I have been dying to tell about this morning. The first day. Regardless of if you have 6 weeks of maternity leave, 18 years before college drop off, or 34 hours to the first day of school — you are never fully prepared to leave your kids.

High five to the littles, their teachers basically kicked us out the door with as little as a hug. I really appreciate the “rip the bandaid off quick” approach. It happened so fast walking to the car, I was still trying to figure out what just happened. But before there was too much processing we headed to the elementary school. I was pretty anxious, the day before I wasn’t greeted with warm hugs or even a smile. I get it, school employees are counting down the days to Christmas break and so are the kids which equals a pretty tense environment. I was afraid for our 3rd grader. She was really nervous and she needed warmth, she needed blankets of overt love. Meg and I walked her in holding her hands and our breath. The above mentioned staff presented as Dr. Jekyll. “Hello baby, you look so pretty today”.

Whew. They must of saved all their warmth for the most deserving. I will cope.

We waited for the classroom ambassador to take us to her class. We listened to Belly Breathe — we all needed some deep breaths. We walked the long hall to the classroom where we were greeted by a SUPER COOL teacher. Like so cool, I want to be friends with this girl, except she is probably way to cool to hang out with me. Tears streamed down our sweet baby’s face as the cool teacher attempted to warmly greet and welcome her. With a little nudge the sweetest, kindest kid baby stepped into the classroom. Meanwhile, Meg and I are sobbing in the hallway. Cool teacher gave us a reassuring nod and we took the long walk to the parking lot; silent tears.

This post is totally dedicated to the real warriors a.k.a. the teachers. For real, I bow in admiration. I can’t begin to explain the gratitude I have for all the babies teachers today. Their thank you card would be longer than this post. I am so weak, they are so strong. They took care of those sweet children today. For better or worse they loved on them when I couldn’t. More on that guilt at another time. Similar to the brevity of the relationship we have with these kids; trust can be built quickly when there is a need for that relationship. In those brief moments I connected to those other caretakers and I trusted them to wipe the tears and hold the hands of babies we were entrusted.

School and daycare were big mountains and lets just say there is a lot of room for improvement.

I intended to say more about these hard choices that came tonight but I am feeling so tired and I should sleep. I think for the hard choices moving forward we will just rely on a magic eight ball. What is right and what is wrong is absolutely not black and white; its a spectrum. I pray the choices we make in the toughest moments are more right than wrong. We are doing the best we can with what we ahve.

Lastly, I would like to congratulate Meg and myself, we have been foster parents for 48 hours. Thank you village people (y’all and the band). Lets do it another day!