Category Archives: education

August 15, 2017 · 10:08 pm

Summer holidays are over

Screen Shot 2017-08-15 at 22.10.34
I’m not going to lie, the last 46 days have been very hard graft. It’s the first time I’ve gone seven weeks without childcare for the Wee Man since he was six months old – and at least then he didn’t move. Now, he’s on the go from the moment he opens his eyes until the second he reluctantly shuts them – his zest for life is undeniable.

Plus he now has a wee brother who’s nearly three and has his own ideas about how the house and schedule should be run. Thank goodness for private nursery three days a week… I’ve managed to juggle my workload and thank God I’m self-employed. If I had a real job I would certainly have been sacked. All the childcare I thought I had lined up fell through, for a variety of reasons. My own naiveté was the main one, coupled with human error, expense and changes to holiday plans. It was frustrating and stressful. The weather was mostly rubbish, the days often began at 6am and all the driving to adventure parks and beaches resulted in KD napping at all sorts of inappropriate times. The bedtime and sleep routine were, for the most part, f*cked.

Yet here I am, the night before primary two, feeling emotional.

My mum spent the day with us and we had some lovely chats (in between hanging on to a dog and two boys on scooters) discussing my first summer holidays and how hard they are for everyone. I felt reassured and fired up – this afternoon I made a lasagne and filled a load of tupperware with jelly and mandarins ready for the lunchboxes.

This will never happen again – neither will I ever iron the Wee Man’s uniform (why bother when you can tumble dry it for ten mins) – but I’m pretending to be all #kickassmum and #winningatlife and whatever.

For his part, the Wee Man is so so ready to go back to school. He misses his pals and the structure of his day. I miss my pals too! The social side of the Wee Man’s school is great. The parking is shocking so everyone walks up together, plus the catchment is pretty small so we all live nearby. It’s a cosmopolitan crowd, lots of languages and backgrounds, which I love – the chat in the playground is interesting and I’ve missed it. I need my routine back too.

As for the weather, well, of course today was a scorcher.

Now that the schools are back the sunshine will no doubt beat down til October.

Oh christ – the October Week.

Protected: It’s time to start potty training – part 3

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May 30, 2014 · 9:50 pm

Protected: It’s time to start potting training – part 2

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May 29, 2014 · 10:21 pm

Protected: It’s time to start potty training – part 1

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May 23, 2014 · 8:50 pm

Why didn’t I think of this before?

I don’t know if it’s typical of three year old boys, or just mine, but concentration span is an issue.

I do remember mum frequently asking me, when I was wee, whether I had ants in my pants, so maybe it’s typical of small children full stop.

The wee man is a ball of energy. “Full of beans” is the standard nursery report.

“He’s been into everything,” the creche supervisor told me today.

“He’s non-stop,” my mum frequently agrees when I phone her in weary triumph, having finally packed him off to bed.

But today at 5.30am I made a break through – and now I’m wondering why the hell I didn’t think of this before.

It’s called Play-Doh.

He’d received a four-pot-pack for his birthday two months ago and I’d thrown it into the bag when I was packing toys to amuse him while we were at Mum and Dad’s holiday house. (If only I’d thought to pack the black-out curtains we wouldn’t have been sitting waiting for the cartoons to begin at half five in the morning, but I digress.)

I’d pulled it out in the ambitious hope it would keep him quiet until the magical hour of 6am.

It absolutely did – and the best bit was I enjoyed playing with it as much as he did!

The smell when I peeled back the first lid immediately awakened a very old, childish excitement and the sight of the perfect, untouched block was ridiculously tempting. We rolled and squidged and pressed and pulled and smacked and stuck the shapes together, laughing and passing the lumps back and forth, using the pots and lids and various bits of cutlery to make shapes. He copied my movements as I shaped the dough and gleefully destroyed all the little animals I built for him.

As it began to dawn on me what a long time had passed without a complaint, I remembered a client telling me about her new product, Jumping Clay. She was using it to hold classes for children with additional support needs and had some interesting observations about the power of clay. The senses it appealed to and the concentration it inspired, the skills it helped to teach and the calmness it promoted were just some of the reasons she said it was so effective with this particular group. I was seeing first hand how universal these qualities were – we were both engrossed and happy. I kicked myself for not connecting the dots before.

