Me & Mine in September 2017

September 2017

Do you see what I see when you look at the above? I see legs. Lots of legs. We look like one big caterpillar ready to scuttle this way or that (once we've eaten up our tasties, and only then! 

September was a a busy and hectic month - as the month in which the summer holidays end and the new school year starts, it does tend to be like that, but this year we've had the end of a lovely maternity leave, return to work and start at nursery to deal with as well. Frankly, there weren't enough legs to go round, and we could have done with a few more hands as well to do the washing, ironing, cooking, housework, school runs, packing of lunches and all those other jobs that go with having two working parnets and three kids in different schools. I'm still a bit stunned by it all and we'll be looking forward to October to settle into our New Normal while still mourning the old. 

Cara took to her new school with extreme enthusiasm. Had she been able to cancel her summer holidays to start sooner, I'm sure she would have. Choir, orchestra, musical auditions, even French vocabulary - this new school is her oyster! Her first lot of homework consists of decorating her workbooks and she's happily hiding in her new room (which already sports a level of mess that suggests she moved in years ago, and not mere days) drawing this that and the other. We argue a little over whether Blondie is adequate material for her saxophone practice but her stubborn rivals mine and Blondie it is. Papi is asked to wake her at the crack of dawn (6.30am and no kidding) and she's raring to go and very reproachful when he just calls her name and lets her doze off again. September really has been "her" month.

Theo has taken to his new school with the matter-of-fact-ness of the younger sibling that's seen the school a thousand times already. "When can I start walking in by myself?" he wants to know on day two, and "I'm much taller than my buddy from year 6, you know?" Due to my working hours, he has to stay for clubs after school on 3 days per week and is therefore now a student of karate, a footballer and a cross-country runner. That's a lot of gear to buy but also a lot of move-your-butt action... I scowl a little less as he resumes his after-school routine of slumping in front of the telly with a packet of crisps... but only for one hour! His weekends still include long Pokemon hunting sessions with Papi, so we're good.

Baby Alba stopped being a baby - at least nominally! She's a nursery-going, assertive and subborn little toddler with a love for odd things like cotton buds, dangerous things like knives in the dish washer, forbidden things like the compost bin and of course, predictably fascinating things like bubbles and balls, although The Best Ball is the floppy, half chewed one that belongs to her dog-frind Suki. After a successful settle at nursery and an ok first week, the second week was a complete write-off thanks to a mystery temperature without a cold, and the third not much better thanks to a cold without the fever. She clings to her teacher at nursery, usually cries when mummy comes or goes but does find joy sitting in oats, rice rispies or the squirrels in the garden. In all of this, her birthday is marked with one balloon and a few photos. Any thoughts of more than that are drowned out by the noise that September has been for her and...

...Mummy. Whoa, back at work! What a radically different lifestyle from the leisurely year of maternity leave we enjoyed prior to mid-September! The welcome at work was warm, the first week a novelty; the second week drove home the struggle that having a toddler, a family, a house AND a job would be. In the third week, I realised I sort of still remembered everything from before - but for the new assigned role ahead, the old knowledge woudn't quite suffice - any really, WHY do children want to be fed every night? How is one to fit all of the homework supervision in? What exactly is it with all the paperwork from schools? And where does it go when nobody is looking? When will women evolve into a seperate species with two heads, four arms and a minimum of five legs?! Mummy liked August better...

Daddy... Daddy? Nobody knows what J. enjoyed most this month. Nobody really took the time to ask. And if they did, would he have had time to answer in between working the usual long hours and cooking and pre-cooking meals to help keep the family afloat? Possibly not. We do know he enjoys cooking, if maybe not at 10pm, so let's just claim that it was that: cooking tasty meals (mostly - there was one experimental "let's agree not to bother with this recipe again" meal) and supporting the rest of us.

Also September 2017