tennyson the preschooler

today we sent this kid off to school for the first time.

can you believe it?

(and can you believe how perfectly his "alphabet cadet" shirt describes him?)

i've really been looking forward to this day.

i've told mike a few times that i feel like i should be more sad than i am. like maybe i don't have normal mommy emotions. the thing is, i know how much he needs preschool and i have high hopes for him this year.

i think we are going to see a lot of progress.

but still, five mornings a week is a big deal.

and i may have felt my mommy emotions come out a little bit as i was walking him down the hall of his school. i mean, this kid goes to an elementary school! with decorated classroom doors and posters everywhere saying "welcome!"

he's all grown up.

he's taking the bus and everything.

i was really weary of the bus, to be honest. i decided that since i was going with him to school today, that we could try it out and i would make my final decision then.

and he's going to take the bus every day. 

we really lucked out with bus routes. he's the last one to be picked up and the first one to be dropped off, which means he only spends about ten minutes on the bus. the bus picks him up at our door and his teacher is there waiting at the curb when he gets to school.

it's a pretty sweet deal.

and he pretty much felt like a king on that bus.

tennyson's classroom is awesome.

there are only nine kids in there with him.

he gets to spend the day playing with all sorts of toys.

legos, books, puzzles, letters, you name it.

plus he's got a pretty sweet snack hook up (although today he wanted nothing to do with it because... toys.)

a couple days a week he'll have a speech therapist and and occupational therapist that will come into his classroom and work one on one with him. it's going to be so good for him.

(mom's favorite part? five days a week, someone else gets to deal with his potty training all morning!)

at the end of the day, tennyson didn't want to leave.

who can blame him, really?

it wasn't until i pointed out that we needed to go find our maggie that he was ready to get on that bus again.

the whole way home he kept asking "gaggie? where are you? dada? where are you?"

and my mommy emotions struck once more when tennyson was walking home from the bus stop.

how in the world do i have a kid who is old enough to have to walk home from the bus stop?

when we found our dada and our gaggie, we went for a celebratory lunch at mcdonald's.

for the first time ever, tennyson played in the play place. as if he didn't already love mcdonald's enough already, now he knows that there are slides inside.

and just like that, tennyson is a preschooler.

if anyone finds a way to invent a pause button for time, i'd be seriously interested in investing.