Awfully Chipper: It gets better: Swamped parent edition

I posted an impromptu photo of myself with Mabel on Facebook the other day, and was amused to see someone comment that I looked "groomed". From where I was sitting, I just had clothes on. And maybe my hair was on one of its good days. (When it's newly washed, it's fluffy. When it needs to be washed, it's flat. There's about half an hour in the middle there when it looks quite nice, if you ignore the grey bits.)

Oh, fine, here's the picture. Judge for yourself.

But the commenter has two tiddlers. I mean, toddlers. I mean, two under four, or so. She's probably lucky if she can find some clothes, never mind brush her hair of a morning.

So today I'm here to tell you that you do get out of the trenches eventually. You get to take someone to school and leave them behind, at least for a couple of hours. And then one day you get to take both of them to school and go off on your own and do the shopping and think about what you're going to cook for dinner right there while you push the trolley around the supermarket. That's a great day, so 'tis.

The day will come when you can have a shower even though you're the only adult in the house and both children are in residence. And not only will nobody be crying when you come out, but there won't even be someone sitting on the toilet seat eyeing you balefully through the wobbly glass, or squeezing your toothpaste all over the basin or brushing their hair with your toothbrush. (Okay, this only works with the TV on some thrilling show, and I probably wouldn't risk shaving my legs as well as washing myself, but it's a start.)

In fact, some glorious day, in the dim and distant future, the baby swings will be a thing of the past and your children will be able to pump for themselves on the big-kid swing, and beyond an initial push you'll be rendered pretty much superfluous in the playground.

And then you'll smell someone's new baby's head and you'll think, wow, that was a long time ago.