The thanks I get for doing them a favour

Late yesterday afternoon, I had to leave work early to get my health card renewed, and by the time I had that finished (picture the exact same scenario as a visit to your local DMV)... I decided that it wasn't worth it to come back to work, and I went to pick up the kids a little bit early. It's summer, it was a nice day, we could either play a bit before dinner or at least get through the dinner hour in a more leisurely manner before then doing something fun after... whatever.

Except that as soon as I set foot in the door at Cindy's, both kids started to cry.

Now that it is summer, one of Cindy's regulars is off rotation (her mom works for the school board) and two school-aged kids who used to be her charges are back in her care. These two are a brother (7) and sister (5) team, and let it be said - Liam adores them both.

When I got to Cindy's yesterday, everyone was out in the back yard. The 7 year old was running around shouting that he was going to eat Liam's eyeballs, and Liam was on the ground laughing so hard that he could scarcely catch his breath.

Boys. [eyeroll]

I stuck around for a good 15-20 minutes or so, trying to ease them out the door, but by the time we left there were tears all around. I tried to reassure the kids that the other moms would soon be coming to get the other kids, but that was little consolation to them: they did not want to miss out on a minute of it. In fact, despite the fact that he has not been napping at home for the past six months, yesterday was the first day that Liam told Cindy he did not want a nap at her house. And it was because he didn't want to miss a thing.

This was a first for Liam, this fussiness at getting out the door, though Mallory has been crabby at pick-up time for the last little while. No idea why and no ability to fix it. (We tucked her into bed at 8:30 last night and she was still talking to herself at almost 10 p.m. How on earth do we fix that??)

The silver lining in this is that it reinforces what I have suspected all along, which is that Liam is ready for school. He is ready to enjoy the company of older kids and move onto new things. There is some solace in that.

Anyway, the next time I am out of work half an hour early, I will go run an errand or something and then pick the kids up at the normal time. No more of this early pick-up business that makes me the bad guy. I get enough of that on my regular bath-taking and vegetable-eating enforcements at home.

(Chad organized a charity creek clean-up event last weekend. Here's Liam swimming in his t-shirt and thrilled about the work gloves he got to wear... that he didn't want to get dirty.)