Conquering Kindy

I thought I had another year before I was waving goodbye to my little girl at the school gate - but she had other plans. At 3.5 years old she is craving some extra stimulation. I’m not a sit at home all day sort of mum and she had plenty to do but I was beginning to find that I simply couldn’t keep up with her constant need for high end stimulation. I don’t want to be one of those parents who brag about their kids and make huge claims as to what they can do but she is ahead of herself. Add to this the attention sucking vortex of a 6 month old and a very sleep deprived mummy and we had to do something.

After lots, and I mean a lot, of thinking we finally decided that we had to enrol her at a day care centre. Yes - No - Yes - No - Yes - No - OK let’s just do it. I never liked the idea of having to send my children to day care and was waiting to do the pre-prep classes next year. But you know what they say about the best laid plans. Never say never. All that sort of cliched jazz. Anyway, I did a heap of research, visited a lot of centres and after leaving some almost in tears they were that depressing, I finally apprehensively chose one. I am happy with the centre I chose but just wary of all the horror stories that come with day care in general. But the last thing I was going to do was let me daughter know this. She was so excited to be starting school.

All of a sudden her first day of ‘Senior Kindy’ was upon us and I was awake early with excited-nervous jitters and packing her backpack with her hat, a change of clothes, sheets for naptime (yeah - good luck with that!), a jumper just in case, and the all important lunchbox.

We had been to the shops and together we chose a new lunch box for her and stuck a sparkly name sticker on it (this lasted all of 30 minutes before falling off). And together we filled it with delicious mummy-feels-a-little-guilty treats, but in fairness it is all among her most favourite things to eat. Cheese sticks, greek yoghurt with blueberries and honey, butterfly sandwiches, a carrot, homemade trail mix (sounds fancy but really it was just popcorn, pretzels, m&ms, almonds, sultanas, and dried apricots - really a mix of whatever bits and pieces I had in the pantry), a juice, rockmelon, apple and a special mini muffin that we had made a couple of days beforehand. These are delicious and healthy so check out my recipe over here. Wow - on writing it down that’s a lot of food, isn’t it.

I had accidentally booked a dentist appointment at the same time as drop off so with a deep breath I sent her off to her first day of school with Daddy. Now while Daddy was more than qualified for this job I felt that I should have been there, I wanted to be there to make sure she was going to be ok. In the end it seems it really didn’t matter as while laying in the dentist chair being drilled, poked and prodded I was checking my phone every five seconds for an update and it turns out that she told daddy to leave as soon as they walked through the gate. “I’ll be ok Daddy, you can go now”. I’m sure Daddy was thinking, yeah but I’m not.

Meanwhile I had visions of getting lots of things done while I only had one child to care for. I can hear some of you laughing at me already. Yes, I learnt the hard way, I think I only managed to do about 5 things on my list of 20.

We managed to only call to check up on her twice all day and when it came time to pick her up she was intact, smiling and full of stories of all the amazing things she had done that day. I was filled with joy to know that she had not only survived the whole day without her mummy but that she enjoyed it and was excited to go back again. Day one conquered!