As the new year emerged, greeting us with a touch of frost, we knew the hours were numbered and that we had to go back to our usual routines – school and work.

• wake up early and bring the kids back from Narnia
• get the kids ready for school, which includes clothes and hair don
• invent new lunch menu hoping they would eat it
• wash and brush teeth against their will
• drink a gallon of coffee
• drag the kids out the door screaming, pushing them onto the school bus
• drive to work – hopefully fully dressed and awake

It’s never easy to get back to the routines after a very nice and long break. It’s so easy to get use to sleep in, in the mornings, and stay in the pajamas all day.  And, that quickly became the standard outfit in our house.

We had our usual battles the first school day morning of 2012, see above, but managed to get the kids off to school, and me off to work.  A few tears were shed and in the end we had to run to the bus.

One of the regular challenges we have as parents, is getting our kids to do their homework.  In hind-side, it’s funny to see how strict I’ve become when it comes to getting the kids to do their homework, considering that I was notorious for not doing my homework when I was a kid.  But, there’s no need to share that with my kids.

After the first day back, it’s fairly normal to be a bit exhausted.  The body and mind has to get into gear too, which might take a few days – especially for me.

My daughter surprisingly finished her homework in somewhat good time, and with a lot less arguments that usual.  Unfortunately the brain had forgotten some of the math skills, so her results weren’t as good as normal.  Nevertheless, homework was done.

As for my son.  That didn’t go as well as we had hoped.  Once he realised that it was homework time, his temper went into Hulk overdrive.  He was not going to surrender without a fight.

He gnawed on the table, held on to the sofa with his hands, spitting like the anti-Christ, screaming loudly and hitting anybody getting near him … or anybody mentioning homework.  Something told me he was not planning on doing his homework.

My wife (bless her patience) calmly kept at it and in the end she managed to get him somewhat engaged, resulting in him finishing his homework.  Funnily enough, he actually smiled at me, or rather smirked at me, as if saying to me “you didn’t make me do it, I did it myself”.