Missing Mommy and Daddy

Thursday, daddy was home sick. To help keep the house quiet I took Andrew outside. In the driveway, Andrew was riding his tricylce around. I see him slow down next to daddy's Nissan truck. He puts his feet on the ground to come to a stop. I hear him say, "Honk at daddy's truck" as he reaches to ding the bell on the tricycle.  He turns to me with a big smile and says, "Mommy, I honked at daddy's truck!"  I told him, "I heard!" and smiled back.  Then he slowly pedaled himself a little further and parked in front of the Toyota truck. He "honked" his little bell again and told me he honked at daddy's tire.  Then he kept on pedaling around the driveway.

Friday it was off to school again. As we were walking in, he was smiling and skipping so I thought maybe today would be different. We get in the classroom and about a minute later he starts crying. Both teachers try to engage him in cheerful conversation, and I immediately start assigning him things to do. The teachers were trying to clean up the mess kids had already made, so I got Andrew to help. We did it together. All the while he's crying, "I dont want to go to preschool. I want to go home." Then he starts telling me "I want to go to a different preschool"  We talk and reason things out and I take him potty and we talk about the things he's afraid of.  One of the things is that he's afraid mommy wont come back to get him.  I remind him of the Llama Llama Misses Mama book and how "little Llama was scared of the same thing and yet what happened? Mama Llama came back and took little Llama home. I PROMISE Mommy and Daddy will always come get you and take you home."  "Okay mommy" he says trying to be strong and not cry.  He cries again that he wants to go home when we come out of the bathroom. I tell him to go line up at the wall to wash hands and get ready for snack like the rest of the kids. He started to go and I scooted out the door. 
   I picked him up early Friday... around 2:30.  He was so surprised to see both mommy and daddy (sick but feeling much better) and there were no tears, just a little whimpering.  The teacher told us that it's been getting better and better each day. That he cheers up pretty quickly. Friday they talked about family relationships (because of Fathers day) and he did tear up a little bit during that time. She said she could tell he thinks about us a lot during the day, and periodically he'll ask for his blanket and go sit in the book corner by himself for a while. She said it's really good that he knows he can do that, and that it's good for him to do that too. And when he's ready, he joins the other kids playing again.  He didn't eat any snack or lunch today, but did take a good nap.