See You Later, Mom!

Normally, I don't see the kids off to the bus in the morning. But on Tuesday after Labor Day, we had a forced plant shutdown at work. Since my company still enforces two mandatory days off each month with a 10% pay cut, they decided to save even more by forcing everyone to take the same day off. Normally, I enjoy my "UPDO's" (unpaid day off) or furlough or Mula Hula as MIT Mommy calls it. We used them to go to Water Country and Canobie Lake Park last month on slightly less crowded weekdays. It's great to use them as extra vacation days. It's not so great when you're forced to take a day when your family is not around. Almost every nearby school in Massachusetts and New Hampshire had the Friday before Labor Day off, but not the Tuesday after, so bad planning on my company's part. But I made the most of this opportunity to peek into the kids' school routines. Normally, Doug rushes around making lunches and drives them to the bus stop, but he slept in that day as I pretended to be Mrs. Dad. Since I also wanted to improve the carbon footprint for our school routine, I made them walk to the bus stop.



I did NOT coach Adam to put his arm around his sister. He just did it automatically because he is a sweet boy through and through and truly loves and wants to protect his sister.

I snapped a shot of the bus approaching as I knew the rest of the shots would be looking at the back of their heads.



I asked them to wave as they were getting on the bus. Adam waved so quickly that I completely missed the shot. But I got Dova waving.



Did you miss that? Here's a close-up of her wave:



Can you say, "See you later, Mom, I don't have time to wave and look at you!" I can't complain though. I'm happy that she is secure and doesn't have any separation anxiety about going to school. She's come a long way from the tearful break-your-heart 20 minute goodbyes for daycare.

When I got home, Doug went out for an errand, and I was suddenly in my house by myself for the first time in ages. The last time I can remember was when I was eight months pregnant with Dova and I sent Adam to preschool on the day I worked from home. Prior to that, he was always home with me on my telecommute day, always making a ruckus as I tried to work. On this Tuesday, my house was extremely peaceful without the kids, but so quiet it was spooky. I ended up making calls for kirtsy (stay tuned, to be announced soon), which quickly dispelled my peace.

Doug and I had a lunch date at our favorite Japanese restaurant and we had a wonderful day together. We had to rush back to catch the kids coming off the bus. I didn't even have time to get my camera, so I shot this video from my phone:



Dova had fallen asleep on the bus. When she is woken from a nap, watch out! We call her "grump munchkin", direct offspring of the "grump monster" (that would not be me). Adam wanted to hold her hand, but she wanted nothing to do with it. Ah well, so ends another UPDO.