It Is a Tough World Out There

Shame they don’t tell you before you have kids how the first days (weeks? Years?) of school are going to be like, because I would have enrolled on a training camp to toughen up. Or, better still, decide to hibernate, leave the husband deal with it, and wake up when it is time for summer holiday again. I may not have opted for the smartest thing to do when one is so bad at handling the drama involved, namely not to have a kid at all, but that’s only because I am not wise enough. 

To cut a (few days) long story short, things have not gone too well, school-wise, so far.

We did everything right, that is, before school effectively started and everything went pear shape. The list of things to bring had been carefully read, stuff bought and items crossed. Clothes had been tagged (admittedly in the night prior to the first day of school, but tagged anyhow). Cheerful comments about how big a boy N°1 now was and how excited it was that he would now be going to school. Visit to the hairdresser done. We even managed a shot of the four of us by the house, cheerfully leaving home for school on that first day.

and also a shot of the two of us looking relax and happy (I am the queen of faking)

A few minutes later, "cheerful" was a word which had been crossed out of our home dictionary.

I am lying a tiny bit since first school-day was actually OK (ish), but that's not saying much since the first day was actually one hour, half of which I spent at school with n°1.

On day 2, The Dad called me after having dropped Kid n°1 at school, to let me know n°1 was crying his head off when he left, and had said, unprompted, on the way to school that “really, he did not mind being left by himself at school”. If something should have raised the flag, I guess that was it.

On day 3 and 4, I took n°1 to school, and both mornings he tried to dive from the teacher’s assistant’s arms, through the glass door and in my arms, and I could hear him shout from the end of the corridor that he wanted to go home with me.

In between, I’ve had n°1 telling me he did not want me to start working again, as if I did not manage to build up enough guilt on my own.  He’s also been waking us up up to four times a night, something none of our kids has ever done, not even when they were only a few days old, or when n°2 was born, or when we moved home (I knew we would pay for that luck, sooner or later). And if you ever wondered whether sleep deprivation helps seeing things in a brighter light, I can ensure you, it does not. And what to reply to a little boy who is telling you he is “a bit scared” because there are “too many children” at school? “Wait, you’ve only met 28 of them out of 350”?

I know it’ll get better. At least I hope it will. In the meantime, the silver lining of this drama (if I really must come up with one) is that his sister is meanwhile starting day-care, all smiles and cute, funny noises, and I don’t even have time to realise that, starting next week when she’ll go to day-care three days a week, I will miss 42% of those smiles and cute, funny noises.

In the midst of all this, I have decided to sign up for my first 10K in... ages. I may not do too well, but at least, I now have "sleep deprivation" and "unlimited stress" to add to "lack of specific training" on my list of excuses when it is time to justify my appalling performance.