Vanishing dress, nuggets and boxers

I'd like to tell you that this blog post is going to be life changing; revealing a deep and meaningful truth that I have discovered, but alas it is not. Today, I am going to have a jolly, good moan.

My entire life seems to have been overrun  run over by children.  Hardly surprising as they come with the territory,  both as a single mother of four children and a school teacher. Now I know how Miss Hannigan felt in 'Annie.' Everywhere I turn there are children in all shapes and sizes and all the paraphernalia that accompanies them. I need a separate room just to store all the sport equipment that is required to keep my twelve year old active and occupied.  My four year old has developed an obsession with bags.  She prefers playing with a collection of bags over all her other toys and is usually to be found raiding my office in search of interesting objects, such as staplers or foreign language phrase books, with which to fill these bags. She then proceeds to move her luggage from room to room. Baggage handling may well feature in her future, although I shall hold out for her obtaining a position with Louis Vuitton.  Along with the tripping over bags, I'm having to store paintings and cereal box, object d'art as there is all hell to pay if even one of these pieces is spotted protruding from the rubbish bin. To top it off,  if we didn't have enough junk to store in our home, my eldest has developed a thriving e-bay business which means a postal worker regularly delivers yet more tat to our door.

This past weekend, I called time on our junk stash and we had a good clear out. We managed to rid ourselves of four, large bags of rubbish and five large sacks which I put out for the charity van to collect this morning. All of which resulted in me receiving a frantic call just as I arrived at work because my older son had witnessed a suspicious looking van pull up outside our house, with four guys who jumped out and hurriedly bundled our unwanted booty into the back of their van, before speeding away. It took me several minutes to convince him that they weren't bad guys 'stealing' intended charity goods but were in fact sent by the non-profit and were just working efficiently and responsibly. By the time he'd called out, 'Oh right, love you, bye mum,' and hung up,  my brain had only just begun to process the fact that he should already have left for school! (*Make mental note to ask if he was late for school this morning when he gets home.)

We appear to be in a constant flummox of remembering where items have been left, looking for them, finding or not finding them, having to go shopping to replace said items, washing and ironing these belongings and so on and so forth. One child is constantly misplacing items which results in hours of hide and seek. Another has a fondness for tying things up so additional time has to be allocated for untying laces, socks, belts, etc. I don't  even want to think about where that habit may lead later in life! My eldest swears blind that I deliberately lose her dance gear and never do the laundry! These things combined with the having to search every Barbie, Hello Kitty and Peppa Pig bag for missing keys results in a rather frazzled mother leaving the house for work in the mornings.

I realise that some parents go to work for a rest and look forward to the prospect of adult conversation, an uninterrupted coffee break and stimulating mental challenges. I, on the other hand, go to a work place that very much resembles the environment that I have just left; where I deal with other people's children who have lost their spelling books, PE kits, etc. I kid you not, last Friday afternoon started with walking a class of thirty children up to the local pool for their swimming lessons, and ended in us returning to school with one girl having to wear a makeshift dress because her pinafore had gone missing! How can a dress go missing?!! I don't think she was too impressed with the fact that I said, "Those two sweaters tied around your waist may not be fashionable but they are functional." I'm not sure what was worse, having a girl walk back to school minus her dress or me having to walk back accompanied by an extra pair of boy's, boxers which had turned up in the search for the pinafore.

Yeah, yeah, I know I'm complaining for no good reason. Having a little grumbling session every now and then helps me to let off steam and hear my complaints for what they are; mild inconveniences in the whole scheme of life. I also realise that no sooner am I despairing of the children in my life, than they wheedle their way back into my affections and warm the cockles of my heart. At school, there's the light bulb, eureka moments when children have mastered column addition, the surprised look of delight when their name is read out in assembly for a good work certificate and the stage whispered, "Yessssses," when you say you will be returning to teach them the next day. With my own children, there is the pride when they win the match for their team, the fuzziness which accompanies the, "Can we just have one more snuggle Mummy before I go to sleep?" There is the 'thank the Lord she doesn't hate me' moments when my teenager says, "Thanks for coming to the movies and going shopping with me Mum." And yep, there's lots of laughs too. I almost choked when my nine year old asked, 'Which part of the chicken are the nuggets?"