Hi there, blog! Long time no see! Really long time. My bad on that. I wish I could promise that I had an iron resolve to be the most dependable blogger of ALL TIME! But, good gracious.... life, man. Why don't I skip the excuses and just pick up and tell stories!
My baby started Kindergarten last week.
Oh, right. She's not a baby anymore.
The last 5 years were clearly sucked into a time-warped, black hole. I feel like I could pull facts and data that there is no possibly way she is old enough to be in elementary school, but somewhere in the rush of life, 5 years have come and gone. Of course, there is an element of sadness to this because I'd do anything to slow time down, but we've lived a lot of fun life in these 5 years, so instead I'll do my best to celebrate this milestone!
I felt like we were both really prepared for Kindergarten. I wasn't weepy.... I was focused on the fact that elementary school will be a blast! She honestly didn't seem to care one way or the other. She was rocking along like normal. The night before school started, Champion of the Bedtime Stall Game decided to make a run for her world record and took forever to get to sleep.
We woke up for our new early-squirrely routine and crumbled into a teary puddle. Bless that heart. It was so early and she was so sleepy and I told her she couldn't take her blanket that smells like the inside of a dumpster to school with her and I was unrivaled in my motherly horribleness. (Thankfully she came home from school with the "no blankets allowed" rule and all was peachy since her new cool teacher had sweetly laid down the same law that I attempted at a much less cheerful hour of the morning!) But really, that blanket has got to go.
Thankfully, I did make a 'first day of school' sign, which she was really hoping I'd get for her and we found joy before we left the house! (Side note- the "wall of awesome" in the background is one of the culprits for why I haven't blogged. Pintrest said it would be SO EASY. Umm humm. Pinterest lies. All of the time.)
Our house is one block from school so we get to walk to school in the mornings! It's my new very favorite thing. At the moment, there is nothing better than these sweet few minutes with her. Knox lives a few blocks in the other direction so we meet up at the corner and all walk over together. These two might have been trying to hide their new school nerves so they held hands and braved this big new world together! :) What a sweet, sweet blessing to have each other on days like this!
The first day of school was good! They didn't do much but she enjoyed it! Sweet Lala had planned a FaceTime date after school so we could all hear about our young-uns first days back! They had so much fun telling each other stories from their classes, friends, recess, and lunch breaks! Another enormous blessing to be so close to our darling family! Look at all the joy in these faces!
Kindergarten has not gone quite as smoothly over the past week. We had an after school pick up mistake that scared her a little. And the big kids aren't as nice as she thought they'd be, and they are really big and walk fast in the halls. She loves her teacher and friends, but it's been a hard week for both of us as London's come face to face with a more harsh real-world than she was expecting. It's been hard for me to watch her little light dim slightly. Heart breaking actually. But we are healing together, and talking ALOT about how to stick to what you know when the scene around us changes. Be kind, be brave, and people will follow suit. Even if they are scary at first.
I know this makes for a long 'first time back' post, but my favorite, Glennon, wrote about the first day back feelings and just nails it....
"I just dropped Chase off at middle school. MIDDLE SCHOOL.
Like I’ve been doing for three weeks now—I let him out of the car. I let him walk away from me and toward that huge building filled with PEOPLE AND DYNAMICS AND IDEAS and other horrible wonderful things that will break his heart and MAKE his heart and that I have no business trying to control. I let him walk toward a life that is HIS and not mine. Toward experiences that he is meant to have without me. Toward journeys he has to take alone.
Someone needs to create a word that describes what happens inside of a mama’s heart as she’s watching her child walk into a school building. We need a word for the feeling that overtakes her after saying goodbye to her infant who is somehow masquerading as a young MAN and who is walking away from her into his adolescent life. A word to describe the phenomena that is a mother sitting helplessly in her empty van while her heart silent screams her daily PLEASEPLEASEPLEASES!!! PLEASE be good to him. Please see his strengths and overlook his weaknesses. Please sit by him at lunch. Please smile back when he smiles. Please want to be his partner. Please be gentle. Pleasepleaseplease. PLEASE.
And how as she watches him walk away—toward the unknown of his day and away from the KNOWN of her (SO BRAVE! HOW DID HE GET SO BRAVE??? IS THIS LEVEL OF INSANE BRAVENESS EVEN WISE????) her head understands that the world is unfolding as it should. Her head KNOWS that all is well. That he is beginning his LIFE and that LIFE in all its bruty is what he came here for. And that he is ready. But her heart will not receive that memo. Her heart wants to run after him and pull him close and say: JUST JOKING HONEY! WE MADE A MISTAKE! THIS IS TOO MUCH! Come home and we will stay together forever and I will make sure that life NEVER HAPPENS TO YOU. Don’t worry. We will snuggle forever. Because I am not ready.
So she just sits in her empty van for a moment—holding up the car line for a split second too long. Her body is temporarily paralyzed, short circuited by the opposing messages from her head and her heart. The mixed messages SWARM her being and all at once she feels pride and fear and terror and excitement and hope and hopelessness and tenderness and ferocity and loss and gain. All these emotions swirl until her heart becomes so swollen that it threatens to escape out of her throat into tears and so she instructs herself to snap out of it. She shakes herself a bit. She breathes deeply and shrugs it all off and she drives away. And on her way home she tries to restore her heart to its original size by thinking of other things. Practical things. Because it’s all too much. Whatever that feeling is—it’s a lot like looking right at the sun. It’s simply too bright to stand for longer than a moment."
- See more at: http://momastery.com/blog/#sthash.7r8Tusvi.dpuf
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