world of limitless opportunities are opening up to me. (Within the hours of 9am-3pm 3 days a week in Liverpool, so still pretty limiting really.) But going from no free time to this much free time is pretty good. I'm going to split my free time into 3 categories: fun, stuff for money and house stuff.

Fun

I think this time is the time where everything gets levelled out. If you compare the effort me and Dan have put into parenting so far we've both worked hard. I've done more hours because he's earned more money, but if you count up all the extra night time hours I put in because I was breastfeeding, I think thats an average of 1.5 hours per night.

If you include the time it takes to get back to sleep again I think 1.5 hours is a conservative estimate and thats for for 1.5 years per child. So 3 years x 1.50 hours is 1642 hours. Theres about 5 hours in a school day which means I can have 328 days off before I should start feeling bad that I'm having too much fun. So lets say I have one school day of "me time" a week there are approx 190 days in a school year, so one day a week term time is only 38 days per year. So thats 8.6 years till I've made up for breastfeeding in the night time. Which is pretty much until they're both in secondary school.

So how should I fill my 1642 hours of fun? Please let me know some things I can do! I thought about having a whole day of napping, it would be quite a challenge. I might have to then do some intense exercise when the kids are home so that I can still sleep in the evening. I would really like to cycle up the Loop Line (a cycle track right by my house) as far north as I can go. The loop line claims it goes to Southport but actually only goes to Aintree. I'd love to wild swim somewhere, but not sure where is near. I would love to spend a whole day painting. Really a whole day doing anything would be nice. I feel like I so rarely have time away from the kids that when I do I have this mad list in my head of things I should be doing. It's easier without them and it's hard to relax because it's the only time I have to do anything.

Suff for money

I've written a list of 14 self-employed things I can try to do to make money, I'm hoping some of them will pay off. There's a project that was all agreed for June that should be going ahead this term, and I finally managed to blag a meeting with the school Percy goes to, because the head teacher phoned me about something else and while she was on the phone I managed to get her to agree to meet me. I've got a little mural to finish in someone's garden and hopefully I can get more mural work. And then there's all the comedy stuff I could start doing again. And if all this stuff doesn't work, then I could look for a real job.

Hoping to make a bigger version of this in schools sometime soon.

House Stuff

Since buying our house 3 and a half years ago I've been gradually ridding it of all the magnolia. I like almost every colour in the world except magnolia, it's just such a nothing colour that can't even be bothered to be white. Our whole house was textured wallpaper painted magnolia, with a beige carpet. But I love our house. It's a good size, a nice size garden and it's 15 mins walk to Woolton village which is super posh. But, because it's also 5 minutes walk to belle vale shopping centre, which is a bit of a dive, it made the house affordable (£132,000).

One good thing about the house is that under that horrible wallpaper is decent plaster, so if you can be bothered with the time consuming job of removing it you can make it nice without spending much money. I already decorated all the bedrooms, the bathrooms and the lounge. But now I'm trying to do the dining room. It's going to be duck egg and coral (Dan has no idea what colour either of those colours are). I'm going to try and do wood paneling on the bottom section too. Here's what I've done so far...