I need your help

Two weeks from today my little girl will start school.


I mean look at her, she's such a tiny little thing. The thing is though, she just can't wait to get to school. She talks of nothing else, every day "Am I going to school today mummy?". The same question every single morning.

We already have her uniform.


And her shoes...



With the little kitties on the outside of the shoes requested by the school so that she can tell easily which shoe goes with which foot. Well hey didn't have to be kitties, but you get the idea.

So now my little girl has a drawer in her room filled with green polo shirts, royal blue jumpers, grey trousers, skirts and pinafores, not to mention tiny little white socks which amazing reach all the way past her knees, grey tights, new pants and vests and little white airtex t-shirts for PE and toffee soled plimsoles so they don't leave marks on the games hall floor. We have her school bag and her PE bag and I'm in the middle of labeling everything with her name.

We don't' have shorts for PE yet, but it's still quite strange looking into that drawer.

This is my first year doing the school supplies thing, but tell me this. Is it perfectly normally to get annoyed over silly little things when you're trying to get every bought and organised.

Case in point, regarding the PE shorts. I've had a look in a few shops now and I'm just not coming across anything suitable. Just to see if I could get lucky and find a pair I went in to Tesco yesterday. I walked along the aisles of clothes. Passing by the boys clothes I noticed perfect little shorts for a boy's PE kit, nice little navy ones with pale blue stripes up each side and the reverse, pale blue with navy stripes, just the right length and with a bit of room in them for running.

Then I walked around to the girl's side and saw the offerings. One lonely design, a pack of two pairs of shorts. And I mean shorts. One pair white, the other baby pink and they actually had that cutaway scallop at the side which took the sides of the shorts even closer to the child's hips, if such a thing is even possible.

I took one look at them and all I could here in my head was "Hi, Welcome to Hooters. My name is Candi and I'll be your waitress." No daughter of mine will ever be seen dead wearing shorts like that!

Speaking of which, I think my friends and I were the only ones to go to Hooters when it opened in Belfast. From memory they were read the riot act on false advertising and closed shortly thereafter:)

Anyway, back to the point. Is it silly to get annoyed about the fact that shops seem perfectly capable of providing suitable shorts for boys but at the same time they thing that I should be willing to dress my daughter like a cheap slapper? I think not!

So we're nearly ready, bar the shorts.

Toots can't wait and the husband is so proud of her. I mean really proud, you should see the look he gets in his eyes and the little secret smile on his face when she talks about school. Toots just doesn't have any fear about school whatsoever and she looks so grown up now. She's just ready to go and the husband is really happy to see her like that. Ready to take on the world!

I think when we brought her out of daycare way back at the start of the year we were a bit worried that she would get so used to being at home with me by this time that the very thought of school would freak her out a bit, but that just hasn't been the case. I love her so much and I'm so proud of her myself.

Now, the title of this post suggests that I need your help and here's where you come in.

You see everyone thinks this is fantastic, my mum, dad, brother, the husband and I do too. But there's still this tiny little part of me. And I do mean a tiny, little insignificant part of me that needs to freeeeeaaaaak out.

And I mean bouncing off the walls fah-reak-ing out and someone has to come along for the ride.

She's just so.....small!

Seriously, I remember bringing her home from the hospital like a week and a half ago and she would lie with her little face buried in the side of my neck and her legs curled up so that her feet only reached as far as my chest and I would sit with her like that for hours, rubbing my thumbs along the soles of her feet while she slept and rolling her little toes back and forward between my thumb and forefinger while she smiled up at me.

And now I'm supposed to just send her off to school in two weeks when she'll be, what does that work out at, like three and a half weeks old. Really?

I pretty sure I'm entitled to have a mini panic attack of sorts.

So who's in?