September 27, 2004 - Monday
I had wondered a little before today how Jeremy would react to going back to Mary's house for the first time in more than two weeks. Our plan for the fall is for him to go to Mary's every Monday for a relaxing day in a comfortable place, but Mary was away on vacation for the last two Monday and Jeremy's just been going to school instead. I didn't really think he would mind going to Mary's again, but who knows? He'd equated going to school with being a "big boy" for a long time and dropping Harry off and not letting him stay might have set him off. Thankfully, it turned out that the boys were late enough getting up this morning so I was able to just go to Mary's first. Jeremy was delighted.

The bigger worry in bringing Jeremy back to Mary's was that he might not want to go back to school. After three weeks of preschool the honeymoon is probably over. And with the novelty gone, Jeremy might just be happy to go back to all the attention he gets at Mary's full-time. Only time will tell how big an issue that will be, but after running happily to meet me at pick-up time like he did all summer, Jeremy went into a very strange mood when we got in the car to go pick up Harry at school. He didn't say much, just pensively sitting in the back seat on the way, and all I could understand was that he didn't want to go get Harry at school, or perhaps just didn't want to go to school. There no way to know for sure what he was thinking, but I have a sense that Mary, in trying to encourage him with a little "I'm so proud of you" pep-talk, actually had the opposite result. Instead of ending with the big boy at school praise, she awkwardly went on to tell Jeremy how soon he would go to school all the time and only come to see her for haircuts. True enough, but that won't be until January and that's an eternity to a two-year-old. I think he took it as imminent.


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