Nativity season and contagious crying

I am by no means a new year R parent, in fact the is my second year in a row of having a child in Year R, and my third time so far.

However it always gets you a little when the kids trot out wearing their costumes, and packed full of a combination of excitement, nervous energy and down right fear.

Cat did us proud and made a beautiful star, although keeping her very old and now very grey vest on under the pristine white dress may have been a mistake! At least all the mums now know for sure that I don't use Daz!

The show was accompanied by the odd sob from a very proud parent. However nearing the end one brave little fella started to tremble, the lip started to shake and the tears started to roll. All credit to him, he just about managed to hold it together until the end, but I think this made several other children even more wobbly than they were before.

Luckily this happened in the final song, whereas last year one little girl broke down half way through, which set in motion a domino effect of crying, with about 8 more kids joining in the tears and exiting the stage before the end.

We are very fortunate that are school have some good sense when it comes to the photo issue. They take some lovely still pictures before the day, and give parents the chance to buy these for 50p a pop. However they also allow video and still cameras, with the only limitation being that the pictures must not be posted on the internet, fair enough.

I know for some kids ( in fact for all kids) its a lot to expect them to put on a show only a couple of months into a new life, with new teachers and new friends. However my girls have been very excited at the prospect, and I am looking forward to the older ones show on Friday, fingers crossed for no tears. Sadly the Junior school have never joined in the Christmas spirit to put on a show for the parents. I would love to see Aidan up on stage now, I am sure he would make a very cute elf, or a very convincing donkey.

He unintentionally stole the show in the infant school a few years ago. Of all the characters he got picked to be Herod, and his role was to look extremely grumpy, while singing a song about Herod being furious. After that rock rolling nativity I am now convinced that Herod should feature strongly in ever Christmas play forever more.