summertime nurseries

When we first talked about moving to Bosnia I envisaged getting a nanny for the boys. The more I think about it now the less attractive that option comes. Firstly, and most importantly, I think that Adam, at 3 1/4 needs to have other children of his own age around him. Although Luke is starting to be more of a playmate, there is still quite a big discrepancy between them. Second, I do worry that having a nanny or even someone who came round everyday would send me into complete nervous meltdown about how untidy/chaotic the house is and I would probably end up staying up all night trying to tidy some of the chaos up before they came round. At least this way the house retains its atmosphere of total happy mayhem that was so prevalent in the UK.

Anyhow, having decided on nurseries I have been exploring the options. Turns out that August isn't such a great time as in the whole of Tuzla only 4 nurseries are open. These are all state run and absolutely ENORMOUS. Admittedly the boy's English nursery was tiny (16 children total) so I was always going to be in for a culture shock on this one, but these nurseries each have 10 groups of 15 children. Each group has 2 members of staff which is about half the number you would expect in a UK nursery - although both must be qualified, one as a teacher the other as a nurse.

Cue more twirling around by me about a non Bosnian speaking Adam in a nursery of this size. I'm sure the Bosnians think I am being very precious about this, noone else seems to find it strange at all.

So, instead I am putting all my eggs in one basket and hoping that the private nurseries, which reopen in Sept will be smaller and more intimate. And, equally as crucially, that they will accept non-potty trained Lukey. The only issue with this tactic (barring the fact that there is no plan B and that I may have to take on the Lukey potty training gauntlet at a very early age which will be extremely ugly) is that these nurseries shut for the whole of July AND August. I thought I was unlucky in the UK when my nursery shut for August (a fellow Mother's Union member and I would get very jittery mid July as the holidays loomed). Two whole months? What do all the people with proper jobs do? I might still need a plan B.