Growing Pains

Yesterday was the first day of Owen's week long giraffe camp at the zoo. Other than Mister (a.k.a. Jabba the Cat), giraffes (a.k.a. "doo-rafts") are his favorite animal. When I saw that the zoo had a giraffe class for kids his age, I signed him right up.

Yesterday's class was the first time Owen had done anything without Spencer or me and, let me tell you, it was a bit rough on all of us. He was very apprehensive about going - in fact, my mom came along just in case it didn't go well and I needed to pick him up early.

Honestly, I never thought he would walk off into a closed zoo, but he did. He shed a few tears, held the hand of the teacher and walked off in the orange line of campers. I waited for him to turn around to look at me, so I could run through the gate and grab him, hug him and take him home, but he kept trudging on.

It was a long 3 hours at the zoo. I checked my phone every 5 minutes to make sure I didn't miss the call to come pick him up because he wasn't going to make it through the camp, but the call never came. Spencer was going crazy with nervous energy the entire 3 hours and the minute he saw Owen in that orange line of kids he was calm again and, actually, so was I.

I guess at the end of the day I don't know what to think. For me, it is hard to know when to push and when to indulge. Sometimes I underestimate and sometimes my expectations are too high. It is difficult to distinguish what I project onto them from what they really think and feel. Needless to say, today, I felt some growing pains.

By the way, how cute is this little one?