'Tell me school holidays are over without telling me.'

Aside from the frowns on the faces of kids (summer lovin', happened so fast) and the relief on the faces of their parents that it’s back to school time, it’s quite obvious who’s caught up in the end-of-school-holiday frenzy.

They’re the ones who relaxed all summer but are now spending the last days of holidays undoing all the R&R by getting frazzled by the list of chores they must tick off in record time.

Here are the telltale signs that school holidays are about to end. 

You’ve visited the uniform shop twice this week.

In fact, you might go back tomorrow, just in case you missed something.

‘Just one more tee’ you think to yourself as you tap away to pay for a pile of logo tops you know will be drawn all over (clumsily or otherwise) quicker than you can say ‘art class’.

The other clothes-related sign? The kids’ wardrobe is neatly stacked with sized and colour-coded uniforms that will save doing the laundry every day (I know, it’s a great idea) because you’re determined to start the new year how you’d like it to continue. Organised and efficient for 2023!

You’re on a lunchbox snack mission.

With their health always at the forefront, tracking down good foods to fill little bellies is a daily quest. It can be quite easy to find lunchbox snacks, but what isn’t so easy is finding healthy snacks and VARIETY. The kids are my biggest fans but also my biggest critics, and they vet the contents of their lunchboxes before packing (nothing boring, more fruit and less crusts apparently).

Thank heck for Ocean Spray and the new Ocean Spray Craisins Fruit Splash with 50% Less Sugar range. What a treat it is to find products on the grocery run that are perfectly portioned. These packs are available in fun kid-friendly varieties like Raspberry Lemonade and Strawberry Kiwi, which has lessened the usually powerful taste of dried cranberries. They also have 50 per cent less sugar than sultanas. 

Bit of a trick on my part here too: the kids have no idea that they’re gobbling up antioxidants, vitamin C and fibre in each mouthful. And gobble them up they do, there’s never any left at the end of the day. What a find!

Image: Supplied.

You’re sitting under a pile of invoices.

It’s Term 1. It’s when your little cherubs – through eagerness, peer pressure, inquisitiveness or indecisiveness – sign up for every sports and after-school activity available to them. Then, in a flood of paperwork, the dance/football/karate/basketball/netball/swimming/football/Nippers fees are due, all at once, all before the first class. 

I’ll be just over here working until I’m 76 to afford it all, but what well-rounded, skilled little humans I’m raising!

You’re besties with the staff from the shoe shop.

You thought you were too clever by ordering the kiddos the next size up in their school shoes, getting them delivered, and keeping them tucked away until the new year. It’s then you discover that all that sunshine and good food over the summer meant that they actually need three sizes up in school shoes and it’s probably best you bring the kids in to store to try on.

Which is what should have happened in the first place. Kids grow like weeds. Lesson learned.

"Mum, where’s my drink bottle?"

It’s easy to forget about that old chestnut: the morning routine. Where the kids question mum through bleary eyes about the whereabouts of their library bag/sunhat/drink bottle/lunchbox/homework/socks/hair ties/sneakers and windcheater. 

No matter how prepared you are or how many times you’ve told them where these items reside, it seems there’s an invisibility cloak over the item until you make a grab for it. But, like the reassuring constant you are, mum is on top of it all.

You’re brushing up on your skills.

Homework skills that is! As holiday brains switch from sunshine state to back-to-school, you know you have to match all expectations. When the homework starts and the questions are fired at you from your minis, you want to be able to give them the correct answers in a flash – no hesitation or they will doubt your legitimacy forevermore.

Hot tip: a multiplication chart on the back of the toilet door is handy for everyone in the family and phonics are confusing for every prep parent, because it’s just not the way we learned it ourselves, okay?

The bedtime bargaining chips are being played.

We’re wise to their ploys to stay awake a little bit longer, but wow, they can be creative to avoid the extra (and necessary) shut-eye.

While school holiday mode meant no bedtime deadline, the start of school for the year marks the start of an earlier time to drift off to sleep – but parents and kids are never on the same page as to when this should be. 

From asking for more water, to complaining about being too hot/cold, to saying they’re still hungry, forgetting to clean their teeth, to needing a shower or asking to stay awake to “chat to the man on the moon” (this was my son’s latest attempt), it might take a glass of milk and a quick bedtime story to help them get to dreamland. Once they’re asleep, the silence is bliss and you can put your feet up – ready to do it all again tomorrow!

Healthier just got tastier. Shop NEW Ocean Spray Craisins Fruit Splash with 50% Less Sugar at Coles supermarkets.

Feature Image: Supplied.