In our house no two weeks are ever the same so we try to manage our hectic schedules on a week-by-week basis – with the aim of getting through the week as best as we can! It is always a careful juggling act of completing the daily school and nursery runs, remembering school timetables and extra curricular activities, and – when the kids are dealt with – getting ourselves to work. There’s no time for either of us to get sick, which happened this week when I came down with a migraine.

There is nothing quite like trying to function in the morning – getting two children dressed, fed and out of the door – when all you want to do is go back to bed! I don’t know how I did it but I managed to drop Ben with a friend to be taken the rest of the way to school, and then delivered Molly safely to nursery. After stopping to get some medicine on the way home I retreated to bed.

At the end of the day I had to rely on a good friend (yet again!) to get Ben to and from his gym club. Being ill also meant that I was unable to do a quick shop – we were short of food in the house and Ben needed a pair of dressing up glasses for his Harry Potter fancy dress costume (for Book Week at school the kids had to come dressed as their favourite character – in the end two pipe cleaners did the trick!).

Being sick didn’t just affect the kids, when you work a reduced week being ill makes it even more difficult. I have enough work to do in 4 days without missing a day through illness, so it was pretty full on when I got back in the office.

Despite this there were a couple of proud moments for me this week – Molly has started to walk unaided with confidence and Ben was awarded player of the day at his Saturday morning football… so it wasn’t such a bad week after all!

Benjamin in his Harry Potter costume ready for book week at school: