The epic rentrée 2023

Evening of a very very very long day. Why does the start of the school year have to be so maniac? Is it like this everywhere or just here? I consider myself a seasoned organiser and my signature strengths shine of anticipating everything as much as I can before the summer break. Yet, the past week has been completely ridicilous and parent undermining race of preparations, reviewing of material lists, ordering books, trips to the bookshop of missing items and an embarassing number of A*orders. Add to this the arcaec system some organisations still have in place to register kids to after-school activities, such as the community swimming pool - where I queued along with other brave fellow parents in about 40 degrees celsius for 2 sweaty hours to get my youngest for her class. EVERYthing in their process was manual: one (1) person was managing the registrations, payment cash only, update of attendance list manually by another 1 person (her only task), manual filling of papers. I forgot the paper ticket we had to take (manually) to keep order of arrivals. Blind me. No wonder I slept in this morning, the First day of school! Oh we made it to the school well on time (vanity mom would have just wanted to make the first impressions with her hair washed). It was a huge day for my youngest, who changed school and language section. She was so excited and brave. The teacher seemed nice and the new girl friends as well. 5 year olds are adorable. I hope she will find her place and happimess there. I felt a pinch in my heart thinking she will likely pass her baccalaureat with many of these little angels. My baby is out in the big world now! Her siblings were as excited to meet their friends and happy faces hopped into the car in the afternoon. The heatwave continues with +32 celsius and the best place to spend the afternoon after an intense morning was of course the pool..Ode to that! Bravo babies, bravo mama (a bit papa) for having succeeded another 1st Big day!