First Day

I had dreams for this morning. I would be up early, in plenty of time to blow dry and style my hair. After a few minutes spent cuddling in bed, JP would go cook pancakes while we waited for Landon to wake up, which he would do around 7:45. He'd be dressed in the clothes I already laid out and we'd eat a nice breakfast together before taking pictures and heading to New Center at 8:15 for his big first day.

Instead, I woke up at 8:05. I yelled, hit JP, and jumped into the shower. JP went upstairs to shove an irritated Landon into his clothes (not the ones I had picked out) and handed him a cereal bar and cup of milk to eat on the floor of our bathroom while we got ready. At 8:30 I was dressed with hair done (or "done") and make-up on, appreciating all those mornings I had to get ready for school in fifteen minutes after 5 a.m. swim practice. I still insisted on pictures, and managed to get this one of my two handsome men:

Five seconds after this was taken Landon decided that he didn't want to hold his lunch box anymore. And he didn't want JP to hold it. And he didn't want it to touch the ground. The world can be very frustrating when you're a toddler and people/gravity aren't following your simple instructions.

We all jumped in the car and headed off to New Center, realizing half-way there that we'd forgotten the carefully packed and labeled bag of diaper and nap items. At 8:52 we were on our way again. When we arrived in his classroom the kids were already outside for their morning playtime. Landon wanted to join them and paused for a picture with great reluctance.

We walked out the door in the back of the classroom to find his teacher and new friends. Landon spotted the playscape and Little Tikes cozy coupes and took off.

We chased after him so we could at least identify the curly-haired kid to his new teacher, but she remembered his name from Open House and gave a cheerful Hello. There were three crying kids on her lap and Landon gave them a concerned look, probably wondering if they had seen the buses (cozy coupes), and if they had- why were they crying? He jumped on a tricycle and after some prodding gave us a cheerful "bye bye mama! bye bye dada!" And on that anticlimactic note, JP and I headed out very proud of our little boy, but thinking maybe it wouldn't be so bad if we were at least some competition for the cozy coupes. JP picked him up at 5:15 and got a glowing report from the teacher. Landon was very happy to see his dad and gave him a huge hug. JP thought he was just relieved that this daycare worked the same way as the old one - that we did come back at the end of the day and take him home to his doggies and personal bus fleet. It was a great first day.

And here are two superfluous pictures of Landon prancing around with his new backpack last night.

I hope he's always this excited about the first day of school. I can't wait until the day we get to pick out school supplies!