Good-bye My Little Preschooler, Hello Little Girl

Today I sat and held a squirming preschooler, her bony sit bones stabbing into my thighs, for the last time.

Tomorrow morning E1 will walk with her mom into a kindergarten classroom and cast aside the title of preschooler. It's a momentous day.

In many ways sending my oldest grandchild off to school is a bigger deal than when my firstborn started school. The children's mother had been in an organized preschool for a couple of years or maybe longer. She'd already been navigating the society of kids her age for a long time. I'd been leaving her with sitters since she was six weeks old.

For most of her life I'd been trusting someone else with her well being a portion of the time. I had to work. Her grandparents worked. Family care was not an option.

So school for my little girl was just a different place and different people. It was walking in on her own and learning new lessons.

She also was closer than she had been at preschool. If she were sick, or, God forbid, had a splinter she wouldn't let the school nurse touch, most of the time I was just a few blocks away. Working at the local newspaper I knew the people at her school and was in and out on a regular basis long before she sat foot in the doors. It wasn't a new place to me either.

Besides there had never been a school shooting, bullies didn't pick on cute little girls, and the world felt like a safe place.

Now two and a half decades later, school isn't always a safe haven of learning and growing. I've seen girls in preschool gymnastics already huddling in the snobby little cliches their mothers probably inhabited. Random gunmen have killed small children in schools more than once. And unlike my own children, E1 hasn't been thrust into someone else's care for much of her childhood.

She's been with her parents and grandparents -- people who love her and would die for her, people who always have her best interests at heart, people who try to protect her from the unsavory bits of life as long as possible. (Yes, all right, she's been with me a lot of the time and I'll miss her doggone it.)

Her friends and playmates have been the children (and sometimes grandchildren) of our friends. They are a group of kids we know things about raised by people we know things about.

Tomorrow all that changes.

The children who become her friends may be temporary or lifelong confidants. Either way they'll influence her decisions and help her choose good or bad.

They may use drugs and fight(or not fight) addiction together like Ethan and his friends, or they may show up with their new baby at a birthday party like my daughter's bestie did last weekend.

There's no crystal ball to guide us; no longer a way to filter and protect her.

It seems at times a precarious place for a 5-year-old, but at the same time a wonderful place. So much to learn and discover, so much about herself that she's just going to start to know, and the fact that now, at least, the mistakes are usually easy to correct and the right path not so hard to find, helps mitigate the terror of the unknown.

Today I said goodbye to our preschooler. Tomorrow I'll begin learning about our little girl.

One Week In, School is Still a Great Adventure

It should come as no surprise that E1 loves school.

She loves the bus.

She loves the teacher, even though she may not remember her name.

She loves the cafeteria, which is so big and so full of children and noise.

She loves the new books she brought home to work on reading each day, and the activities, and the other children, and the fact that during her first week of school she was appointed timekeeper, even though she's never on time for school.

On Friday, when it had snowed about three inches -- the third weather interruption of a week that had her with an early dismissal on the first day and a snow delay on the second -- she declared that she was not coming to my house, she was going to school.

Mommy told her there was no one there and her teacher was at home in her pajamas.

It's Pre-K and there's a lot to love, and it's still a big adventure that may wear off in another week. Then we'll see if she really likes school and how well it's going to work out for her.

In the meantime, here at Ma's house we've had some adjusting of our own to do.

There's a different pace to the day without E1 to lead the way. And everyone's schedule has been advanced by about an hour in order to get up and get ready for school, which means earlier lunch, earlier naps, a longer evening post-nap, but more time to get ready for any evening activities.

I even took in an extra girl on Thursday, but she was too quiet to take E1's place.

I've missed the tornado of her activity around which her siblings swirl like so much storm debris, sometimes enjoying the thrill of flying and being part of the action, and sometimes wailing as they are dropped for something new. I've missed her endless questions, her joyful "Ma!" when she gets out of the car, even her naptime fidgets which often subside into a blissful slumber once she's threatened with bodily harm.

E2 has missed her most of all, however, as though the sun around which she has orbited her whole life has gone dark. She regularly asks when E1 will be home; will she be here before Mommy; will they go to Awana; to gymnastics; will she be here for snack or dinner. She's learning a new pattern and for just a few hours each day, she's the big sister -- a generally kinder and gentler big sister than she experienced as a toddler. She and "her baby" seem content to play and have lunch, to lie down and take their naps, waiting for their leader to return.

Thursday, her only full day of school (she won't be going on Wednesday yet due to her weekly therapy), she rode the bus home and emerged with the declaration that like the rest of the school experience, it was delightful. When we wound up behind her bus on the way to gymnastics, it was a source of delight to tell her sister all about how that was her bus and she had ridden it to my house just a short time earlier.

The phone call to her mom's work, which her mom feared would be word of a meltdown, was actually her teacher calling to say what a great little girl she is.

So the experiment in school has, at least, begun well. The new experiences have been offset by the routine. She's gone to bed earlier, but had no additional meltdowns. Perhaps the therapy she's already had, from which we've noticed a change, has helped. Perhaps the meltdowns are yet to come. Perhaps she would have been fine either way.

Today we start week two.