Two months after Alice turned three, an email dropped into my inbox letting me know the primary school application process had opened. I didn’t feel ready to start thinking about my little girl going to school, she seemed so little and I decided to ignore it. I am not very good at ignoring things, if there is a job to be done, an email to be read, a text message to send, I just have to do it! So, after two whole days I accepted that this was the start of my little girl going to school or ‘Big school’, as she likes to call it, because she is ‘Big”!
It started with the school visits to have a look around and before Andy and I went on these I thought I knew which school I wanted Alice to go to. I had done the research, listened to lots of lovely mummies, job done! But, as I entered the gates of each school and wandered through the classrooms, I started to think about Alice running though the gates, sitting on the mat listening to a story…I started to look at this ‘process’ differently, thinking about my little girl and was this the perfect fit for her. It played on my mine…
Once all the visits were done, it was then onto completing the application form and letting the council know our choices and in which order. I normally like a process, something that I can logically follow, but I have struggled with this one. Why? because the final box in this process I am not involved in, someone else will decide which school my little girl will go to. It might not even be one of our three choices…
I felt consumed by our decision, was it the right one, should we change the order, what will we do if we don’t get one of our choices. The deadline for making any changes was looming and to be honest I just needed to get past that date, so that I could tell myself there is nothing I can now, but wait until April!!!!
But, here I am a few days after the deadline date and my thoughts have taken a new direction….what if Holly doesn’t get into the same school as Alice, how will we manage getting the girls to two different school…
Honestly what is wrong with me? Holly is sixteen months old…..I am out of control! It’s keeping me up at night worrying that the decision we make for Alice, affects Holly….and trust me I don’t need anything else keeping me up at night, I have my girls to do that 🙂
But, I know what is wrong with me…it’s called ‘being a mummy’…we worry about everything, we feel overwhelming responsibility for our little ones, we want to do the right thing for them and I am ok with that…
Laura x