First Day of Kindergarten

Everybody's doing it....posting pics of their kids on their first day of school! Even we homeschoolers like to get in on the fun. I was in Lucy's bed this morning (most nights she wakes one of us up at 2:00am to come sleep with her cause she's scared or lonely), and sometime early this morning she woke me and said "I just can't believe today is my first day of Kindergarten!" "Yep" was about all I remember muttering! She had the choice of us going to TOP POT doughnuts for breakfast, or making "Tyler's buttermilk pancakes" from a library book she checked out, and she opted to stay home and make pancakes!! She did most of it herself, including flipping a pancake or two. Lately she's much too busy for any "baking with mommy" so I'm thankful for the renewed excitement! Later, we were at the zoo (we had only done about 10 minutes of schoolwork-time for a recess!!) and she was climbing the pretend spider web with a new friend. "Did you know that today is my first day of Kindergarten?!" Out of the blue!!! So cute! She really was excited, and had a sense of pride that I wasn't expecting. I debated about whether I should promote the idea of Lucy's "first day of school", since we've been working on "learning" for her entire life. Nothing much was going to change. But I think everyone needs that "first day" oomph to feed excitement and fresh start feel. I'm so thankful that I can be her mom AND her teacher this year. WHY?

1: my night owl kids can sleep in as that yellow bus drives by at 8:45
2: that Henry's afternoon nap will not be interrupted to go pick up Lucy
3: days like today we can go to the zoo and eat pizza and stray from our scheduled math lesson to learning how to play checkers, because part of her real math assignment was working with these colored tiles to make shapes, and she opted to make a checkers board and I had to set her straight!
4: my kids love each other, and frankly even 3 hours a day, let alone 7 away from each other would be so sad, and really way more work to entertain Henry (since Lucy does most of the Henry babysitting!) then it is to sit down and do Kindergarten level schoolwork!
5: I love being the one who sees the breakthrough, the light bulb go off, the one who hears the thought process and the tough questions.
6: who would teach Henry things like knowing his left and right?! Apparently Lucy has taught him this.

This girl amazes me every day, sometimes in a not so great way, but usually I am so so thrilled and thankful for her presence in my life. Oh, like this: the other day,coming back from the park, Henry melted down and refused to ride his bike home, walk, or be carried. So I was carrying him, his balance bike, the water bottle, getting more and more impatient (and weak!) with every step. On the last hill coming home, Lucy, pushing her own bike, was basically asking me to stay happy or something. Exhausted I put down his bike (I had put him down a little ways back, hoping he would be inspired to walk, where he still stood screaming immoveable) and said "do I LOOK like I'm having fun??!!!" I left his bike on the side of the road, went back to get him, and when I turned around she was pushing her bike, AND Henry's AND the water bottle! Up a hill!!! I caught up to her, and she said she didn't want Henry's bike to get lost. I told her that she had totally made my day, and that her helpful spirit just made up for all the negative that the last 15 minutes had been!! I thanked her, took over Henry's bike, as my love bank was filled by my 5 year old child! We made it in the front door, and Henry and I sat down on the bottom step with an open bag of Cheeze-its. He was so happy. I could see him for the hungry little monster that he was, and honestly I don't want to miss one minute of any of it!!!

So no leaps of joy or tears of grief that my first-born is heading off to the great big world without me. Not today. Not THIS day, my sweet Lucy's FIRST DAY OF KINDERGARTEN!!