Sometimes, when he first wakes up in the morning, he’ll let me hold him close and just snuggle. He still sleeps with an assortment of stuffed bears that must be arranged in the proper order before bedtime. Most of his adorable mispronunciations are gone, but he still sometimes says, “aminals” or “amn’t I?” or “brefakst.”

He’s in Kindergarten. He’s 5 and a half. He wears size 6 clothes and size 11 shoes. He can read. I want to hyperventilate when I think that almost a third of his time with us before he’s officially an adult is over. But let’s slow my sentimental self down and talk about kindergarten. Right up until the night before it started, he said he wasn’t going to go.  We know by now that this is how he is with new situations, and we talked a lot about how he had felt similarly with other new things like preschool and ended up loving it. We were firm that he was in fact going to go to kindergarten and that we knew he would like it. We told him it was okay to be nervous and that even grownups feel that way sometimes when they start something new. I braced myself for tears and clinging on the first day. But my brave boy did great, looked a little uncertain when Jeff and I left the classroom, but no crying, and when we picked him up, he said, “I had a great day at kindergarten!”

A couple weeks in and I am thankful that things are still going well. His school is a co-op school, so parents are in the classroom each day to help. I go every other Wednesday and it is great fun to go with him to recess and music class, and help the kids in the classroom. His teacher is warm and kind and also sets good limits and maintains control of the classroom. He goes to school from 9:20-12:00 Monday through Thursday. Then Fridays rotate–every other Friday is no school, the alternate Friday he stays for lunch and is done at 1:30. I am so proud of him.

Here are the official first day pictures:

 

 

And if that wasn’t enough “my baby is growing up” for me, Anna started preschool! We really weren’t sure how dropoff for her would be. So far the dropoffs have been rough–always tears. Sometimes she’ll hold on to me and say, “I don’t want you to go!”, sometimes she’ll have tears running down her cheeks as she says, “I know I’m going to have a great day.” Thankfully by pickup she is fine, but it certainly makes it hard to leave! We are very lucky that she has a good friend in her class, and she’s also at the same school where Max went for two years, so the environment and the teachers are familiar to her. She always reports back what she did at recess time and brings home art projects, so I’m confident she does participate once we leave. Here are her first day pics:

 

 

This is real life, people.