Mixing sequins with a sweatshirt

The school year is now in full swing, and I’m figuring out how to manage my schedule in this new post-toddler phase of my life.  Four days a week, I drop my son off in the mornings and pick him up in the afternoons, which creates more time than I’ve had for myself since before he was born!  So far I’ve spent most of the extra hours in the gym, or wandering around Notting Hill when I got the pick up time wrong.  Soon, I hope to allocate a good portion of my extra time to blogging, so my posting will be more regular.  I’ve not had much luck with that so far!  For right now, I’m getting accustomed to my new daily rhythm… and trying to figure out what to wear.  There is no point in getting dressed up for an 8:30 school run if I have a 10:00 gym class, so most mornings I am Athleisure Mum.  Sometimes I have meetings, and I enjoy dressing up on those days.  When I don’t know what to wear, I start with sequins and go from there… and this day was no exception.  With a silver sequin skirt, I needed something casual on top to keep it daytime appropriate.  You can’t get much more casual than a sweatshirt, so I chose this grey oversized one that I got at the Vogue Festival earlier in the  year.  The contrast of style but similarity of colour with the silver skirt is enough to tie it together for me, so off I went.

I had a flashback while I was writing this post.  I remembered the first time I strolled down the street with my son in his pram (baby carriage for Americans).  It was just few days after he was born and my husband and I were off to have birth announcements printed.  I felt so self-conscious that I kept erupting into giggles.  ME!  With a pram!  I was certain everyone who passed by me was thinking, ‘What in the world is that ridiculous woman doing with a pram?  Doesn’t she know that she’s doing it all wrong?’  That’s kind of how I feel about the school run right now.  I’ve seen people walking down the street holding hands with their children dressed in school uniforms on the way to and from school, but it seemed like another universe to the one I lived in for over 40 years.  Now I’m doing that with my son.  Like the pram scenario earlier in his life, I’m probably not doing it exactly right, but I’m doing it how I do it.  Mostly it involves lots of questions.  Every day on the way home, I try to find out some details about how my son’s day went–

“What did you do at school today?  Did they have any dinosaurs or scorpions?  What did you eat for lunch?  Was it nice?  Where did all of this glue and glitter come from, did you make something?”

The answer I generally get to all questions is, “I can’t tell you.”

I ask, “Is that because what happens at nursery school stays at nursery school?  Is the first rule of nursery school that we don’t talk about nursery school?  Or do you just not remember?”

“I can’t remember,” he says.

“Wait, you can still remember a swear word Mommy used in traffic eight months ago, but you can’t remember what you had for lunch today or what you made with all that glitter??”

And so it goes.  He’s finding his feet at school while I find my rhythm around his schedule.  I’ll figure out what to wear when my days involve me being in a gym, a meeting, and a classroom all in the same day.  If I managed to figure out how to fold up a pram to fit in a car, I’m sure I can figure the rest of this motherhood stuff out.

In my effort to get the world to wear sequins more frequently, I’ve shown on my little corner of the internet how to wear sequins in winter, how to wear sequins with a chunky cardigan, how to wear sequins with camouflage, how to wear sequins with a plain white shirt, how to wear sequins with a slogan tee, and in this installment, how to wear sequins with a sweatshirt.  I’ve added the sparkliest sunglasses I own, my most comfortable heels, my favourite Hermes cuff bracelet, and a positively ancient clutch.  Each piece is a well-worn little security blanket in its own way, which is reassuring while I settle into my school mum role.  Paolo Coelho said “If you think adventure is dangerous, try routine; it is lethal.”  Well, I’m looking forward to getting just a tiny non-lethal dose of routine into my chaotic adventurous life.

If anyone has any tips or wise words on managing the flood of emotions that come with transitions from one stage to the next with your children, I’m all ears.  So far, listening to Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Landslide’ and looking at outgrown baby clothes isn’t working out so well!

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