kindergarten

 

    
Yesterday was Ryan's first day of kindergarten.  I ran the gamut of emotions leading up to it -  complete denial, fear of this new & potentially scary phase of our lives, excitement, sadness that my firstborn is growing up so fast and that I'll have less time with him, relief that I'll have a break from his recent whiny, sometimes obnoxious behavior.... -  so I wasn't quite sure how I'd react when the day finally came.  But Ryan was SO excited that I couldn't help but let excitement be my overwhelming emotion too. 

 

Ryan's only concern about kindergarten seemed to be Kaeden.  I'm sure he had other nerves, etc. about starting a new school, but he never really voiced any of them.  On the day before he started, though, these were all interactions that we had:

Me: "Ryan, what are you most excited about doing in kindergarten?"
Ryan: "I can't wait to learn to read so that I can read books to Kaeden during rest time."

Ryan, to Kaeden, at bedtime: "Good night, Kaeden.  See you in the morning!  But Kaeden, there's something kind of sad.  I'm starting kindergarten, so I won't be here all morning, but we'll get to play in the afternoon."

And sweetest of all...
Me, before bed: "What do you want to pray about tonight?"
Ryan: "That Kaeden will still love me when I'm at kindergarten."

I'm so thankful for the special bond that these two have!  I'm sure that it will take a lot more than kindergarten to stop it.  And I'm looking forward to seeing a lot more of this in our future:


Anyway, on to the big day.  We had to get the traditional first-day-of-school photos, which was a little challenging, since we needed to leave the house at 7:25 am!  We got it done, though.



The whole family drove him to school and walked him to class.  We had an open house last week, so at least he was somewhat familiar with his classroom and teacher.  His teacher greeted us at the door, showed him where to put his backpack and lunch, and then we said goodbye.  He hugged me a little longer than he normally does, but he had no trouble separating and went to sit down at his seat.  I got a little teary walking down the hallway away from him, but he did so great and I was so excited for him that it really wasn't too bad.

 

The littles and I had a great morning at home, but around 1:15, I started counting down the minutes until we would leave to go pick him up.  He hopped right in the car and immediately started talking about how great his day was... how much fun he had, how he got to visit ALL 5 of the specials ("specials" are the classes that they do one day a week... music, art, PE, library, and spanish), how he made a new friend (though he couldn't remember his name!), etc.  When we got home, he said, "I had such a fun day.  I'm a super excited kindergartener!"

A little while later, I asked him to bring me his backpack so that we could unpack it and he said, "OH!  I have something for you!"  And then he brought me this:
 
 And I almost cried again.  But I held it together :)  And then Ryan and I both laughed because he had just been telling me about another book they read at school about kids going to kindergarten and the parents cried - he told me this in a "can you believe how silly that is!?!?!" kind of way.  :-)


 I am so proud of my big boy!