Whew. This morning was a doozy. Ava was insistent that she didn’t want to go to school, and Emmett’s fussiness from last night carried over into the daylight. At one point, both kids (weird…”both kids”) were crying away downstairs, Emmett on my lap and Ava to her mom on the sofa in the TV room. And I thought to myself, “So this is what it’s going to be like now.” Like any responsible adult, this thought was followed quickly by, “Well, I asked for it.”
The experienced parent in me wonders how long this phase will last. The pessimist in me wonders if it’s a phase at all and whether it’ll go on forever and ever and ever. It pains us to see Ava so sad, particularly when she’s too young to understand we’re serious when we say we really are going to pick her up from school; we won’t leave her there.
By the time I dropped Ava off at school summer camp this morning, she was happily drinking the Italian soda and munching on the bagel I’d bought her at the Java House. Still, when I tried to leave after escorting her to her room, she made it clear that she wanted her Gramary to take her “straight home, immediately” after school. Well! Even her worry over being displaced by the new kid isn’t enough to dampen her love of giving orders.