A wonderful day

I haven't had the energy to type my thoughts out in a long while.

To give you an idea of the situation at home, the three year old is now averaging around five wake-ups per night, and the one year old is up every forty minutes. Meanwhile the four year old is regularly sleeping through the night and waking up full of beans at 07:00.

It is beyond torture.

Today, however, was awesome. I've recently moved into the kids' room, and we've parked the kids' bunk beds at the bottom of the master bed in our room, with Marie and the one year old in the bed together. While this sounds like Daddy escaping and leaving Mummy to do all of the hard work, in reality it's better for everyone.

I'm a noisy and fidgety sleeper, and end up waking the one year old up a lot more than he already does. Secondly, the three year old was routinely coming out of her bed and climbing into ours, before proceeding to kick me in the head until I got up and went to sleep in her bed anyway.

Finally, when they do wake up, they all refuse to let Daddy settle them back down, and demand Mummy attend to them, so I'm really no help at all.

So this new configuration just works a bit better for all involved.

Last night the kids slept a little better. By which I mean the three year old was only up four times and the one year old managed up to two hours in one go. This meant we were all in better spirits as the day began, and I sauntered out of the house without my usual sleep-deprivation-vision, where I struggle to make out the gate from the front door, so clogged up and foggy is my visual cortex.

We went with the kids' godmother to the marina at Dover, to scoot around on bicycles and skateboards, and grab a bite to eat. The sun shone, the kids played, the food rocked.

We then dispatched the exhausted godmother to the station and returned home to run around like maniacs firing nerf guns in the garden with the grandparents. The ensuing dinner was utter chaos, with spaghetti everywhere and lots of giggling, and the one year old finally went to sleep - after a 25 minutes nap seven hours ago - at 20:30.

It feels unfair.

It feels unfair that our kids sleep so badly, and we're so exhausted despite trying absolutely everything in the book to no avail. But we know the reality - it's unfair how lucky we are - to have the wonderful, healthy, exquisitely interesting and adventurous children that we have been blessed with.

I'll take the sleep deprivation over any alternative, because it means I get them.

Ode to the grandparents.

We literally couldn't do this without their help, and I have no idea how other parents manage. Whether it's popping in to hold the one year old while we prize the fighting three and four year olds apart, or visiting with food and four extra hands to fight the good fight, we are indebted to the grandparents on both sides of the family for their assistance.

Are we doing the right thing?

We bash this debate back and forth - whenever we have the energy - all the time.

It's so hard to be different and to do the thing that very few others are doing, especially when you're surrounded by people at work who simply do not understand why you would ever consider homeschooling your children. In their mind we should just do what everyone does, and pack them off to be looked after for seven hours a day while you do more important things, like going to work in a job you resent.

I try and explain some of our many many reasons:

• The bullying
• The lack of control over exposure to social media
• The lack of support and development for children with higher learning potential
• The fear of a 'different' child being labelled as 'disruptive' or 'disordered' and being advised to therapise or medicate our child into compliance with the system
• The inability to express yourself with interesting clothing or hairstyles, because it's not part of the 'uniform'
• The lack of relevant education for life skills and self-development
• The 'worker' mentality of giving up your time for someone else's benefit, never being taught how to manage money, set up a business or fend for yourself financially
• The schedule, where kids are made to work on a project for a specific amount of time, rather than for as long as their interest and imagination carries them
• The prioritisation of learning a broad, generic and shallow curriculum, rather than pursuing the things that stimulate and interest you in life
• The sheer amount of time away from family, during the most important developmental years of their life, spend in a concrete box looking out the window at the sunshine
• The damaging sleep deprivation for children who require more hours overnight, and need to wake up later in the day
• The inflexibility to go on holiday or interesting trips when you want, when plane tickets and hotels are even remotely affordable
• Getting fined when your kids don't turn up for whatever reason
• The terrifying possibility that our children might be encouraged to consider gender-reassignement therapy without their parents knowing

The list goes on.

People either get it or they don't, and we don't expect anyone to agree with us. We're very happy to do our own thing and let others do theirs. We've always been weird. But I'll admit, it's tricky keep the faith sometimes when you're exhausted and the world is telling you that what you're doing is wrong.

Stay strong!