Since we last properly caught up, quite a few things have changed.
That baby I was always writing about is a baby any more. Now nearly eighteen months old, she’s walking, running, climbing, on the cusp of talking, and the primary reason for why my the muscles in my knees and lower back are constantly on fire.
Although there’s still a few relics of the baby phase left over with her—bouncing on the yoga ball being prime amongst them—it’s clear that she’s well into toddlerhood. Soon enough she’ll be stepping through the doors to the same day care that her elder sister started almost three years ago.
Speaking of my eldest, that’s probably where the biggest change is taking place at the moment. As the beginning of September rolled around, daughter number one started full-time school.
On the surface, perhaps it wasn’t that big of a leap for her. After all, she’d already attended the nursery of the same school for the previous year. She was used to being away from us for most of the day as she attended a private nursery in the mornings as well. She’d gotten used to wearing the uniform every day (even though it’s still a fight getting her into it), and she has already made plenty of friends that are starting alongside her.
Not that much had really changed. At least, that’s what I thought for about two days.
Buried under permission slips
I’ve written here before about the Admin Mountain, and holy shit does it get a whole lot bigger once they’re in school for real.
They’ve got school photographs that need to be taken, so you need to sign permission slips for those. Oh, and arrive at the school an hour earlier than usual if you want them to have one with their sibling. Oh, and they’re £27 EACH for just the digital version. Great, thanks.
You’ve got to sign permission slips for them to go on school outings, so obviously they need to know her allergies, medicines, blood type, bone density, star and Zodiac signs1, and more for those forms. Those slips are just for community outings though—for proper school trips, don’t worry—you’ll get more forms for those.
You need to give permission for flu vaccinations. You need to bring in a bag of their stuff that describes their interests and personality. You need a 5x7 framed picture of them and their family to hang on the classroom wall. All lovely stuff, but it takes us time—the one thing we parents lack above all else.
No matter, we thought. As my wife and I always manage to do, we conjure up some time from nowhere (that “nowhere” being the time we’d usually be watching TV and eating crisps) and get it all done. No one could say we hadn’t kept on top of our parenting paperwork this time.
As we flick on Love is Blind UK as a stimulus for our brains to shut down for an hour or so however, both our phones ping at the same time.
It’s a WhatsApp notification. You know, that one you we all dread. We’ve been added to a group chat.
Cue two days straight of strangers introducing themselves and their kids. So, so many new names and faces for me to awkwardly mix up at the school gates in a couple of days time.
Then the party invitations come flying. Everyone feels the need to RSVP on the group, rather than individually, so yet more phone pinging. Wading through all the messages about kids’ dietary requirements, all I could think was how long it must have taken these poor parents to fill in their permissions forms.
The questions keep coming. Does anyone know what the required PE kit is? How do I order their school lunches? What time is pickup now, is it different than nursery or the same? When’s the next inset day? Are individual photographs on the same day as sibling photographs, or a different day? Never mind Love is Blind, I could have just scrolled through that group to put myself into a lovely long coma instead.
But the point of this isn’t to rant about all the new and weird school admin. Because amidst all this, there’s a kid who's just started something momentous. She’s walking into a new classroom every day, with new teachers, new surroundings and new expectations. Some of her existing friends are there, but there’s plenty of new faces as well.
Never mind my head being stuffed with new information—she’s the one going through the most right now. And don’t we just know about it.
So much stuff for such tiny minds
Parents of kids who’ve already started school will know exactly what I mean when I say that the hours between them coming home from school and going to sleep in those early few weeks of the first school year are quite volatile.
Her mood swings far more wildly than it does at any other time. She’s constantly hungry as soon as she leaves school, but then won’t eat a bite once dinner is ready. She’s so tired to the point where I’m dragging her up the stairs to bed, yet once she’s in her pyjamas all she wants to do is jump on the bed and use me as a flesh-and-bone jungle gym.
Her head is literally spinning with all the new experiences she’s going through right now.
Writing all this down is helpful for me, because I do need reminding that what she—and many kids starting school for the first time right now—are going through is MASSIVE.
Reflecting on the past few weeks, I have found myself to be a bit snappier than usual with her recently. The jump from one kid to two is way bigger than I ever thought it would be, and what little thinking time we have reduces even further, so I haven’t been able to be actively as present in the moment as usual (and that’s not as often as I’d like to begin with), which means my mind shortcuts to authoritative responses—”Stop doing that!”, “Just eat your food!”, “That’s enough!”.
My wife told me the other day about the nine most important minutes of a child’s day: the first three minutes after they wake up (and come and jump in your bed), the first three minutes after you pick them up from school, and the last three minutes before bedtime.
All these outbursts and temper fluctuations throughout the day are really driven by one desire in my—and our—kids: the desire the interaction with us. But let’s face facts, we can’t be everything to them all the time. It’s impossible. Yes, we try our best, but there’s moments in the day where, like Chilli, we just need twenty minutes.
But reading about those three-three minute chunks in the day has validated that feeling in me that I can’t be perfect the entire time—and I don’t have to be. As long as I put my fully active self into those nine minutes of the day, and fully engage with my daughter’s desire for close connection, I don’t feel so guilty for letting standards slide for small portions of the rest of the day.
You don’t need a permission slip for that, either. We’re all humans, just doing our best.
Whilst writing this, it really struck me just how much I’ve missed doing this. I’m slightly annoyed that I let myself get too wrapped up with subscriber numbers, content schedules and deadlines, to the point where I lost my desire to write. But I’m grateful to be back.
Also a big thank you to everyone’s kind words in the last week. It’s reaffirmed that I’ve made the right decision.
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