He did lose interest eventually and wander off to watch cartoons, but he came back to the table looking for the Play-Doh on three other occasions throughout the day. I need to watch he stays at the table and the wee bits don’t stray to the carpet or any other soft furnishings – and I pretty much have to sit there playing alongside him, but I’m still delighted we’ve discovered such an absorbing activity.

I have now put a pot into his wee rucksack and will consider it as essential as the iPad when it comes to keeping him entertained in public places.

My Play-Doh bear in the three seconds it survived before being gleefully squashed

Protected: Messy Play

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June 7, 2012 · 10:52 pm

Protected: Choosing a nursery

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August 5, 2011 · 9:58 pm

Time travel

My youngest sister once told me: “No one will ever invent a time machine. If they had, they would have come back to tell us.”

I’ve always felt I could mentally time travel by reading my old diaries. I’ve written about my days since I was 11 years old; the box containing my scribblings is my prized possession. If I’m interrupted while engrossed, I can almost feel myself being sucked through time back to the present.

But it wasn’t until I became a mum that I felt that physical time travel was possible.

I first realised it when the wee man wouldn’t settle and, having run out of nursery rhymes, I suddenly started singing The Frog Chorus by Paul McCartney. The last time I sang that song I was five years old. As I concentrated on recalling the lyrics, I was vividly sitting on a pink carpet next to my brown Fisher Price tape recorder. I was wearing a pink and white striped cotton dress with Minnie Mouse on it and my Mum was calling up to me “not so loud Kimmy”. When the wee man stirred in my arms I nearly dropped him, I felt so completely in that moment.

It happened again when I was in a nightclub on Saturday night – one I hadn’t been to in years. I was with girlfriends I’ve known since I was at primary school and we were dancing to Superstition by Stevie Wonder. Jenny was laughing at the guy trying to dance with her, Steph was clutching two drinks and Kirstin was looking around making sure the Spanish guy she’d once met there wasn’t going to jump out at her from the shadows. I was 17 again, unmarried, without a single responsibility – my only worry whether I could drive to school in the morning without being over the limit.

The taxi ride home was like a journey through time and I headed straight up to the nursery to remind myself who I was. His sweet sleeping face grounded me like an anchor. I stared down at him and realised that every moment has been leading to this. Whenever I’m remembering, he will be the 1.21 jiggawatts I need to get home.

Sound!

First antenatal class

Both Rod and I had been working late, so when we raced into the hospital just in time for the 7.30 start of our first antenatal class we weren’t exactly “in the zone”. Plus I’d cooked sausages while sending my last emails and was suddenly aware that I smelled like a burger van.
We had no idea what to expect. We sat meekly alongside 12 or so other couples and stared at the diagram of a non-pregnant human body – so that’s what I used to look like.
The midwife grinned at us, introduced herself and suggested we all do the same. Everyone was married, everyone was having their first baby and everyone was due within a month of each other… I instantly felt like we belonged. Two husbands were missing due to car trouble (a loose handbrake and a flat tire) so when it came to us I joked that Rod was in the car game if anyone needed a hand. One of the women was having twins (so that’s why my belly seemed so small!) and the lady on my right shared my due date, so all in all I’d say the ice was broken pretty quickly.
The first class focused on our bodies and our pain relief options. The diagram we’d been staring at was flipped to show a pregnant body… Jeez, where did my intestines go? “This is why you’re all probably guzzling Gaviscon” the midwife joked and there were several nods and smiles round the room. And that wee black blob right under the baby’s head is my bladder? “Yup, that’s why you’re in the loo constantly!” It’s always nice to be reassured that your symptoms are totally normal.
When it came to birth plans I was the only one who raised my hand when she asked about water births. She was really supportive and explained exactly how it would work, including the fact I could effectively deliver my own baby by grasping him/her under the arms and pulling him/her to the surface. I loved this idea! She said that Rod could even be in there with me – “Great! I’ll bring my mask and snorkel!” he piped up. Everyone laughed but then there were a few murmurs and I wondered if some other mums were beginning to consider the idea.
At the end of the class we were offered additional breast-feeding and physio classes so I signed up for both. A few others did too, so I’m looking forward to getting to know them. Isn’t the NHS a wonderful thing?

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