the one with the schoolin’

Oh the joys of par­ent­ing.  We’re deal­ing with try­ing to fig­ure out where to send Squidge to school.  I filled out the online appli­ca­tion last week and sent it in.  Our local school isn’t very good so there isn’t a chance she’s going there.  We decided to try to get Squidge into a Church of Eng­land school.  We have 3 which are in our local area but only one that is in our catch­ment area.  The one that is in our catch­ment area is very good and over sub­scribed to the point of ridicu­lous­ness!  We attended (albeit not con­sis­tently or reg­u­larly) church, had Squidge chris­tened there but still that is not enough.  When­ever we attend church we need to get a card stamped to prove atten­dance.  Still that is not enough to get Squidge in.  Because I didn’t know we needed to get any­thing stamped until recently we are now waaay behind on our stamps.  The card holds 20 stamps we only have 3 and there aren’t enough Sun­days before we have to send the card it to get all 20!  One of those things I am kick­ing myself over.  We used to attend reg­u­larly but then stopped about a yr ago.  Squidge was turn­ing into a pain in the butt and even w/ the creche they pro­vide all she wanted to do was run laps around the church.  It was eas­ier to stay home.  Then when I knew she had out­grown that stage it was just eas­ier to stay home watch­ing “Some­thing for the Week­end” and drink­ing tea in my jam­mies.  We’re con­tem­plat­ing send­ing her to pri­vate school. The thing with pri­vate schools is that they cost money– yah who wouldda thunk it!  We’re cur­rently pay­ing for pri­vate nurs­ery so it’s not like we can’t afford the tuition, it’s the extras she’s going to want– dance, music, sports, trips, MILK (yes one of the schools charges an addi­tional £16 for milk). So the seri­ous debate of going back to work begins.  We have always planned on me going back to work once Squidge started school full time.  The ques­tion becomes do I go and get a ‘real’ job or con­tinue with my pho­tog­ra­phy which at the moment is pro­vid­ing me with a spotty income at best.

On Sat­ur­day I went to my friends house for a bit of bak­ing.  We wanted to try The Pio­neer Woman’s cin­na­mon roll recipe and since it makes enough to feed a small army we thought we’d do it together!  It was loads of fun and she has such a fan­tas­tic kitchen– I was seri­ously drool­ing over it the entire time I was there!  We had hoped that the kids would play together but I kind of sus­pected this would happen…

the kid is a sucker for bak­ing so I brought along her apron and bak­ers hat– just in case she needed it. It was won­der­ful chat­ting w/ Rachel about liv­ing in the UK, being a work­ing mum, Eng­lish hus­bands and miss­ing with and deal­ing w/ our fam­i­lies back home.  She’s also an ex-pat so she gets it!  She’s been in Man­ches­ter for 10+ yrs so she’s a lit­tle more with in than I am but hey I’m get­ting there.   I had been telling her about my desire to move and about want­ing to work, feel­ing a bit rud­der­less… you know a good old bitch­ing fest w/ some tea and cin­na­mon rolls.  It was nice to have a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive on par­ent­ing.  I some­times get lost in how I feel and what I am miss­ing out.  I KNOW I’m soo self­ish that way!  It was good for me to hear about how Rachel strug­gles with being a work­ing mom.  The guilt she some­times feels.  How she holds off on dis­ci­pline some­times because she doesn’t want to spend the time being nasty when she only see’s him for a cou­ple of hours at night. It’s not that I am happy that she has these strug­gles, it’s more that it was good for me to see that the other side is not as green as I thought it was!  It was like a wake up call.  Hey  you’re self­ish– be HAPPY you get spend all this won­der­ful time with your daugh­ter.  Be HAPPY she loves to help you bake.  BE HAPPY you ninny!  So that is what I have been doing.  I’ve been enjoy­ing the fact that Squidge is FAB and funny and smiley.

Thanks Rachel for the fan­tas­tic time– loved the bakin’, the talkin’ the good advice and the com­pany.  I think next time we should try some mon­key bread!