School Mum

I must admit that four days in I’m starting to struggle with the whole school routine thing. I’m not by nature an organised person. So I knew this would be a bit of an issue for me. I feel like I’m just destined to be ‘that’ mother. You know? The one who’ll rush through the school gates ten minutes too late, baggy eyed with a dazed and frazzled looking child in tow. I’ll quickly re-tie her day-before hairdo before pushing her into the classroom with red-faced apologies. I’ll get home and collapse then suddenly realise I forgot to pack her lunch. I have strengths in other areas. Time management is not one of them.

 

I started off the week with good intentions. I did the whole ‘pack the lunch the night before’ thing and had everything ready to go in the morning. But I woke to the sound of my alarm today with a splitting headache. I swatted in the general direction of my phone until I finally managed, by some miracle, to press the snooze button. Unfortunately, it persisted in assaulting my very sanity and being. Every. Five. Minutes. And there is only so much blind swatting you can do before something breaks. Lamb managed to get herself dressed and her father made breakfast. I toyed with the idea of braiding her hair like I had done on the first few days before promptly sticking it in a (slightly lopsided) ponytail. I popped some Panadol and started making her lunch at which point I realised that the whole ‘lunch neatly packed the night before’ thing was unlikely to happen. I’ve managed to wash out her lunch box every afternoon so far, so in my book I’m doing good. I’m going to make every effort to be more organised (if I could do it for anyone, I’d do it for her) but I’m never going to be the ‘model’ school mum. And I’m really OK with that. I’m more of the laid back ‘lets go to the beach and relax instead of clean the whole house with bleach’ sort of mum. And I’m certainly not saying that one is better than the other. They are just different. And different is good.