Monday morning

Up before the larks, a few pages under my belt I bake bread and pack up lunches. Uniforms are pressed and laid out. Extra-curricular kits are bagged and ready. Homework assignments are complete. Showered, fully dressed and ‘slapped’ I call the dustbin lids with a spring in my step. I lovingly prepare breakfast as they greet me with love in their eyes. A small chirping bird flies through the open window and lands on my finger. Then I wake up.

And it’s Monday Morning Take Two. Minus the calm charm. And the tweeting bird.

Does everyone leave half-term homework ‘til the last day? We coulda shoulda woulda gone out. Instead I supervise the older ones homework and cook. Against the grain I do some of the homework myself –explaining penicillin and making gravy was beyond me. Meanwhile He-who-must-be-adored gardens with the little-un. Well, not so much gardens, as hacks ferociously whilst the little-un ‘weeds’. My foxgloves. The foxglove seedlings I lovingly nurtured last year. The foxgloves that take two years to flower.

The joys of a family Sunday in the ‘burbs.