My eldest started school last September. Now, with hindsight the time he’d spent in a school nursery the previous year should have given me an inkling of what was to come. When I returned to work after having my first he went to private nursery. Private nursery is great as far as organizing your working life. Drop them off at 8am till whenever, five days a week, no school holidays to worry about, entertainment, care and food all covered – sorted!

Now, school life, well, that’s a whole new color coding on Google Calendar. OMG, the nightly prep, the morning prep – I totally get now why one parent often stays home. It’s a job in its own right. Now, I’m conscious of sounding a little sexist with my tales of parental challenges, but again, I speak from my own experience. And this is no criticism of my wonderful husband. Between us we graft hard to support our family and keep things running as smoothly as possible. But I do know that on the weekday mornings my brain is busy processing a few more tasks. The hubby’s to-do list goes a little like this: wake up, make top-notch lattes for myself and the wife, pack lunch for the big kid, make breakfast for everyone, shower, dress, go to work. My to-do list is something like this: get up, be eternally grateful for awesome life-saving latte, shower, dress, dress kids (this usually involves a battle with elder kiddo over whichever item of clothing he doesn’t want to wear the week), chase boys and cajole them into brushing teeth, wipe subsequent toothpaste dribble off various pieces of furniture/floor, prep school bag (ensuring appropriate homework/ permission slip/ contribution to latest school fundraising event is enclosed along with the random pebble or piece of Lego eldest insists on taking to school), deal with one boy refusing to walk to school and the other to be strapped in buggy, bribe both with a bag of Hula Hoops, walk/run to school depending on timeliness, drop off and breathe.

Reassuring to know that my sons creativity at school is not being stifled (or filtered!)

So yeah, I maybe over dramatizing and complicating our mommy to-do list, and yes, I know we do it to ourselves by trying to think and do too much. But that’s why we have awesome husbands, to keep us fueled with lattes and keep the world turning!