Mother's Day Out

It was a bittersweet day here at the Richardson house. My baby boy spent five hours away from home in the company of strangers at his very first day of Mother's Day Out, where he will hopefully be spending every Tuesday from 9-2. He looked so grown up this morning in his brand new jeans, holding his moose-themed lunch box. When we got to his classroom, he clung to me for a few minutes. Then he saw a plastic banana on the floor and forgot all about Mommy. I had intended to give him a hug and kiss goodbye, but he was pretty enthralled with that banana. So I quietly whispered "goodbye" to my sweet baby boy and drifted out the door feeling much sadder than I had expected to.

Perrin and I have been practically inseparable for the entire 18 months he's been alive (or longer than that, if you count the 9 months before he was born when we were REALLY inseparable). The only people who have ever taken care of him for short bursts of time are people he's known his whole life. I was nervous for him ALL DAY LONG. Would he look around and wonder where I was? Would he play well with the other kids? Would he be lonely, scared, confused, angry? And did those nursery workers really think they were going to get my little ball of fire to curl up on one of those nap mats and fall asleep just like that? Ha.

After a trip to the office to do some work, I came home to change clothes and then left to pick him up a little early. When I poked my head into his classroom, he was playing with a dump truck. He really didn't seem too traumatized at all. I knelt beside him and said, "Hi, Perrin!" He glanced up at me and then tinkered with the dump truck some more. Nope, clearly not traumatized. Finally he turned around a gave me a great big hug. That's what I needed.

His teacher told me he'd had a little bit of a rough morning. He cried when he realized I wasn't there. (Poor, poor baby! It's probably good that he didn't start crying until after I was out of earshot or I don't know if I would have had the resolve to leave him). But he ate most of his lunch, played with lots of toys, and even took a nap. I'm impressed.

I told Perrin it was time to go, so he took off across the room saying, "Box! Box! Box! Box!" I had no idea what he was talking about, but then he dug his lunch box out of a big pile of lunch boxes and said, "Bye bye!" I had kind of forgotten about his lunch box. I guess he knows the drill better than I do.

So, we both survived. Perrin may have even handled it better than I did. Plus he looked super duper cute carrying around his moose lunch box. See for yourself: