How is this possible?

Today was this big boy's first day of preschool. Well, technically preschool doesn't start until September, but his preschool has a summer program a few Wednesdays throughout the summer. I knew as soon as I heard about the summer program that I wanted to enroll him. I was a little anxious about sending him off to preschool for the first time shortly after his baby brother comes. I didn't want him to think that the baby has anything to do with "sending him away", so this was perfect! He could get used to being away from Mommy here and there, without the big, twice a week jump. We had been talking about this for a long time and he was really excited! Just a few weeks ago, I would have been a lot more nervous about how shy he is, but lately that hasn't been the case. He's been really friendly to everyone and has started coming out of his shell more and more. When we took him to his little classroom, he immediately went up to the teacher (a complete stranger) and gave her a hug. He then promptly turned to Eric and me, said "bye!" and started playing with toys. Eric and I looked at each other and high tailed it out of there before he changed his mind about us leaving. I had three hours all to myself! And I used every second of it! First I had a physical therapy appointment, then I drove through Starbucks and went to Joann's to pick up some fabric for a special order quilt someone placed over the weekend, then I went to the dollar store to pick up supplies for Jackson's birthday party this weekend, and I even had time to go to one other store to see if they had balloons for the party. (they didn't, but it was a heck of a lot easier for me to run in and find that they didn't have what I was looking for by myself, than it would have been had I had Jackson with me) Three glorious hours of errand running! For those of us stay at home moms with husbands that work ridiculous hours, you know how big of a deal this is! Just running to get more milk at the grocery store is normally a big ordeal that involves special shopping carts shaped like cars, a stop at the "free cookie" station in the bakery, a meltdown by a toddler because the cookie broke, waiting in line to ride the free pony, and yet another meltdown when it's time to leave the pony and put the cart away. And when I do get time away, say on the weekend, it's accompanied by an impatient daddy's texts asking me how much longer I'm going to be, or at the very least I feel guilty that I should be hurrying. But this wasn't like that at all. I was paying for someone to watch him and I knew I couldn't pick him up until 12:30 anyway, so I might as well enjoy my errands. By noon I had pretty much gone everywhere I needed to go, and was only about ten minutes away from the school, so I decided to be a good mommy and get there really early to wait for Jackson. I didn't want to be that mommy that was the last one to pick up her kid. When I pulled up, there were a surprising number of cars leaving....huh..... That got me to wondering. Was pickup time actually at noon? When I got to his classroom and he was the last kid there, I quickly realized that, yes. Pick up was, in fact, at 12:00. Crap! So much for my mom of the year award. Jackson didn't seem to notice though, and was happily talking the teacher's ear off. She said he did a great job. He was the only boy in the class, but he didn't mind, or probably even realize he was surrounded by girls. We left and he told me about how he had a snack, and played on the playground, and read books, and played with trucks, and colored, and sang a song, and went potty. I'm so glad that his first day went so well! We are both really excited for his next day of preschool at the end of the month!