So himself and myself were invited to crèche for a briefing to discuss our little darling’s likes and dislikes ahead of her first day.
Eva shyly toddled off to explore and we shared a pride filled look before our friendly care-giver proceeded to introduce herself and run through a typical day. We all had a giggle over the chef’s lunch of the day specials and himself’s joke around bringing home leftovers.
Our initial apprehension soon turned to excitement over the wonderful activities Eva would partake in. Himself even got down on the play mat with the other kids to stack blocks.
When it came time to fill in Eva’s personal file with family info, likes and dislike etc our caregiver proffered a seat with a wave of her hand and turned to pick up a sheaf of papers.
This is the point where things started to go downhill – rapidly. We looked around but there was nothing resembling an adult seat, so with a jerk of his head towards the empty kids table I followed himself over to the tiniest seats I’ve ever seen.
Surely he didn’t expect me to sit on one of those. I might never get up.
Its amazing how long-term couples can have a full conversation with each other without ever uttering a word but after much eyeballing at each other we both sat down on toadstool seats around the kids table with our knees touching our chins.
Our caregiver turned around and looked at us startled but being the professional she was, came over and sat down on a beanbag in front of us. I couldn’t even look at himself.
She held up a sheet of paper and poised her pen over it ready to write. In a bubbly voice she slowly asked out loud,” who am I?” In a frenzy I racked my brains back to introductions.
How awful if we failed the test before we even got started. I looked over to himself but he looked as stymied as I was. I could see he was following the same thought process as I and when his mouth shaped the O vowel it came to me and we both shot up our hands and yelled “Yola”.
Our caregiver looked taken-aback and the pen in her hand froze in mid air. Her face turned into a frown. ‘We had gotten her name wrong. How do we get out of this one?’
I gazed at himself for a solution but my shock and horror was mirrored in his. We didn’t dare try any other variations. We stared helplessly at each other wondering whether we should just gather our daughter and leave. I tried to moved but my bum had gone numb.
Suddenly our caregiver let out a yell of laughter and the façade of professionalism slid. She laughed uncontrollably, holding her stomach.
Eventually she managed to pull herself together and between lapses of barely controlled giggles informed us that it wasn’t a test. She was in fact asking the questions from Eva’s point of view for her personal file.
Bewildered, himself and I giggled along with her as though we had always know this. Mortified, I felt myself mention something about a gold star for such good students getting her name right and before I knew it Yola was up getting us a ‘top student’ stamp.
With her back turned I edged myself sideways off the seat and stretched. I could feel the pins and needles begin but it was a distraction from the mortification.
Once the kids saw the ‘top student’ stamp they rushed over to get theirs so himself and I had to line up behind them to receive ours.
Eva looked up at us with our matching stamps with a proud smile from ear to ear and hurled herself into our arms.
We looked at each other over her head and resolved to be top students for the next ten minutes, after all, this was for her.
We only had a few years left before she told us off for embarrassing her rather than hugging us and to be fair there’s a lot worse we’ll do to embarrass her before she even starts primary school.
Mom in a whirlwind... 