I hate preschool.

Okay, the whole speech-improving thing has happened. Kittyboy is now his own narrator. Not necessarily a coherent one, but it helps to know his books and viewing habits, and it's so funny that he just talks ALL THE TIME. He talks to his toys, his toys talk to him, his toys talk to each other, sometimes everything and everyone is apparently talking at once, and he talked for a non-verbal friend at the playground. He said "Hi!", boy said nothing. Mom said boy doesn't really talk yet. So Kittyboy helped out. "Hi!" Silence. "Hewwo, what you doing? I cimbing! See you yator!" And I laugh in the face of the "but he won't be socialized!" argument against homeschooling. I have watched him at the playground, and he appears to be the friendliest and most outgoing child there. I love watching him run up to older kids (kids who've probably been in daycare, gone to preschool, etc), say "Hi!" and get NO RESPONSE. I tell him that they've just not learned social skills yet. :)
But we're what, four weeks in? And every afternoon, without fail, we have the same conversation. "Daddy?" "Daddy's at work." "Daddy not be at work?" "Daddy has to be at work. Daddy is at work every day when you get out of school." "Daddy be at Mommy-Daddy House?" Every single day at noon, since school started. "School", if you can call it that, takes place from 9:30-12. Husband works at 12, until 9 at night. Kittyboy goes to bed between 7 and 8. So basically, he doesn't GET Daddy during the week, but for maaaybe two hours first thing in the morning. And he's not "getting over it" or adjusting, he's increasing the requests. It's not getting better. It's getting sadder.
Last week, it got a LOT worse - he started having problems going to sleep. He would cry again and again to be rewrapped, wrapped tighter, his legs weren't wrapped tightly enough, he wanted the light on, bedtime took forever and was a mess. Friday night after Akathist, friend Peyton was over and I was going to put him down for bed and then go to get Husband. I ended up taking him along to get Husband, because bed was not happening. This was not an over-tired, whiny, I-want-to-get-up cry that you could let go. He would eventually be coughing and gasping for breath. And he kept asking to go to the hospital.
Only, ONLY way the hospital request makes any sense is when you consider the following - last time he went to the hospital, the Benadryl incident, Husband was at work with the car. And had to come home in order to take us. He wanted Daddy. He also started wanting me to be in the same room with him, just for the sake of being in the same room, and Saturday required me to sit on his bed until he fell asleep for a nap. It's been over half his lifetime since he's NEEDED someone in his room to fall asleep.
When Kittyboy was not quite a year old and decided overnight that I couldn't put him down, his wise, wise therapists Rhonda and Janna basically said, "Then, don't put him down." For reasons we didn't know, he needed extra security, and should be given whatever he needed for as long as he needed it. And I stubbornly followed that advice until one day, presto, he decided he could be with someone else and was fine with that. So obviously, if he needs extra again because he doesn't have Daddy, we'll give him that extra. Husband fixed up a small table and repaired the switch on a Noah's Ark nightlight we hadn't used since Kittyboy was very small, and Kittyboy was quite thrilled when he got home from school today. I gushed to him that DADDY had made him a little green table! (his favorite color is green, he told us yesterday) And put a light on it! And the light has animals on it! And DADDY did this just for HIM, so he can have a light on if he wants to go to sleep with a light on! DADDY is just so wonderful! So I told him he could even eat his lunch sitting at his little green table with his Ark light, and he thought that was wonderful! And then he asked "Eat with Daddy??" Sigh. So we had "that" conversation Yet Again. I am very, very ready to be done with it.
But he IS asleep tonight. Without a hitch, and he decided he didn't need a light after all. So we can just do WHATEVER he needs until June, and if it does eventually come to me sitting on his bed until he falls asleep, I'm cool with that. But come June 1, June 8 at the latest if they need ALL their snow days (they haven't used one yet to my knowledge), we're done. Between the fact that he doesn't get Daddy during the week, and the fact that one of the words in his "vocab list" the week before last was "wheel"... and discussing the fact that wheels are circles (call the NY Times!!), this is just not working for us. I did have fun quizzing him on the way home that day, though - "Honey, do you know what a WHEEL is?" "Yup!" (I love when he says "yup"). "Well then! And do you know what a BUS is?" He pointed out the car window - "City bus!" (he's a veteran of those). On another block - "Schoo' bus!" Academically, it's not like he's missing anything (I giggle as I type that). I pulled up the academic standards for kindergarten - he's well on track, especially in the area of language, WOW. He knew which direction books went in probably a year ago. He wasn't two yet when you could hand him any book with print on the front and back, and he would turn it right side up. This applied to manga (Japanese comic books, they go right to left) as well, because what he was doing was orienting it so that the front cover was face up and right side up, regardless of how the book opened. We were fascinated, and so a few months later, we handed him a manga again, and got quite a kick out of his puzzlement. He'd figured out since the first time, that books should open on the right side, and so he oriented the manga correctly and then it didn't open where he thought it should. Very confusing when you're two. Silly non-Western languages that go backwards.
I'll print them (the kindergarten standards) out and use them as a rough guideline. When he meets them, print out first grade, and so on. No more preschool. He needs Daddy, and he doesn't need to be told what a wheel is.