Summer camp

No pictures with this one, but I feel like I must document the occasion...

The place where Thomas will go to school (2 half days a week) in the fall is holding camp during the summer (much less structured than the regular school year). You can send your child for whatever time you want (2, 3, or 5 half or full days). We wanted to get Thomas acquainted with his school, and give me a little free time with Parker, so we signed him up for two weeks of 2-half days in June and two weeks of 3-half days in July. Tuesday was his first day and it went great!

Before Parker was born, we never had a problem leaving him somewhere (though we haven't done it that often), but since Parker's birth we've left him twice and he's not fared so well. The first time was at the church nursery and we got paged to come get him after about 15 minutes. So that's why I had a little bit of anxiety about leaving him yesterday. I had been talking it up for a couple of days. The night before and all the way there yesterday morning though he kept saying, "Mommy coming?" and I'd say, "No, mommy is going to take you to school and you will stay and play and mommy will go bye-bye and come back and get you in a minute."

As soon as we arrived in his classroom he went to the toys right away and started playing without hesitation (just as he did when we attended the open house a couple weeks ago). But then when the teacher said something to him like, "Thomas, we are going to do some painting today ... and then go on the playground!" he immediately could tell that meant Mommy was leaving so he came to me with a very worried look on his face. He tried crawling into my lap (I was crouched down while wearing Parker in a wrap on my chest) and I could tell he was about to get upset. The teacher encouraged me to tell him a good goodbye and then go. So I told him goodbye and I think I was still lingering so the teacher said, "Okay, your mommy gave you a good goodbye" so I knew that was my cue to leave.

I was able to take Parker and run several errands and that was nice. I arrived back on time to get him and the kids were all on the playground. Thomas was having such fun he didn't want to leave! I had to ask him about 10 times before he finally came along...only with the promise that he would be coming back in a couple of days. He goes back again tomorrow and two days next week! Already I'm looking forward to his time there in the fall.