My blissfully empty nest

Today, after two months of summer camp and two weeks off (aaaugggh), The Kid returned to daycare.

I had registered late, and she was put in a class with a teacher that I didn't know. I was afraid that I was being PMS'y, but after attending open house yesterday morning, and seeing that a majority of the kids in her new class were younger than her, and that the teacher seemed to pay more attention to the more mumbly boys (they understandably needed more attention, because they were less verbal), I spoke with the director and moved her to the class I originally requested. The teacher is Israeli, and very attentive. She listened to my request that the Kid's sugar intake be limited throughout the day due to my own hereditary adult issues with Insulin Resistance (last year, one of the teachers was handing out chocolate chip cookies for breakfast), and said she would do whatever she could to support me. And, better yet, her teaching assistant is the art teacher that stopped me last year to tell me the Kid was her favorite. :)

So the Kid couldn't be in a better class, and I'm deliriously happy I requested the switch.

This morning was magical. (Apart from the fact that I was carrying her backpack, her lunch bag, a banana, my purse, a pack of pull-ups, and the camera - but not the keys, and locked myself out of the house. I had to crawl back in through the living room window). It was magical because prior to this summer, I used to have to fling my kid out of the car window at 7:30, speed to work, work, and then speed back to pick her up, at which point she'd be starving, because it was 5:30pm. And all this in heels. I would glare at the other mommies standing around, sipping their lattes in their yoga pants, holding the keys to their Hummers, making plans to go get manicures after coffee.

"Am I the only one with a JOB?" I would wonder.

This morning, I rolled out of bed, pulled my hair into a ponytail, threw on my gym clothes, and took my kid to school. At 9am.

I may still very well be the only one with a job. But I am oh, so cool with that. I've realized that I have to work. I don't know what I would do with myself otherwise. While many of my girlfriends are Stay at Home Moms, and I love them and they love me, I have no idea how they do what they do. I can't imagine being at home with the Kid all day.

As Count Olaf says in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, I'm sorry, I don't speak... monkey.

My child likes to spin in circles until she falls over. She thinks snoring is fun. She eats things off the floor. She likes to tell everyone that she pooped. She dances to commercials. She does not like roasted fennel, or contemporary art, or fresh olives, or movies with subtitles. Everyone tells me that she speaks so well, and so clearly, but what they don't understand is that she has to. I'm a single mother, and I don't speak monkey. When she asks why she can't leave her toys strewn all over the grass in front of our apartment or throw garbage on the ground, I ask her if she can say "socially responsible".

"Socially asponsible" she peeps back at me.

When we're out together, I speak to her as if she was another adult. "What kind of lettuce should we get?" She points. "I don't like that one" I tell her. The red lettuce seems to spoil quickly. What about spinach?" "Yes, spinach." she says. "I like spinach". People passing by look at us strangely. She points at the other toddlers sitting in 7-foot long shopping carts shaped like small cars. "That's difficult to steer", she tells their parents. Meanwhile, their kids are muttering incoherently and trying to eat their own hands.

Don't get me wrong, I completely encourage the spinning in circles until you throw up thing, I just don't know what I would do with myself if I had to monitor that all day. I don't have the ability to be a SAHM. I used to feel bad about being a mom who enjoyed working and utilized daycare. Now I just feel like it really is the right choice for us.

Here's some photos of yesterday's walk in the park on a 1.5 mile nature loop, complete with runaway fiddler crabs and a sunning iguana: