22 Month Update

Dear Lana,

Yesterday you turned 22 months old. I won’t lie to you – the past month was a tough one. I knew it would be tough and I dreaded it for some time because this, my dear, was the month that you began nursery school. I did everything I could to make this an easy transition for you. I enrolled you several months ago in a Mommy and Me toddler class to get you used to interacting with other children. I found an excellent school affiliated with a local church that I knew would provide a safe, loving, and educational atmosphere. I enrolled you in the two-day a week program to give you time to adjust and continue to enjoy days spent with your beloved Granny. I setup play dates with our neighbor and your new classmate, Preston, to ensure you had a familiar face in class.

I’d like to think that all of those things helped, but in the end we both found ourselves crying our eyes out on the first day of school. I held it together while you lunged and cried for me from your new teacher’s arms and made it all the way home before I collapsed on the floor in tears. I sat in my office with my stomach in knots and counted the hours until I could pick you up. I watched in amazement as you sat calmly eating Cheerios when I arrived that afternoon, but just as soon as you saw me you dissolved into tears again.

What surprised me the most about that first week was how your insecurity and fear didn’t end when you left school, how it crept into our once comfortable routines of dinner time, bed time, and days at home with Granny. You were clingy, grumpy, short-tempered, and absolutely petrified of returning to school. You realized something was up as I dressed you for the next day of school and out of desperation tried to redirect me by shouting, “Store! Store? Wanna go store!” The redirection became even more literal on the third day of school, when you turned around in your car seat as we approached the building and began pointing in the opposite direction yelling, “NO!!! DIS WAY!!!”

And so it went for almost two weeks. You did, however, show signs of improvement with each new day until, on the fifth day, I knew you were finally settled in when I received a report that you ate your lunch, took a nap, and unclenched long enough to take a poop away from home. Never before has a poop meant so much to me. I wish now that I could go back to the early part of the month and give us both a huge hug, wipe away our tears, and let us know that things would work out just fine. That in a few weeks time you would be all smiles while talking about school, professing your love for Ms. Jessie and Ms. Connie, and providing detailed reports on your classmates (“Kaleb cries, Chad trouble, Ethan’s daddy cute”).

Your adjustment to the school routine made life at home much easier and often times, more interesting. You began to mimic the routines of school days and started applying the “time” label to every part of the day. Breakfast became “Cheer-O Time!” and diaper changes were, appropriately enough, “Change Time!” We engaged in “Clean up Time!” throughout the day – I recall one day in particular when you chanted, “Ms. Jessie says clean up!” over and over until I wished Ms. Jessie would also institute quiet time. The one special “time”, however, that I enjoyed the most was without a doubt “Daddy Time!” Each evening when your father would return home from work, you would literally drop whatever you were doing and run to the door squealing, “DADDY TIME!!” and clapping your little hands. This was such a nice change of pace from your previous grumplepuss greeting of, “Go away, Daddy!” earlier in the month and also an approach that’s much more likely to get you that little sports car when you turn 16.

Your manners, like your attitude, also showed a significant improvement toward the end of the month. You began consistently using words like “Please”, “Thank You”, “Bless You”, and even an occasional “Yes, Maam.” One day I fed you a piece of sliced cheese and you sweetly offered up a “Thank you, Mommy , JMo” after every single bite. You also started to talk more about your feelings, as in “The moon scared – don’t like it” and “I love this shirt – cute."

Perhaps my favorite moment of the entire month came on a Saturday when I had praised you repeatedly for your impeccable manners and your remarkably improved coordination. After climbing the stairs up to my office in record time you paused at the top, turned to look at me, threw your hands up over your head Rocky Balboa style and declared, “I am SO big!”

Indeed you are, my amazing big girl.

Love,
Mommy, JMo