Tea is life. The rest is noise.

10.30pm: With her eyes half closed, Ruby launches herself off her bed and at me, where I am kneeling on the carpet. In one swift motion she smacks her nose against my cheekbone, slides off my lap and collapses onto the floor, where she channels Leo in The Wolf of Wall Street quaaludes scene. The injury incurred – not insignificant, if the discomfort in my cheek is anything to go by – breathes fresh life into her screams.

The original issue prompting the almighty furore five minutes prior: that she woke to pee. This is what happens, I think, when you down a mug of lemon water (warm, darling) and a vat of milk before bed. Goddamn these efficient bodies and their inconvenient need to dispense of excess fluids, eh?

STOP LAUGHING! IT’S. NOT. FUNNY! She yells this at the top of her lungs. I wince at the thought of her sister waking from the ruckus, though this fear is not quite enough to stifle my laughter. Five seconds later Ruby is asleep again. I am still laughing. I imagine a chapter on Navigating Your Child’s Distress in a conscious parenting handbook somewhere and predict this is not the recommended approach.   

3.15am: The monitor lights up, visible from behind the eyelids these days – mumblings from Georgia’s room. The desperate, foolish hope she’ll self-soothe is promptly dashed when I hear the chilling call: Maaaaammy, Maaaammmy. MAMMY!  

Generally, I enjoy that my kids call me this – an endearing and as yet unquestioned nod to their North-East heritage. I don’t care for it now though. Nooo thank you, do not come at me with the Mammy chat, I want no part of it. You must have a Mummy somewhere else in London and you should call out to her instead. Otherwise, Daddy may be available.

He is not. I wait for Tom to move, wonder why he’s not responding (probably something to do with him getting up twice the night before), meanwhile Georgia’s volume is rising exponentially with every shout. Then, with an audible for fuck’s sake, I climb the well-trodden stairs, enter the arena and sing Baby Shark, replacing the word baby with the selected name of a child from her nursery six times, all the while hating the fact she’s singing along. I extract myself from her room, climb back into bed and fall asleep for approximately 12 minutes before we’re summoned again. Daaaaddy, you’re up.

5.30am: Both girls are in our bed, clambering over us to get to each other. I am headbutted twice, take a kick to the boob, and there’s a moment of panic when Georgia lays across my throat and I have the very real sense of being throttled. I scream for Tom who curtly reminds me I’m capable of lifting a two-year-old pint-sized human off my own body. I blame my physical weakness on profound fatigue. 

6.30am: They’re jumping on our bed and running around our bedroom, disrupting clean folded piles of laundry that may never be put away and begging to select Tom’s work outfit. Unbelievably he seems to be agreeing to this, and I watch as the man signs off on three conflicting shades of green and some dinosaur socks, ready for his safari to Victoria.

6.50am: I enter the kitchen to find Ruby doing laps on her red trike, deluxe curtains of hair covering the sides of her face, humming. Christ, I think, one of those twins from The Shining is alive and well in our home. I dump the pile of our clean clothes for the day on the counter, unwittingly mopping up spilt water with them in the process.

Georgia is helping herself to Cheerios. Ruby starts grabbing Cheerios too. Tom leaves for work. All I can think about is a cup of tea. There are Cheerios all over the floor. I’m crushing them under my feet as I fill the kettle. There’s a tussle over bowls, Ruby or Georgia is screaming, now the other one too. I pour boiling water over the teabag, unable to engage until the tea making ceremony is complete and the first sip of life giving, liquid nectar is consumed. Tea is life. The rest is noise.

7.40am: I discover our clothes are wet. I take multiple sips of my second cup and consider that I need to go back upstairs for dry outfits. I hope Georgia doesn’t yank Ruby’s hair while I’m gone in another dingdong over the trike, or that Ruby doesn’t floor Georgia in self-defence. Given the hyped-up energy of the morning, I decide to enlist the help of the TV as supervisor. Delighted, Ruby grabs the remote and forwards to her favourite moment of the Trolls movie, with Georgia cosied up beside her like the best friends they intermittently are.

8.15am: By the time the girls are dressed I’m invested in Trolls myself. When Branch flicks his hair and helps Poppy out of a sticky situation, I can’t help myself:
WOAH! That’s cool, I say.
That’s what they do! That’s what I dream about, mam. Saving people with my hair.
If anyone has the hair for it, it’s probably you, Rubes.
Looking at her, I remember the mass of knots I need to negotiate before we leave for school in…wait, how long have we got? I dash to consult the time on the oven clock, which I will soon discover is two minutes slow… Fuck!
What is it mam?
Now! We need to leave now!

8.30am: I’m filling Ruby’s water bottle and barking orders about coats to no one. Ruby is back on the trike, laughing like a Bond villain, while Georgia chases her screaming MY TRIKE hysterically. This isn’t the time for a pointless lecture on turn taking. I want no more turns, for anyone.   

By a miracle of biblical proportions, we manage to leave the house. My heart rate is elevated, to say the least, and I start to wonder if – given the threats and the raised voice required to negotiate this exit – I should be sourcing one of those conscious parenting handbooks. Or I could continue the relentless pursuit of being just about good enough and concentrate on getting through the remaining 14 hours of the day. Yeah, it’ll probs be the latter. More tea, then.