Forget juggling, let's try cloning next...

Please speak quietly. I am currently in a catatonic state having made it through the first few days of the new school year with three schools (and four children between them) to juggle. I'm not sure I am likely to accurately process much for the next two days....

Seriously, when did the next year transition become such a major event? How many printers, cartridges and reams of paper were sacrificed on both home and school side to ensure the children were successfully "transitioned" to the next academic year? How many weeping parents blindly assumed that "Back to School" meant "Back to Normality"?! Go on, admit it - how many of you even went as far as putting a coffee date in your diary for this first week, eh? Most of you I suspect, unless you are in full time work.

After eleven years in this game, you would *really* think I had some grasp on the reality that is "Back to School". But no, the virtual ascent of Mount Everest as I near the end of each successive annual nine week summer break deludes me year on year. Sucked in to the concept of "Me Time" I plan, salivating over that Starbucks Coffee with another adult, children elsewhere and nothing to stress over but whether to pick a cappuccino or filter coffee with my Fruit Toast.  And each year....... crushing disappointment as the juggling takes on exponential proportions as Death by Paper hits on Day 1 - just as the children have been delivered back to school.

Of course you know what I mean by "Death by Paper". The phenomenal volume of letters, calendars, dates and "Information" letters which arrive home on Day 1 of the new school year  are incredible. Historically I have tended to get my head down on the evening of Day 1 and just get it all done. Times 4. But that's on top of the pile of medical information I need to pass on too! (I would like to think that within the same school that would happen seamlessly but sadly that is rarely the case!)

So, job done (so to speak) and I begin to think that we are home and dry, that everything is Hunky Dory and that the little smidgeon of time for doing NOTHING is on the horizon. Then the phone rings.  School just need to know "xyz" please? Hmmmmmmm.

I expect we will get there soon, since one has transitioned to High School with a full time Statement of SEN and new SMAFOs (splints) which are making his feet bleed (bless him) it is going to take a while.  But we are all still struggling to shake ourselves from Holiday mode, from that blissful state of existence when you only wake up when someone is screaming/dying from starvation/requiring medicating/coming to the house in ten minutes and it was never going to be a swift changeover. I really miss the holidays, the lowered expectations which makes for a simpler existence and sunny, carefree days pleasing ourselves within the usual family constraints....

But all four have had a fabulous three days, and we have only lost a pair of glasses, a raincoat and two lunch boxes so far - so on balance I feel it's gone rather well?! Everything in perspective, right?