This Is What It Looks Like When Real Life Resumes
The holiday ends in bits and pieces, a much truer reflection of real life perhaps then true Welsh holiday mode.
Saturday was particularly bitty. Grandpa took the morning shift — breakfast, toys, outdoor ball kicking. I got them out by mid-morning and we began the walk to town. Seventeen ladybirds were spotted along the first stretch of the route, including a yellow and black one. A mystery feather was found — Roan declared Red Kite, Albus and I thought Pheasant. We stopped for photos under a tree absolutely covered in blossom.
We made it just over halfway to our destination before Grandma pulled up and tired legs and residual cold symptoms had us gratefully taking the lift. By the time we got home I was on my last legs too. Day one of my period had knocked me for six and the cold was a lingerer. I managed a quick walk to the swings with Albus, who didn't last long - which was honestly a grace - and then I lay down while the grandparents took them both to the village park.
The evening ended with the first movie of the trip. Shaun the Sheep, snuggled on the sofa with the fire going. Cosy, cuddled up and exactly what we needed.
Easter Sunday I took the boys to the little church where I grew up singing in the choir. Where my grandparents had been involved for their whole lives. My last visit had been for my Grandad's funeral, five years ago.
The vicar Ginny said, "anyone with small children — God made them to move and talk loudly and cry, so let them." I found that so wonderful.
Of course the boys needed endless wees, so we were in and out throughout — each time stopping to admire the blossom and the Great Tits moving through it. I kept an eye on the bell tower, watching for the Kestrels that nest there. My Grandad had taken me up to see them as a child, and one had done a flyby during his funeral. We weren't lucky today, but I looked each time we found ourselves outside, just in case.
Then to my sister's for an Easter egg hunt and an obscene amount of chocolate. We brought her girls a gift - a magnifying glass each, for bug hunt adventures.
Monday and it was home time.
We spent the first leg of the train journey playing a game of 'Mistletoe or Nest' out of the window. But the boys got too good at it and after thirty odd nests and perhaps more Mistletoe we moved on to rating gardens for how welcoming they were to birds. The bushier, the messier, the better - that's our family motto and we're standing by it.
The London leg held the boys' attention with buildings taller than anything they'd seen before. And then someone said something, so someone punched someone, and there were tears. Then car racing replaced the tears. Then more tears about something else. The rest of the journey involved keeping them off the handrails and stopping Roan from launching himself off the train entirely, which he thought was hilarious but just made me feel a bit sick at the thought of him actually being left behind.
But then — at one of the stops — Roan shouted for me to join him at the door.
"You must come and listen," he said.
A Blackbird was singing on the platform, the most melodious tune. We stood together listening and it was genuinely magical. And then the doors almost closed on our noses and we dissolved into giggles.
At the airport, waiting at the gate - something I have found genuinely stressful in the past, the kind of situation that used to have me snapping and white-knuckling my way through - I noticed something different.
I noticed space.
Not because the boys were better behaved. They weren't particularly. But I had more capacity. More room between what was happening and how I responded to it. I could let go where it didn't matter, hold the line where it did, and feel the difference between the two clearly.
I've been sitting with why that feels different this time.
And I think it's this: each time we engage with nature - not just visit it, but actually engage with it, give it our attention, let it give us something back - it does something to us. It restores a kind of spaciousness. A steadiness. A connection to who we can actually be, rather than who we become when we're running on empty.
It doesn't happen in one walk. It happens in the accumulation of them. The seventeen ladybirds. The blackbird on the platform. The bluebell Albus called Jinglebells. The adder Roan nearly stepped on. The kestrel I didn't see but looked for anyway.
Each one small. Each one working it's magic beneath the surface.
The question I left you with at the end of the last post was: what does this look like when real life resumes?
And the honest answer is — it looks like Monday on a train. Someone punching someone. Tears about nothing. A high-octane gate experience. A blackbird that almost gets missed.
It doesn't look like a holiday. The big doses of nature, the wide open days, the luxury of time - those aren't available most of the week. But the capacity that built up over those days? That came home with us.
That's what this is really about.
Not expertise. Not perfect outings. Not knowing the name of every bird or having the right gear or getting it right in every difficult moment.
It's about attention.
When you shift your attention - even slightly, even for two minutes outside before the school run - the conditions around your children begin to change. And when the conditions change, they don't need constant entertainment. They find their own, they follow it and they become part of it.
That's the shift. Not a transformation that happens once. A practice that compounds quietly, steadily, in all the small moments you choose to show up for.
If you're ready to begin building that practice in your own family - whatever your home looks like, however many ladybirds you can realistically stop for - this is where most families start:
👉 Download the free guide: 3 Shifts That Change Your Child's Behaviour
And if you want to go deeper - to really understand what's been driving the behaviour and what to change instead - the 14-Day Wild Shift is where that work begins.
