It all started at 8.30pm last night, when I realised I was putting my daughter to bed half an hour too late for how tired she was. It took nearly an hour to get her to sleep and the night that followed was awful. I think she woke up at least five times throughout the night. At 5.30am she fell into a deep sleep and was sleeping like, well, a baby (perhaps ‘like a log’ is better in her case) when the alarm rang at 8am. I spent the next 45 minutes trying to gently wake her up because we have to leave for kindergarten at 9am.
I tried everything. I stroked her cheek. I rubbed her head. I called her name. We made coffee and breakfast as loudly as possible in the kitchen. We clanked about with dishes. The child would not wake up and I felt really mean in interrupting her sleep after the night we had all had. So, I called the kindergarten and used all my best German words to apologise that we would be late and would miss the all-important Morning Circle, which is the start of the day for the children. “I’ll get her there for 10am!” I promised, and the kindergarten teacher said she would pass the message on to Maya’s group leader.
With much rushing, and a fight over putting on a snow suit, I shoved Maya into a coat (‘She doesn’t need the snow suit today anyway! She doesn’t go outside with the group yet!’) and we were off.
We got to the kindergarten at 9.55… Yes!
….and saw that the entire group of Maya’s class were all dressed in snow suits and about to leave for the park…
“Ahh, Maya is here!” said one of the teachers. It sounded like they hadn’t had the message. “Does she have a snow suit?”
“No, it’s at home”, I said, feeling like a really bad mother. And then, at the same time as feeling guilty, I felt really annoyed. Because one of the other teachers had recently said that Maya wouldn’t be going outside with the group until the Spring, otherwise I would have left the damn snow suit at the kindergarten for her. But, as so often happens, I couldn’t think how to put myself in the right in German, plus the teacher just needed to get going anyway.
“Sorry”, I said. Followed by “Shit”. Followed by another “Sorry”.
They must think I’m SUCH a bad mother. But at least I said it all in German.
Pregsit - The Blog 
My daughter is almost 13 months. High 5! German is also not my mother tongue (english either). I can’t count how many times i thought: at least i said it in german, like these days, when i live in germany, it is my biggest achievement to speak german…btw my daughter is waking me up every hour (still breastfeeding).
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