He didn't look back

Little Loren started preschool today. As I mentioned in a previous post, he qualifies for Occupational Therapy through the school district. We had his IEP (Individualized Education Plan) last Friday and they will be taking him out of his classroom for 1/2 hour a week (2 days, 15 minutes each) and the rest of his time will be in his classroom. He will go Monday through Thursday in the afternoons which works out great because our playgroup meets on Thursday mornings and he can still go to that, and then our playgroup does our extra activities on Fridays so he can still go to that too.

We talked up school all weekend, asked him if he was excited, and just really encouraged him that it would be fun. Last night I asked him what he wanted to wear and he asked me if he had "a Transformers shirt." I told him he doesn't, so he decided he wanted to wear his Dino Robot shirt. He also wanted PB&J for lunch so I called the school this morning to make sure it was ok to send peanut butter. It wasn't an issue so he had PB&J, a cereal bar, carrots fresh from the garden, some chips, and a water bottle with Ocean Spray drink mix in his lunch box.


We got him dressed, loaded up his backpack and lunch box, and then it was time to go. Loren stopped to pose for pictures on our front porch, although he wasn't very cooperative so I don't have any "happy" pictures of him. Then we all got in the car and drove to the school. We have to wait in line for his teacher to get him out of his car so I took another picture. Then it was time to let him go. His teacher came and got him and they went and sat down on the sidewalk outside. He didn't even look back or wave or anything. I got a tiny bit teary-eyed but didn't really cry. And I'm not too entirely convinced that Daddy wasn't misty-eyed either- sunglasses are good for hiding those things.


Justin asked about him a few times while we were running our errands and stopping at home for lunch, but he didn't seem too upset. We'll see how he does when this is a nearly every day thing.

Finally 3:15 came around and it was time to pick Loren up. Daddy couldn't go to pick him up, so it was just Justin and I. We pulled into the pick up lane and when it was almost our turn, I almost started bawling because I missed my little buddy and was excited to see him. I pulled up to the pick up spot and got the biggest and cutest wave from Loren when he figured out it was my car waiting there. His teacher said he did great and they had a really good day.

Loren said they sang some songs about green and black and pink, he drew some sort of ship, and they played with pretend dinosaurs outside. I'm not entirely sure what it all means but he had fun and wasn't upset or scared or anything so I'm pretty proud of him.

Now I'm getting teary-eyed again. He'll be 5 next week and I'm just not ready for that!

There are two lasting bequests we can give our children.
One is roots. The other is wings.
~Hodding Carter, Jr.