My son is now at an age where he’s becoming more active with out of school activities, but not the ones that I organise. Apart from requests for playdates, he’s started Cub Scouts and he starts playing football tomorrow.

Cub Scouts started last term as a trial for him and he absolutely LOVES it. He’s been to around six get-togethers now and is nowhere near bored. I recently bought the uniform and paid the fees so now he has to stick it out but I don’t think he’ll get sick of it any time soon.

They’re organising a camp on the long weekend in June which should be interesting. I don’t know if we’ll go but it will be cold, they have to sleep in tents and I’ve a feeling parents have to take their own tents to sleep in. I don’t think I have to go but if he goes I’d like to go to this one.

I thought I was going to have to be a parent helper at the weekly meetings because there are girls in the group and they need a woman because of child protection issues. I’d expected to be involved in the Scouts as I know it’s not a babysitting service but I’d become used to the thought of having just over an hour to myself once a week and to have that ripped away from me hurt a bit. Out of about 14 people in the group, only two or three of the mums had volunteered – and I don’t even have a daughter. I took JJ to Scouts the other night and asked if they’d drawn up a roster for the parent helpers and they said that one of the mums had decided to become a leader so they had the female angle covered.

In addition to Scout meetings, bottle drives, sausage sizzles and camps JJ starts playing football (the Australian Rules) kind tomorrow morning. I have to be a the oval at 8am with the game starting at 8.30am. It’s about half an hour away so there go my Saturday morning lie-ins. I knew it had to happen. At least because he’s playing for the school I’ll know some of the other kids and parents and one of his friend’s parents has already said they’d have JJ around after a game one day. Not sure if that means they’ll take him as well.

I know this is not uncommon for parents around the world when their kids start getting past the early childhood stage and if you’ve more than one child then the running around goes up exponentially. When I visited my friends in Melbourne a couple of years ago, the whole weekend was spent dropping off and picking up from the school disco and basketball games. After the umpteenth basketball game I opted to just hang at their place for a bit. I don’t know how they do it – although their oldest now has his learner driver’s licence and they’re into a whole different ballgame I don’t want to even contemplate.

I’m sure that when I’m up to that stage I’ll look back at my early Saturday mornings freezing my ass off watching my son play football and really miss it. Instead, I’ll be trying to wake him up before midday.