Somehow – and I don’t know how – Hayley has been growing up. There are times I wish that we could go back to the newborn days when all she wanted was for me to hold her tight (and she didn’t talk endlessly). There are other times when I am so glad to be right here and now when she says and does things that make me laugh so hard and I appreciate this little character that she’s grown into. And then there are times when, somewhere in the back of my mind, I metaphorically curl up in a ball in utter denial that time won’t pause itself and she’s going to just keep on growing and getting bigger. One of her favorite things to say is one of my least favorite to hear: “I grow bigger EVERY SINGLE DAY!”

Yes, yes she does.

And tomorrow we are taking her to the open house for Kindergarten. She’ll be taken off into one of the Kindergarten classrooms with a teacher (not necessarily hers, we won’t know that until the Fall) and all the other kids who are starting school in September, and they’ll do some sort of activity and see what the school looks like. Meanwhile, George and I have to go and… well, I don’t know exactly. I assume that we get a breakdown of what to expect when school starts, maybe an explanation of what the curriculum is like.

And you know, the fact that I’m talking about Hayley and a formal curriculum in the same paragraph is just stunning because, hello? Who IS this big kid and what happened to my little baby?

You know, when I was five years old (and technically, Hayley will be starting when she’s still four, at least for the first couple of weeks, so double the WAH), I apparently got on the school bus, sat myself excitedly into my seat and stared straight ahead with a gigantic smile, THRILLED to be heading off to my very first day of school. I was completely oblivious to the fact that my mother was on the sidewalk, waving at me while she sobbed hysterically over her firstborn child going to school. I never noticed and never waved back because I was too excited.

I hope she’ll forgive me if, in penance for my own first day, I stand on the sidewalk and sob hysterically when she leaves on the school bus her first morning.