Not a backward glance!

We walked into the school playground on Wednesday with both our hearts aflutter, I think, but for very different reasons.

I was worried I might sob whilst A2 was just excited.

There was the usual confusion as everyone tried to find pegs, file away their bags and then I turned to see A2’s back disappearing into the classroom to find all his friends without a word of goodbye!

Er… I felt abandoned and really hard done to. I was at the very least expecting a little bit of a hug. I confess I did have to hurry out of the playground at that point just in case a tear spilled from my eye but by the time I got back to my car my equilibrium had returned and, whilst I wasn’t jumping for joy, I was focused on getting home and getting as much done in the following three hours as I could.

On my return to collect A2 after lunch there was a pleasant schoolgate chat with other mums. I’d quite forgotten just how sociable those little gatherings can be. And then A2 wandered out with a little less energy than he had gone in with earlier in the day. Just half a day and he looked quite shattered although he managed to revive himself by the time we were home once more and still wasn’t too keen to go to bed at his usual bedtime hour.

We’re reading something I found online at the moment for a bedtime story. It’s about miniature spacemen who fall to earth and it’s really quite fun. I open it up on my tablet and read. There are new chapters appearing every so often so we’re not reading it every night but A2 is enjoying it. You can find it here www.piggyinthemiggle.wordpress.com  I still don’t feel it’s quite the same as reading from a book, having the feel of a book in your hands, but I suspect that before long A2 will be asking for his own e-book reader once he’s learned to read. His will be the generation that grows up more used to reading from a screen than from a book.

Funny then that all the boxes under his bed are full of books that we’ve read cover to cover and that he can repeat word for word in most cases. He does enjoy flicking through the pages of those books but I’m quite convinced that once he can read himself he will choose to do so electronically.

So school has passed the first day test and has been pronounced much better than nursery because nursery is boring. We’ll see how long that lasts!