Yesterday morning as I walked into the house just after nine o'clock I could feel the quiet and the calm enveloping me. All the boys were back at school and order had been restored. Don't get me wrong, I love the school holidays. For a start there is no alarm clock reminding me that although it is only 6.30am I still need to get up, and there are none of the time constraints of term time. If my youngest goes to bed twenty minutes after his normal time it doesn't matter, and if we leave the house fifteen minutes later than planned it isn't a problem. However, everything is very vague during the holidays. Arrangements are planned last minute and the catering department never knows quite how many it needs to supply food to.
Whilst it is great for the boys to be busy and socialising I have to admit that I am not very good with vague, or to put it another way I think my family consider me to be a bit (or perhaps a lot) of a control freak. When I go to bed quite often I am thinking about the following day. Have the older ones got their ingredients for Food Tech? Has my middle one checked the time for his trumpet lesson? Do I have enough bread for sandwiches or do I need to leave my nice warm duvet and get a loaf out from the freezer? I know these questions are mundane but they are what keep the wheels turning.
It's funny how easily I am mocked but how many mornings before I even get a "Morning Mum" does someone say "I can't find any school socks" or "Is my PE top ready as I need it now?" That is usually the one I found caked in mud on the floor under a pile of other unmentionable clothes three days earlier, which I was kind enough to wash.
I know that I am the one who needs some sense of order and routine probably to feel as though I am on top of things. I am not good with clutter and whenever something is lost it is assumed that I have binned it! To this accusation I will maintain a dignified silence but my logic is that if it is tidy it has to be easier to find a memory stick or piece of homework.
Although I have an iPhone any arrangements, appointments, school trips or social events are in an old fashioned diary. Everything is in one place and accessible to all but funnily no-one else ever seems to know what is going on. With 5 other people at home there is a lot of repetition of the same questions such as "What are we doing this weekend?" My other half is happy to socialise but doesn't deem it important enough to actually remember who we are seeing and where we are going and when I tell him he still doesn't remember. By the time he is asking me for the third time which restaurant we are eating in I could happily throttle him, and if we need a babysitter the magic fairy is brilliant at booking her.
It is the little things which get organised and done that no-one questions. Miraculously when there is a birthday or a party a present and card appear, revision books arrive in the post just as they are needed, money is always ready to top up oyster cards on a Monday morning and although there were only a few drops of milk in the fridge in the morning there is another bottle ready to be opened by the afternoon.
Perhaps doing these things is just part of being a parent or being organised, perhaps as my family seem to think it makes me a control monster, but either way it means things normally happen on time with everyone in the right place, taking the necessary items with them, and knowing what they should be doing.
By the way, what are we doing this weekend :-)
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