Have a good day, little monkey!

 Ze Monkey Lunch Box

This morning, my little Edie starts preschool.  It's a part-time gig, from 9-1pm twice a week, but it's a lot for us.  I am excited for the toddler-free time - though soon enough it will be time filled with a newborn.  And I think that Edie is really going to like it.  My daughter loves to learn. And she relishes stopping foolishness, micromanaging, and speaking her mind.  Perfect teacher's pet!

Excitement aside, I am really going to miss her!  We've been two peas in a pod since she was born.  It took me almost two years to have her baby sat, and we've only been apart for entire days for me to take the bar exam and for a couple difficult - but admittedly cathartic - solo vacation weekends away from her during this pregnancy.

Soon after you have your first born, people like to talk about how you "need" to get away, "need" to let someone else care for them.  I really don't understand this advice.  I felt physically unable to leave Edie in anyone's care for a long time, and since I was far away from family or friends who would (well-meaningly) insist on babysitting, and also since I have a partner who is arguably a bigger sap than I am when it comes to leaving Edie outside of parental care, I just didn't leave her.  This is not to suggest that I was never over-whelmed - I was quite often during that first year.  Nor do I mean to imply that I was or am always Mary Sunshine.  More like Mary Partly Sunny with a Chance of Scattered Showers.

I think that my inability to let someone else care for my child has been something, for me, that was correlated not at all to my super-momness, but instead by my insecurity as a mom. I worried everyday about my ability to figure this whole thing out and so I just couldn't imagine that anyone else could step in and solve the impossible riddle that was my baby.  Seems like it also has to do with the child at hand, and mine was long a mama's girl.  Separation anxiety just ebbed and flowed, never quite ceasing.  She nursed about 18 times a day for the first six months, as I remember.  Maybe neither one of us was quite confident that the other was going to make it, so we just grabbed on for dear life and didn't let go.

In a moment of mind-expanding culture (i.e. Will was out for the night and so I did secret things with Hulu), I was watching 16 and Pregnant the other day.  Teen Mom's mother convinced her that she needed to go out for the night and learn to let someone else care for her newborn baby.  Teen Mom was despondent, frowning and looking into nothing as she answered "Yeah, I guess so."  I wanted to shout "No! She's not a competent mom yet and she knows it! Let her learn to trust herself!"  I didn't shout it, though, because it was an MTV rerun.  And I'm not crazy.

But here we are today.  Edie is almost 2 1/2 and we're both ready for this.  Not ready a little too.  But mostly ready.  She is still very attached to me, but also very confident and her independence grows by the day.  My little love bug, she recently went around the circle in music class and gave a hug to every last parent there during hug-your-mamma(or daddy or nanny) time, to a chorus of "oooohs."  I really hope her teacher gives hugs.

I will be sending her off with a meticulously packed backpack, along with a lunch packed in her brand new monkey lunch box - an impulse buy picked out by the lady herself during a Target run.  I have big plans to walk the dogs, bathe the psycho hot spot licking dog, sew a bit, and maybe even some yoga.  Then, pick that big kid up at 1 pm and try not to cry as I hug her for a little too long.  Oh yeah, and maybe shake this other baby loose while I'm at it.