When I walked into the room, E was crawling under a crib and quickly disappeared from sight. I laughed and gave a questioning look to his teacher. "Oh he lost his purple ball under there. He'll be back!" And sure enough, he emerged from under the crib holding the ball in his hand. He laughed, threw it across the room, and then continued to chase after it.
It was Friday, thankfully. The end to a long week. E had a great day - better than I'd had, and I listened as his teacher recapped it. A long nap, a skipped bottle, drinking from the sippy cup. All good things! I gathered up his stuff and tried to convince him to leave. Since all his friends were there, it wasn't easy, and he was whining as I tried to balance him and all of his stuff in my arms.
We got down the hall and somehow I managed to sign him out and get through all the doors without dropping anything. Through the parking lot to Penny, ready to throw everything including E in the car, and the door won't open. Blame it on new technology, but I sat there confused for a few minutes, pulling on the handle. You see, I've never unlocked my car. Or more accurately, I've never used my keys to unlock the car. As long as the key is on me somewhere, usually thrown in my purse, all I need to do is put my hand on the handle and I can open the car.
So it dawned on me that I'd left my keys somewhere in daycare. Back inside we went. Through all the doors, down the hall, back into Room 2 where the teachers looked up confused. I found my keys while they laughed that they hadn't even noticed them yet. Usually they find keys at least once a day and start counting down until a parent runs back in. I wished them a good weekend once again, and headed back to the parking lot with E.
We got to Penny, successfully opened the doors, and as I was throwing things in the car, E managed to dislodge some artwork that I had carefully balanced in one of my bags. I got him in his carseat, and then leaned down to pick up the artwork. It was Tom's father's day card they'd made in class. Super cute, except it was signed from E's little friend instead of from him. I sat there looking at it in the parking lot.. debating whether Tom would care. Was it worth the trip back in? E was already in his car seat. Do their footprints really look that different? I decided Tom would probably laugh about it, but then thought of the little girl's parents and decided they might care...
Sigh.
I grabbed E and we walked back in the building. The person at the front desk looked up alarmed and asked if everything was okay. "Fine, yes.. the artwork.. just one of those days..." I trailed off, holding up the artwork as a half explanation. As I walked back in the room, his teachers started laughing "Now what!?" they asked. I just shook my head and started laughing - thank goodness it's FRIDAY!
Artwork switched out, we headed out again. I told them I really hoped that I wouldn't see them again until the following Monday, and we trekked out to the parking lot again. I looked at E and told him that we were done, no matter what happened, we were going HOME!
The good news, is that Tom really enjoyed his artwork, and we managed to finally get home!
