Six-word Saturday

Where did the school year go?

My son has only three more days of kindergarten before school is over. I can't believe I'll be the mother of a first-grader soon! And my baby will be a preschooler next fall. Where did the school year go? Where did the TIME go?

It goes way too fast.

I can't help but feel the way country music singer Billy Dean does in this song:       

 

                    Lyrics here.

Wishing you all a Saturday filled with beautiful memories. ☺

 

Six-word Saturday

Oldest turns six on Thursday. Wow!

I can't believe six years have passed so quickly. I look at my son sometimes and still see him as the baby I brought home from the hospital. I think time really does go by faster once we have children.

Wishing you a weekend full of happy memories. ☺

I survived (but just barely)

At my son's preschool graduation last night, I saw kids who looked like this:

Is it over yet?
(Image courtesy of Michael & Christa Richert, rgbstock.com)

and this:

Why are all these people staring at me?
(Photo by Tiene Alles, rgbstock.com)

and a lot of them that looked like this:

Yay!
(Image courtesy of Billy Frank Alexander, rgbstock.com)

And all of them were completely adorable!

However, I, as predicted, looked a lot like this:

Where have all the years gone?
(Image courtesy of Michael & Christa Richert, rgbstock.com)

and used up my share of these:

*sniff, sniff*
(Photo by Shari Weinsheimer, courtesy of Public Domain Pictures)

Surprisingly, though, my tears weren't sad tears, at least during the ceremony. Some of the kids did the funniest (and sweetest) things as they walked into the gym, and I couldn't help but laugh until I cried. One little girl skipped down the aisle, her ponytail flipping from side to side; a little boy with spiked hair loped to the front of the gym, his hands in his pockets (I nicknamed him Rico Suave); and another little girl speed-walked to her chair, a wide grin splitting her little four-year-old face.

My son looked a little worried as he waited for his turn, but once he started down that aisle and heard the applause, he was smiling from ear to ear. I was so proud of him!



Image courtesy of Chris
rgbstock.com

When we got home, however, it was a different story. I lost it then because all I could think about was how quickly these five years have gone and how recently it seemed that I was holding my newborn son in my arms. So much has changed since then, and I know so many things will continue to change, but that doesn't make the changes any easier. Last night I cried the sad tears.

However, when my wonderful preschool graduate saw that I was upset, he went to his room and came back with his beloved Mickey Mouse doll, which he handed to me. "Mama, you can sleep with him tonight if you want to," he said.

And you know what? I did. And today I feel much better.


Have you ever been comforted by a child?

Break out the tissues...

Image courtesy of Moi Cody,
rgbstock.com

my son is graduating from preschool tonight!

I can't believe how quickly the school year has gone. It seems like yesterday that I was taking his first-day-of-school picture on the front step. He was so excited, thrilled to be going to preschool at last, but now it's all old hat for him, and he can't wait to move on to kindergarten. Yesterday he had his kindergarten screening, and I took him for a walk through the halls of his new school. His eyes lit up when he saw all the cool, "big kid" stuff, and he told me he wants to start going there tomorrow!

I know I'm going to be a teary mess when I see him walking into the gym tonight, and I'll probably be sobbing outright when he receives his diploma. It's hard to believe that the baby born by an emergency C-section in late February 2007 is now a smart, capable, independent little boy ready to go off to all-day kindergarten without me.

For the past few months, my daughter has been telling me that she doesn't want her brother to go to school because she's going to miss him too much.

All I can tell her is that I will, too.



So does anyone want to cheer me up and keep me from crying all over my keyboard? And more seriously, for those of you who have trod this path before, do you have any advice for me?

Bittersweet

Today's 100 words:

My son is five now, officially since 9:50 last night. My children's birthdays have always been hard on me, as the older I get, the more I realize how quickly time passes. I love these early childhood years when the kids are learning so much about their worlds and are home all the time with me. I'm finding five to be a particularly difficult age. It's the beginning of full-time school and signals the real beginning of independence for my son. For me five brings the sad realization that my little boy won't always need me so much.

On getting older

Today's 100 words:

I woke up with a tingling left hand and a crick in my neck, and although I know that both are merely the result of a fitful night's sleep, I can't help but also think of them as harbingers of age. I'll turn forty in August, and sometimes I have "I can't believe it" moments when I think of that milestone. It's not that I consider forty old, but it seems unreal that the eighteen-year-old I used to be--the one starting college and beginning her life--could already have had that many birthdays. Time passes so fast.

It endures

Today's 100 words:

When I was growing up, I could look out my bedroom window and see two nearby trees, one a cherry and the other some sort of pine. The cherry tree was old and had all the character that old trees possess: crooked, perfect-for-sitting-in limbs; peeling bark; an aura of history. I knew as I looked at it that it had seen many things as it bore its fruit year after year. The pine was younger. I had watched it grow from small to suddenly tall, a sentinel beside the shorter cherry. That watchful pine is gone now, but the cherry endures.

NaNo - and - Where does the time go?

Heh. Inadvertent rhyme up there in the title. :-P

First, my NaNo update: I managed to write nearly 2,100 words today during the time my son was at school and between cooking meals, bringing my word count thus far to 6,003. I may try to get in a few more words tonight, but all in all, I'm happy with my progress.

Second, the passage of time: Other than NaNoWriMo, the thing most on my mind today is how fast the weeks are going by. It really feels like my son started preschool yesterday, and he's been going there for eight weeks now! Time goes way too fast, especially when you don't want it to.

Sorry for the short entry, but it's time to make dinner now, and then I hope to begin responding to the comments I received on this entry. Thanks again to all of you who offered advice!

No more slow-motion world

Today's 100 words:

It's nearly the middle of September, and I don't understand how the days and weeks speed by like this, so fast--zip, zoom--and then they're gone, and suddenly it's another month with its own zipping and zooming, days and weeks that come too fast and go too fast--out of control, really, and not at all like what they were when I was a child and the months used to crawl by, a day seeming like a week, a month like a year as I waited in eager anticipation for something--anything--to happen in my slow-motion world.