Of cusps and thresholds.

Life is changing around this old pirate ship. The Destroyer manages to get away with some pretty crazy stuff while my back is turned but so far "turning into a preschooler" is his greatest prank to date. No kidding, he's starting school in a week and while there is a certain part of me that is wringing her hands and wiping tears out of her eyes, there is another somewhat louder part of me that's saying "Hell yeah! That's six hours per day of my life back." The prospect of all that free time was so perplexing that I had to go and get a job just to fill up the void in the middle of my day...except that then I realized that only one of my children is going to school, so that still leaves me with one. Ragnarbaby is the easy one, but something tells me that they are going to notice if I try to show up for work with him strapped to my back. I guess that means some sort of childcare for him as well.

Which brings us to the truly terrifying, impossible thing which is boggling my mind: establishing a morning routine. Seriously. How the hell am I supposed to get two uncooperative toddlers (Ragnarbaby isn't actually toddling yet, but it seems a meaningless distinction at this point) up, dressed, pottied, fed and dropped at their respective repositories so that I can get my butt into work by 9 o'clock in the morning? Functioning members of society how do you accomplish this feat of scheduling razzle dazzle?

Here's the thing about the current routine at our house. There isn't one. Manimal goes to work sometime between 5am and noon. The kids and I wake up sometime between 7am and 10. It takes us anywhere from .5 to 3 hours to eat breakfast and unless we have someplace special to be we mostly wear our pajamas all day...or in the case of The Destroyer, his birthday suit. Somehow I think the nakedness thing isn't going to go over all that well at pre-school.

So stay tuned. It'll be like reality television.

This morning we learned that getting the destroyer dressed before sitting him down to breakfast is pointless since every stitch of clothing will have to be changed after he paints himself with yogurt.

Ragnar...is not a morning person.