Countdown to Kindergarten....a Mommy's thoughts...

In one week my baby girl will transform from a free spirited preschooler to an honest to goodness little girl. It's a new chapter in our lives and while I'm used to her leaving for pre-school, I can't help but think of what Kindergarten really is. She will no longer be free to declare a Wednesday as "pajama day", or be able to sleep in until 9:30am on a Monday. She will have to live her life on a schedule 10 months a year for the next 13 years and everyday of her life after that. I am okay with the fact that she will be gone from the house every morning, I know she's ready for that. I know she's ready to learn, she wants to read and write and make friends and be a big girl. What I'm not sure of, is if I am ready for her to grow up. I don't know if I'm ready to have her leave and be in the care of others, making choices on her own and where I will only know what she chooses to tell me.

This is the beginning of her school career, the beginning of her adolescence, where she will be faced with choices and decisions and factors out of my control. I can only hope that she will remain the wonderful free spirited, honest, open minded social butterfly that she is now. That she will still run to me in years to come with her dreams and disappointments. That she will be an intelligent, kind, caring wonderful little girl with friendships that will last a lifetime. I realise that next week is only the first day of Kindergarten and all these things are long off in the future but I can't help looking down that road that we are about to embark upon.

I am so thankful that we had the opportunity to provide her with 4.5 years of freedom. Years of sleeping in, and playing at will. Years spent at home in her pajamas or princess dress and rubber boots or whatever she wished because we had no real schedule to speak of. Years that you can't get back. I can only hope that those years at home will give her a great sense of family and security, and that they will give her a greater sense of self. That she will feel that home is her safe haven, a place not just to rest her head after a long day but a place where she can feel freedom at the end of a long day. I hope we have given her all of these things and I am thankful to have spent virtually everyday of the past 4.5 years with that giggling, chatty, smiling blue eyed little wonder, and I will miss her beyond belief, every second she's away.