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. Lavender Blue Dilly Dilly

2.  You Will Be King Dilly Dilly

3.  An Essential Oil

I put a drop of lavender oil on the boys’ pillows last night.  Son 2 aged 17m woke screaming when The Man went to bed, and I helped him back to sleep.  Then just a yell in the night, and that was it.  Son 1 aged 4y 5m apparently woke afterwards and The Man went into bed with him for a while to get him to sleep.   And then he slept through.  And I, whisper very quietly, got a Reasonable Night’s Sleep.  So. Fingers crossed.  Positive Thinking.  Oh The Things I Can Think Up If Only I Can Get Some Sleep.

Parents’ evening at Nursery again.   Son 1 is lovely.  Polite.  Well-behaved.  Says please and thank you.  Knows his numbers.  Listens. Has an excellent vocabulary.  A confident speaker.  A joy.  Interested in everything.  Well socialised.  Plays well with the other children.  A great sense of right and wrong.  Congratulations to his parents.  He’s a bit slow putting his shoes on, but that’s about it for bad points.  Son 1 got two bonus stars for his chart for his glowing report.  He has eaten cucumber again, and got a star for that too. 

We took Son 2 to the Nursery, and he was lovely.  Tottered over to Son 1 and tried joining in his drawing.  Waved bye bye to the Nursery teacher.  He’s saying Bye Bye very well now too, and his MaMa is impeccable.  He chatted nearly all the way to the Nursery, and stayed awake all the way back as well.  They both ate pasta and pesto for tea, then yoghurts, and then books and bath and bed.  I put two drops of lavender oil on Son 2’s sleeping bag and he passed out almost instantly, and hasn’t cried yet.  Son 1 had one large splodge on his pillow, yet still hung on for five Paddington books, and would have had more if I hadn’t put my foot down. I am going to have to check on Son 2 before I go to bed.