Parenting Without A License

She’ll Always Be My Baby

Posted by Kimberly on June 24th, 2008 — Posted in Zen Baby, No Pudding Until You Finish Your Meat

Between getting back into the swing of things at work and starting to get a handle on Diva Girl’s issues, I’ve been letting some things slide around here.  Like…um….Kindergarten registration.  Which was technically back in February.

Why yes, I have been putting off registering my youngest child for school for the past four months.  Is that problematic, do you think?

I didn’t do it on purpose.  There was no active plan to avoid the whole thing.  It just never really felt like a priority is all.  Even when Sabrina came home with a message from the Principal telling me I should “just come on down and sign her up,” it was always something that could happen another day; it didn’t  have to be today.

Except today, it kinda did.  What with it being the second to last day of school and all.  Suddenly, getting the Zen Baby’s papers in order seemed a whole lot more important than it had yesterday.

Unfortunately, the urgency did nothing to lessen the trauma of the event.

My baby is going to kindergarten!!!!!

Ok, sure it’s still 69 days away.  But still, MY BABY IS GOING TO KINDERGARTEN.

I know, I know.  She’s not the first baby to be headed off to school.  But she is my last baby to head off.  And somehow, the fact that she’s a full year older than her sister was the first time we packed her Barbie backpack with her brand new pointy crayons and filled her Disney Princess lunchbox with nutritious snacks and headed off to meet her teacher isn’t really making it any easier to accept that my baby is going to school.

Regan is over moon at the idea of finally following her big sister onto the bus. She has been dancing all day, constantly reminding us that after this summer vacation, she gets to go back to school too.  No fear or uncertainty here.  The Zen Baby is good to go.

Which thrills me, truly.  After all, this is the child I used to describe as “painfully shy.”  Who had me googling “selective mutism” before she finally started to speak again post  tumour.  This is the child whose inability to deal with the world at large–and especially all the people in it–made is necessary for me to take an entire year off of work to help her work that out.  This is the little girl who literally lived beside my right leg. Even now, I look down, expecting her to be there, right beside me.  But she’s not anymore.  Now, rather than cringing in fear beside me, or watching from the safety of Mama’s Personal Bubble, she is racing away from me to join in the fray. And nothing quite brings that home like realizing that not only is my baby going to kindergarten, she’s ready for it.

But she’s my baby.  And she’s going to kindergarten.  And as happy as I am for her, as thrilled as I am that she is not only going to be able to do this, she’s going to rock the socks off of it, I’m allowed to be a little bit sad.  Because she’s my baby.  And she’s going to kindergarten.