We are now boarding the flying school bus

If you want the first day of school to be all "Look at us, Pinterest!" then consider these tips:

A) When Larry the bus driver for your special-needs nine-year-old calls a week before school and tells you he will see you promptly next Tuesday morning, go ahead and assume that he actually won't because he will quit the day before school starts.

B) Also assume that Steve the substitute bus driver doesn't know his way around your neighborhood and will show up after you have returned from dropping your kid off yourself. In your pajamas. With two pajama-clad younger sibs in tow. Let's not forget about the bed head either.

C) While watching for the phantom bus, keep a closer watch on the five-year-old who will disappear and poop on the downstairs carpet.

D) Embrace the reality that you will never be one of these über-fit women who wears her yoga clothes to drop her children at school, looking awfully chipper, coiffed, and glamorous at 8:00 AM.

E) Try not to have kids at three different schools, with three different first days of school. Seriously, just no.

F) Just roll with it. All of it---the poop, the bus, the rocky transition.

I mean hey, summer is over. We survived another one, with a few shreds of mom's sanity. The best season of the year may now commence.

After the third boy's school starts next week.