Joy is painfully shy - and first days are always the hardest. Aren't they for all of us? Day camp started this week, and I thought I did an OK job of preparation. We had a new "cool" bag, a new swimsuit, a new towel. Her name was written in everything. Lunch was all ready to go, with cheetos no less. We'd discussed where camp was going to be, who would be there, what the itinerary would be like... the more she knows ahead of time, the easier the transitions are.
We got there early Monday morning and sat on a bench so we could watch the kids and counselors while we scoped out the situation. Rock climbers over there. Wild boys over there. Oh, a group of shy looking girls hula hooping over there -- we eventually decided to introduce ourselves.
Everything seemed to be going OK, but then... I picked her up too early at the end of the day. The kids were all in the woods playing a hide-and-seek game, so a rowdy counselor had to call her name on the BULLHORN. Which basically describes Joy's worst nightmare. Then this morning, we were ONE MINUTE LATE getting to camp, and all the kids were sitting on the outdoor bleachers waiting for the morning skits to start. Facing us. As we were walking toward them. Which is actually probably worse than any nightmare she had thought of before, but she was too busy getting her little 7-year-old bottom into the bleachers to tell me what she thought of my scheduling abilities.
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Cross-posted from singlesupermama.com