The problem with independent kids

This morning, Scout and Kid 2 left for 5th grade camp.  I had a bunch of work I needed to do before 8am, but unfortunately a work crisis took precedence over my early morning work.  Needless to say, it was a busy, kinda stressful morning.

But Kid 3 ate breakfast, got ready for school (he even made sure to bring the bag of clothes for his Shakespeare play), gathered money to buy lunch (I don't carry any cash) and left for school.  That all seems okay, doesn't it?

Well, he let neither his older brother or me know that he was leaving for school.  And he left 50 minutes early!

It's not cool when you try to get a progress check on how the morning is coming and find that you can't find your second grader.  I did a quick check through the house; his shoes were gone, his backpack was gone.  He must have gone to school.   I remembered hearing the garage door open, but I assumed that someone was putting their swimming stuff in my car,  prepping for the afternoon.

I'm no paranoid parent, but I wasn't going to wait for an hour for the roles to be updated and see if he had made it to school.  Who knew how many more crises the morning would have.  I stopped what I was doing and stormed off to school.

There was no one on the playground, so I went into the office to see where, "if someone came to school really early, where would they wait?"  The office lady was really nice and did a a school wide announcement asking for kid 3 to come to the office and if anyone had seen him this morning.  Almost immediately, the phone started ringing and teachers reported that they had seen him and just a moment later he stuck his head in the office doorway.

All, in all, everything was okay.  But its not cool to realize that your kid isn't in the house and though you have a pretty good idea where he is, not a definite one.  But it just wasn't the way I wanted to start my morning.  Do you know where your kids are?