Georgie started Reception in September, and Lydia began doing 3 mornings a week at pre-school at the same time, which has been amazing for both girls and, I’m not going to lie, pretty great for me too. As I blogged about previously, I’ve struggled a lot with my health this Autumn and having child free time to take time out for myself and get the basics done has really helped.
At the end of November I convinced my doc to let me go back on the medication that worked for my chronic headaches & migraines back before I had the kids, and things have been steadily improving since then – but December has been completely bonkers for another reason – Christmas with kids is a Very Big Deal. Especially once they have started school!
Lydia’s pre-school Christmas stuff has been fairly easy; a nativity sing-a-long one morning and a Christmas party another morning. Both all very sweet and nothing needed from us but a pack or two of paper plates and turning up with Lydia in an adorable angel dress one morning. It was the same dress Georgie wore the year before at their sing-a-long, which was enough to make me have fuzzy sentimental feelings!
It is such a fantastic pre-school playgroup with a relaxed family atmosphere and the staff work really hard to make all the kids feel at ease, and I’m happy to be able to mention that partly thanks to the amazing prizes lots of brands donated we raised over £400 in the Christmas raffle.
For Georgie though, it’s been a different story. Her December has been action packed, starting with the school Christmas disco on the 4th December, and going non-stop from then to when she collapsed in an exhausted poorly state a few days ago, missing her class Christmas party on Thursday & Christmas jumper day on Friday. It was bad luck she came down with such a bad bug right at the end of term, bless her. She was so sad to miss the last few days.
We’ve had weeks of stories about their nativity rehearsals, culminating in two performances – one during school hours and a second one in the evening the day after which was nice for those parents who couldn’t go to one in working hours. Georgie was an angel and the whole performance was great with fun songs and kids obviously all enjoying themselves. Our little rascal was in the front row and managed to show off her belly to the whole audience by pulling up her dress… and then doing it again the next day, apparently!
Georgie has also had a Cinderella pantomime to watch at school, Christmas Lunch one day, her first end of term assembly, a Christmas Fair (where I managed to somehow spend a tenner in about 15 minutes – all for a good cause!), and some extra bits thrown in for good measure – a birthday party one weekend, a few visits to Santa for the blog, and all sorts of madness. This is on top of all of the usual Christmas preparations as well… I’m looking forward to a few days peace before Christmas! There’s no doubt that Christmas with kids is really enjoyable as it is all magical again, but it’s exhausting too!
