1 hour and 15 minutes

So, yesterday was Henry's first day of school. He's going to an episcopal day school near our house. It's a beautiful campus, woodsy and rustic. The cottages look like Hansel and Gretel lived in them, and the play yard is enormous, shaded and has tons of cool things to play on. There are only 30 kids in the whole school and many of the teachers have been there for decades. The director has a masters in education from Duke and she has a son named Henry too. I really liked her. They have music class (the teacher is a former opera singer from Hungary--she's slightly overqualified) and they attend chapel once a week. This is good for Henry so he can be exposed to other deities besides the Giant Spaghetti Monster (mine and Justin's lord).

The ratio at Henry's school is 5:1, but it's actually better than that since it's really rare that all the kids are there and then there's the ones who leave early or come late. I'm really happy with the arrangement. He will be attending M, W, and F and probably no more than 2-3 hours until I find a job, and then he will probably stay 10-15 hrs a week. This is the same amt. of time a lot of the other kids are there too so I feel like he won't be the only one who's not there much.

The kids in Henry's class have interesting names. Some examples are Tenoc, Emiliano, Milan, Harper (a girl). They're very sweet and seemed pretty docile like Henry. Henry is unfortunately the youngest, by like 6 months. However, he is the same size, if not bigger and he actually says just as many or more words (according to the teachers). Still, I worry.

I spent the morning there with Henry so he could get used to it and feel comfortable since I was there. Then we went home for lunch and nap, and then we went back in the afternoon and after about 30 minutes I left him there for an hour and 15 minutes. You would have thought I'd handed him over to the Nazi's (like in Sophie's Choice) the way I sobbed in the car pulling out of there. I thought I was actually going to vomit. Luckily my gym is across the street and I worked out the whole time. I got to see the footage of Obama arriving in DC and that made me ver klempt again.

When I went back to get Henry I spied on him through the window. He was playing airplane in his usual manner (totally oblivious of everything else around him). I went in his classroom and stood for several seconds before he noticed me. When he did he reached his hand up and said, "Nut!" revealing a soggy almond that had been stowed away in his palm for god knows how long. Then I swooped him out of there like it was a hazmat site, and we rode off into the sunset...