Back to normality

Back to normality with a bump. Literally. The first day of term was a bit of a shock to the system. Not mine, I hasten to add. I have been joyfully awakened at around 4, 5 and 6 every morning of the holidays thanks to some very active back teeth [when on earth does teething actually end? I seem to remember it being  just before chicken pox kicks in. Something to look forward to then]. So there I was wide awake at 6am being kicked by a small person who seemed bent on climbing all over me and inserting a bonjela tube into my mouth [he won't, of course, deign to open his own teeth-aching mouth for me to put bonjela in his mouth]. I endure this as the alternative is for him to run to the bathroom and turn on the bath and sink taps full blast before running down the corridor yelling towards his sisters' room. My partner, suspiciously, appears to sleep on peacefully beside me while I am effectively being pinned down and tortured. He does occasionally groan when a stray foot hits him in the back.

The baby had exhausted himself by about 6.55 so I had to manoeuvre around him to go and wake up daughter one at 7. It was still pitch black. She was not best pleased, but stumbled into the bathroom. I took pity on her and drove her to the bus stop as, when I opened the door, it was lashing down and there appeared to be rather a strong breeze gusting in to greet the return to school. Oh joy. The headlights on one car have got some sort of wiring fault on them and the other car got stopped by the police for having overly-tinted windows [we bought it cheap off e-bay...]. I have spent much of the past week trying to blow dry the tint off as the police advised. They said it would be easy...in just the same way that Smoby announced in their instructions that assembling the plastic oven the baby got for Christmas would be "easy".

Daughter three had to be carried downstairs half asleep. Daughter two spent about 40 minutes in the bathroom doing her hair. The baby ran around trying to fling himself onto the computer seat. He particularly likes to do this when I am trying to change his clothes. I manage to get one item on at a time before he gallops off. To make it extra hard, he was holding a plastic knife and a cloth cabbage.

At around five minutes before we were due to leave, daughter two started hobbling around complaining of a damaged foot. "I need a bandage," she said. She did indeed have a bruise on her foot. Of course, we never have any cotton wool or bandages in the house as, even if I hide them, daughters two and three always manage to smell them out and use them for their dolls or, in daughter two's case, to create some sort of outfit. Short of examining every doll in the house, I decided to sellotape some toilet paper to her foot. This appealed to her sense of experimentation and we managed to get to school just on time before the heavens darkened and the rain fell down in sheets. Welcome to 2012, it seemed to be saying.