Parent's Day Out and Sweating it Out

This was Jack's first week at Parent's Day Out. It's Monday and Wednesdays from 9-2. That is 10 full hours spent away from me. I fully admit that I had a FULL ON FREAK OUT last weekend. I completely regretted my decision to enroll him and basically drove Alex bonkers with my fretting. I sent out texts about my fears. I cried. I paced nervously. I panicked that my son was going to hate me for the rest of his life.

It was FINE.

Kid didn't even cry. Granted, I sneaked away so he wouldn't see me leave and have his very own FULL ON FREAK OUT, but still. He was happily playing when I left and happily snacking when I picked him up. His teachers told me he only got teary when it was nap time. Which I totally expected because he is used sleeping in a big boy bed, while a parent reads to him and lays down with him while he drifts into dreamland.

Which...yes, let's talk about that, shall we?

My kid is a hustler. Straight up.

He slept in a crib at Parent's Day Out. A CRIB. Homeboy hasn't slept in a crib since he was 2, maybe 3, months old. He hated his crib. HATED IT. He would fall asleep in our arms and instantly awake the second he hit the mattress. And then he would scream bloody murder. He acted like I was ripping him apart, limb by limb, if I put him in the crib so I could do things like, I don't know, go to the bathroom. (Oh, how long for those halcyon immobile days when I could pee without a small person standing next to me, hitting me in the back with the toilet seat.) We co-slept mostly out of laziness because it was SO MUCH EASIER to sleep with him than fight the crib fight. We moved him to a big boy bed very early because we were desperate (desperate!) for him to sleep in his own room and the crib was NOT. AN. OPTION.

We were hustled. HUSTLED. That child has napped two days this week with STRANGERS in a CRIB. If I were one to use such phrases, I would offer a great big WTF to this. Because seriously? SERIOUSLY? My own child has been playing me for a full year now. I had no idea crib sleeping was even an option for him anymore. Do you know how much easier that would have been? GAH.

Also, I have joined the MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) group at our church and it's been great fun to meet new moms and we even had a MOPS-wide play date this week. It was at this indoor playground place with lots of slides and bouncy houses and other child-friendly items. Jack had a really great time and I got to talk to lots of different moms. The only problem was that I was sweating like I was at the gym. Seriously. I had to go to the bathroom to TOWEL OFF. The owners apparently turn the air conditioning off at night to save on costs, so when we arrived at 10 am that morning, they had only just turned the AC on. And oh my word, it was so embarrassing. My forehead was glistening, I had sweat stains on my arm pits, my back had a line of sweat, even my CHEST was sweating. MY CHEST. I looked like I had just run 3 miles, not just sent my son down a slide 3 times. I wanted to leave, but Jack was having a great time, so I stayed for him. To everyone's credit, they still talked to me even though I was covered in a layer of sweat from head to toe. I'm just afraid they're going to remember me as "that sweaty girl in the Saints shirt" instead of, you know, MY NAME.