Can't a mum get some sleep on the weekend?

I don’t know about you, but my Saturdays and Sundays are my lie-in days, where I can lay in a stupor in the morning and get up at my leisure, not having to jump to the urgent message of the alarm clock. Consequently, the weekends seem to be the days when my kids are up before me, excited by the freedom of no school, and the anticipation of what’s ahead – going out, meeting friends. This Sunday I was awoken by the sound of the smoke alarm going off. They were preparing their brunch, as they told me, and the burning toast set the alarm off. Not just the one alarm though. Five minutes later, another smoke alarm in another room goes off, then another one. I could hear their hurried footsteps as they ran around trying to locate them (we have alarms in every room).

This reminds me of the previous Sunday, when I was awoken to the sound of my two girls patrolling the house, locating spiders (it’s that spider time of the year, especially in our house, me being a less than keen housekeeper). They were spraying them. Thinking ‘oh no, the house will be filled with pesticide chemicals and we’ll all get ill’, I dragged myself out of bed to stop them. I discovered it wasn’t fly spray they were using, but body spray! I dread to think what its effect could have been. Either they died a slow death, or we will have an explosion in spider births due to spider romance!