Smashed.

Three of my children went back to full time school today. I thought I'd managed to survive the seven long weeks of school holidays.....until yesterday. When the five year old, in the course of being harangued into tidying up his room, managed by a sleight of hand to completely decimate my bedroom mantelpiece....with a retractable tape measure, of all things. 

Before:

After:

See that teacup on the left of the 'before' photo, that once belonged to my grandmother who was an inveterate teacup collector....she even had a specially designed display case to show it off. One day my sister and our cousins were allowed to choose a cup that she was going to give us to remember her by when she died. That was that cup I chose. Notice it's absence in the 'after' photo....it was smashed to smithereens.

Look at how the butterflies fared:

I'm afraid that this incident pushed me over the edge into catatonic meltdown territory. I may have been just a tad tetchy beforehand as my husband was heading for Mebourne first thing and I was going to be saddled with the dressed/short order cooked breakfast routine/lunches/hair and bags packed rigamarole.....single handedly. Usually, when he's participating, it's at this point that I wave them all off still in my bathrobe to hang out the washing/do the dishes and get the baby and self dressed in time to get to Bikram Yoga. No, no, no, think again, it was going to be the first day of school.....so in addition to all of this I was pensive because I knew that I was also going to have to make myself presentable to front up to each of their respective classrooms. For me, this is always the hardest part of the exercise.....I may have been guilty one day last year of doing the school run.....in my bathrobe.  

So I was just a tad agitated and was also workshopping a special 'last night of the hols' dinner menu.....that everyone in the family would eat....and thinking about the stressy subject of what I was going to pack in their lunch boxes....which is extra specially difficult as I have declared a moratorium on pre packaged kiddy muck....everything has to be made lovingly by me.....yet I've eased off somewhat as it no longer has to be grown by me.....I know my limits. Or maybe I don't. Needless to say the china/butterfly carnage which ensued pushed me over the edge. With four children I am well and truly outnumbered. With the numbers so firmly stacked against me I don't stand a chance. Over the course of the holidays I became consumed by my children and lost sight of myself. To the constant cry of 'What are we doing today' I became further and further adrift. Admittedly, on occasion I did drag them all kicking and screaming to the childminding at my Bikram Yoga Studio.....yet it obviously wasn't enough. 

Now that three of them are back in the classroom and the baby is asleep.....and I finally have the luxury of some time to myself....I've been trying to reconcile my reaction to yesterday. I've been thinking of all of the good times that we shared over the holidays....when my eldest daughter participated in a yoga class with me.....seeing the mindblowingly superb movie adaption of 'The Hobbit' which had been read to them aloud by their father last year and all of the conversation that engendered.....laughing at the amusing new games invented and the costumes that accompanied them.....watching my almost ten year old master the art of the unicycle and the sense of confidence that it gave him....and listening to the five year old work through all of his old favourite picture books and tell his baby sister the stories.

Better hurry as it's time to get down and pick the little darlings up.....I've missed them!

Rx