Must Try Harder!

I hate mornings! I think I may have mentioned it once or twice before. I don't know what it is with mornings that makes all my "positive parenting" comments and thoughts turn and flee henceforth into the woods!

Each morning, despite my crib sheets on the fridge and cheat sheets in the car, always turns into verbal meltdown with me begging, nagging, persuading and bribing all three Beehives to get themselves together and get into the car:

For example:

1. Give the ten minute warning: well, we do that AND the five, the three, the one and the thirty second.........I can still guarantee one or other won't be down. "Tell them" and I quote "the car leaves in 2 minutes with or without you"........okay, so the person that wrote that smart ass comment, tell me what you do at 2 Min's and 30 with a 5 year old still in the house wearing his pyjamas........leave???

2. There is always a breakfast calamity: spilt milk, spilt orange, the wrong cereal, the right cereal but finished, the wrong bowl, the wrong cup, the fact that x laid the table but didn't get y a glass or bowl or whatthefeckityfeckever!! I am always, pretty much without fail, on my hands and knees under the table with the dog at some point or other during breakfast. So, the guru suggests I allow THEM to clean up.......okay, if I then desire to stick to the kitchen floor for the next couple of days until I get around to washing it entirely, by then having walked nice sticky black footprints around the perimeter! I am from the old book: if you want a job doing.......

3. A bathroom calamity: naturally! Little Miss Beehive is a wonder at hanging on until the last possible second, normally then attempting to get herself down from the table bent in half and unable to actually operate her legs in a contrary motion to get herself to Mr Armitage Shanks! First change of the day!

4. A lost lunchbox (if I have been slack in my motherly duties the night before) or a mislaid reading book that was "definitely on my bed last night!" or a note that was signed and put into the appropriate school bag, only for it to then be extracted and put to an alternative use hence causing knuckle rapping from one or other of the Beehive's teachers! Organise the night before, encourage them to pack and prepare their own school bags and lunches. Technically in an ideal world, this works, however, my fridge has been out of operation since last Friday. Yumm!! What can I prepare for dinner? Slimy carrots, mouldy tomatoes and soggy cheese! If I leave their lunches in there overnight, they will send the DHA around to condemn me. Luckily the repair people have me down as an emergency - only not THAT much of an emergency and I am "on hold" until Thursday at the moment!!!!!!!

5. Give them selected choice when dressing, but allow for choice and independence. What happens then when, despite the discussion as to not dressing up in Snow White and Power Ranger costumes before school, your child
a. goes commando!
b. Wears his interpretation of a Samurai costume UNDER his school clothes and causes me to be collared by his teacher and presented with wooden pizza cutters and wooden toy sushi cutters in a small holster after school.
c. Wears cotton skirt, thick sweater, vest, wellies and sun hat all in the same day.
d. Insists that pyjamas are what they are going to wear today and thus reduces me to downright begging to get her to change into something more appropriate.
e. arrives on the front step when we are running late, whilst the car engine is running in 40 degree temps (Fahrenheit that is!) wearing ..........wait for it.............SHORTS!!!!!!!!!!!and THEN have the audacity to tell me that HE will get a tardy mark because I made him late! Pah!!!!!!!!

Did I say I HATE mornings???????????????????