Back to school...

...or not as the case may be.

I have truly excelled myself today in the field of Ultra Organised Motherhood.

For some inexplicable reason I decided to have my own private party last night (me, 4 cans of Strongbow, the front room...well it's nice to bring that Friday feeling into a Monday once in a while! Otherwise it's just so boring) and boy did I regret it this morning. So I was pretty relieved that it was the day A was going back to nursery after the Christmas holidays.

I got him all dressed up in his uniform. I made his lunch. I got him there in good time....very good time.....in fact early. THREE DAYS EARLY.

As we were walking across the (very quiet and empty) playground his teachers got out of a car and shouted 'yoooo hooo, where are you going!?'. It appears that this week is 'visit week' where the staff go round in a car visiting the new children who will be starting this term. Thus there is no actual nursery until Friday. It appears everyone else knew this but me. And now the teachers know that I didn't know.... And they saw me in my 'it's bloody freezing' winter attire of a large Pat Butcher style fur coat teamed with a knitted tea cosy style hat, furry boots and a long trailing scarf. They're probably thinking 'hmmm, well his mother is clearly a little vague and not quite operating on the same frequency as the rest of the town'.

So we went home again.

Later we went to the shops and as I drove away I decided to do a u-turn and go back down the road I'd driven along, passing our parking spot. This was highly fortuitous because I noticed a red pushchair at the side of the road which somebody has appeared to have abandoned. 'Ohhh I've got that pushchair!' I thought ! Quickly followed by 'that IS my pushchair!'. Put it in the boot and, once again, went home.

In light of the fact I had nothing more exciting that needed doing I then spent an utterly thrilling afternoon trying to pretend that A was actually at nursery and unpicking the stitching from doll's backs, pulling out most of their stuffing (and boy do they have a LOT of stuffing) and then filling them with lentils/rice/whatever else was in my cupboards and not being eaten (although I drew the line at tins of mackerel or the sachets of 'Slim a Soup'). There was stuffing, lentils, rice, blood (mine - from the needles, nobody else was hurt during the stuffing) and a lot of other things everywhere. I think my son was slightly traumatised by the 'operations' I needed to do on all these 'babies' (he loves them, he wants them all in proper cots and wearing warm clothes).

Don't worry - this isn't some kind of weird way of working through my 'issues', it's just that I need dolls that handle 'like a real baby' for the work I do with expectant parents and I'm afraid that filling their body cavities with dried foodstuffs is a close as I can get as I doubt anyone is going to lend me a fleet of real life newborns for us to practice on. Especially judging by today's performance.

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