she's leaving home

Sunday's starting at a small playgroup this week.

In another classic example of what people have been known to call 'Molly's Luck', the place just fell in my lap via a much more jacked friend whose little girl (same age as Sunday) will be starting there too.
(Actually it's a new little school opening up a few doors down from my friend's house so maybe it kind of fell into her lap too.)
Anyhoo, I've been very excited about it - loving the idea of Sunday playing with other little kidlets 2 or 3 times a week and blissfully anticipating an extra free morning for writing - happily telling people that she'll be starting school 'next year'.

But, now it is next year, now in fact she's starting this week and I am, naturally, now riddled with guilt and emotion and feeling more than a little weepy.

Friday was two and half when she started preschool. She'd been talking for 18 months and we'd been chatting about school for many weeks before she started.
She totally got the concept, was very excited about it, knew I'd be back to collect her in a couple of hours. When I dropped her off that first morning she happily scrambled into the sandpit without a backward glance while I wept pathetically behind my dark glasses and sat outside in the hot car for a completely unnecessary 15 minutes just in case she noticed I was gone and cried for me (ha!) and fought the urge to phone my mother and blubber incoherently.
Obviously I blame all this emotion on the fact that I was 8 months pregnant at the time.

With Sunday. Mah baby.
She'll only be two in March, she's still prattling away in mostly incoherent baby talk. We understand her but will anyone else? Her bottom lip quivers when I leave her with her beloved nanny, she still cries as she drives away with my Mum, whom she loves. She's a clinger, this youngest daughter of mine.
How on earth will she take to being left with virtual strangers?

The thought of her navigating snack, peer interaction, adult guidance from someone other than the 4 or 5 key grown-ups in her life, hurried mornings getting ready and mostly, my leaving her there and driving away, suddenly has me feeling very wobbly.

I know that so many parents have weathered this experience with much younger children than Sunday, and I know there's a whole bunch of reasons she'll be fine - not least of all that she's watched her sister happily go off to, and come home from, school for ages now - but still ...
She doesn't have to go to school. This is not a necessity born from my work situation or a lack of other child care options, and that's why I'm feeling conflicted about it.

Sunday's starting playschool 'cos it suits me, because I've decided it'll be a good idea. Are my motives selfish? Am I potentially putting her through premature separation anxiety for all the wrong reasons?

No. She'll love it, even if it does take a few traumatic goodbyes. And I've no doubt the trauma will be more mine than hers.
She'll love it and she'll thrive and in a few short weeks I'll look back at this post and laugh at myself and my indulgent parental angst.

As usual this is my shit, which I'm trying to disguise as concern for my child. This is my baggage and my baggage is this:
I've realised this last week, that 2011 was our last year of having a baby in the house. I am 100% confident and sure that I don't want another one, but I'm shocked at the finality of the thing - no. more. babies.
By the end of this year Sunday will be nearly three, she'll be losing those baby curves, her face will be that of a little girl, she'll be talking and doing and growing so very much more independently of me. Mah baby.

My baby's taking her first steps off into the world. Come Thursday expect to find me weeping in a hot car.

10 alternative NY resolutions

I don't make New Year's resolutions. I don't believe it setting myself up for failure really. But I did have some fun today thinking of a list of resolutions I wish I could make, and act on.
You know, if I wasn't such a conscientious citizen, loving mother, supportive partner, all round nice person yada yada. If I had less concern for consequence and far less regard for my fellow (hu)man.

In 2012, in an alternative universe, I would pledge to ...

1. embrace my inner road rage and start acting on it
2. swear more (if that's possible)
3. allow my kids to watch heaps of trash TV
4. buy a deep-fryer, and use it copiously
5. never return calls
6. start smoking, again
7. say what I'd really like to say on twitter
8. spout unfounded vitriol and pessimism about the 'state of the country' and bemoan what will become of us
9. boycott Woolworths entirely for the year on the basis of them being unethical thieving shmucks
10. not cook a single thing unless I expressly feel like it, or could use my deep-fryer.

Wouldn't that be nice? Or at least selfishly indulgent and satisfying.
Which by its very nature would be nice.

In fact, I think I might commit to two of the resolutions on this list after all. One has to start a new year with some goals right?

Whatever your resolutions, plans or secret desires may be, I hope some or all of them come true this year.
Ahoy 2012!