Empty nest syndrome when I still have one little chick left...

Mmmm. I have been a professional, I have always had a job: since my first newspaper round at 13 before and after school. And Saturday and Sunday mornings.

Although some would look at me and say I don't have a job, and to be honest sometime  I feel that I don't either - I have been running my own internet business, with lots of ups and downs due to the crisis. But hopefully things are back on the up again.

Anyway, the point of today's blog was to help me work through some emotions that I suppose come with age and milestones. 

I am sitting here having been busy with visits from mum and sister, who are now back in the UK - and I am back at the desk working on my webshop. 

The house feels and sound empty but there is one little chubster approaching her 6 month milestone, sleeping upstairs and all I can hear is my typing. And my old biddy dog Ramsay breathing. He turns 15 next week. He and I have an agreement that he must stay at least until 15. So far so good.

Two things changed this school year. My third bubba is 4 and goes all day to school, and the kids no longer come home for lunch as the school now has a çontinurooster: they all stay at school from 8:25 until 2:30. My two oldest are already at school and enjoy spending the whole day there now.

My 4 year old doesn't have to legally go to school here in the Netherlands but we send her nonetheless. And I come to the conclusion that although many parents have no choice but to send their kids to school at 4 due to work contraints, I don't feel I have that pressure as I work from home. So why is she going?

I have to say that I miss that little girl pottering around the house making mess as she walks, with My Little Ponies dripping from her hands as she walks over to the Duplo box and spills it all out, and then the Playmobil. I miss her demands for "cheese/peanut butter/chocolate paste sandwich", her surprise kisses. 

It makes the feeling all the worse when I can hear the school kids playing outside as we live across from the school! Is it really doing her any good to be in fulltime school so young? I know that she needs to stimulation that school gives her, and that she loves being around others her own age. But we have them all for ourselves for such a short period of time, will another 6 months at home really make a difference?  I reallywish the school could be fleixible in the first year so that a child could attend school only for a few days a week if the parents felt that would be beneficial. I have at least negotiated her staying at home on Fridays but "only until the Herfstvakantie"..

I have at the moment a real feeling of loss, that her and I have been at home together for our first 3 years in this country: and now that period is over.

I hope that this is just a phase and it is a adjustment that I will eventually relish and that I will get used to just one bubba at home. But I have to say that walking my baby and Ramsay in the forest just isn't the same without the little girl running next to me with her green bucket filling it with acorns, leaves and dead beetles. 

Although it is such hard work lots of the time, enjoy your toddlers while you have them, breath in their smell, and let their lust for life pick you up out of that bad mood - before their school career takes them away to different places. 

It is time to pick them all up: roll on a house full of kids!

Remind of this when I am pulling my hair out by this evening....

PS. Afspreken ended up at my house so I had an extra 2 girls and 1 extra boy. If you have 4 kids at home, you might as well have 7...