I am REALLY struggling to amuse all three children at the same time during the summer holidays. If one is happy, two are about to die of boredom….
Having three children spread so widely apart in age did save money on buggies and I only ever needed to wipe one bottom at a time, but quite frankly those are the only two advantages that I can think of.
A three year gap and a five year gap = bloody nightmare summer holidays.
Take yesterday for example. We decided to go and see a film. Nothing that worked for everybody obviously. Big arguments ensued leading me to give them an ultimatum. “OK. It’s The Time Traveller’s Wife or nothing”. Secretly, it was the only film that I wanted to see so I was pretty pleased with that result, my daughter and her friend wanted to see it, my teenage son got out of it and my 9 year old….well, it was never going to work, but I was pretty sure it wouldn’t freak him out at least because as far as I could recall in the book, there were no rude/majorly scary bits.
Within the first 5 minutes, my 9 year old had said “mum, I’m really confused, what’s going on?” and then thereafter, every 5 minutes I had to explain why Henry had disappeared and was talking to a six year old girl and then why he had appeared somewhere else.
It doesn’t really work as a film in my opinion, although I’m comparing it to the book. I was disappointed – I’ll be interested to see what other people think – it was always on all my friend’s Top 10 favourite books. Good eye candy and lots of love, but too strange to work as a romantic science fiction film and certainly not as humorous as it should have been and very very sad at the end so I didn’t get left with the warm fuzzy feeling I wanted.
My daughter and her friend loved it, I cried as usual, my 9 year old said “that was the most confusing film ever, I didn’t understand a word” and Builder Bloke said “thank god I didn’t come, I hate that time travel bollocks in the style of “The Extraordinary Life of Jenson Button”. Rubbish”.
Muddling Along Mummy
August 18, 2009One of my friends saw it on Friday and said if she hadn't read the book it would have been too confusing – shame because the book is one of my favourites
Laura - Are We Nearly There Yet Mummy?
August 18, 2009The book is my favourite and made me blub like a baby.
I'm going to see it tomorrow with my friend. I'm hoping it won't disappoint too much
Shiny
August 18, 2009I loved the book and think I'm going to skip the movie to avoid disappointment! Sounds like the looong Summer holidays are pure joy for you… good luck! x
Expat mum
August 18, 2009I managed to get my 16, 13 and 6 year olds (sorry to trump you on the age gap thing babe) to agree to see Aliens in the Attic, but when we got there it was sold out. 13 year old and cousin (12) therefore got to see the war one (?), and the other two came to M&S with me. What fun!
The thing that is really bugging me is that although I have built in babysitters for the immediate future, (when they want to, that is), in 5 years, when the older two bugger off to college, I will have to start searching for babysitters again! WTF!