Excuse me while I cover all my furniture in plastic

When I went to pick up Zoe from School on Friday, we stayed and played for a while before I realized we needed to stop at the grocery store on the way home. I gave her bottom a little pat to check on the status of her diaper and felt.... nothing. NO DIAPER. It seems she had shown an interest in wearing underwear (more than half the kids in her class are now potty trained) and the staff gave her a pair to wear.

Of old, stretched-out, STAINED boy's briefs.

I was a little grossed out and more than a little annoyed, that they hadn't asked me, that they put some random, old, emergency undies on her. That I didn't get to be the one to put her in her first pair of underwear. That the first pair she wore had an escape hatch for an appendage she doesn't have.

I don't know why this whole thing bothers me but it does. We'd been talking about the orange (her favorite color: "ORANGERAGE!") underwear we would buy together and how the very first time she wore underwear we would be together and celebrate. I know it's silly, but on Friday I felt like something had been taken away from me.

I don't often feel like Zoe's teachers overstep their bounds. I usually like the balance of power (ie. they are usually deferential to me and CG, which is, I think, as it should be.). But I've heard them talking a few times about other children with a tone (or words) that suggests that they know the child better than the parents do. When this has happened, most of me thinks: they should step OFF. But the small, petty part of me thinks: well, maybe they do. Maybe since THAT child is at school 5 FULL days a week and MY child is ONLY here 3 partial days a week I AM SUPERIOR IN ALL WAYS AND MY CHILD WILL BE A SUPERSTAR, the teachers have more time with the child than the parents, at least during the week.

(This time-with-child score-keeping is such an ugly, petty, stupid [DID I MENTION PETTY? UGLY??] part of my brain. Can we just pretend I didn't write it? Think it?)

This weekend, I wrote an email to Zoe's lead teacher and she was apologetic but told me "all the teachers feel Zoe is ready for underwear". Well, that's just dandy isn't it? (And perhaps you could have told me BEFORE you put underwear on her?!) Because I don't think that ANY of Zoe's teachers are going to be willing to come clean out her carseat or have my carpets steam cleaned or do my laundry. What if I'M not ready? Personally, I'd like her to be able to walk into the bathroom, pull down her pants, get on the potty, go, wipe herself, flush, and wash her hands without any prompting/tantrums/extreme dawdling/forcible hand washing and I think we are months, perhaps YEARS away from that.

Whatever, teachers. Yesterday, I pulled my ostrich head out of the sand and we went to Target and got us some tiny undies. Twenty pairs to be exact. Because I have a feeling there will be quite a few pairs that I just don't feel like dealing with, EVER AGAIN. Hopefully that won't happen to the one lone pair of "ORANGERAGE!" undies I could find.