School daze

So it's happened, Charlie has started school.  This is old news, it's been going on for weeks; it's practically normal.  The other day he turned to me and said 'Mummy - I'm a school boy now!  A school boy!' as if this is a hallowed dream that he has been clutching to his chest along with his nest of buses and model trams.

 

There he is in his uniform, blowing a kiss as he heads out for his first day and here he is at the end of it, smug as anything.

 

He already looks like he belongs on the cover of a Clash album in his uniform, he's all crooked tie and un-tucked shirt.  He's a proper boy now, he's rushing away from us at light speed.

 

Already there is pressure on us to conform.  The other day he ordered me not to walk to school, but to drive there, then to wait outside in the car, around the corner... until social services showed up, presumably.

Everyone asks how the settling in process has gone but he has slipped simply and easily into school life and is gaily practising handwriting and phonics as though he's been there ages.

It helps enormously that his school is tiny and that he knows children in almost every year.  It helps that I am standing outside his classroom with parents I met when we were all pregnant.  It helps that his beloved Lizzie is in the class above him and despite her raving beauty and superior age is still willing to be his girlfriend at playtime.

It all helps - him, anyway.  None of this is helping me at all.  This has all been much too easy; if he carries on growing up like this it will be no time at all before he is striding off to university and leaving us to the darkness of life without him.

Frankly I could do with a tantrum; perhaps some begging and a little clutching around the knees before school.  I feel like doing a little of it myself, to be honest.

Don't grow up quite yet, my lovely boy.