I survived!

Yey! I did it. I survived. No trauma. No disasters. Feeling rather proud of myself actually.

On Thursday night I posted (here) that I was feeling nervous about going to my first playgroup with T. This was not helped by reading Mother Venting’s account of a less than successful visit to a soft play centre (here) but people had left some lovely comments which I really appreciated and I was determined not to wuss out. Anyway, hubs had told them that I was coming when he dropped E off at preschool earlier in the week so I really had to go. In fact that was probably why he did it, he’s sneaky my husband.

We got off to a bit of a shaky start. We had to be there at 9:30, right when T would normally have his morning nap but I thought he’d be alright for an hour or so as long as he was being entertained and he could just sleep in the car on the way home. Unfortunately, when we got there at 9:25 (which was impressive in itself as I’m always late for everything) and sent E off upstairs to preschool, the deputy head came past and told me they’d changed the times since last week and it wouldn’t be starting until 10:30. This would make T two hours late for his nap so I nearly gave up and went home but the deputy head wouldn’t hear of it and ushered us into their staff room so I could feed T while we waited.

But when it did finally get going T had a great time checking out all the new toys, babbling at the other babies and displaying his newest skill, crawling backwards looking very pleased with himself until he bumps into something or someone. There were about eight other mums plus one very enthusiastic dad and a nanny. Everyone was really nice and about half of them hadn’t been before and didn’t know anyone either so it was very easy to start up a conversation with people (especially once T backed over their child). There was no competitive parenting in evidence. The dad did keep making his son perform his various party pieces for us all but I think he was just a bit over excited (the dad that is). T enjoyed himself so much that he stayed awake long enough to get home and have his lunch before passing out for a lovely 2 1/2 hour nap. Result!

So in summary: T loved it, I had a nice time, everyone was friendly and I’m going back next week. The question really has to be why on earth was I so nervous about it? Why didn’t I just go months ago? I’m not one of those super outgoing confident people but I’m more than capable of stringing a sentence together and making polite chit chat. My job involves going out and talking to teams of people I don’t know or presenting to big groups so why do I find other mums so scary? I really don’t know but judging from some of the comments I got on my last post I’m not the only one.

Image: photostock / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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