Today was Noah and Jane's first day at Mother's Day Out. You'd have thought Noah was starting school, the way I was feeling about it.
I'm only putting Jane in MDO for a couple of hours at a time, and she'll only be there when I have to go do something that I can't do with children around (working out, dentist appointment, etc.). Since she won't be there all that often, and since it won't be for very long at a time, it wasn't that big a deal to me. After all, Noah went to the nursery during Mom to Mom every week starting when he was just a couple of months older than Jane.
But when I thought about dropping Noah off for five whole hours, I was having some issues. Never having put my kids in child care for more than about two hours at a time, I was feeling some mommy guilt, some trepidation, and some sentimentality. "What if he feels sad that he's away from me for so long?" "They can't possibly take as good care of him as I do, since they can't possibly love him as much as I do." "Is it really necessary that he goes at two years old? Isn't he pretty socialized already? Does he really need it? Do
I really need it?" "Is it selfish of me to prioritize some time for myself?" "He is such a big boy, and that's great, but it also makes me sad."
I think all moms can relate to that.
But about five hours later, my tune had changed, because I saw how good MDO is going to be for Noah. I had dropped him off about an hour late, because I wanted him to have a shorter period away from me the first day. However, this ended up backfiring, because it turns out that the kids are allowed to play with the toys in the room for the first hour, and then they move on to another activity. Well, evidently all Noah wanted to do the entire time was play with the toys, and the teachers had a hard time getting him to obey when they were trying to organize story time, etc. Thinking about it, this makes perfect sense, because at home he pretty much roams from thing to thing without a lot of structure from me. So it'll be great for him to learn to 1.) obey other adults, 2.) learn how a classroom works--that all the kids do the same thing at the same time and that he needs to follow along, 3.) get used to a little more structure, and 4.) make some new friends. Actually, I had really emphasized to him that he'd be making new friends at Mother's Day Out, and that's the part that he was most excited about. For months, I've been saying that he had to do this this fall because he is such a social kid, and I think that will definitely prove to be true. He loves friends.
Anyway, all that to say that I think this will be a really great thing for both him and me. And it's exciting that he is getting to be such a big boy. Here are the pictures I took that morning.
I didn't get a good picture of him at the actual venue because the camera lens fogged up when we stepped out of the cold car into the soupy outside air. Dadgum Houston humidity.
But here we are at home, before we left for the day. You can tell he was a little excited!
So the backpack I got him might be a tad bit too big, don't you think?
What a big boy! That's my Noah!
Okay, "Texas shaped" is obvious. "Texas sized" is a totally common phrase. But "Texas powered"? Alright; they're stretching it on the whole "Texas sized" thing, but I'll go with them there. But then they just go downhill with "Texas owned," and I'm kind of done with their non-cleverness at this point. Yet I'm still somehow kind of tickled that they tried to be cute.
