First day of nursery school - not quite as expected

Masters R's first day of nursery school today. I was excited and couldn't wait to drop him off so he could have some interaction with other kiddies. He's always been a mummy's boy and suffers from separation anxiety. But generally he'll cry for 5-10mins and then be fine. He was in a crèche at Snowbird in January and was fine so I thought this would be the same.

It's a 50 minute walk from our current temporary apartment. (It will be about 15mins from our new house.) So I trekked over there in the cold wind utterly exhausted and with an aching back. Master R was a little apprehensive and clingy when we first got there but it was food time and all the others were eating apple so soon enough he joined them and attempted to stuff as much apple into his mouth as possible and steal other kid's apple if they weren't eating fast enough. Because he’s quite big, running around and a bit rough, he’s actually in with a class of bigger kids. They were all born around June 07 and he’s the youngest by months with a birthday in February 08.

I stayed with him for a while and he seemed happy enough. I said goodbye and left and then waited a little while, heard that he stopped crying after less than a minute and was on my merry way. I waddled home, crashed into bed and promptly fell asleep. I woke up about 40mins later with a feeling that something was wrong. Turns out that the nursery director had called me 10mins before and I’d slept through it. The message said that I should come straight away as he “was in a great deal of distress”. Dragging on my jeans I jumped in a cab and arrived at there only to find him curled up on the playmates, snoring away with the kids running and playing around him.

Lucky I had my knitting and just sat in reception for an hour waiting for him. He woke up distressed so I took him home. Apparently he was fine until nap time and then be broke down and screamed – and yes, he really can howl! He just wouldn’t be settled and wouldn’t let anyone hold him. I’m actually dreading next week now and wondering what I can do to make it easier for him? Any suggestions?