Bad Mommy

This morning at daycare there were more tears as I dropped him off. The bright side is he can actually articulate what's going on. "I was sad and I cried because I missed my mommy." That seems to cover it nicely. Oh, yeah, he forgot "so I cut her heart out and left it in the sand area. Then I was fine"

I'm kidding. I feel the need to say that since last week when he cried as I was leaving one of the teachers held him and said "Your crying makes Mommy sad. If you want to make Mommy happy, you need to stop crying." I was appalled. I turned around and told Rex, "it's okay to be sad honey." I mean please. Give me a f'ing break. He's miserable! Let's make him feel reeeeally bad about it! Jesus.

But my point was this. Wednesday he was fine and on Wednesday we were all business since I needed to take B's car in for a smog test kinda early (We've lived here for a year and his MN tags expired in September. Perhaps it's time to look into remedying that.). This morning we had time for our regular leisurely breakfast, read some books, play tent/camping on our bed and generally yuck it up before we got around to rolling him into school around 10. He fell apart as I went to walk away.

It hit me when I went to pick him up. (Why did it take so long? Because I'm an idiot and cannot possibly see the obvious.) One of his teachers said something like, Rex got better 10 or 15 minutes after you left and we kept telling him that mom was coming back to get him in the afternoon like she always does...' For some reason, this make the light go on.

See, him worried that I won't come back? That's not it. It's not like when he was 9 months old and I was working and object permanence was like intelligent design - a kooky idea that nobody with a brainreally takes seriously. He knows I'm coming back. He would just rather hang out with me all day than hang out with them. We were having fun, why would I want to blow that and dump him with these lunatics who expect him to share his toys and don't focus all their loving attention on him? No wonder he's bummed. It breaks my heart but I'm gonna have to stop our morning fun time on the days he's going to school. He just does better.