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I sit here, I go through my photos, I start to create the posts… and time runs away with me. And so another week goes by with nothing recorded.

SO. I’m jumping back in again, and I’ll back-fill as I have time.

Yesterday was a Big Day.

No.1 had a rough start to Yr 8. He’s been dropped a set in three subjects, and his best friend and he fell out over the summer, so he spent a very lonely and sad first day back. He’s a bright bright boy – but out of the last three school years he’s maybe managed four full terms (if you add his entire attendance up; Last year he managed just THREE weeks at 100% attendance, and for the year he was at 43% attendance).
No wonder he has gaps in his Maths and IT knowledge, and his confidence in French is shaky. He was in-his-boots gloomy, very tearful and too emotional about it all.

Boy however had an excellent start to Yr 6. He was very scared, as he always is, starting a  new term, new teacher, new room. But he REALLY likes his new teacher. Who started the day with the words “I know some of you have been a bit apprehensive of coming into Yr 6 – but you really don’t need to be”. Music to my boys nervous ears.

Jolly did what Jolly does – shrugged, tipped his head on one side and said “yeah, it’s good. She’s nice. What’s for tea?”.

And Pink? My baby girl? She loves school. Naturally. Like everything she faced it head on with a confident sparkly grin and a pair of baggy socks.

Today, No.1 had a MUCH better day. He had his first French lesson in the new (lower) set – loves his new French class & teacher, and for the first time doesn’t feel he’s struggling out of his depth. This is Good.

OH and.

And and AND.

He did P.E.

First P.E. lesson in what? Two years? Nearly three? It was circuits, and they just had to run around the large gym hall, see how many circuits they could complete. he let the pack of boys belt off, knowing he’d be slow, and just decided to do what he could.

he said the first three circuits were agony, and he nearly stopped when he thought his lungs might actually burst. But then some charming child muttered “come on then, fat boy”. And so he gritted his teeth and plodded onwards. And he said by lap 5, it was easy to just keep on putting one foot in front of the other.

In the end he ran almost 2km, lapped a lot of them and finished fifth out of 40-odd boys.

I’ll just pause for a second and absorb the way my insides just lit up as I typed that.

Remembering the way he was hovering in the kitchen when I got back from the school run, bursting to tell me, the shiny beaming of PRIDE on his face. Just… Magic. Priceless.

Apparently his PE teacher, who’s also head of year and has followed him closely over Yr7 couldn’t stop shouting out encouragement and praise.

Course, it’s now 9.30, and he can’t sleep because his legs are aching so much. Not, I think, the M.E. – just sheer objecting complaints from unused muscles!

Right now, my girl is in school.

In her nooniform and everything.

At 6 this morning she climbed into bed with me, and as I hugged her close I listened to the wind blowing a hoolie, the rain slapping at the windows… and I wanted to hold on to her forever. Just breathing in the delicious smell of her, feeling her warm and sleepy, curled into me like we’ve done so often over the last four and a half years…

…and just refuse to let the world come and take her away.

Not yet.

Course – three hours later she was bustling excitedly into school without a backwards glance. Little Sod.

(apologies to Keris, who read this first…)

Well. We got up – good and early.

Everyone was excited, everyone was cheerful.

Lunchboxes were filled, bags were packed, uniform was put on, hair was brushed and clipped, photos were taken, and into the car we got.

On time.

Oh yes.

Parking was easy, oddly enough.

The lack of children in uniform trouping towards the school was ever-so-slightly a cause for concern.

The whistlingly empty playground was a giveaway though.

Inset day today, huh?

It would have been funny if the rather overly-wired Pink hadn’t been distraught at the sudden change of plans.

There may have been some roadside heartbroken sobbing.

*sigh*

It’s the last day of term, and I have just 15 minutes before heading out on the final school run of the year.

Jolly is saying goodbye to KS1 – infants to you and me. My baby Jolly is headed into Junior school, and he can’t wait.

Boy is sailing on into Yr5 with his usual imperterbable calm and gleeful anticipation.

But No. 1.

My biggest boy.

He leaves Primary school today.

That’s it. He’s off to the bight lights of Big School come September.

I honestly didn’t think I’d be quite as emotional about it as I was yesterday watching the leavers assembly. It’s not just the simple fact of coming face to face with the irrefutable goodbye to his baby years. That’s hard enough, but I kind of saw it coming.

