A selection of life's truisms according to me.

The photo is unrelated, I'm just trying to encourage spring to hurry up.  

1. Your smile when you wave goodbye to your kids when their Dad takes them out for a few hours on the weekend is equally big (but for different reasons) to the smile you have when they all come home, usually tired, dirty or sandy and sugared up, and even though you know they'll probably drive you mad within 5 minutes.

2. It is possible to have a filling removed and rejiggered (a technical dental term I just invented) with a child lying on you in the dentist chair.  Watching Mr Bean and laughing her head off.

3. When your kids come home and tell you they got left out, or didn't get a party invitation, or their best friend didn't want to play with them, it will stab you in the guts, the same way it did when it happened to you all those years ago (well it certainly happened to me).  And you tell them it happens to everyone sometimes and you get them through it, but that first feeling of pain and hurt is so familiar, you just feel so sorry for the poor little buggers.

4. Usually the next day, after you've stewed over the issue and lost sleep worrying about how they're coping, the child will completely bounce back, often so quickly and thoroughly that when you ask them how they are, they say, I'm fine, why?

5. No matter how cross you get with them, they still want to hug you.  It's possible to be a source of anguish and their main source of comfort at the same time.

6. If you sit on the couch, even for thirty seconds, at least one person will come and lie next to you, often leaning in or actually lying on you for max body contact (and that's just the kids).

7. Sometimes because our bottle bin is full because we drink a lot of...um...milk? I have to steal across the road and put stuff in the neighbours bottle bin.  The ones who I know don't drink so much...um...milk.

8. Children's minds don't work the same way adults do.  They have different priorities and different concepts of time and if I could just get my head around this and just go with it more, life would be more peaceful.  For me...and them.

9. Nobody in my house EVER changes a fucking toilet roll except me.  They say they do but they don't.  Or if they did, they might have done in once in 2008 AND THAT DOESN'T COUNT.

10.  Everyone always needs a cuddle in the morning.  It's the only way to start the day.

PS. Regarding point 9.  Issy and I were at a bike shop this morning when she was caught short.  We asked to use their loo and upon entering discovered...yep...empty toilet roll.  Because only men work at this bike shop (well I've only seen men working there the 20 times I've visited).  And men NEVER change toilet rolls unless they have absolutely no choice.  Unbelievable.