Getting out of the house

The school run hit a new low this week. First, toddler boy was up at 5.30am and ready for action. Second, being ready for action currently involves microwaving anything that takes his fancy. Theoretically, I should be able to stop him from doing this as he is very small and the microwave is not within his reach. However, he is fiendishly clever and gets a small chair to stand on. He knows how to programme the microwave and, when I am doing something else with the other kids [eg getting daughter one out the door on time, a feat she has yet to master], he starts gathering material to put in. I only just rescued the lemon in time. His next object of choice was a playing card.

Meanwhile, daughter three was languishing in bed with a temperature and a sore throat and required medicine. Toddler boy also required medicine for his infected thumb. However, toddler boy does not like his medicine and spat it all over me. The doctor had also recommended bathing his thumb in salty water. I am taking bathing to mean essentially dunking because he won't keep it in any longer than around three seconds.

As I was cleaning toddler boy, I decided to change his nappy. I had not at that precise moment noticed that he had done a rather big poo. As soon as I whipped off his nappy, however, he sprinted away from me and sat on the girls' school clothes. Lovely. He then escaped upstairs with the poo still hanging from his bottom. After that I did my usual round of running up and down the stairs about 100 times getting people ready and doing my "lucky sweep" which I think counts as housework. I dressed toddler boy at the last minute to avoid him taking off his socks and shoes before we had even left the house. It didn't work. He was barefoot and coat-less within seconds. I redressed him. 
Then just as I was heading out the door daughter two revealed that the juice in her packed lunch had leaked all over her sandwiches. With the near certainty that we were going to be, yet again, slightly late, I headed to the kitchen to redo the packed lunch. This, of course, gave toddler boy enough time to get his shoes and socks off again. I let out a scream of anguish. "I HATE the school run. It is surely a form of torture," I shouted to no-one in particular. The problem is that the school run is totally relentless. Even when you have completed a marathon version, you know that you have to do the whole thing again the next day and for, I have calculated, possibly nine more years unless I find a job which starts at dawn and allows me to pass the baton to my partner.