Thursday 10 January 2008

Oh brave new world...




So, it's here at last. The day I've alternately dreaded and looked forward to for what seems like months.


Boy #2 started nursery this morning.


I am sitting here alone.


No small person sleeping silently in the room next door, bumbling around the flat with his brother's scooter, walking into the table, standing next to me in the kitchen stealing fruit as my back is turned or sitting on my feet when he wants to tell me it really is time for lunch now, mama.


No toddler sneaking into the office every time my back is turned and switching on the printer, pulling all the magazines off the sitting room table and spreading them around the floor in a crazy collage, and helping me with the laundry by putting the clean clothes into the dirty linen basket.


No dark-haired bombshell smiling cheekily as he hangs onto my legs demanding 'book! book!' until I give in and stop what I'm doing to indulge him (yet again). No little tyrant staring out other children at the supermarket and melting the cashier's hearts with his grin when they pay attention to him.


I have a long list of things to do with these extra three mornings a week, starting with actually making use of the gym membership we've been paying for and ignoring, moving on through decluttering the boy's toys, getting rid of anything in my wardrobe I haven't worn since Boy #2's arrival, and - mainly - doing all those jobs that we've been putting off since we moved in here nearly 2 years ago.


Not sure I can stand the excitement, actually...


(I will be back shortly - in less gloomy frame of mind, one would hope!)

19 comments:

  1. That is one adorable little face. I'd miss him, too.

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  2. Thanks Kaycie - I think so, but then I am allowed to be just slightly biased...

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  3. So sad they have to grow up, especially when they look that cute. But just think of all that time for blog posts! Or for cups of coffee while you decide which job to do first, by which time the clock will have ticked and it'll time to pick him up.

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  4. ...and I will have achieved even less than I would if both boys were home, GPM...

    Ho hum - time to snap out of it and get on with being depressed by the full length mirrors at the gym (alongside shouting at their scales that they can't POSSIBLY be right). Blast Christmas...

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  5. I want to make some flippant comment about how we'll all be there shortly with some champagne to toast your freedom, but I can't.

    I remember the day my youngest one went off to pre-school and it was scary. No more excuses. No more built in rationalizations. Time to make good on promises to yourself.


    The good thing is that that feeling is very fleeting. You will enjoy this. I promise. It just won't be today.

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  6. He is a cutie. I started dropping my own little sweetE off this year, but then I scurry off to work. So the whole empty house thing will probably happen next year. You want them to grow up, but you want them to stay little. If only we could slow down time and kind of have both.

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  7. Gosh - what a cutie patootie -

    Do it for the kids!!

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  8. He is beautiful, the Mystic Meg in me sees him as a prop in the England team...
    Motherhood seems to be all about the erosion of your pre-children identity until the day you are handed some free time...and then you have no idea who you are anymore.
    Good luck, i reckon soon you'll be loving it. I only have 9 months until my time comes! (last child starting pre-school, not another baby you understand)
    Pigx

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  9. He's a very cute one, you'll be ok...would you like a piglet to cuddle? (apparently they smell a bit, but you won't notice after a while...

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  10. Pig in the Kitchen puts it perfectly. It's all so bittersweet. You yearn for a free morning, and then you don't know what to do with it. RC is right. The feeling will pass. Unlike her, though, I find that I don't really ever get round to all that stuff I promised myself. I just let everything else expand slightly, to fill the newly available time. The 'to do' list is slightly shorter these days, but only slightly. And the feelings of inadequacy have gone up, of course.

    Come on over and have a coffee. That'll fill up the time perfectly. Nice Starbucks round the corner here, if you can face the 12-hour flight (not direct, I'm afraid).

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  11. Gosh ladies - you do know how to come through for a blogger, don't you?

    I think that emotions have been magnified by the fact that he was 2yesterday, so I really can't think of him as a baby any longer; he is well and truly on the way to boy-hood. So starting nursery today kind of rubbed salt in the wound. But he had a great time, by all accounts - and I did (against all expectations and predictions) make it to the gym. But damn those full-length mirrors!

    RC, you're right, champagne is called for. And I will drink it - but as you say, just not today.

    Ped, it's funny you say that. When we started Boy #1 at nursery it was totally different; maybe because I was already expecting Boy #2, but mostly because, as you say, I was scurrying off to work. I clearly need something else to think about. Now if only I could find a job I want that allows me to work 4 hours a day 3 times a week!

    Aims; I'll do my best (and thanks for the sweet comment about the most beautiful 2 year-old in town. Biased? Moi?)

    Pig, you truly ARE Mystic Meg; we see him as exactly the same thing (with his older brother coaching from the sidelines not wanting to get mud on his knees). And spot on with the whole identity theft thing - I'm hoping to find mine in lost property now that I have time to look for it!

    (And for a moment there I thought you were going for number 5...)

    Frog, thanks for the offer but having looked at the photo on your blog I'm not sure my nipples are up to it...

    Iota, I think the inadequacy thing is an implant they give you in the delivery suite when you're too spaced out from giving birth to notice. And I suspect that my free time will fill up much as yours has. There will be a lot of fussing about, of course, to convince Husband I'm to busy for him to add to my to-do list, but in reality, it will be same jobs but with more coffe breaks.

    Speaking of which, make mine a tall skinny hot chocolate please (I need something to get through this disgusting weather!)

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  12. What a little charmer. I think I'd be sad too.

    When my little Sprog started having a life independant of me, I took a while to adjust. It's natural. It's normal. It's just not that easy.
    But now, I wouldn't have it any other way. He's happy, so I'm happy.
    Embrace your new freedom. And bugger the gym for the moment - eat some cream cakes, it's an emergency.

    Mya x

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  13. Potty Mummy: Just don't get pregnant again, overcome by a wave of nostalgia....it's easily done. Go out to shops where bringing a toddler would significantly cramp your style - you'll find it wonderfully liberating.

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  14. Awww....I can't imagine what you are going through and with mine 14 months old I don't want to yet....hang in there. He's still your "baby"

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  15. Mya, thanks. I would say something more effusive, but I'll just spit cake crumbs into my keyboard...

    OM, good point, but don't worry. I may be feeling nostalgic, but not THAT nostalgic. I mean, it would be guaranteed as to be another boy - and then I would be outnumbered 4:1. No thankyou!

    J'sM - and he probably always will be - even when he's 6'4"...

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  16. Just wait until they're 15 and don't even want you to say goodnight any more.

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  17. What a lovely little boy! He is a real cutie. I remember that first day at nursery so well... it does get easier. Be gentle with yourself. xxx

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  18. Frog - sorry, I couldn't resist...

    GPM - I know. Must make the most of any cuddles I can get now...

    MAL - Actually, as you probably worked out by the following post already - it already did. Get easier, that is...

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