The honeymoon is over

School is wonderful and my children love it!

For the first two days.

Then the honeymoon is over.

One morning recently, I was dealing with three children who were all doing their own thing to make the school drop-off as difficult as possible for me.  They try this every day but on this particular day, they actually succeeded in nearly making me cry.

Buzz insisted on riding his bike to school, even though I had to drive the others.  I could tell he was going to be impossible about it, and what was I going to say anyway?  "No, you can't ride, it's too ... exercisey?"  "You are going to sit in the car and be driven to school, it's for your own good?"  So although he's not 100% road-safe and makes scary decisions with regard to crossing at times, I let him ride.  I followed him closely in the car so I could stop, get out and help with the crossings when needed.

Woody wanted to meet up with Buzz as soon as we got into the school carpark.  His mistake was choosing to walk towards Buzz riding up the hill via the extremely busy traffic-filled road.  I wasn't able to catch him until he had walked a scary distance away from the car, because I was too busy dealing with Jessie at that moment.

Jessie is the biggest offender with regard to The Honeymoon Period.  Two days of wonderful fun at school has been followed by a week or more of the most ridiculous displays of over-emotional suffering I have ever witnessed, despite ending each day with a huge smile and reports on how wonderful school is.

Each morning she tries a different ploy to be allowed to stay home.  This particular morning, it was feigning narcolepsy.

She pretended to fall asleep in her carseat and by the time we arrived in the school carpark, the only way I could get her from the car to the footpath was to lead her Weekend-At-Bernies-style by the hand from one to the other.

Help.