Today I left the house with poo on my jumper.

I saw it there as I left the kindergarten classroom, my child having been dropped off as the final participant of the school day. We were late, as is currently normal practice for us. You see, I realised today that I actually suck at doing morning drop off.

There seem to be too many things to do on a school morning for it to run smoothly. Today, my four year old was both curious and pensive at breakfast, prolonging the time it took for the toast to enter his mouth and make its way down to his tummy. I felt like every second sentence coming out of my mouth was, “eat!” This, whilst my one year old ate half of his toast, threw half of his toast on the floor, squealed offensively until I gave him a mandarin to eat and then wormed out of his high chair straps and bounced precariously, cheekily, until I released him to the floor. Here he proceeded to finalise a giant poo which had the obvious texture of sand from his time at daycare yesterday, and needed specialist wiping with multiple materials – of which I am not entirely sure the residue is completely off my person even now. This then happened a second time right as we needed to walk out the door. Typical.

After I finished calmly yelling at my bigger boy to eat his food, the next lot of shrieking was composed with a selection of “where are your socks?!” and “put your socks on!” as well as “stop shouting! Put the dogs collars down, we’re already late for school!” and “Come on! We’re late for school!” and “MOVE IT!! We’re late for school!” I became resigned to the fact that I would not be cleaning my own teeth before departing the house today, nor would I wash my face or brush my hair, clean up the mess from breakfast or the many things that were strewn across the floor. Upon arriving at school, I realised that we had also forgotten the Comprehension Pack due every Tuesday and the Library Book we need to return in order to have rights to a new one. Whoops.

I never thought I’d be the type the leave the house with shit on my shirt. But today I was. And the funny thing about it is that in fact, I didn’t even really care. Things change when you become a parent, the sacrifices you come to make outweigh personal gain if they mean a better outcome for your child. Even though my kid was the last one to arrive for his school day, he was happy. He had a full belly, a full lunchbox, a uniform and hat. He was greeted by his little crew of friends and he both gave and received a warm mummy cuddle and kiss goodbye. And after all the stress I endured, I walked out the gate and my watch read 9:01am.