In an ideal world, we’d all drink our coffee while languishing in a blissful moment of relaxation – preferably in a fabulous café or an Instagram-worthy location by the sea.
Life, though, isn’t always ideal. Busy schedules, work pressures and sticky little hands means that sometimes, we must take our coffee however we can get it. So, in no particular order, here are the seven types of coffee that every mum is familiar with.
The Holiday Drive Coffee, otherwise known as the 6am Maccas Pit Stop. Leaving the Hills for that three-hour holiday drive – air-con blasting, kids bellowing, sun not yet risen because you wanted to ‘beat the traffic’ – is interesting at best. Caffeine is required but not always available, forcing us to traipse, bleary-eyed, into the nearest fast-food restaurant or petrol station for anything resembling a coffee.
The Alternative Cold Brew Coffee. Why pay $5.70 for an ultra-trendy cold brew coffee at a café when you can simply craft your own by making a coffee, forgetting about it and finding it five hours later in the baby’s room?
The School Event Coffee. There’s a nostalgic charm about this coffee – kindly served from a trestle table in a styrofoam cup, complete with paddle pop stick stirrer and a biccie from a pack of Arnotts’ family assorted. A necessary accompaniment to any school music concert, book week parade or P&C meeting.
The ‘That Can’t Be the Sun’ Coffee. We’ve all been there: you’ve been up all night with a fussing baby and finally crawl into bed as the sun rises, only to hear the patter of the toddler’s footsteps as he merrily rises for the day. Double-shot flat white, anyone?
The ‘I Made it Myself’ Coffee. Okay, so the shot may be less-than-perfect, and sure, your latte art may be less ‘artistic leaf’ and more ‘Sponge Bob Square Pants’, but there’s nothing like drinking a cup of coffee you made yourself – even if you must hide in the pantry to do so in peace.
The ‘Gulped in Ten Seconds’ Catch Up Coffee. It always sounds nice in theory: “let’s catch up at [insert child-unfriendly hipster café here], the kids will be fine!” You order, and it starts well … until one child poos in their pants, the other edges dangerously close to a tantrum, and another decides glass mason jars make a great set of drums. At that point, you have about ten seconds to elegantly swig your flat white and leave before chaos descends.
The Amazing Acrobatic Coffee Juggle. They don’t call women multi-taskers for no reason. Pushing a pram while holding a takeaway? No worries. Ordering a coffee while telling your four-year-old to get away from the cake display cabinet and checking a text message? Can do. Balancing a tray of flat whites while loading a troupe of children into the car on route to sport? Piece of cake. Just don’t leave said tray of coffees on top of the car as you drive off. Not that I’ve ever done that.
This article was written by Sophia Russell, a Hills District Mum of two and owner of local coffee roastery Murray Farm Roasters. She frequents way too many parks (takeaway coffee in hand) in her spare time.
