Growing Pains

-->

Those who have sent a child off to kindergarten or are about to embark on this journey can relate to my melancholy and nostalgia tonight. It began when I opened my laptop at work this morning. The default site for my Internet browser is my district’s website. A seemingly innocent choice, but today, much to my sorrow, the district had posted the dates and times for kindergarten round up.

I’ve known this day was coming for quite a while. Reminders keep popping up in the most unexpected places that my little boy is going to be “school-aged” next year. First, it was Target, where we had to abandon the comfort of racecar jammies and Sesame Street shirts and move across the aisle to the size 4-6x racks. I shed more than a few tears over the fact that there will be no more puppy dog-themed outfits, but that I will now have to buy clothing covered in skulls and cross bones (he’s going to kindergarten, not joining Hell’s Angels for crying out loud).

While gathering ideas for our family vacation this summer, I was looking up information on a popular theme park. As I scanned the admission prices, I noticed that by summer R will no longer be four and under. More tears.

Outgrown car seats, the end of the pages in the baby book, and moving up on the dosage table on the back of the Children’s Tylenol box; all signs that I should have heeded, yet I was still caught off guard by that screen this morning.

I’m excited for R. There’s no doubt in my mind that he’s ready for the challenges of kindergarten, and I look forward to watching him go from preschooler to elementary student, but I’m also wistful for the years that are now behind us.

A couple of months ago, I was cleaning out an envelope of old papers that had been stuffed in the trunk in our bedroom and forgotten. I came across an old piece of notebook paper from the winter that R was two. Hastily scrawled across the page were funny things he had said or done that year. Here are just a few of my favorites:

One night we were sitting in the living room after work and daycare, playing before dinner. R turned to me out of the blue and said, “You’re a feisty girl.”

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Before bedtime one evening, R was really wound up. He had been talking and chattering for almost an hour non-stop. Suddenly, he became very quiet. I asked him what was wrong. “I think my mouth needs to take a rest,” he said.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Not long after he was potty trained, R was at daycare when he told his daycare lady that something in his pants “hurt.” Concerned, she checked out the “situation” and found that it was caught in the waistband of his underwear. She fixed the problem and turned around just in time to hear R say, “Ahhh! Better.”

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

One day while we were playing outside, R climbed inside his red, blue, and yellow Little Tikes car and announced to me that he was “going to the grocery store.” He proceeded to drive the car to the end of our driveway, then turned around and drove back to the top. As he climbed out of the car, he said, “Hi mom! I’m home from work as a doctor.”

During a recent baby shower I attended, the guests were asked to write a piece of advice for the new mother-to-be. I noticed that one of the guests had written this: “The days are long, but the years are short.” Truer words were never spoken.