Will It Ever Get Easier?

After a month with no Mother's Day Out, it was finally time to send my sweet boy back to school. He was ready... I was certainly ready... and my running schedule was primed and ready. After a bit of a brouhaha with his fabulous school from last year, we decided to try a new place. Prior to this I would have told you that you could drop off Isaac off with the devil himself and, so long as he had some toys, Isaac would be happy as a clam. So the first day of school came and I had no worries!

Isaac, age 2 1/2, shows off his backpack and monkey nap mat before we left for the new school.

Let's go already, Mommy! I've got to go and hang out with my peers.

We arrived without incident. The new place is literally less than a mile from our home. Yippee!

All smiles with a helicopter before silly me made a big mistake.

We met his two teachers and then I skeedaddled out of there. But I forgot something and had to go back into the classroom. That was the undoing! My 'cool as a cucumber' boy lost it. I felt an inch tall. It was awful. That is the worst feeling -- like you're leaving your child somewhere they desperately don't want to be. It is HARD on a mother. I didn't cry, but I felt awful.

Alas, I had to get home. I was running a big Labor Day cheesecake sale and I had to get started baking. That week I baked NINETEEN cheesecakes. Oh my aching feet!

Here he is before his second day of school. Still all smiles at home...

On Isaac's second day of school, I wised up and dropped his stuff and hightailed it out of there. But not before he got an unfeeling look on his face. Ugh! Again, I felt bad. But when I picked him up his teacher said that it only lasted about two seconds past my departure. That was great to hear! And he received high praise, so all was not lost for week #1 of school.

However, the cheesecake biz got a harsh self-review at week's end. After all of the painful hours on my feet, I didn't have the profits one would think I should have. I decided I could do one of two things: quit this little venture OR raise my prices considerably. I opted for the latter (which may cause the first... LOL). We'll see what happens. As it stood, though, that hard week was NOT worth it, financially.

But then came Saturday. A good friend asked if I wanted to take Isaac to the Delta Fair in Memphis. I was nervous as a cat about putting Isaac on his first kiddie ride. It did not look as secure as I would have liked. Off he went with me worrying up a storm.

He smiled the whole way around the race car track!

Here is Isaac and his BFF, Phoenix, doing exactly what they shouldn't be doing.

Here is my brave boy getting harnessed up for a big, big jumping time!

Look at him go! Not a care in the world!

Look at that smile! I love those twenty cute teeth!

He is way up there. Not a single worry is evident (not even from me).

This is the new background on my desktop. Love that fella!

There they are in the monster truck enjoying every rough riding second.

Isaac honked his horn nearly the entire time he was on this ride.

This experience taught me a couple of things. 1) My boy is growing up quickly and certainly not a baby anymore. 2) This is why I stand on my feet for hours on end baking cheesecakes -- so I can spend a bundle in the heat letting Isaac have the time of his life. Worth every cent!

Most of the time, though, it doesn't cost a dime to have a great day. Labor Day was no exception. We decided to go to a local park and we were approached by two men from the local newspaper (well, the local edition for our neck of the woods for the Memphis paper). I chatted it up with the reporter while the photographer snapped away. The very next day Chasen and Isaac made the FRONT PAGE!

Here are the new local celebrities working the backhoe in nearby Hernando, Mississippi.

After that we went to see Isaac's most favorite things: tractors.

At the end of the three-day weekend it was time to go back to school. Uh oh. But day three went better than one and two. And by day four, they said he was really coming out of his shell. Oh happy day!

My little monkey just adores his monkey nap mat.

He also likes getting filthy dirty outside on a nice afternoon.

Obviously Isaac going back to school and the cheesecake biz took up a lot of my time, energy and thoughts over the past two weeks. But I am happy to report that I only missed one base training run. At this point I have completed fifteen runs, and the last several were actually done outdoors because the weather miraculously cooled off this week. I have to say, though, that the treadmill treated me much nicer than the open road. It has just been tough, even with better temps. You'd think after fifteen runs I'd feel like my old self, but I don't. Apparently it is going to take a while longer. Three mile runs were OK, but 4-milers were killer. Just four miles! Ugh. I still have two semi-easy weeks ahead of me before I start doing 5-milers at the drop of a hat. By then I'll have 23 runs (give or take) under my belt and hopefully I will be ready to get down to business.

This week Isaac's other new school begins, so we have another "new school" experience to look forward to. Oh yay. I'll have my game face on this time, though. Between the two new schools, I'll have four mornings to myself. That should help my running mojo return, I think. I have designed my running schedule around his Mother's Day Out schedule, so I will soon be running Monday through Thursday, with another run on Saturday. I hope I can pull it off -- the Mississippi Blues Marathon is a mere seventeen weeks away!