Tattoos, booze and the perils of peak poos

In her monthly column Sara Witham discusses the highs and lows of being a parent. This month she discusses.. the family holiday.

So I’ve decided to talk about the family holiday, I feel the need to share my recent experience. In hindsight perhaps it was an oversight on our part to take a non-walking badly teething 10 month old who doesn’t like to be strapped in. To anything. Also an error to go on the last week of the holidays when everyone has had five weeks of getting steadily more and more fed up of one another. Oh and sticking 6 humans in a two bed caravan, two of which are small humans. You can see where this ends up right?

Now don’t get me wrong, I dearly love our children but we got through A LOT of gin in a week, so much that I can’t actually repeat the bottle count publicly. The four year old had an epic screaming meltdown every time we had to leave the park or soft play or swimming pool or indeed anywhere that is fun for four year olds. The baby slept through for just the one night in seven. The rest of the nights he was up poking our faces and/or screaming for HOURS. This woke everyone up and made me wonder why caravans actually bother having walls.

We packed up our entire house, moved it into a caravan and had to do all the same things as we do at home with much less surface space. Then come home and put it all back in our house. Strange concept that. We lived for a week cheek by jowl with other shouty parents and screaming children too.

Some highlights were... the four year old screaming at me in a busy harbour for putting crabs in with some previously caught shrimp that might get eaten (do crabs even eat shrimp? Plus have you ever tried to remove two tiny shrimp from a large bucket containing crabs? Impossible). Horizontal, choking fit tears when his big sister won him Superman instead of Batman from the grabby machine. Me doing an entire wash with the tablets sitting on top of the washing machine. More washing drama by putting everyone’s stuff on a hot wash as I got the buttons mixed up. 101 awkward times/places that the baby could fill his nappy. A seagull decorating the pushchair. Running out of tonic (this was the worst one of all).

I probably sound ungrateful but we did have fun and if anything these things make you closer right? The four year old announced that he had ‘the best holiday ever’ the teenagers were brilliant and patient the whole time and we ate so much delicious food, sat on some lovely beaches, skimmed stones, won a drawstring swimming bag at bingo two nights in a row and watched the small people’s faces light up at the garish evening entertainment. Plus the gin, all the lovely gin that took the edge right off. Same time next year yeah?