Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Ohhh, back to school, back to school....

to prove to dad that I'm not a fool...

Today is Elizabeth's first official day of official school. Real school. Not daycare fake school.
I drop her off in three hours for the first time.
Oh, I'm gonna sooooo bawl.

It's a great day for it too, cold, overcast and rainy. The rain can hide my tears! :(

I don't think it's that she's going to school that's getting me sad, because I know she is going to love it. She's getting so bored here with the little brothers. It's only 3.5 hours a day, four days a week, so it's not like she's gone all day. And LORD KNOWS I could use a break from Miss Thang.

It's more that this is the last time she's gonna be all mine. I don't even know if that makes sense. But it's like, once I release her out into the world, I can't scoop her back out and have everything back the same.
First it's preschool, then next year kindergarten...
She'll start making friends and enemies. Other adults will be influencing her development. Then before I can blink, if the next almost five years go as quickly as the first five did, she'll be in fourth grade! And that's freakin me out.

I feel like today is the first tiny step of a million tiny steps that takes us both to a place where she's not my little baby girl anymore.
Thank goodness she won't be my little baby girl any less either. At least not in my heart, where it counts.

4 comments:

Anne Marie said...

I know EXACTLY what you mean- it's really hard to explain the first time you let your kids be completely under someone elses watch. It's hard to put them out there to "sink or swim" on their own... knowing all that lies ahead in their own life journey. Good luck to you all on the first day... I'm sure Elizabeth will love it, and I'm sending you a big hug for those tears, mama!

Andrea said...

Yay! Preschool is awesome! It is a little strange though when they come home from school singing a song that YOU didn't teach them. Or picking them up for the first few times and not getting an exact play by play of everything they did since you left. You are both gonna do great!

Jessica said...

Transcript -
Location: My car, driving home from first day of preschool

Me: Soo, how was the first day?
Elizabeth: Good.
Me: What did you do? Lots of fun stuff?
Elizabeth: (rolling her eyes ~as seen in rearview mirror~) Siiiiiigh. Lots of stuff.
Me: Like what?
Elizabeth: (another eyeroll) I did the Chicken Dance.
Me: Did you just roll your eyes at me?
Elizabeth: Yeeeeessssss.

Ugh.
Four going on Fourteen.

Jessica said...

Then I told Bob that and I said...

"She acted like 'God Mom! That's MY business! Stay out of my life' and she's only four!!"

He said: "Ah crap. Already with this huh?"