Almost two years on

Its almost two years since Baby was born and I have been rather bad at updating this diary.  Its partly because I am rubbish at writing regularly and partly because I have been genuinely busy over the last 24 months.  A brief update...

It has been a very steep learning curve going back to work full-time and trying to spend sufficient time as a family to make life interesting for Baby.  I must say that our nursery is brilliant and Baby comes home everyday having had a great day and made progress with becoming a little man.  We feel happy leaving him there for the day as we know he loves the people who look after him, and they are affectionate towards him.  He has made friends with the other kids in his room and is gradually learning the social norms for a group.  We were worried how we would be able to teach him to share things and be considerate of other people as he is an only child and pretty much always gets his way at home.  Nursery has been great for that.  It was worth the time visiting the nurseries near us to make a decision as to which was the best suited to our needs and hopes for him.  We got very different vibes and impression of each of the ones we visited but the right one just clicked- both my husband and I picked the same nursery without hesitation.  

Choosing a nursery near home was a good decision as it meant that we could still drop him off or pick him up easily if one of us were ill and needed some rest.  And the other kids live nearby.  As they get older there will be scope for the kids to meet up for play-dates without the trauma of navigating through London to visit.  We have already started doing birthdays and it does feel like a little community built around the children, which is more than we ever expected as London is not a particularly friendly place.  Childcare is expensive- do believe the hype in the media about this and be prepared- but the right childcare is worth every penny.

Baby's vocabulary skills have recently come along in leaps and bounds- we attribute this to the fact that he gets to practice expressing himself everyday, and he's learning from adults and his peers.  We are currently looking forward to the 'inappropriate' words in public moments that seem to be just round the corner as Baby has no qualms with using words like 'poo', 'fart', 'bum' whenever he fancies.  Having a child is daunting, going back to work after having one is daunting but it is incredibly rewarding, and it isn't actually as terrifying as I imagined it would be.  I guess the fact that lots and lots of people have been coping since time immemorial should have been a clue that things are not all that bad.  People say raising a child in London is madness; actually its not quite as they say.  London offers lots of learning opportunities to a child.  I have been trying some of these out and, hopefully, will be able to share these with you here shortly.

It is now time to start looking at schools.  This was a bit more complicated than I expected but I have found what I learnt to be very interesting.  It is not particularly easy to navigate the schooling system in the U.K., especially as I wasn't educated here and everything is new to me.  However, I believe that even local people find the system complicated.  I would strongly encourage you to visit schools near you as soon as possible.  As with nurseries, we found each of the ones near us to be very different and the right one(s) just clicked from the start of the visit.  The complication is that, unlike with private nurseries, we have very little control over which school we will be allocated.  Unless, of course, we chose to use a private school.  More on that when I have consolidated my thoughts.

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