This is the first school holiday that I haven’t had to include my ‘pre/post/or during’ school holiday rant blog. With some quick math, four holidays per year and 5 years of primary schooling that's close to 20 blogs that I’ve dedicated to the stress of working and parenting during school holidays.
The difference at the end of Term 1 2025 is that Matt is working from home and I have a job that I’m required onsite for. For the first time in five years I didn’t have the pre panic of ‘shit, what am I going to do with two kids while I try to work full time in the lounge?’ Interestingly Matt hasn’t had the same panic that I used to have.
He wasn’t frantically ringing up Grandma trying to figure out the best combination of days and nights for a kid to sleep over so we can maximise billable hours over the two week period. He wasn’t worried about making sure that we line up the kid play dates in advance so that everyone gets equal playing hours in with their buddies before people are away. He basically does the opposite to what I would do and it drives me crazy for two reasons.
Reason number one is that I have worked incredibly hard to make school holidays the best and most efficient use of time for both me and the kids. I implemented holiday bingo where we made a list of all the things we wanted to do so we could focus our energy on achieving said list (in between paid work) which makes everyone feel like they had a great and fulfilling holiday. I’ve also tried every combo of getting up early to fit in some billable hours to working late at night to keep as much of the prime holiday daytime hours free.
Reason number two is that I don’t think the kids care either way. They appear to be having a pretty good holiday despite Matt’s lack of planning and preparation. Each day is a surprise on what’s going to happen and to be honest, working from 8-4pm three days a week, I don’t really care what they get up to as long as it's something. Primary aged kids in particular need to be exercised daily or they would spend 8 hours straight playing Nintendo or watching Netflix. They only stop for food or when they realise that they haven’t stirred up their sibling in a while so will just lash out for the hell of it. While you may get a stack of work done on a day like this, you also end up with feral children at the end of the day. You can maybe afford one day like this out of 14.
Matt’s lack of planning has led to last minute playdates, impromptu lunches out and kids being dragged to client meetings and they love it. His seemingly ‘casual chaos’ approach to the holidays seems to be working. I can’t decide if I’m impressed or pissed. If I step back and remove every expectation of myself and how I’d prefer things to be run, then he has technically achieved the brief objectives, he has just done it in a way that differs from how I would go about it.
While this may be annoying it is also something I’ve had to get used to since we closed HUCX and Matt has been working from home. I have run a pretty tight ship for the last nine years with Matt working longer and longer days at the factory. I got incredibly good at managing Monday to Friday with the kids timetable, my own business and my role at HUCX. I could go for a run, have a shower, make the school lunches, get a load of washing on all before the kids were even up at 7am.
When Matt was first at home in the morning it completely wrecked my routine. He was in the way, he didn’t make the lunches like I did and at first, his help just slowed me down. It took a few heated discussions to figure out how to work together well in the morning but after a few weeks, maybe even months, we finally figured out what worked. I had to let most of my ‘well oiled’ routine go but in return we have all four of us hanging out at breakfast each morning which is one of my favourite parts of my day.
Matt does things really differently from me. He always has and always will. In most cases it’s an asset and why we compliment each other so well but other times it makes me want to throw something at him. Every day we live with each other is another opportunity to refine and improve processes. Even if it means holding my far superior methodologies more lightly so Matt can bring his own essence to the party. I’m not ready to concede on washing etiquette yet but I’m happy to report that this holiday has been the most stress free one so far because of Matt’s spontaneity and ability to make an adventure out of anything. Thanks babe.
