Our nanny canceled at 8:30 this morning. That left me to cancel on the dentist and preschool at the last minute, as the latter requests you not bring your kids on tours. I sent the preschool an e-mail explaining the situation, and the said to bring the kids. Here’s the sequence of events:
830 – N cancels
837 – E-mail preschool
946 – Hear back from preschool to bring kids
1030 – See email from preschool and nurse B and get her and L out of the house as fast as humanly possible with much suppressed cursing on my part. I’m trying to clean up my language. So far, I’m not doing a great job.
1045 – Scheduled visit start time
11 – Leave Newcastle
1115 – Arrive at preschool
They were quite snarky with me upon my arrival for being late, which I can understand to some extent, but on the other hand, I didn’t expect them to tell me to come anyway with the kids since the website explicitly states this is not OK, and so I wasn’t checking my email all that frequently. Getting two kids, one age 5 months and needing to be fed, out of the house in 30 minutes is a minor miracle. I turned on all my limited charm and buttered up the lady, who gave me a tour. The preschool turned out to be great. I loved it. However, they told me the place has a waiting list already.
I left with the registration form. Because I really like the preschool, I decided that I should fill it out on the spot. I discovered I didn’t have a pen, but I didn’t want to brave the preschool again so I drove to a grocery store a few minutes away and hauled the kids in and out to buy pens. (I also picked up a few other items, so it wasn’t a wasted trip.) I drove back to the preschool and hauled the kids out of the car again to drop off the form. When I got home, I e-mailed the head of the preschool who told me it was “unlikely” we’d get in from position #5 on the waiting list. I’m so annoyed at myself for not being more on top of things and visiting sooner! Arghh!
In short, if we’d gotten in here, I’d just sit back and see how the lottery turned out with preschool #1 and then make a decision. Instead, I feel like I need to go visit more preschools until I find one that still has spots that I actually want to send L to. B had to go over to the university today and got home late, and right now I’m just feeling exhausted. In fact, this blog entry is procrastination from changing the sheets on my bed that I found (baby) poop on a few hours ago.
I’m beginning to understand why a huge gap exists by the time kids start school. I am generally pretty on top of things, though I’m a little off my game thanks to having a baby, and I’m still struggling to find the best thing for L. I’m guessing a lot of kids don’t have a parent running around to five different preschools trying to find the perfect situation for them. Of course, lots of kids – like me – don’t even attend preschool, so it’s certainly not essential. However, I know that when I started kindergarten, I was significantly behind both socially and academically. I caught up, thanks in part to my mom reading Heidi, Stuart Little, The Borrowers and others end to end while I was in first grade, but I guess some kids just get farther and farther behind.