6.50 am : Alarm goes off. I go into the bathroom, sit on the floor and have a cigarette and then get dressed.

7.00 am : Go upstairs, where I wake up The Girl ( ‘Go away!’) and get The Baby ( 15 Kilos), whom I carry down to the first floor . ( This is why I have a cigarette first : I have to be somewhat awake, or I am afraid I will stumble on the very steep staircase to the third floor).

Once downstairs, I take Baby to the toilet, get her something eat, turn the TV on and start the coffee. Then I go up to the second floor and wake The Boy up( ‘I wanna sleep mo’- remember, he drops his R’s). He is very groggy in the morning, so I have to lead him down the stairs. He sits in the kitchen with Baby, The Girl in the living room.

7.15 am : I get the newspaper and my first cup of coffee. The Girl comes in saying that she is sick. She must have kinkhoest,she says. Actually what she has is a math test today. I tell her that she is not sick ( this illness has been creeping up on her since yesterday). When she realizes that she actually has to take the test, she becomes , well, hysterical (Apparently, she feels that she is going to get a zero and it will all be my fault . Why, I wonder. Because I gave birth to her ?) . I send her to get dressed and to get her math papers.

7.30-7.45 am : Get The Boy ready – dressed, hair combed, teeth brushed. Prepare the snacks for school, brush my teeth, brush my hair,wash my face ( where are all of the kitchen towels?).

7.45-8.00 am : Brush The Girl’s hair and go over math problems with her. I give her an adaptation of the ‘only thing we have to fear is fear itself’ speech : Stay calm, take your time, there will always be another test.

8.00 – 8.05 am : Get The Baby ready, sans shoes as her new shoes have given her a blister ( The Girl took her socks off yesterday) . I hope that she doesn’t develop an aversion to the shoes, as- like all children’s shoes here- they were very expensive: 50 some euro. Coming from a village which traditionally made shoes, The Father insists that the kids wear good quality shoes and we have to pay through the nose for them. Although they are not the most expensive brand around.

8.10 am : Tell everyone to go to the toilet and then put their shoes on.

8.20 am : Leave for school. At the door, The Boy insists upon taking ‘Froggy’ ( a very large stuffed frog) to school. He runs upstairs to get Froggy but can’t find him. We have the mini-drama over the missing frog, which leads to the tear trembling thought that maybe Daddy threw him away ( ‘Daddy wouldn’t throw Froggy away’), that, horror of horrors, Daddy may one day throw Stinky ( The Boy’s blanket) away ( ‘Daddy would never throw Stinky away’).

8.25-8.30 am : We stand around the playground waiting for the bell to ring. Ring-ring ! Kisses and have a nice days all around.

8.45 am : Home. Feed the fish, feed the cats, set The Baby up in front of the TV with some milk and an apple, get a fresh cup of coffee and sit down behind the computer.

I am really not a morning person at all. I dislike mornings almost as much as lunchtime:

11.40 am : Go to pick up The Boy and The Girl. Something is up with The Boy, he is in tears and finally tells me that his teacher has told him that he can’t be in the class play. This sounds off to me, as he has been working on his costume for two weeks, so I go to look for his teacher, knowing that otherwise lunch will be a vail of tears. It takes 10 minutes to find her. Indeed, The Boy will not be in the play- apparently by his own choice. He wanted to be a pirate but only a certain kind- a kind which is not in the play.

12.00-1.05 am : Lunch, the time of day I hate most. I make the sandwiches, get the drinks and no matter what I do, the noise level is devastating. The Boy is wailing at the top of his lungs about the play. The Baby is screeching because Boy keeps taking her new Nijntje ball ( “Not in the house Boy!”). The Boy and The Girl take every opportunity to shove, pinch or trip each other in passing. At 12.55, I call out to put on shoes and go potty. Inevitably, there is a fight over who goes potty first. It’s going on now. Door get shoved into whomever is second in the race. Depending upon how ragged I’m feeling, I send them off to school between 1.00 and 1.10. They walk to school after lunch by themselves.

Now the afternoon is almost over and I actually managed to get some work-work done. As The Baby stood on my chair behind me and combed my hair with the cootie comb, I completed a rather complicated bit and now find that the end of this fool project is in sight.

Nooit meer.

Oh, and after the whole Camille scene, The Girl got an 8 on her test. She also tells me that by next week we have to know 12 important places / waterways in the province of Groningen. We will be learning- by heart- 12 things about every province, one province a week. Am I doing this right ?