The plum was very vile on the second day of school

Sami started school yesterday and had three major meltdowns over the course of the next twelve hours. I'm not used to my kids having meltdowns. Normally both are go-with-the-flow kind of boys. At first I was a little put out: what is wrong with this kid? But being five is hard. Starting a new school, a new routine? It's hard. Learning to negotiate with a whole roomful of new people? Hard, hard, hard. And truth be told, I sometimes forget that Sami is only five. His language and his thought processes are pretty sophisticated. He's the kid who sits down to do something and immediately starts talking objectives and strategies. But he is still such a little boy, after all. And though he is ready to step away from me, into this wide, exciting world, I remind myself that it takes a lot of courage to chart a new orbit, one that that takes him so much further into the unknown.

So apparently all the extra energy he spent at school yesterday meant that he didn't have the emotional reserves to deal with the fact that I asked him to find his socks or to discover that, say, a vile plum was packed in his lunch box for the second day of school.

Plums have been banned from the lunch box for good. Because when you're going off into a new orbit for the first time you should be sustained by the fruit of your choice.