Summer is over and my little boy is in kindergarten. Coming from a half day preschool, we were worried about how he would handle himself in full day kindergarten. So we decided to put him into full day summer camp this summer. We knew it was going to be a transition, but we didn’t expect him to tell us his clothes blew away on the second day of camp.

Six hours at summer camp is the longest he’s been away from one of us or his grandparents. We weren’t sure if he (or his counselors) would make it through the day. On the second day of camp, I went to pick him up and three of his high school counselors surrounded me, looking frazzled.

“He lost his clothes,” one said.

“He wouldn’t put his clothes on,” another said.

“I found him swinging on the bathroom doors,” the third said.

What? What do you mean he lost his clothes? I looked at him and realized he was still wearing his wet bathing suit bottom and had his sneakers on with no socks.

“We couldn’t find his short or underwear,” one counselor explained.

I looked at my child and asked, “What happened to your shorts, underwear and socks? Mommy packed your clothes in your backpack.”

He shrugged and turned his hands up. “They blew away,” he said.

Huh? They blew away? What was he doing, changing in the fields?

We went home and I got the full story. Apparently he took his clothes out of the backpack and laid them on the grass outside. Then somehow, he forgot about them and went with everyone into the bathroom to change. There, he realized he left his clothes outside but had already taken off his wet bathing suit so now he’s naked with no clothes to put on. He tried to explain to the boy counselor but the boy didn’t understand him. All the counselor saw was a naked boy who wouldn’t get dressed. I’m not sure where the swinging on the doors came in (maybe he was pretending to be Tarzan?).

The next day, I went to the lost and found box to see if I could find his shorts (figuring the socks and underwear were long gone). And found more than twenty pairs of underwear in there. Whew! My child isn’t the only one whose underwear blew away! There were at least twenty other kids who went home yesterday going commando!

The first week of camp was a trial with each day presenting a new problem, but by the second week of camp, he had settled in happily and declared, “I LOVE camp!” When camp ended, we took him to Sesame Place for a fun family vacation.

We did yoga with Elmo and Big Bird,

met Super Grover,

and had a blast on the water rides. He screamed with joy all the way down.

We’re sad summer is over but kindergarten has taken over our lives. I have to pack a snack and a lunch every day. I have to check his folder every day and write notes to his teachers. He has homework! But he loves it all and says, “I LOVE my new teachers!”

I’m just glad he came home from the second day of school with all his clothes on.