Whew! Well, summer sure seemed to zap all my free time. Ha! I thought summer was busy?!? Summer pales in comparison to juggling two kids in school. Two kids in school, part-time. Two kids in preschool and Kindergarten. These are the lines I repeat when I am FREAKING OUT. I realize you haven't seen any first day of school pics, kids at their desks pics, etc. Well, according to the dates on here I haven't posted anything since July. Bad, bad Mommy. If you haven't noticed, I love to kick myself when I am down. So, before I backtrack and give you all the details on Brooklyn and Jameson's first week of school, let me break your heart. I preface this with the fact that I know that there are terrible, sad, horrible tragedies that are much worse the following story. But, in the moment, I could actually feel my heart break.
The kids and I loaded up in to the car this morning to first drop Jameson off at school and then Brooklyn. Jameson's drop-off went flawlessly. He is so excited for school that he is literally wriggling in his seat by the time we get there. After he said, "Later Mom, Love you Brooklyn," he was off. On to Brooklyn's school. I park, unload Emmett and grab Brooklyn's hand to walk her in to school. At the gate she asks if she can walk ahead of us because, and I quote, "no one else is holding their Mom's hand." Heartbreak number one. I thought she would be at least 10 before I was no longer cool. So she saunters ahead and chats it up with some of her classmates. We get to where she needs to line-up and she gives Emmett a hug and a kiss, the same for me, and then heads to get in line. She quickly lets me know that we can leave now. So, Emmett and I start our walk back to the parking lot, heavy hearted. Halfway there I hear a kid wailing. WAILING. I feel so sorry for the kid that is so sad to go to school. I think to myself that I guess I should be happy that Brooklyn is confident and independent. You know where I am going with this, it's Brooklyn. She falls into me (the back of me) and is yelling DON'T GO! I crouch down so she can really get in for a good hug and try to calm her down. She is mumbling in-between sobs that I can't go, she needs me at school, she just wants to go home, etc. She finally agrees to walk back over to her class...glued to my leg. I convince her to let go of my leg and I will hold her hand in line and wait with her (she is white knuckling my hand - funny thing, wasn't it just five minutes ago that she didn't want to hold my hand?!?). The bell rings and the class starts filing in. She panics and goes full circle back to wailing and tears. We finally reach the door and her teacher looks at me with "you can do it" eyes and tells me to just go, she will recover faster if I go. So, I go. I turn away and hear her crying, still. Don't look back, don't look back. I have terrible flashbacks of when I used to drop her off at daycare and she would paste her face to the little window and cry when I left. Sigh. Heartbreak. Clearly I may have post-tramatic-daycare-stress issues.
I pace all day. My cell phone is basically glued to my hand. No calls. She must be fine. We head up to pick her up. She comes running out of the building with a huge smile on her face and greets me with the biggest bear hug. She said she had a great day. Her teacher said it took her awhile to shake it off but she did and she really did have a great day. She had a great day while I paced and ate chocolate. Kids sure are resilient. Which, I clearly need to remember.
Even as I wrote this I can't seem to convey the feeling in words. It seems so, well, not heartbreaking. But, it has been a stressful few weeks and my emotions have been on high so, in the moment, I was heartbroken. So heartbroken that once I was back in the car and I actually had to look back and thank Emmett for being so good on my hip while I calmed Brooklyn down...because I actually forgot he was on my hip for that few minutes. Geez. Self kick number two.
I figured this would be good to have on this ol' blog because it is only going to happen once. One time. Happy drop-offs from here on out. Positive thinking and deep breaths. I can do this two kids in school thing. Two kids in school, part-time. Pull it together me!
