F had her first taste of day care today. She went for a couple of hours of playing with other toddlers and near-toddlers at a local church hall. Good fun for her, I hoped, plus lots of new ideas for movement and some new toys to bash around. Her smurfs are starting to unionise, I suspect, I felt they needed a day of rest.
Being a parent makes me terribly competitive. From quite a competitive start, as well. It's not a race! I keep telling myself. Nobody is keeping track of how quickly your daughter grows, or when they hit milestones. Well, okay, they are, the midwife does it. But that's just quietly professional, there's not prizes or anything. Are there? There should be, is my basic instinct. And F should win them all.
The reason I mention this is that in a group of about ten children (I lost count very quickly), F was the only one there not actually walking or crawling independently. "Oh, that's fine, Valkyria/Odin* didn't start until he/she was twelve months" people kept telling me reassuringly. Except the proud mum sitting next to me, whose son was two weeks younger and leaping balletically round the mat like a young Nureyev.
The singing circle was kind of an ordeal - I knew slightly less than half of the songs. F has a CD of kids songs, some of which have osmotically embedded themselves into my brain through repetition. Not enough to do anything more than poorly and obviously lip-sync my way through the Swedish equivalent of 'Baa Baa Black Sheep', anyway. Which is 'Bä, bä, vita lamm' and has a totally different tune, just to make it even worse.
Hampered as usual by my dismal Swedish, I felt a bit gloomy by the end. Everyone else sat in the common room having fika whilst their kids romped and cavorted independently round the far end of the room. I sat with the kids, holding F up so she could play with the big plastic activity centre she wanted to grab. Lying next to it wasn't quite good enough, that made her get shouty and impatient, and whilst she's extremely close to crawling or pulling herself upright, she's a shade away from it still. So I'm still her bionic walking machine.
F had a splendid time, which was obviously more important. Other than the bit where she unexpectedly nearly stood up and faceplanted vigorously onto her nose, at least. All the other kids came and stood round me in an accusing circle, staring at F while she howled or checking back with their own parents to see if they'd learnt from my mistake. Perhaps no actual judgement was passed, I don't know, but for a moment there it felt quite Lord of the Flies. My head certainly felt at risk of being left on the handles of the inflatable rocking horse as a warning.
We're going back next week. By then, I will have taught myself the lyrics to all Swedish nursery rhymes and F will be able fly. That'll show 'em.
*Not their real names, sadly
No comments:
Post a Comment