First day in daycare

Today I'm in a melancholic mood. Just a few minutes ago, I left our little angel, who is only 15 months old, for the first time at his daycare.

His mom already had to deal with separation from him a couple of times. The most obvious was the birth, where they were separated for the first time. But then she had to go on a business trip to China for a couple of days. Another time was when we stayed longer in Germany after Christmas but she had to go back to work, etc.

But I have been with him every single day And night since he was born. I never had to separate from him until now because I was staying at home with him for the whole last year; I took parental leave.

I know it's today and tomorrow only for one hour, but after that, we will need to extend the time because my parental leave is over, and I only have one more month of annual leave, and then I need to go back to work full-time, 8 hours a day (+ lunch).

And yes, I know we will be more and more separated over time, and that makes me both sad and happy. Obviously, I want him to have a great, independent life.

But this time, for the first time, he is not staying with his mom, grandma, or grandpa, but with some people we don't even know, and we have to trust the process that everything will be good.

Once we arrived, he didn't mind me and started playing by himself and checking what the other children were doing.

I stayed for a few minutes and talked to the principal, and he played without even checking where I was. But then I said goodbye, and he knows what it means because we say it to mom and sister every morning. That is when he started crying and wanted to go with me.

They told me they would call me if he cried for more than 5 minutes. Now it's already 20 minutes and they haven't called yet, so he seems to be OK, but I miss him a lot already!

...

After half an hour I git him and he was playing with the teacher and one of those baby walkers. For some reason he really likes them although he doesn't have one. Anyway, once he saw me he started crying a little bit and ran to me and we hugged and he patted me on my back like he sometimes does, because I do it to him often when he is sad.

He was a bit skeptical about the whole thing but all in all he seemed to like it there.