Johnnie Back To School

So today is a BIG DAY. HUGE! Johnnie goes back to school in person today. I don't know who's more excited, he or I. He was so excited that he packed his snack last night, put water in his water bottle and we resurrected his brown bag and lunchbox from more than a year ago! He woke up early without needing to be nudged awake he was so excited. Really it isn't like we were going to get up much earlier than usual. Maybe we'd be at McDonald's at 7 AM instead of 7:30 AM now but he still would have plenty of time to kick around since we don't have to be lined up at the entry gate until 8 AM. Of course there is the logistics of that DAILY PASS you have to create every single morning and not only there is that, but also the TAs need to take the kids temperature and scan the Daily Pass which now serves as the check-in mechanism for the kids. I wanted to be early. Didn't want to be stuck in the back of what was sure to be a line. And so we left at 7:40, left the dog at home and was fortunate enough to get parking on Indianapolis around the corner from the entrance. True enough the 1st grade kids were already lined up. We ended up being the 4th in line with Johnnie's old TK classmate Jennifer next to us. Her dad is kind of a bit of a oddball and asked me lots of questions about the vaccine and if I thought the kids wouldn't have to be wearing masks come summer. Sounds like he's one of those people that get their info from the conservative talking heads that still think it's an affront to one's liberty wearing masks. Bunch of morons. Anyway my challenge there is to make sure I am not talking down to him and be respectful in conversation. After all, my son is watching and learning. And I always tell him to be respectful to others. So the drop-off went pretty uneventfully and then off I went home to eat MY breakfast, take MY shower and then do my 9:30 team meeting. I will admit it seemed a bit strange doing all that and not having Johnnie in the house doing his thing.  But the 3 hours also went by pretty darn quickly and next thing you know I already needed to head out the door to pick him up. This time I needed to bring his yellow placard because they let out the kids and they only sent them out IF they saw the placard. I stood there with Rose's parents next to me and also Paul's mom who is Lisa's patient. Funny even when he's not around, I'm known because they know Johnnie. As it turned out his room was the last one to let out and I got brought back to that time when I would pick him up at Carmen's Daycare. Whatever he was doing he was always so excited to get picked up he would run out. Same feeling today. But it was also good to see him say goodbye to his classmates. I whisked us off because we needed to get to Grandview Elementary. Time for this week's Covid test for him. We did this a week ago and this time it went by even faster. I presume it will be like this for the rest of the year. And then we went on home, I made Johnnie a pizza for lunch. He actually asked for it. I asked him about his morning at school and he said it went well. I posted a pic that his teacher Ms Wiley posted.  It seemed like they didn't do much at school this day, but hey, it's just the first day. And really it's just an acclimation week as far as I'm concerned. Still I can't say how glad I am that he's back in school IF ONLY to socialize with other kids again on a regular basis.  He still had homework to do at home of course. They call it asynchronous work. And EPIC books to read obviously. And karate class to do, since I found a new episode from his online teacher. But somehow all that seemed anti-climactic after the morning pick-up. I had a lot of work to do of course but I did all my work when he wasn't around this morning, which is EXACTLY how it should work out. All we had to do tonight was get Panda Express for dinner for him and we were good to go. Feels like just another Tuesday night. Still it was a success and me, Johnnie, AND the dog all went to bed early tonight. More of the same tomorrow...