Why It’s Important To Stick To The Routine

I don’t know about everyone else, but I have a morning routine and if I deviate from it things tend to go belly up.

Mostly my routine involves barricading myself in the bathroom and not coming out until I’ve run through the three S’s. Another big part of this routine involves Tracey feeding, clothing and having the bags of our three school age children packed before I emerge. Yes, I know I’ve got it good.

But part of my routine, which helps Tracey out, is me dropping the three school kids off on my way to work, so it’s a win-win.

But this week, with me being home crook, the routine has been tested and who knew it was such a delicately balanced house of cards. The simple act of me not emerging from the bedroom  until 10am this morning threw everything into a spin, culminating in the near total humiliation of Master8 in front of his classmates.

Taking up my slack, Tracey piled all the kids into the car and drove to the school. She’d parked the car but waited for all the school kids to cross the road before pulling back out. She likes to know they made it into the school grounds before she leaves, whereas I drop the kids at the bottom of the hill so they can have the excitement of walking themselves in. In any case, Master8 jumped out of the car, joining the group of kids waiting to cross the road.

“I was watching him standing there,” Tracey told me, “when I suddenly realized something was wrong. Really wrong.”

She threw herself out of the car and raced over, managing to get a hand to his sleeve just as the lollipop lady blew her whistle for the kids to cross.

“Hold up,” Tracey whispered into Master8’s ear. She leaned in even closer to him, so no one else could overhear, and hissed, “You’re still wearing your pajama top.”

Master8 looked at his arms. Sure enough, instead of the red & black, short sleeved school uniform he was still wearing the black & red, long sleeved Transformers pajama top he’d crawled out of bed in.

His uniform shirt was still damp on the line this morning so Tracey had to put the shirt in the dryer while he had breakfast and put the rest of his uniform on. Then she pulled it out and placed the shirt on his bed, just before they were due to leave. Unfortunately, though, they were sorting out the rare tuck-shop treat at the time, so it was overlooked in the excitement.

“Mum…please…take me home,” Master8 pleaded, wrapping his arms over his chest as though he was naked and trying to preserve his modesty, and scurrying back to the car.

The idea of Master8 being embarrassed by anything is funny in itself.

I’m guessing ‘get dressed for school’ is one part of Master8’s morning routine he’s going to be a little more attentive to from now on. I’m also guessing from now he might also include the three S’s in his morning routine, but they will simply be Shirt! Shirt! Shirt!

When not typing away over here and checking his stats every two minutes Bruce Devereaux hangs out at his ‘BIG FAMILY little income’  Facebook Page.

 ’raising a family on little more than laughs’