The Official Kindergarten Post

Now that I'm starting to come to terms with leaving my baby with a bunch of strangers everyday at that crazy place called kindergarten, I guess I can document it.

The first day she woke up early, all excited and sleepy eyed. I almost overslept, which I never do. Then the next hour was super hectic as I got myself dressed and Alana ready and cooked up some pancakes cause I couldn't just send her to school with an empty stomach.

She was so excited that she packed her lunch the day before. Then she was too excited to eat most of it. She got over that the second day though.



Clearly I need to work on my pancake shapes. It was supposed to be a heart.

 

Sleepy eyed and excited.

David and I took Alana to school, along with the giant bags of school supplies that public schools can no longer afford to buy, like kleenex, while Ava and Witten waited at David's parents house. She was super excited. I was not. We took her to her classroom, found her cubby and nametag, looked around for a couple of minutes and then took her out to the playground to say goodbye. She quickly hugged both of us and then went on her way to get to know her classmates and do some playing.

I didn't want to let her see me cry, because she was being so grown up about going to school and I'd rather have an independent girl than one who is crying and begging me to stay. I'll have to deal with that when Ava goes to school probably. So I enlisted my sunglasses to disguise my tears and tried to be brave as I walked away from my baby who was clearly not as sad about the separation as I was.

I was mostly okay till we got about 50 feet away, which was about the time she got to the top of the jungle gym and yelled Bye! as we were walking away, then I had to deal with waving and saying bye again, all behind the sunglasses that were not hiding my sadness as well as I hoped they would. Then David had to drive home because I was too sad.

For the rest of the day I randomly cried, and so did Ava. She kept saying she missed Alana, which made me even sadder and reminded me of how much I missed her too. The day went really slow, and 3 o'clock took forever to arrive. We all went to pick her up and she just casually walked out of her classroom like it was a normal thing for her to be gone from me all day. Then we went to McDonald's for an ice cream cone, because surviving that day needed to be rewarded. Especially for me.

Ready to go to school.

She's pretty proud of her puppy backpack.

After this our normal life will never be the same. I can't lay around my house everyday and not brush my kids hair. I'll save that for the weekend. I have to leave my house daily, even in the winter when I despise going outside. Since I'm picking her up instead of having her ride the bus since the dropoff for our house that is 3 miles from the school is almost an hour after school gets out, I actually have to go in public everyday and I don't want to look like a crackhead so I have to put on non-pajama clothes.

Everything feels different. Sunday nights, which I always hated when I was in school or working, are suddenly a time of anticipation for Alana. She was excited last night at the prospect of going to school today. She didn't get that from me, I used to get grouchy and anxious as the day passed just because I knew I'd have to go to school/work the next day.

Being a stay at home mom who has kids in school feels so different than my previous normal day where we got to stay home everyday. Suddenly I feel like I don't know what I've done with everyday that I've had at home with Alana for the past almost six years. That whole part of my life with her is done, now she's only home on weekends and evenings and summer break. She grew up into a kindergartener when I wasn't looking. I don't know how this happened.

I don't know when, if at all, it gets easier to be away from your kids all the time. Its kind of a crappy deal. You spend all this time growing them in your belly, then you take care of them and feed them and teach them everything, only so that they can eventually abandon you. I don't recall signing up for this.

I suppose that kindergarten isn't the end of the world. She still comes home everyday excited to see me. But by tomorrow she'll be graduating from high school and moving away and it will seem like yesterday that she was a little girl with a puppy backpack waving bye to me on the playground.