I’ll File This Post Under ‘Reasons I Must Never Let My Wife Leave Me’

TABLE

“Are you sure you’ll be okay?” Tracey asked me again. She was going away at sparrow’s to Brisbane to shoot a wedding, leaving me in charge of getting the kids to their respective schools and day care. 

“Piece of cake,” I told her.

“Just don’t forget the kids hats,” said Tracey. “And make sure you’ve got a milk bottle for day care or she won’t go to sleep and she’ll be hell tonight.”

“Seriously, I’ve got this,” I said. I mean, I’ve been a dad for 22 years now. What could go wrong?

“Dad! Milk! Everywhere!”

I’d nearly gotten as far as finishing my shower this morning when Miss10 barged in with this exciting news. I grabbed a towel and raced out to the kitchen, arriving just in time to see Miss2, who I’d already dressed for the day because she’d finished her breakfast, dump a heap more milk into and around Miss4’s bowl. Mainly around.

“She’s helping me,” grinned Miss4.

Isn’t that nice.

Miss2 raced off as I grabbed some tea towels and a cloth and started the clean up. Naturally, the phone rang.

Found in the milk bottle: a plastic spoon, plastic recorder and a fruit loop.
Found in the milk bottle: a plastic spoon & fork, toy recorder and a fruit loop.

“How’s it going?” It was Tracey checking up on me.

“No problems at all,” I lied. “A little messy at the breakfast table but nothi…” I was momentarily distracted as Miss2 ran past me into Tracey’s office. She was butt naked. “Nothing I can’t handle,” I finished as I caught up with Miss2, stopping her from climbing onto a chair to play with Tracey’s computer.

But by past standards, all was going swimmingly.

Following this stellar start, I managed to drop the three older kids at school and Miss4 at Poppy’s (for delivery to her pre-prep class later in the morning) with only two trips back into the house from the car before I’d pulled out of the drive (hats and homework) and only the one return trip to the house before dropping Miss2 at day care (my tablet). A record!

So I was feeling pretty smug as I walked Miss2 into the day care room and began to distribute the lunchbox and other items from her back pack.

“Where the hell is your bottle,” I mumbled, riffling through Miss2’s backpack. I wasn’t worried I’d left it at home because I could visualize myself shoving it in.

A thought struck me. Was it definitely this bag? Another thought struck me. Had I just sent one of the kids to school with a milk bottle? Won’t that go down well.

“Bugger, bugger, bugger,” I continued mumbling as I began pulling out nappies from the bag.

The woman across the room gave me a very sympathetic look.

“First time at day care?” she asked.

“Ummm….no,” I said, slightly embarrassed. “This is the youngest of seven.”

I’m not sure if it was just in my head, but I swear her face changed from a sympathetic look just plain old pathetic. It didn’t change much when moments later I spun a full 360 degrees looking for where to put the nappies.

“They don’t usually have nappies by the time they get to this room,” she said.

I spun around again. Yep, wrong room.

I bundled up the backpack, nappies and Miss2, retrieving the lunchbox from the fridge and the water bottle from the tray and trotted next door. I spun around, pleased to see everything was much more familiar. I dumped my cargo on a kiddy table and, pleasingly, a milk bottle fell out and rolled across the table and onto the floor.

Piece of cake, I thought to myself, as a few minutes later I raced back to the car…

…where I found a pile of school hats on the passenger seat.

HATS

🙂 please share 🙂

“Raising a family on little more than laughs.”

10 Comments

What do you think?

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.