My baby starts school at the end of the summer, and I’m not ready

OK, time to ‘fess up: this post isn’t really about Max preparing to start school. No, this post is really just a blatant excuse for me to show you this picture, which he did at nursery this week:

They were asked to draw something to show how they felt about starting school, and what they were most looking forward to, so naturally Max drew himself having a pee in the “big” toilets. He colour-popped the “pee” and everything. We’re thinking of getting it framed.

A few hours after the nursery staff gleefully handed this over to me, Terry and I headed to the school to meet Max’s teacher (Who he had already informed me was, “Really, really beautiful. Much more beautiful than you, mummy.” Ouch.), and find out a bit more about how the transition from nursery to primary school will work. (Oh, and we also got to have a quick look inside the nursery, which was a pretty big deal for us, really, given that Max has been going there since March 2021, but, thanks to Covid, we’d never once set foot in the place.)

So we’re all set for school. Max will actually remain at nursery throughout the summer (We’re really fortunate in that the nurseries here are open 50 weeks per year, closing only at Christmas), but he will officially “graduate” next week (Yes, there’s a ceremony…), before starting school in August. Which, I mean, HOW? Like, he was literally JUST BORN? How is he going to school THIS YEAR?

He is, though; which means I have just a few short weeks to get my head around that fact.

Now, as it happens, I’m actually not particularly worried about how Max will get on at school. I know he’s more than ready for it, and we’re very lucky in that the school he’s going to is our local one; it’s attached to his current nursery, so he already knows the building and a lot of the staff – not to mention the fact that most of the kids who’ll be in his class are his friends from nursery, so he’ll know pretty much everyone already. Because our village is so small, there will only be 8 children in Max’s P1 class; that means they’ll be sharing class space with Primary 2 (It’s a really small school…), but there’s still a very low teacher-to-student ratio, and we’ve been really impressed with everything we’ve seen of the place so far, so we don’t have any concerns about the school at all.

It’s … well, it’s the holidays I’m worried about. Because while nursery is, as I said, open for 50 weeks of the year, school seems to be on holiday all the damn time, basically, and, as we’re both self-employed and therefore don’t get paid for time off, I’m absolutely mystified about how we’re supposed to make that work. (No, we can’t afford a child-minder, unfortunately.) So far, my only real plan is for us to somehow become fabulously wealthy – ideally in time for the October break – and then just spend all of the school holidays traveling, but that plan doesn’t seem all that realistic, sadly, so we’re going to have to come up with a Plan B. You know, just in case.

We have another two months to work all of that out, though. In the meantime, we’re just enjoying the last few weeks of Max’s nursery career, which has been notable, not only for the huge amount of paintings and other “creations” he’s brought home with him, but also for that one time he claimed to have “narcolepsy” and the nursery called me to check, and that other time when he told them we didn’t ever feed him, and I spent the next week worried they were going to send social services round or something.

Oh, and who could forget the Valentine’s gift he made me this year?

Yes.

All joking aside, excited though he is to start school, I know Max is really going to miss nursery. It’s been an amazing year-and-a-bit for him, and it makes me quite sad to think this phase of his life is already almost a thing of the past. Parenthood: providing all the harsh reminders of your own mortality, folks!

Like it or not, though, in a few short weeks we will no longer be the parents of a nursery-age child, and will, instead, have a schoolboy to look after. Hold me, please…