A couple weeks ago, our rainbow baby turned five. I have no idea how we got from bringing a 7 pound baby home from the hospital to watching him graduate preschool today in the blink of an eye, but here we are.
Yesterday when I went to pick him up from preschool, he came over and gave me the usual hug that is our routine when he sees me, but then burst into tears. He told me he was crying because today was going to be the last day of preschool. I had to suck it up and not cry myself too even though I totally felt like it. THANKFULLY his preschool teacher was right there to tell him how much fun he's going to have in kindergarten and that he's going to do so well. Today we both held it together until we walked out the door, it took me awhile to get the picture of him outside the building because he kept crying.
When I graduated high school 10ish years ago[let's pretend it was 10], I never imagined I'd be walking the same halls with three kids in tow three days a week, leaving one of them with my old child development class teacher who still looks and acts exactly the same. But then again, I never imagined we would have a baby die or that I'd be a stay at home mom or basically most of the things that have developed over the past seven years. And holy cow, I definitely could have never imagined how fast these five years could possibly go.
I had to drag Lucas crying through those halls the first day of preschool two years ago. And even though it killed me to leave him, his teacher swore he would be fine. [I wasn't so sure after he spent the 3 hour sessions crying the entire time the year before, for a month, before we finally pulled him out.] After the second day, he never ever cried about going to school again, and in fact I would get him ready faster in the mornings by threatening to not let him go. [Not my finest parenting/former teacher moment, but he loved preschool so much that saying "Get your shoes on right now or I am telling your teacher you aren't coming today" worked better then anything else, always.]
This year is a bit overwhelming, we have so many big changes we are all going through and the changes are only getting bigger in the months to come as we move into a new house, I go back to school, and Lucas goes to school full time. But whenever I find myself getting too stressed about it, I remember how quickly this year went by, and remember how overwhelming it seemed to have to drag a newborn and a toddler through the high school three times a week, two times a day, back in August, but we survived it and it went by so quickly.
As overwhelming and exhausting as being home with three kids can be, I am going to miss it, these days when we can decide on a whim to go to the park with some uncrustables for lunch, or to go hang out in the children's zoo for three hours watching them play in sand tables and on the slides or today we went strawberry picking after preschool graduation, just everything. We only have a few months left for these fun days of mostly doing whatever we want, I definitely intend to take advantage of it.
It is definitely bittersweet, this growing up stuff.
