When a long-time friend is in town, your reminder of a hair appointment or when you need to pick up a sick child from school, you hope to see those texts straight away. 

On a same-same but different scale, there’s the preschool Christmas party food list. It was 36 hours before I noticed my husband’s text, which included a photo of the list of food items and a message: Any preferences?

“Yes, icy-poles!” Unfortunately it was now the weekend and classes did not resume until mid-week. Out of interest, I asked our child what she’d like to take to the party: patty cakes, vegetarian option, chips, a fruit plate or icy-poles. “Icy-poles,” she says. “Definitely not the fruit plate.” Icy-poles were party food, fruit was everyday food. The photo showed no one had yet put their name down for two lots of 10 x icy-poles.

On Wednesday afternoon I arrived at preschool pick-up early, ready to pounce on the party food list. I put out subtle feelers on the present situation.

“I got icy-poles,” my friend says. “Not sure what else is left.”

Suddenly other mums within earshot overheard our conversation; other mums, like me, who were yet to put their names down on the list.

“I have a photo of the list on my phone, but I’ve never actually seen the working document,” I confide.

They pore over the list before the mum who is in the third trimester of her pregnancy declares: “Perhaps the pregnant mums should get the icy-poles.” (Insert pregnant pause here.)

When the classroom door opens I tackle the teacher to the ground and ask her to hand over the Christmas party food list now. Actually I politely ask where she is stowing the list. And is she checking it twice?!

I got the list from the “hidden drawer” but I was out of luck. No icy-poles x 2. No Cheezels. They’re gone. No fairy bread, nor fruit juice. Gone. Gone. There is one bag of chips left and I cast a guilty eye over to the pregnant yummy mummy sitting on the bench behind me.

I do the only thing I can and write my name against: CHIPS. Just kidding, I put patty cakes! Then the mums noticed I was madly scribbling on the list. “You’re not putting icy-poles are you?!” they chorus.

“No,” I say before I hand the list to the yummy mummy. “I saved the chips for you.” 

I returned to my daughter who was busy telling her preschool teacher that we’d bring the icy-poles. Perhaps we’d bring the patty cakes instead, I suggested. Just as she was about to have a It’s-my-party-and-I’ll-cry-if-I-want-to moment and I was headed for an icecream headache, I promised she could decorate the cakes any way she liked.

“Great! They can be elves and Santa and reindeers!” she says, giving me a proper brain freeze.

Over the weekend I checked the dates of the preschool Christmas events. Our daughter spends two days a week with one class and only the third day with the other. As the second class had its concert on a day our child didn’t attend, I felt the same would happen with its party. Nope. There’s a whole other class party and she’s invited.

As I was now two weeks late on seeing that party food list, I could only assume the icy-poles had gone. I was resigned to baking a double batch of patty cakes decorated like Santa’s little helpers when my text tone sounded. It was from my husband with the other list: “You got icy-poles!”

It’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas.