So I just had one of those mornings where I really just want to go back to bed and wake up again and start over on reset. And since I have some luxurious free time for a little bit, I thought I would blog about it.
Today was Clarissa's first real day of preschool for the year. I say real day because she actually went on Tuesday but it was a shortened meet the teacher kind of event, not a normal preschool day. Today is the first regular day. She's been super excited about it all week. Heck, she's been excited about it all summer. She loves preschool.
But this morning just started off bad for some reason. Josh got off to school, Matthew has a field trip with the gifted program to study salmon today so we were making sure he had everything he needed for that and I was tying to get Clarissa ready for preschool.
And then Clarissa had what can only be described as Meltdownfest 2013. Seriously, I need to get myself a t-shirt to commemorate the occasion. I think it was the meltdown heard 'round the world. Did you hear screaming this morning? It was coming from my house. You're welcome.
Clarissa is generally a very even tempered kid. She can be a bit dramatic but now that we're long past the terrible two's she's really not a big tantrum thrower. She has her moments, heck *I* have my moments, but mostly she's not a difficult child at all.
So what happened today was just unexpected. First she cried because her nose was running a little and that bugs her. Then she was crying because she couldn't get her jeans snapped. Then the crying made her feel like she was going to throw up so she cried about that. Then all the crying made her nose run worse so she cried about that. Like a total on the floor in the fetal position meltdown. I told her to get up and finished getting dressed. In very dramatic fashion she told me her legs didn't work. Really, princess? In the words of Sweet Brown, ain't nobody got time for that.
I was trying to get Matthew out the door for the bus in the midst of this. He has a super crappy bus stop so I drive him to his stop every morning. But in order to take Matthew to the bus, Clarissa has to come along, and that was just not happening this morning. So I ended up making Matthew walk, which I feel terrible about and I feel the judgement of everyone who saw him waking this morning and wondered what kind of mother would make their child walk to the crappy bust stop alone. This mother, apparently.
So Matthew left and I was able to deal with Meltdownfest 2013. Clarissa cried, and she cried some more, and then she dry heaved for a while because of all the drama. All while I stood there and said "seriously, we have to go to preschool in 20 minutes. We can't go while you're crying." "Do you want to go to preschool? Because we have eighteen minutes and you're still crying." "Ok, we have to walk out the door in sixteen minutes. Get up so I can do your hair." "Clarissa. Sweetie. We have 14 minutes before we're going to be late. What can I do to help you stop crying? Do you need a hug?" "WE HAVE TWELVE MINUTES BEFORE WE HAVE TO BE THERE! FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY, STOP CRYING!"
Yeah, it sort of went like that. I think she laid there and went through all the stages of grief in very dramatic fashion. Meanwhile I was somehow trying to get myself ready to leave the house while doing all the song and dance I could muster to get her to cooperate. It failed.
Here's the thing. If it had been any other day besides the first day of preschool, I would have just said screw it and we would have put our pajamas back on and had a stay home day. Some days you just can't get it together. I get it. I can roll with that. But today was the first real day of preschool and all I really wanted was to be there with all the other moms, waving goodbye to my smiling child as she happily skipped off to a glorious morning of learning and friendship while I enjoy my three hours of peace and quiet. Is that too much to ask?! Moms, you're with me on this, right?!
Maybe she was just overwhelmed about it being the first day of preschool. Maybe she just woke up on the wrong side of the princess bed. Maybe she just felt like today would be the perfect day to mess with mommy's head. I don't know what her deal was, all I knew was that the minutes were ticking down and we still weren't in the car on the way to preschool.
Finally I told her that fine, we would just stay home today. No preschool. That just made her cry harder and beg me to let her go. I said fine, then stop crying! She would stop for a minute. And then start again. And the minutes ticked by. And I was wearing yoga pants, a wrinkled t-shirt and sloppy pony tail because that's what moms look like on the mornings when their child cries for an hour and all order and schedule screeches to a halt.
As I stood there I was having an internal argument with myself. Do I take her or not? I don't want her to miss the first day and set the precedent as being THAT mom. But I also can't take her to preschool a crying mess. I knows she WANTS to go and will feel bad if she misses it. But she has to stop crying. So do I take her, or not? Yes, or no? Get in the car or screw the while thing and eat chocolate for breakfast? I was seriously considering the chocolate idea.
Finally, ten minutes late for school, she decided to calm down and go. She put her shoes on, got her bag, let me fix her hair and we got in the car. We had a talk about not crying and I told her that if the crying started back up again we were going to have to turn around and go back home because that is not acceptable preschool behavior.
So we rolled up to preschool way late and now I'm THAT mom. You know, the one who shows up late in yoga pants, a wrinkled t-shirt and sloppy hair because she can't get her act together and get her little angel to school on time. Yeah, that's the impression I was hoping to make on the first day. We had to interrupt circle time and everything while I explained to the teacher that we had kind of a rough morning and I was worried about leaving Clarissa there if she was going to cry and the teacher, who could not possibly be nicer, by the way, looked at me like "ooh, one of those moms. Got it."
Here's the thing. This is our NINTH year of preschool. Nine years I've been dropping children off at that preschool. Six in a row between the boys and then a thee year break and now this is our third and final year with Clarissa. After this year I will have officially graduated from being a preschool mom. And I am cool with that because after nine years of preschool, I'm a little over it. I'm not a young first time mom dropping my sweet baby off for the first time. Nope. I've been there and done that so many times I could write a book about it. Last year on the first day the teacher handed out Kleenex and chocolate to all the moms who needed to cry in the car after dropping their babies off. That's adorable. I was tossing Kleenex out the window and shoving chocolate in my mouth as my minivan screeched out of the parking lot. See ya suckers, I'm on year eight of this. I have no more tears.
Ok, it wasn't exactly like that. I didn't throw the Kleenex out the window.
So today I think I must have looked to her new teacher like an overprotective mother who was nervous about leaving her sweet baby for the first time. Not the case. I'm cool. This meltdown was not normal. I was not worried about sending my sweet angel to preschool, I was worried about her continuing Meltdownfest 2013 in the middle of the room. That would not be awesome.
But the teacher assured me that everything was fine and they would call me if they needed me. Also, I think she probably wanted to go borrow some Kleenex and chocolate from last years teacher to give to the poor disheveled mom who was interrupting circle time with tales of a morning meltdown.
The last time I saw Clarissa she was happily sitting in circle time making a friend, so I high tailed it out of there. See ya suckers, I'm on year nine of this. Is it Kindergarten yet?
No comments:
Post a Comment