1.  Starting Slowly

2.  Finishing Fast

3.  Dropping Marks

Son 2 aged 21m, rattling around downstairs before 7am, while I drank coffee to wake me up and got together drinks and snacks.  I took his night-time nappy off to change it. “Wee wee,” he said. “Do you want to do a wee?” “Yes,” he said, and toddled off to the potty. He sat on it. “No,” he said, getting up.  knowing Son 2 to be a child who can wee on the bathroom carpet whenever he feels like it, I said “Oh go on Son 2, do a wee on the potty and I’ll give you a biscuit.”  Up he sprang, the potty forgotten. “Bisbik.  Bisbik.”  A heat-seeking missile, following me, his course unswerving “Bisbik. Bisbik.”  We haven’t got any, so I went upstairs to hunt in my briefcase, which is where I put the free ones you get sometimes in coffee shops. He burst into tears thinking he wasn’t going to get one. ”Bisbik.”  

Son 1 aged 4y 9m has been in Nursery since a few days before he was six months old.  When I first left him he was a babe in arms, with no hair and huge blue eyes.  Today was his last day in Nursery, a scruffy schoolboy in shorts, falling down socks, floppy hair, and dancing eyes.  He has the summer off and then he’s in school. I feel like I’m on some mad express train racing past these milestones so fast I can hardly see them go.  Surely it’s only a minute since he left the Day Nursery for this one. http://mumsnet.com/blogs/serenedays/2008/09/01/last-day/ We have Three Things to celebrate now: Son 1 leaving Nursery, Son 1 getting a Good School Report, and Son 1 saving my big leather chair from Son 2 aged 21m (the biro still hasn’t come off.)

Nobody told me you have to give the teachers and teaching assistants presents on the last day of term. It was like a wedding in there. A table set aside for the floral arrangements, carefully wrapped presents and pretty carrier bags. All the little children conveying in their gifts. Except one. We had a card which Son 1 made for Miss Lovely before we set out.  How do people find out this stuff? I’ve spent all week checking and checking again that the other children weren’t going to turn up in their own clothes today… and then they all sneak the present thing in.  I rang Wonder Nanny to beg her to sort it. ”Oh yes, when I was a Nursery Nurse we were always getting presents.”

1.  Watchful and wakeful

2.  Closing Time

3.  Mummies Night Out

Son 2 aged 1 woke up every 30 minutes yesterday evening.  He’s not in his cot, he’s on the double bed, where I’ve been lying next to him to get him to sleep.  Because he’s teething/missing his breast feed/missing Son 1 aged 4/missing Wonder Nanny/missing The Man.  And he’s now rousing himself every time he comes into light sleep and hollering for the missing body next to him.  This evening he’s only woken up 3 times.  How much Better Things Are Getting.

It was his last day at the Old Nursery today.  From tomorrow, Wonder Nanny looks after him 4 days a week.  I was up at 6 and didn’t stop, trying to get all three of us ready so I could drop Son 2 off, drive another 7 miles to drop Son 1 aged 4 off and still get into The Office on time. It was very hard on Son 2, the first into Nursery and the last out, as Son 1 and I charged cross country to try to get him before closing time.  We didn’t make it.  My fault.  I’d stopped off at a supermarket on the way to get the cash to settle up with the Old Nursery before I picked up Son 1.  (Couldn’t find cheque book.)  When I got there, late, they said “Oh yes. We’ll send you the bill. Didn’t have time to do it today.”

Some friends came round in the evening for a quick cuppa and a chat.  We cleared out The Man’s shelf of hula hoop, chili crisps and After Eights.  Son 2 only cried once when they were here.  It was good to see them, and we have a lofty aim of a once-weekly Mummies Night Out, which we could invite other people to drop in on as and when.