We Have a Kindergartner

I should preface all of this by saying that I'm aware this is kindergarten (as opposed to college or the peace corp), that it's not exactly comparable to leaving the house forever, and that some people may view it as melodramatic. No arguments from me there. Let's just classify it as stream of conciousness...

Despite a day and morning of pre-school preparation, a family walk to the bus stop, and watching as Audrey got on the bus for the first time, the fact that she's started "real" school is still pretty surreal. And that for the next 16 years (hopefully), this will be an almost daily occurrence for her.

As it turns out, as much as you anticipate milestones and look forward to the next one, we're never really ready for them as much as we think we are. At the blink of an eye, Audrey has already reached the point where she will be out of the house more than she's in it. And that's she's going to face challenges (e.g., social, mental) that we won't be there to help with and might not even know about. 

One of the hardest parts is how quickly it all happens. We went to open houses, orientations, talked about the start of school all summer, prepped on logistics and words of wisdom all day yesterday (mostly for our own benefit, while Audrey tried incredibly hard to ignore us :-)), took a leisurely family walk to the bus stop, visited with neighbors for a few minutes - and then the bus pulls up and suddenly she's gone and we're jumping up and down trying to see her, where she's sitting, make sure she's ok. Except that if she isn't, the bus is already headed off to the next stop and there's not much we can do about it. And while it's incredibly scary, it's also somewhat comforting to think that she is started on a new adventure, and we're excited to see what she learns and how she grows as a little person. 

And if this morning is any indication, she'll be fine. After a few short tears, we got a big smile before she got on the bus. It's a picture that will forever be engrained in our minds - a little scared about what's coming, sad to be saying goodbye, but most importantly brave and courageous enough to move forward and do it anyway.   

But as hard as it is for us, it turns out that certain little brothers might have suddently realized that they've taken their big sisters for granted every now and then - we've been getting a lot of pushback about the fact that Brennan isn't going to kindergarten too, and the promise of preschool later this week doesn't seem to be any consolation. At least we can take solace in the fact that Millie isn't aware enough about what's going on to be affected much - although 1 out of 5 isn't that great of a success rate.