Mother's Morning Out (well, sort of)

For several reasons, including but not limited to:

• Grace having an opportunity for some more structured play time
  
  
• Grace learning to interact with other children (which will be a very important skill for her in another 6 or 7 months), and

• Mommy having a few hours a week to catch up on some work, clean the house, or heck, maybe just take a nap,

We decided to enroll her in the Mother's Morning Out program at the preschool where my mom teaches. It is a two day a week (three hours each day) class. She's only 10 months old and my plan is to go with her for the first couple of months until she really gets used to it (hence the "sort of" in the title of the post). Today was orientation, also known as "THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL." Today Grace and I had the opportunity to see what we are getting ourselves into.

Understand, on a typical day, Grace and I go...well nowhere other than taking Tyler to school. It figures that on the day we had somewhere to be in the morning, she decided to sleep in and when she DID wake up, her hair was an uncontrollable mess. No time to sweat the small stuff, we dashed out the door and on our way to our big day! Grace was all smiles as we walked into the building and I was doing great until I was handed a "Parent's Survival Kit." "How cute!" I thought as I looked inside. "What's that?...Kleenex?...Oh No!" Never ever tell a pregnant woman she is SUPPOSED to cry! *choke* Quickly I reminded myself that I'm staying with her. When I regained my composure, it was time for me to leave the room for parent's orientation. After watching two other parents make a big deal over leaving the room and observing the meltdown that followed from their children, I decided not to make a scene and to quietly leave (sneak out of) the room. During the 30-minute orientation, Grace was a good little girl. Because the room I was in was right across the hall from her, I could hear her start to cry at near the end of the meeting. When I got back into the room I realized that she had needed a diaper change and her teacher was changing it when I returned. I quietly gave Grace a "High 5" when the teacher wasn't looking for letting someone else take care of one. My pregnant spidey sense of smell has made changing diapers much harder for me to bear than normal and I am more than happy to share that duty with whomever will help!

All in all, I think it is going to be great. Grace is, by far, the smallest kid in the class. But make no mistake, she is one tough cookie! I have no doubt that she'll be able to hold her own (especially with ME sitting with her!) Maybe one day I'll leave her there on her own, but hey, they're letting ME go for free, so I'm in no rush! :)