Back to school

I know I've probably said this before, but September always feels like the real New Year to me. Fall is coming, school is starting, life is changing, and it's a great time to make resolutions. I had some real good intentions to start today.

Too bad things never go as planned.

James was going to be home this morning, to help with the first crazy morning of the school routine, but then late last night found out he had to do something different at work today, which meant leaving even before the kids wake up. Which left me alone to do the morning routine. Which I did many times last year, but over the glorious lazy days of summer we all sort of forgot how it went.

My best intention of training the kids over the past two weeks to go to bed early and get up early was an EPIC FAIL. And so even though they all fell into bed at 7pm last night, 7am still came too early for Colin. He yelled from his bedroom for me to come and turn off the alarm because he was still tired. (I had even tuned it to a classical music station so that it would be an nicer transition than those terribly annoying beeps.)

I had the idea of all the boys eating breakfast together while I read a bible story from our Gospel Art Kit (the kit contains 8 x 10 pictures of scripture stories, with the story and a verse printed on the back - how easy is that for a morning scripture study!) But Caleb must eat the moment his eyes open, and Colin can't possibly stomach anything for at least an hour after waking. So breakfast lasts about an hour in our house, which put us about 5 minutes late for getting ready for the bus!

I completely forgot about the scripture story as I was trying to get Colin to eat, telling Caleb that 4 bowls of cereal was enough, and sending everyone upstairs to get dressed, since breakfast is way too messy too be done in school clothes.

The whole bus ordeal is beyond frustrating. It is a process that takes close to 45 minutes - and I could drive to the school and home again in 15 minutes. I'm seriously considering throwing out the whole bus idea altogether.

On top of all that, Caleb has his first "day of school" today, which is simply an hour one-on-one with the teacher and me in the classroom. At 1:30pm. Right smack dab in the middle of naptime. And by 10:30am he was already begging me to get lunch together so he could go for a sleep. I tried to tell him there would be no nap today, and he started to melt down. So I broke down and sent him for an early nap around 11am. I'll have to wake him up early to go to his class, which means he'll be absolutely miserable. At least it will help my case in why I will be picking him up at lunch time every day - the teacher will definitely not want to deal with an over-tired Caleb! Oh, and because this school thing is at 1:30pm, that's in the middle of Benjamin's nap. So I had to figure out how to get someone here to watch Benjamin during his nap while I take Caleb to school.

Then after school we were all supposed to go for ice cream and talk about the first day, but because James won't be home until after the boys are in bed, I'm on my own. I'm thinking about getting ice cream right after school, picking up a pizza and heading to the Early Years Centre, a tradition in our home when James works late on a Tuesday night.

So no, today hopefully looks nothing like what our school year will iron out to be. I don't look as "failing" resolutions on the first day as failure - just a realistic look at how new routines need some time to work themselves in.