How to make 5 o'clock rock

Arsenic hour. Crying hour. Witching hour.

Call it what you will, every mum knows that when the clock hits 5.00 pm, kids everywhere go mental.

I was warned when BallFiend was a baby: "newborns are known to cry more in the late afternoon and early evening... maybe they're overstimulated by the day's events or something... just feed 'em more and they will settle down eventually". I learned from a Breastfeeding Education Class run by the Australian Breastfeeding Association that this behaviour of frequent feeding is called 'cluster feeding'. I suspect it has very little to do with the Witching Hour that strikes kids as they get older.

And I used to think it I had it bad when BallFiend was a toddler - 5 o'clock brought out his inner-demon and he would try to simultaneously play with scissors, stick his head in the oven, stick the scissors in a powerpoint, have a cuddle, scream and/or bang his head on the floor when what he really needed to do was eat a quick dinner then go to bed. Trying to prepare dinner was challenging. Trying to get BallFiend to eat it (in less than an hour) was even more challenging. Getting him to bed after dinner was a little more straightforward, usually because DeepSpice arrived home from work in time to help out take over.

But I really learned what the Witching Hour is all about once Thumper came along. It is not just that there are two kids hitting the wall at the same time; it's worse because between them, they amplify things and play off each other. At first, Thumper just did the typical newborn cluster feeding, and BallFiend was relatively easy to deal with because DeepSpice took 7 weeks leave from work so one of us could prepare dinner uninterrupted. Piece of cake, I thought. Then Thumper grew up, got mobile and got attitude!

Usually DeepSpice doesn't get home from work until 6.00 - 6.15 pm, and my aim is to feed the kids 5.00 or 5.30 pm, so Thumper can have her final breastfeed at 6.30 pm and be in bed at 7.00 pm. So getting dinner prepared with two kids underfoot is horrible. No matter how early I start preparing dinner - even if it's 3.00 pm - they seem to know what I am doing, and they just start the Witching Hour early.

So when The Adel-lady invited BallFiend (along with Thumper and myself) and LittleMissL (along with MasterS and ArizonaGal) over for 3.00 pm playdate last Friday with LittleMissP and LittleMissA, I was expecting nothing more than an hour or two of play-time, a cup of tea, a chat, then home in time to rush through the dinner-then-prepare-for-bed routine.

But once there, I realised that The Adel-lady had much more bigger plans: forget the cup of tea - we had a bottle of sparkling wine instead. The kids had a riot, literally, but no one got (seriously) hurt. We didn't end up leaving until 6.00 pm, so when I got home DeepSpice was already there, ready to share the joys of the Witching Hour... which, I might add, hit with full force! But at least we only had to endure it for an hour-and-a-half as the kids were packed off to bed at the usual time. And a glass or two of wine really does help...

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