First Day of Nursery School

Yesterday morning was iomportant. The boys sang a made-up song about a coffee house after we helped them dress for their first morning at nursery school. Then they picked up their backpacks, and off we went with grandmother to Immanuel Baptist.

All four of us were excited, but only two were nervous, and those two didn't include the boys. They had worked out their worries by clinging to Mama and Daddy the night before, a night culminating in a nice early morning thunderstorm. Parents out there, do you feel a giggle rising, suspecting who slept well, after lots of cuddling, and who didn't?

Once in their Pond, the suite of rooms they and their other boys and girls will call their own two mornings a week, Miss Donna showed them their cubbies, and they began to follow their noses, inspecting everything else and glancing at their classmates. Grandmother and I tagged along, and I watched the wet morning sunshine peep into the windows and spotlight a pretend grill.

"A gree-ill"!

"Two kepuchs [ketchup bottles]! And this is an ice ceem, Mama! It needs to go into the freezer." Noah tested the pretend freezer door. My plan for long hugs evaporated and I backed away gently. They are growing up and I won't smother them, but boy, did I want to reach down, nab whoever was closest, and squeeze him tightly, and then squash the second one equally tightly and leave his nose damp with kiss marks.

"Goodbye, Noah! Goodbye, Christopher!"

Waited.

"Goodbye, boys!"

"'Bye-'bye, Mama!" with some waves and smiles from both of them.

"Thank you so much, Miss Donna; I can see they're pretty happy, and oh, Curte will be here to pick them up...". Miss Donna smiled and I knew she knew what was going on; Curte was not the only Daddy who would arrive early upstairs and sip coffee, a floor away from his children, waiting.

Out the door we went, and a new stage of their lives began. I suppose for us, too.



By the way, yes, I did hug them lots later. When yesterday evening they rode their bicycles back to grandmother's from the ice cream shop, they were taller. I am positive of it. Sigh.