If you give a mouse a cracker...

Each of the rooms at daycare has a pet. Blythe's room has a guinea pig, Ethan's room has a hamster, the schooler room in the middle has a mouse. Ethan's favorite is the mouse. Every day I take the kids to school and this is our routine:

• We go to Blythe's room first. I sign her in, we hang up her coat, and she's off playing leaving me begging for a hug goodbye (which she reluctantly comes over to give me).
• Then we go to Ethan's room.
• Ethan stops in the doorway so that I can't close the door and am left standing there holding his stuff trying to sign him in at the same time while he just stands there on his reconnaissance mission.
• Finally I push him into the room, usually at this point there are several other toddlers crowded around him and I have to get them all to move so the door won't hit them.
• I take off Ethan's coat, hang it up and then try to get him interested in a toy
• He clings onto me for dear life and I finally sit down and play toys with him and again try to get him to play with something so I can leave. Finally he plays with something, so I give him a hug and say goodbye.
• He clings to me even harder
• We try the whole process again (which again doesn't work)
• Then one of the teachers will ask Ethan if he wants to see or feed the mouse.
• Immediately he stands up, says "Bye Mommy" and then doesn't bother with a hug or kiss. Clearly the mouse is way better than Mommy.

This morning he apparently didn't want to bother with most of the nonsense. After halting at the door, we walked in, took his coat off, and he went right up to the teacher and said, "I want to feed the mouse a cracker"...."Bye Mommy".

Maybe he just wasn't in the mood to mess around. Maybe he was tired because his sister opened his bedroom door and turned on the lights at 6:45 this morning waking him up. Regardless, I was back home faster than normal this morning.