There are some areas in my life about which I am not terribly confident.  Is anyone going to enjoy what I write here?  Is that first sentence screwy?  Does that really save money in the long run?  Does this shirt disguise the fact that I’ve had four children?  Will I ever figure out how to make my hair look good?  Sometimes I can’t get out of my own head.

But as a mom, I generally feel like I know what I’m doing.  There haven’t been too many times when I wasn’t sure about an answer.  There was one close call when I was unloading kids at a playground and a then 5-year-old Y startled me with, “Mom!  Why don’t those people have any clothes on?”

It turned out he was referring only to a couple of shirtless teenage boys.  It was nothing I couldn’t explain.  Recently, however, I wavered a bit in my mommy confidence.  Y started first grade and I signed him up to ride the bus home.  The bus stop is five or six houses down the street and unfortunately, the sidewalk is on the opposite side.  (Why can’t we have sidewalk on both sides?  I’m sure this saves someone somewhere some money, but I do wish we had more sidewalks around here in general.  That’s a different rant though.)  I debated a bit about whether he was old enough at barely six to cross the street by himself.  I decided that he could do it.  It’s not a very busy street and I could always watch for him from our porch if necessary.  But a part of me wondered if I really believed he was ready or if I just didn’t want to schlep the three younger kids down to the bus stop every day.  

Y was a little unsettled at this new responsibility as well.  I assured him that I would be waiting at the stop at least the first few days of school.  Just until he got the hang of it.  When the first day of first grade came around, I loaded my babies into their car seats and into the double stroller a bit early.  I figured that if we were going to the trouble we might as well walk around the block to get in a bit of fresh air and exercise on our way to the bus stop.  (I didn’t really count on how much fun it is to push a heavy stroller when it’s 95 degrees.)  

After what felt like a long, hot wait, the bus pulled up.  But my son did not get off.  I checked with the bus driver to make sure he wasn’t just lingering because he hadn’t spotted me.  But Y was not on the bus.  In hindsight, it’s possible that I should have panicked a bit at this point.  Honestly though, I felt mostly annoyance.  It may have been the heat.  I figured there had been some sort of miscommunication that had him in the carpool line because that’s what we did last year.  

I didn’t even call the school.  I just buckled everyone into the van and headed over there.  Anxiety began to replace irritation when I walked into the office and he was not there either.  The staff was very helpful and it was determined within a few minutes that Y had been placed on a different bus and was currently still on that bus on his way back to the school.

I don’t know how this mix-up happened.  At the time I was way more concerned with making sure we were all on the same page going forward.  And when Y arrived, looking a bit shaken, I assured him that he had done exactly the right thing by staying on the bus when he didn’t see me at any of the stops.  Part of me was very proud of him and thinking he really was getting big, surely he was responsible enough to cross one little street.  But the part of me that remembered the few minutes of not knowing where my child was remained unsure about this whole thing.

Walking to the bus stop didn’t seem like any trouble the next day.  Y got off the bus this time and we walked back together.  It was the day after that that he informed me I didn’t need to wait for him anymore.  So there I was waiting on the porch with my three-year-old and a baby.  I didn’t have to get the other baby up from his nap.  I watched Y running down the sidewalk towards us, thinking how nice it was that he was getting so mature.  This was so much more convenient and he looked so big in his backpack.  And then he turned toward the street and didn’t look both ways, didn’t stop… heck, he didn’t even slow down.  

I yelled for him to stop and he did, just before he entered the path of the bus he had recently exited.  Fortunately, the driver was paying a lot more attention than he was.  She kindly put on her flashers and waved him across.  Perhaps he wasn’t quite ready for this after all.  I resigned myself to the fact that I’d at least need to go to the end of the driveway where I could remind him to stop and look each day.

But little Y is a problem-solver and out to prove he didn’t need me.  His solution was to simply run through the front lawns of our neighbors and avoid the street all together.  Don’t hate me, but I’m letting him.  I don’t know my neighbors.  I know I wouldn’t care if kids used my lawn and I’m just hoping I happen to live near a few like-minded people.  Half of these houses have kids getting off the same bus anyway.

Now I just need to get him to slow down a bit.  Watching the kids get off the bus from my porch is sort of like watching the intro to Little House on the Prairie.  You know one of the kids is going to fall down each time and you know which one it will be.  But at least I’m not dragging babies out of bed.

This hasn’t upset my overall mommy confidence.  I still mostly feel like I know what I’m doing.  But I’m also confident that more tricky decisions are ahead of us.  When will they be allowed to date?  What body parts should they be allowed to pierce?  UNC or NC State?  

The worst part isn’t that the decisions get harder though.  The worst part is that the kids get old enough to remember the mistakes.  I don’t have to worry about anyone saying, “Remember that time when I was three months old and you misjudged a doorway and conked my head against it?”  But Y just might say, “Remember when you let me get on the wrong bus?”  (Because even that will be my fault in the future.)

Mandy appears weekends on TriangleMom2Mom.