Worried.

So, the girls are back in day care. Well, we don’t call it “day care” of course; we call it school because that sounds nicer. It’s going well, I guess. The first few weeks were rough. Both girls had to be peeled from my body every morning, their little faces contorting with so much pain they appeared to have been stabbed. But it’s not like the sound of their screams or the image of them grabbing for me is seared into my brain or anything. I’m much too rational to think that they feel abandoned or that I don’t love them. I know better than that.

Obviously.

The thing is, when they were at home all day, I worried that because they weren't around very many people I was giving them extreme stranger anxiety. I worried that they were bored, that they weren’t learning enough. I worried that by not exposing them to germs now I was setting them up for illness later. I worried. A lot.

Of course now I worry about different things. I worry about the processed, sugary food the day care gives them. I worry that no one wipes their noses (which thanks to those day care germs are now constantly running). I worry that they give Julie her pacifier too much. I worry that their colds will never go away. And sure, I worry that they feel abandoned. The fact that Julie still cries every morning when I drop them off worries me.

But by now I've realized that being a parent just means worrying. As my brother-in-law put it shortly after the girls were born, "Your worst case scenario just got a whole lot worse." And it's so true. Even my carefree husband worries. Which is kind of adorable, actually. He dropped the girls off with me earlier this week, and after listening to me complain about the fact that I'm not getting enough feedback from the teachers, he just marched right up to the director and said "We'd like to see some comments in the notes section of their take-home sheet. You know, just something to make us feel good." The director just nodded and smiled, "Of course."

And now there are comments, so we don't worry quite so much. But we still worry. Because that's what parents do.