kindergarten

On the first day of kindergarten, Henry woke up early {just the usual early} and ran from his room to ours to wake me up. He was excited when he said, "today is my first day of kindergarten!" His excitement helped ease so much of my fear and worry. I felt excited for him.

He ate breakfast, his favorite - a stack of flapjacks.

He and William posed for a few first day pictures.



And grabbed his Green Lantern lunch box. I swear I stuffed as much as I possibly could in there just not knowing what he'd be hungry for or how much but mostly it terrified me more than anything to think of him sitting at lunch there in the big cafeteria all by himself. So I packed that lunch box full of as much as I could since I couldn't be there with him myself.

We walked into school, excited but he did start to grow a little nervous.

And if you're wondering about the wardrobe change, there were sort of two first days. The very first one was August 18 and was just an hour for kindergarten orientation.

And I got to come along.

We navigated his classroom together. We found his desk and coat hook, put away his supplies, met his classroom pets and had a graham cracker and juice for a snack.


He wrote the thing he was most looking forward to in kindergarten was "playing outside at recess". And he drew a picture of himself on the monkey bars.


He collected a sticker for a successful first day from his teacher Mrs. Debord. He liked her right from the start. She is warm and bubbly and soothing and kind all at the same time. She has been teaching for 34 years and this is her final year. She is a mother hen to all of these sweet little children.


On Friday, August 19, the first official full day of school, William and I dropped Henry off with his class. They line up just outside the entrance to the school as a class. He wore a shy smile and was so brave. I wore my great big sunglasses because I knew I wasn't as brave and I didn't want him to see me cry.

The class filed in through these doors and I turned to get one last picture of my big kindergarten boy, the one who was just a happy little toddling baby just a few years ago, and he was already gone, disappeared through the doors and into his school. I welled up with tears and walked holding William's sweet little hand through blurred vision behind my big sunglasses. No matter how old our children get or how ready they are, it just doesn't feel like the natural thing to leave them somewhere that you are not in a building full of strangers. It still makes my heart a little bit sad every morning when I drop him off. I miss my sweet boy when he is gone. But he is off learning new things and more importantly having adventures of his own. He is making friends and doing the monkey bars at recess.