But yesterday, watching him and his 26 classmates, most of whom have been together for the full seven years, being a small village school, I realised what he was leaving behind too. This lovely group of children we parents have watched grow and mature into an incredibly special bunch of young people. I see them changing, growing, hints of the beautiful teens and lovely adults they will become.

Of course they’re not all best friends, there are factions and there have been battles. But on the whole they are a very close-knit group, as only spending nearly every day of 7 years in a shared experience can make you.

And it’s all about to change. Some are splitting off into different schools. Even those who are headed in the same direction will no longer be ‘just them’ – they will be split, diversified, watered down by enetring a larger school, streamed classes and countless subject choices.This is the last time they will be ‘them’ – and they’ve been just ‘them’ for a very long time.

So, as I head out the door, I go to collect my baby boy for the last time. The last time I get to stand in the playground and see him running to greet me, bursting with news from his day. The last time I get to know instantly what kind of day he’s had, just from the set of his shoulders as he approaches me. The last time I’ll get to watch him be King of his Hill, being the Big Boy that the little ones look up to and adore as he takes time to notice them.

I am so thrilled and excited for him – and so incredibly, heart-burstingly proud of him. He has made it through the last tortuous year and a half and made it out on top. He’s so very excited to be off to High School, and I know his world is about to explode into glittering possibilities that I can’t wait for him to try.

But.

I miss my baby too.

First school photo - No.1 aged 5

Okay.

So.

Don’t know where to start really…
No.1 has his SATS next week – school has decided to go ahead with them (and that’s a WHOLE other post), so it has been revision, revision, revision for weeks. Practice papers, homework and stress stress stress. NOT good for my boy, he’s been deteriorating rapidly since the oh-so-perfect easter holidays, and last night was final bloody straw. Sobbing in my arms at 11 at night, desperate for sleep, hurting from head to foot, and for the first time ever he wailed

“it’s not FAIR! Why ME? I just want to be normal, and for it all to just GO AWAY.”

Broke my heart, and felt like wailing and sobbing alongside him.

Utterly impotent to help beyond sympathy. Stress comes out physically in the form of pain with him, of course, and he puts himself under so much pressure. He didn’t get into the high school he wanted, we were refused again on appeal (appeals were last week – what a bloody stress that was, didn’t even have the energy to tell you all about it), and he took it a bit personally, so he’s desperate to do well in his SATS to ‘show’ people. Pre-illnes he was a predicted 5A across the board (highest he could get, national average is 4C I think). When he came back to school he was re-targeted as low 4′s, and having missed nearly a whole academic year and had no friggin help whatsoever from the LEA he has climbed back up to an expected 5C, possibly higher. And no matter how much we tell him how proud we are of him and how we couldn’t care two bat shits abot the SATS, he hears so much at school about results and the impact of them that he’s talked himself into the fact that if he doesn’t get at least 5B’s he’s failed himself. FFS. Wanted to rip his bloody teachers head from his shoulders last night. If I’d had his mobile number I would have rung him and had him listen to what the school has done. No.1′s not the only one – the whole class is looking white and drawn. Is such a crapfest, and I wish No.1 would choose not to go in and do the bloody things.
Have kept him home today, and am lavishing him with cuddles and chat.

Alongside that going on in the house, we are restructuring C’s entire bloody company. You know how these things snowball – disaffection with our web host/designers has gone from having a contractor optimise the site, to having him build a new one, to me building a new wedding blog (now done), a new pregnancy site (finished next week), researching all sorts of stuff we’ve been paying for over the last 7 years and finding that actually we’ve been taken for mugs and spent  THOUSANDS of pounds needlessly. Makes me so angry.
Have fired accountants too, who similarly overcharged, and at the same time got so much stuff wrong, and again cost us even more.
It’s so easy just to keep doing what you always have, believing it works without checking. The design company were cutting edge 10 years ago – but haven’t changed since, and of course the internet has changed a lot in that time. On the up side, the new site is going to be everything C has ever wanted, at a fraction of the price. The downside is the sheer bloody volume of work involved.

Oh, and LS is snowballing faster than K and I can’t keep up with it. She’s got the builders in and is knee-deep in house renovation and moving out for a while, I’ve got all this stuff for C, and LS is snapping and snarling at the tight leash cos it just wants to take off and run.

But I did manage to have a period last week (timed to coincide with schools appeal and Big Meeting with No.1′s teacher – perfect, eh?) and not only did I not take any anti-bleed drugs, but i managed to use tampax instead of industrial strength wadding. So I’m thinking the thyroid drugs are finally having an effect.

There’s probably a gazillion other things, but that’s enough for now!