Land of Primary Colors

There he goes. Click here for the first few minutes of Kane's first day of preschool.

It's a cute little place that is kind of like crack for toddlers, like a toy store with all of the goods unwrapped.

And we didn't have any meltdowns until I came to pick him up.

I think we did well.

We dropped him off at around 8:30 a.m. and I stuck around with Carly until about 9 a.m., because there were potential waterworks lurking after he was told on the drive to the school that I would eventually be leaving him alone with the teachers. I thought if I stayed with him a few minutes, he'd adjust and wave me off like any normal child would, having more cool little toys to grab at than you have miniutes in the day to do it.

When I did finally leave him (after flubbing hopelessly at small talk with a couple of joyless mothers who haven't smiled once since I met them last week), he gave a little "mommy!" wail and a few fat tears, but then was all right once one of the teachers assured him he could go outside and play with the dump trucks soon enough. I wanted to hightail it out of there, having already calculated in my head I could get to the store with Carly and perhaps get her to catnap (she did, after all, wake me up at 5:50 a.m.) before picking Kane up. Plus, I was aggravated with the aforementioned humorless types (who looked uneasily at Kane when I joked that he was living out his OCD dream of lining up a dozen toy trains on the table), and with the recurring comment of one of the teachers who claimed Carly was "a busy little girl" (I could sense this woman was wondering whether my daughter would enroll sometime soon, and, if so, would she have to teach her).

After a breezy jaunt at the store (oh Jesus; I forgot how easy it is to go ANYWHERE with just one child - we were silly together AND we got things done!), I got home, checked to make sure the answering machine wasn't blinking with some message about Kane melting down, and then cleaned the house up while Carly talked herself to sleep.

We got back to the school at 11:30, with Carly grumpy from too little sleep. As soon as I set her down, she started flinging herself backward, saying "Eat!" Kane caught sight of me, and said he wanted a snack. I told him I'd give him one as soon as we got out of there, which prompted him to race for the door, despite three teachers telling him he had to stick around for circle time. He was having none of it. He was tired, over-stimulated, processing an incredible amount of new information, AND he had a load in his pants, which meant there was no way anyone would be able to get him to sit down. After much wailing and gnashing of teeth, I grabbed him and hightailed it out of circle time, and they chowed down in the car on tofu and raspberries. There was silence for a full five minutes, interrupted only by: "More, please."

No one napped. Everyone was cranky this afternoon. Mommy is very sleepy now, but I promised I would get these up for grandparents. Here you go. He's still lookig forward to school on Thursday, despite the bad taste he got toward the end of today's session. He said he liked the dinosaurs, and ringing the bell on the play boat outside in the backyard. He said tonight he will go back (and he said this out of the blue), despite him telling me on the walk from the school to the car late this morning: "Mommy, I missed you. My eyes are sad."

Comments

[Jaynet Tagami]

Bless you Jess! It was so good to see Phil there too. I love you guys.