Next year I won’t have him all to myself, except on the weekends and the holidays on a public school calendar. It’s a fact that use to, frankly, elate me. FREE CHILDCARE ALL WEEK!
Until it got closer to reality.
This year, I intended to put him in pre-k 4 days a week, Monday through Thursday. But then there was that tiny tugging in my heart. He’s only all mine for one more year. I’m blessed enough to be in the position to keep him with me an extra day a week, and I suddenly found myself longing to make the most of it.
Funday Mondays. We’ll have a different outing planned for each Monday. That’s what we’ll do.
That’s what we’ll have to do because if I don’t have a plan for the day and we just stay around here, well, it’s a struggle. I know this because I’ve been living this.
In the past, it’s been much “easier” to just stay home with the kids on days they’re not in preschool than to take them both somewhere because I wouldn’t have to deal with my anxiety beyond the confines of these walls. I didn’t have to worry about their behavior… or mine. But “easy” is such a bullshit excuse because really, I’m just trading excitement and memory-making for convenience… my own convenience.
Granted, this time last year, my anxiety was at a paralyzing level, and I’m dealing with it better and better every day, but I still have the urge to just want to hole up and not subject myself to the… inconveniences of it all in public.
OUT we went today (and last Monday, too). To the aquarium.
Leyna practically hugged the sting rays in the bay (where we were allowed and even encouraged to pet them).
Kendall excitedly pointed out every fish he recognized from Finding Nemo, and he asked question after question.
“Can I hear the ocean in that shell?”
“Is that a shrimp?”
“Where are the swordfish?”
Tonight, for probably the 20th time since we left the aquarium, he turned to me as he got into bed.
“I had a REALLY good time today, mom.”
I can not remember the last time he said that to me, unprovoked, on a day that I was entirely responsible for his entertainment. I’m not sure that he ever has.
But I hope I hear it a lot more. It’s worth the anxious inconvenience.