Today was an interesting day for both Riley and me. Nana has vacation this week, and so she’s not at the house to watch Riley during the day when I’m working. Normally, Berta would take off these days, but she’s been taking off so many days on these occasions - from times that Nana needs off to times when I’ve got to be somewhere at the end of the day when Abby comes home from school - that it’s becoming a burden to her work. So to ease that burden, I told her that I would watch Riley on the two days this week that he didn’t have preschool.
I had originally thought that I would keep Riley at home and take the day off myself. I had mentioned to Nate that I might need a couple of days this week to be home with Riley, as I’ve described, and he suggested that I could bring Riley over to his house and his wife, Mary, would keep an eye on Riley while I got some work done. Riley would be able to play with his kids and it would be a good work day.
So that didn’t work out exactly as planned.
I started to worry yesterday morning as Berta was rousing Riley for his extra day of preschool this week. Normally he goes only on Wednesday and Friday, but we added a day just os I would have him one less day this week. He was not having that. He did not want to go to school on a Monday, and put up a pretty good fight in the morning. Screaming a lot, Berta finally got him out the door, and had to leave him crying at preschool, something that doesn’t normally happen on his regular days.
This morning, I let him sleep in and did a little work in the meantime. When he finally got up, I started laying the foundation. Would you like to go over and visit with Mr. Nate’s kids? “No.” How about some toast? “Ok.”
Eventually, I got him to be not only willing to accept the idea, but enthusiastic to go. Actually, I have my laptop out on the kitchen table, and Riley was hurrying me along to pack it up and head out for his visit.
When we finally arrived, Riley was still anxious for his visit. He squirmed until I unbuckled his seat and let him out, then we both walked to the front door and rung the bell. Mary greeted us and welcomed us inside.
It was at this point that something in Riley snapped. He suddenly turned around, mumbling “I don’t want to go…”, and headed back toward the car.
The rest of the morning was pretty much like this. Mary did finally convince Riley to play with the kids and some toys in the basement, but when Riley came up for lunch and didn’t see me where he left me, he kind of freaked out. He didn’t want to eat a real lunch (just two slices of cheese and some pretzels), and he didn’t want to play with the other kids at all.
So, I guess the little guy isn’t ready to break from his routine with Nana at all. It might be nice to run him out on some unscheduled outings with some other people during the week, just to get him used to the idea. Maybe we should really have socialized with Nate’s kids more before trying this and it would have worked out better. That’s probably something we should plan on for the future anyway.
Oh well. I guess I’ll have to plan something for us to do with Thursday. Hopefully, he’ll not want to stay home all day, like he decided he wanted to do after today’s outing.
Riley’s going to be three in a couple of weeks. This should be interesting.
