Growing up and letting go

Just a few short weeks ago I signed my little man up for his first year of preschool..  He has just turned 4 years old and REALLY wants to go to preschool.  This last year I have been homeschooling him and he has done very well.  Knows all his letters, counts to like 50, knows his sounds, writes his name and if I spell things for him he writes his words.  He can read some of the BOB books.  There is nothing lacking educationally... however since we moved 2 years ago he misses his friends! We have joined MOPS, we do a ROMP n Roll class weekly, but we havent really met the kind of friends we had back "home" The ones who we did EVERYTHING with.  Every weekend we had people over or we were over there... He had his best friends.  He sees his big brother making great friends at school and so in his mind he gets friends from school.  He is partly right!
Now don't get me wrong... I am not paying for preschool just for my son to meet people, this will just be an added bonus.  One of the biggest reasons is because in a blink of an eye he will be headed off to Elementary School.  Here kindergarten is a FULL day program from 9-4.  This means he will be in the care of someone else to manage his health and keep him alive.  Can it be done?? Of course.. there are millions of you who are sending your most prized loves to school everyday saying a prayer and trusting someone else to take care of them.  For Joshua and I this will be such a new experience. In the last 2 years we have had 1 person watch him outside of my husband, myself, or grand parents.  We had an entire support system where we used to live. We had a training at our house. we had people who WANTED to learn how to care for him.  WE left that, and have not found a replacement yet. So our preschool year will be a year for us to grow, trust, pray and work out the kinks in teaching someone else to keep my son alive. I think we both need it to be able to adjust. He isnt shy or have any seperation issues... He will be standing at the door waving me off saying okay MOM LEAVE please!!! But we will need the year to prepare for a full day of someone else getting it right with the diabetes! Right now at his romp and roll class it is a 2 hour class and he takes it alone.  I sit in the car or the waiting room and come and test him at the 1 hr mark.  I am sure starting in September and for the unforeseeable future I will be sitting in the preschool parking lot too waiting and praying.

We are at the point where Joshua is figuring it out that he is different and that things don't work the same for him.  He was dxed so young (11 months) that everyone said... "oh hell be so lucky he wont know any difference" YEA right... My 4 year old knows plenty of differences... He says all the time I WISH I DIDNT HAVE DIABETES!  So preschool will be just one more reminder for him that he is different and things work different for him, I am scared of the judgement, the not getting to know how awesome he is because they are too worried about the diabetes.
what did you do? How did you "let go" when it was time for school?.