Malone is tired of being tired

My partner kindly offers to give the coughing 5-year-old some of the liquid antibiotics from the fridge. Half asleep I’m thinking how thoughtful, then I recall I haven’t collected the antibiotics from the chemist. My partner assures me it’s in the fridge, but on closer inspection he realises he’s almost administered a 5ml teaspoon of Pizza Express salad dressing to the 5-year-old.

This is what waking at 5.30am does to you! If the 5-year-old wakes at 6.30am we’ve started thinking that’s a lie in. Since the clocks changed she’s been awake earlier and earlier; soon she will be waking before she goes to bed.

There’s something about being woken up that one hour too early that makes me a muddled grump. Being awake at 7am is fine, I can function, but less than 7 hours sleep and I’m a zombie.

A toast-eating zombie. Sometimes the school run feels more like the school crawl. Zombified parents crawl into school dragged by their excited children who stop to look and wonder at ants and daisy’s growing in pavement cracks, while zombie parents stare down mentally noting to make an eye test appointment.

“Try making a 5-year-old’s packed lunch with arms outstretched like a zombie”

I squint confused, “What ants?!” The earlier I am woken, the later I seem to arrive at school. I can only imagine this is due to the complete slowing down of my actions, and walking everywhere with arms outstretched. You try making a 5-year-old’s packed lunch with arms outstretched like a zombie.

I’m giggling imagining my partner administering the salad dressing as medicine this morning. I can imagine my child saying, “it’s bit spicy,” as she describes every food that tastes bitter, sour, or tart as ‘spicy’. In fact every food that isn’t pasta or bread is ‘spicy’. Oranges are particularly spicy to my 5-year-old. I’ve tried explaining but she’s five and far too knowledgable to listen to her mother.

After all, what does Mummy know? Mummy isn’t clever. If Mummy was clever she’d sit down and watch Peppa Pig more often, fart in the bath for kicks and get people to hand over sweets for writing words. Instead Mummy never sits down, and likes TV programmes with grown ups talking and no drawings at all. Mummy writes words for money and has to write a lot more words. Why write for money to buy sweets when you can just write for sweets? Mummy is clearly stupid and must not be listened to.

I’ve told the 5-year-old to not wake Mummy til the clock says 7. She ignores me. In fact she tells me the clock ticking scares her and wakes me in the night to tell me so. We remove the clock. I should be paying the child with sweets in exchange for lie ins. Sometimes Mummy is bit stupid. Must be the tiredness…