Today is the first day back at school for my kids. None of us are happy about it as we love school holidays and everything about them. No lunchboxes, no homework, no timetables, no trying to be out by 8:30 every morning and never making it. I am not known for my organization or punctuality, so the fact that I get the kids to school on time every day, in clean clothes and with a nice lunch, is a source of constant amazement to me. School holidays are just a chance to revert back to our natural state of laziness so the first day back is always a bit of a shock to the system…
As you can imagine yesterday I was running around like a blue-arsed fly doing all those school related things I have had weeks to do but have naturally left to the last minute.
I dug their uniforms out, made sure they still fit, and gave them a wash. Thankfully it was a nice day so they dried quickly on the line (no dryer here). It would have been just my luck for it to have rained all day.
I made sure that there were two sets of school shoes somewhere in the house. That might sound ridiculous, but I suspect the last time they wore actual shoes was the last day of school before christmas. The chance of at least one of their shoes having disappeared in the weeks since then are fairly good! The weather has been lovely here so the only thing they have worn all holiday is thongs. (We are in Australia, they are not flip-flops, they are thongs.)
I made sure the boxes of stationery I had picked up from school for each of them last week had all the right bits in it. And then I put their name on every single thing. EVERY SINGLE THING. Unless you have kids you don’t know how mind-numbing this can be. If I had known when I chose their names that I would have to write it on a million pens one day, I would have called them something like Z. Why do they need to have so many varieties and colours of pen and pencil and texta and whiteboard marker and book and folder and ruler and highlighter and file? I even cut out the letters of their names and slid them into the tiny individual plastic pockets on the front of the pencil cases, when just writing it in texta would have been so much easier. If all the bits are not named they will quickly disappear, so it has to be done, but aarrrggghhh!
I went to bed last night safe in the knowledge that I wouldn’t have to run around like a madwoman in the morning, looking for something I should already have had sorted out. Well, not knowing this, more hoping the thing I had missed wasn’t important.
Thanks to ultra-organized number 1 son the morning went well. He is a genetic anomaly, an organized person spawned by two extremely disorganized people. He had himself ready to leave before I was even out of bed. Number 2 son is less of a morning person, so he is no help, but we actually got it together without a fuss.
Naturally, we left with bare minutes to spare and then I remembered that every parent will be doing the walk-up this morning. Usually there is only a small percentage of us who walk the kids up to their rooms each morning. Most parents just drop and run. Our tiny school car park cannot deal with one car for each child and normally doesn’t have to. On this morning when everyone has a heavy box of books and the tearful parents of the new preps crowd the halls, that is what we get. Bugger. It means if you are a little late you have to park on the side of the road so far away from the school you may as well have just walked from home. Son number 2 had fallen over in the garden and bashed his knee yesterday too, so not only did I have a box of books to carry, I had a moaning 8 year-old hobbling along beside me telling me I was walking too fast.
Oh well, we made it, and on time too. They got settled into their new rooms, and without a last-minute rebellion. So here I am, missing them. I’ve walked the dog and read the news. Now I’m watching the clock, waiting to go and pick them up. If only I had an excuse to keep them at home! Perhaps I will go and get a Tatts ticket and hope to win millions of dollars so we can take them on an extended holiday and keep them to ourselves until they grow up.
Buried words and Bushwa. 