As One Door Closes...

After a whole year of part time nursery class, Squeaky's broken up for the summer holidays, and is moving upstairs to reception full time in September.  While she knows the children and the teachers, and it's exactly where she goes to Breakfast Club every day, it's still a pretty big change, and she's been showing some anxiety about it all.  Clingier than I've seen her in a very long time, wanting to stay with me rather than go to activities and join in with other children.  Sometimes I think we forget how much our children know, and what seems insignificant to us can be huge to them.  Nursery is all the school she's experienced, so it must be pretty big.

In addition to moving upstairs, and going full time, there's more changes going on at school.  Rather than being the last remaining separate Infants school in the borough, the school is merging with the linked Junior school that pretty much all the Year 3's move on to.  The head of the Infants is retiring after over 20 years at the school, and both schools are getting a new name, motto and uniform.  It's quite the end of an era, as the Infants school has been there for 112 years.  Forget parents having gone to the school, we're talking Great Grandparents, and beyond!  That's something I fell in love with when we first visited, the real sense of history and place.

The new headmaster is doing a good job of involving parents in being an active part of the new school though.  We've been invited to make suggestions for the school name, logo and motto.  And I'm secretly more than a little bit proud that my motto suggestion has been adopted by the school, so we're already making our mark on the future.  You can dress it up any way you like, but it's still a tie-breaker competition, and my inner comper can't resist a good tie-break.

The challenge of full time school, for us, is going to be all about the food.  I'm confident Squeaky will cope with the hours and the work, but the big question is will she eat?  And if so, what?

We're trying our hardest to get her to expand her diet, with some small successes, but she's what can be politely described as a stubborn creature - it's the Capricorn in her.  I've looked over the school dinner menus, and over the three week cycle, she'd probably eat about 5 meals, and that's being optimistic.  The alternative, obviously, is packed lunches.  Again, a battle.  When she eats only a limited range of foods, I'm terrified of falling foul of the lunchbox police & having my marmite sandwiches and babybels confiscated.  I have enough trouble getting us up and dressed in time for school in the mornings, never mind making a packed lunch as well (as you can tell by the rubbish I eat in the office). And really, bento?  No offence to those who can, but this is my reality. I have neither the time nor inclination to make pretty garden scenes out of cress, carved tomatoes and pasta shapes.  Which will only get swapped for someone else's squashed jam sandwich anyway.  If I had time for that in the morning, maybe I'd have time to blog more often!