I wanted to faithfully record my boy's first day at school. Seminal moment as it was I am unlikely to forget the day but in the interests of using this blog to record our family history here's the memory.
The new scholar excitedly put on his uniform whilst I frantically tried to take the definitive photo of him to keep for posterity, my efforts somewhat thwarted by the fact we hadn't managed to buy a school tie in time or arrange the all important start of term haircut. He skipped into school without a backwards glance whilst I struggled to contain sudden hot tears and an apple sized lump which had found its way from nowhere into my throat. Three hours later my husband and I picked him up with over excited interrogation about what he'd done and whether he'd made any new friends whilst he just shrugged and reminded us that we'd promised him a celebratory trip to pizza hut.
On getting back home our tired little boy took himself upstairs to get changed. Whether it was down to the carbohydrate overload or the sheer intensity of the day I cannot be sure, but downstairs he came dressed in pyjamas. He lay down on the sofa, covered himself with the throw and fell fast asleep for two hours. The definitive photo of the day was not of my boy in his shiny new school uniform, but of a little boy worn out by his adventures napping like the baby he was only a heartbeat ago.
I had been hopeful that school would be a good way of calming down his tigger-like bounciness but of course that was the foolish hope of the naive optimist and school has brought its own issues of on/off friends, the gibberish of jolly phonics, and general behaviour issues that arise when you pick up an over-tired, over-stimulated four year old boy from after-school club.
Life for this working mother remains a constant act of balancing the guilts, with the balance tipping a little bit more towards work in the last few months as I have now been made a director at work and therefore find I am having to squeeze more and more work into chinks of my homelife.
I am not normally one to blow my own trumpet but this is my blog and I would be lying if I didn't 'fess up to being totally chuffed at my promotion. The directorship was made official almost a year to the day since I had been made redundant from my last job where, as a part-time working mother, I knew I would never have been able to play the office politics or put in the expected hours which would lead to promotion.
I had a feeling when leaving my last job that I would look back on that difficult time as being a branch in the road which I would never regret taking, and I am delighted to confirm that to be the case. Much like splitting up with a long term boyfriend - it was very hard at the time but meant I had the chance to meet someone a lot more compatible and with whom I had a long term future. My fellow director is also a working mother and it does feel very special to be able to go forward knowing that by still working part-time I can spend quality time with my children yet combine that with ambition and commitment on the work front. The balancing act that is my life is currently finely balanced between family and work. Time for friends and myself has somewhat slipped out of the equation recently (hence the badly neglected blog), but I'm working on it......
