i'm a bad mother and forgot to tell you about Trouble

Sleep deprived and much too overwhelmed over my four year old abandoning me in order to enjoy a successful, well adjusted life, I forgot to mention that No.2 (or as we like to refer to him, trouble) also started pre-school this week.

Which basically means that I’m back on the conveyor belt too. I became a freelancer when my kids were born. Which meant ‘going to work’ pretty much entailed taking my coffee mug upstairs. I stayed in my pyjamas till noon, and loved every minute of it.

This week everything changed. I have to get up, deal with the backpacks, the lunch boxes, the gym gear. It’s funny, it makes me feel like a proper grown up mom. I love setting out the snack the night before, we even lay out the outfits sometimes (this is more of a pre emptive strike, in an effort to avoid overly embarrassingly outfits, M has a strong and unique sense of style).

I feel all grown up.

M & I go to school on our bicycles. How cool is that. We cycle along the canal, say hello to the ducks and the occasional swan, push our bikes over the bridge, possibly the sole hill in all of the Netherlands, (we tried cycling it, but M makes it half way, then starts rolling backwards, and instead of putting her feet down to stop it goes into a panic, so I have to jump off my bike and ran to stop her, which is way too much excitement for me that early in the morning), then we park her tiny blue ‘under the sea’ themed bike next to all the big bikes. I’m pretty sure she is the youngest cycling to school, and we are both darn proud of it.

She loves the big-girls school. For some reason she is totally impressed by the fact that she gets to spend so many hours there, and keeps showing me her feet as proof that she is all grown up now, (I have no idea why). She also loves her lunch box, and was pretty disappointed when I took her home before lunch for ‘sacred Wednesday’ family lunch. She also tried to bring a lunch box to a birthday party on Sunday.

Meanwhile Tuesday was Trouble’s big day. I was worried because he had done a few test runs before the summer, when his sister was still in class, and kept insisting that they were both going to school together. He could not get around the fact that he was starting school, the school M had been going to, but they would not be together. Fair enough, they have pretty much done everything together until now. But he too surprised me.

He didn’t really need anything for school, but we thought he should get something special that marked this new beginning, so we got him the best 1950’s red and white jacket. When we pulled up for school (on his mini bike, no pedals), I couldn’t get over how grown up he looked, I kept thinking “who is this guy?”

Well, let me tell ya, the guy waltzed in, and once he located the cars I ceased to exist. Seriously, he didn’t even look up to say good-bye. He was also shoe-less when I came back for pick-up. There must be some Dutch school-foot connection that I am missing.

So there you have it. A simple story that probably bored most of you half to death, yet, a big (huge ) week for us.

Not only did we survive, but the added bonus is that when they get home from school, they embrace each other like they’d been away for weeks, and then wonder off into a world of their making, where she is princess Ariel and he is prince Eric, and they both live undventures under the sea.