Unprepared

I've been preparing myself for this week. I knew it was going to be a hard one. I knew the reason I had such an emotional week a few weeks back, was directly related to this week. BUT what I wasn't prepared for was this morning. I told myself and everyone around me that this was going to be a rough week.

This week, my son starts school for the first time in the short 5 years this guy's been on our planet. I knew he wasn't going to excel at anything and I worried about his attention span. I didn't work with him as much as I did my daughter. He didn't go to preschool like my daughter did. There were so many emotional tragedies surrounding this little guy's life and I didn't have the mental capacity to work with him. Plus he was our last child and we waited 6 years for him and all I wanted to do was play with him. We did learning activities but on the whole, we did a lot of playing in the rain and got dirty. It's been the best 5 years of my life. He has taught me how to act like a boy and I hope I've taught him to respect women.

I knew when I registered him for school and found out that he would start September 5th, it was going to be very hard for me. I knew I was going to cry and miss him. I was prepared for all of this. I put a call into all my friends and told them that Friday is going to be a tough day. We have it all planned out. It's going to be me in the middle of all my girl friends, crying because my baby is leaving the comfort of my apron strings. I KNOW that when I drop him off on Friday, I won't be able to call my mom and I will cry and my heart will ache because that's always something I knew I was going to do. I did it when my daughter went to school and when my son was born, I knew I was going to do it again. Obviously that won't happen. So Friday will be a rough day. I know I sound a bit over dramatic, but I am going to miss this guy running circles around me all day long.

Today, however, took me by complete surprise. My daughter started her first day of middle school *6th grade*. I walked her and her friends to school. We talked and they joked around the whole time. It was a nice walk. Getting her prepared for middle school has been a year long process, starting in 5th grade. I knew that middle school was going to be a lot different and I didn't want her to fall behind in 5th grade and we made sure that wasn't going to happen. We've had many talks with her about what happens in middle school, how girls and boys both gossip, how she should conduct herself and no matter what...SCHOOL WORK IS MORE IMPORTANT THEN ANYTHING ELSE!!!! I knew it was going to be different then elementary school, but I was not prepared for watching her walk into her new school and start crying!

I gave her a hug and watched her walk across the cross walk and into the school and started crying! I couldn't believe it! I prepared myself for the wrong thing. Not one time did I think I was going to cry watching my daughter walk away from me. I felt like I was loosing the last grip on her "baby hood". She's growing into a beautiful young woman and it happened so fast. Wasn't it just yesterday I watched her walk into her kindergarten class? I remember her backpack that was too big for her body. The one we fought over because it was plastic and cheesy, but that she HAD to have. It was very strange, watching my daughter walk into middle school...WOW