First Day of School

Ty started kindergarten on Tuesday.  I will admit it...I have at times looked forward to this day for the last five years, but when it actually came, it was kind of tough.  Ty was SO excited, though, so that helped things.

On Monday, we went in to his classroom for an assessment day.  He wowed his teacher by whizzing through all the upper- and lower-case letters that she tested him on.  He went on to read every single word on the word list that she gave to him, too.  She asked me if we had put him in reading camp at the school over the summer, and when I responded negatively, she just shook her head.  Her response:  "I have nearly 50 students between my two classes this year, and he is only the second kid all day to have read everything without any mistakes." 

Yeah, he's a smarty.  And yeah, I am pretty proud of him.  

So when we dropped him off at school on Tuesday, I wasn't really worried about him, either academically or socially.  He will do fine.  In fact, he will probably do far better than just fine.  But still, it was hard to send my oldest boy off without me.  And I realized that for the next 18 or 20 years, I will probably always have at least one kid in public school.  I feel like I have entered an entirely new stage of life.

So it's a forgivable offense, I think, that I waited until Ty went into his classroom, and I had walked around the side of the school out of sight, before the tears started falling freely down my face.  It was hard to leave my baby (even if he's not a baby anymore).

The past two days have been easier, thankfully.  The bad news is that McKay has not napped at all in the last three days.  He's almost 3 1/2, and I knew that naps wouldn't be lasting all that much longer, but it's still terribly ironic that the EXACT day Ty started afternoon kindergarten and I was anticipating a good, long, uninterrupted nap, that he decided to be done.  Of course, right?