Ellie transitioned into the toddler room at her daycare this past week. Next week, instead of walking through the building to the infant rooms all the way at the back, we will be dropping her off in the toddler room, right at the front. I have so many mixed feelings about this. She is certainly ready for the toddler room- the toys, the schedule, the fact that she no longer will be navigating her uncoordinated toddler physique around small infants cooing on the carpeted floor. But the saddest part is the fact that her teachers, the lovely women whom we gave our child before we turned and walked away for the very first time, will no longer be her caregivers. It is quite an adjustment for Jim and me!
These past 15 months, it has often been the unexpected that leaves me grappling with the emotions of a mother realizing that her child is growing up faster than a science experiment pea plant. The first toddling steps were not what brought the lump to my throat, necessarily. But that day when I went to pick Ellie up from daycare after a harried day at work, and she walked over to meet me at the door, arms outstretched, for the very first time? Yeah, that did it.
On Thursday I emptied the basket of clothes from Ellie's infant room cubbie and when I got home that evening I spread the contents on the floor, deciding what to bring to the new toddler room the next day. Something took me completely off guard then. Next to the infant-size striped socks and baby legwarmers was a plastic pacifier cover. Ellie was never really in to pacifiers, but I remember we brought one to daycare, one year ago, in hopes that it would calm her when they laid her swaddled body down to nap. I remember bringing the pacifier home a few weeks later and assuming that we had lost the cap. And suddenly there it was, a sucker punch instigated by a simple piece of plastic polymer on a blue living room rug. The formal realization that my sweet little girl, the small being whose warm head I kissed as we rocked to sleep countless times in the odd hours of morning, was no longer a baby.
That's when I got the lump in my throat.
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