just a phase... scary...

Today I dropped Tali off at school and for the third day in a row, I left her crying, clinging to my leg and with the most tortured and miserable expression her face--a look that might seem reasonable if I'd just said, "Bye bye, Baby! I left you a plate of soggy brussel sprouts for lunch and have fun cleaning up your brother's legos all day long!" but not for leaving her with the world's yummiest Kindergarten teacher ever--Morah Mary Grace.

Outside the classroom, after Morah Mary Grace intercepted, gently closed the door and made the international hand signal for please get the hell out of here fast, the other parents were standing around talking about their kids. Of course.

"She's just going through something," my friend says. We could still hear Tali's wails from inside the classroom. "She'll be okay in a sec."
"It could be the change of seasons," someone else says.
"Or the fact that it's the end of the week," someone says.
"Or that she's the middle child."
"Kindergartners are always like this," says a parent with an older child. "They don't know if they're big or little anymore."

Maybe her planets are no longer in alignment?
Or maybe it's another phase...

Except, if they're always in one phase or another, does that even make any part of it a phase at all?

Last year, in preschool, T went through this phase where she didn't want to go to school, hated being away from me, and cried miserably when I dropped her off. Sounds just like now, except that I know she likes school.

I listened on as the parents continued talking about stuff their kids were going through--you know, phase stuff. Apparently, these kids never stop with their phases. They're in a phase, going through a phase, just getting out of a phase...

It's beginning to sound like an excuse to explain the unexplainable. In the meantime, though, I'm hoping that Tali's dropoff troubles are short term and that they'll fall away once she's used to the colder weather, darker mornings, and unaligned planets, and that she gets through quickly whatever she's going through now.

And let's please hope that she doesn't blame me for the rest of her life for being a middle child...