No, your eyes do not deceive you. We have not suddenly gone forward in time three years. At the tender age of 18 months, the girls took part in their first sports day at nursery this afternoon.
R and G were both in the red team and we were told to dress them in red tops for the day. Their extensive wardrobe didn't include red t-shirts so I went and bought a couple from Boots. I subsequently realised that they didn't own shorts, or any remotely sporty clothing aside from their hoodies. Cue a trip to Primark.
So, this morning, we dressed them in their shorts and t-shirts (I made sure they had different coloured shorts) and popped their little converse on their feet. G practised her start technique - one of us had to shout READY STEADY GO! - and she would set off on the g of go, or the s on steady, depending on how excited she was. R hasn't been feeling too well for the last couple of days and looked distinctly unimpressed by the whole thing.
At 2pm, dh and I went to nursery to watch. Rather ambitiously they had marked out a short running track on the grass. I would describe the scene as organised chaos. We spotted a whole gang of children in red tops but couldn't see our two. We sat on the grass and after a couple of minutes R and G appeared. They were in the distance so couldn't see us initially and they were clearly very grumpy at being woken up prematurely from their nap.
They took part - G with great enthusiasm, R rather reluctantly - in the forwards running race, the backwards running race and the potato and spoon race. They both held the potato in one hand and the spoon in the other. They both attempted to eat the potato!
For the first race we joined the parents at the finishing line but for subsequent races we helped the girls out. Lets just say that some of the parents might have been taking it all a mite seriously and were 'encouraging' their tiny offspring with a little more gusto than was perhaps strictly necessary. Not pushy parents at all. Just concerned, obviously... (insert wry smiley here)
Of course, it wasn't competitive at all. There was no winning team. No losers. Each team had their moment on the rostrum and every child received a gold medal. R wore hers until bathtime (I think she was too tired to take it off) but G lost hers within about five minutes of receiving it.
We didn't hang around for the parents race. I didn't spot any adults limbering up but I'm willing to bet that one or two mums and dads had their running spikes stashed away in their rucksacks, 'just in case'.
Maybe I'll should get in training for next year!
