Another Ending, So Soon

The title of this post sounds rather ominous, but really I'm just feeling a bit overwhelmed and emotional over the fact that Lily is graduating from preschool tomorrow, at noon. Before I was a parent, it was hard to see and gauge the effects of time speeding past. Three years was just....3 years. A little hard to measure, except perhaps by what job I had, or what haircut, or where we went for vacation that year. (Vegas, probably. Back when we lived like adults and could do things like go to Vegas.)

But now I see all that the passing of 3 years (or really, two and half) can bring about. My little tiny muffin of a girl in this picture is now 5, and getting herself all grown up and graduated and ready to join a summer soccer/t-ball class. (She has a whole lot more hair now, too.) What really blows my mind is that Lily in this picture is just about the same age at that Tucker is right now, about two and a half. He still seems like my baby. And yet, with my first child, I was so ready to kick her out the door for preschool -- and granted, she started off slow, at only 2 half days a week. But look at how that backpack (filled with an extra change of clothes and some Pull-Ups, as she wasn't potty-trained yet) seems to almost dwarf the child. Well, I wisely knew that I would need just that little bit of time, even six hours a week at first, to be alone with her baby brother in the house, and to maybe, just maybe, catch a little bit of solitary down-time for myself.

Now she goes to school 3 full days a week, and I'm so thankful for the great time she's had, getting paint and frosting in her hair, tracking home enough sand to practically fill our own sandbox, and even maybe learning a thing or two.

And I almost, almost don't feel too guilty anymore, looking at this picture taken at the end of her first 3 hour day: clutching a tissue, because she was crying and missed her mommy:

Oh, who am I kidding? It tears me up, still. The mommy-guilt. It's a deep well, people, and I'm pretty sure it'll never go dry.

Queen of My Heart

My baby turned 5 on Saturday. Five years old? How did that happen?

It's a cliche that time flies quicker when you have children, but it's a cliche for a good reason. Five years old means that she has officially left the land of babyhood and toddlerhood and even preschooler-hood for good. In five months she'll be starting kindergarten and beginning her long odyssey of public school life. No wonder my heart is filled with such dread. I quake with my dark imaginings of what peer pressure and standardized testing pressure and fit-in-the-box pressure will do this brilliant, funny, fearless, imaginative, confident beauty.

But I guess I'll save that post and more of those musing for later in the year. For now...I present to you my girl, my wonder, my first born, my only daughter. "Mommy, you're the queen of my heart," she told me frequently this past year.

I once had the thought that Lily was born in Technicolor. How I love to look at old movies and musicals from the '50s, if only to admire the lipstick reds and intense, vibrant hues of the costumes and sets. "Why can't real life be in Technicolor?" I've thought more than once. At yet when I look at this girl, its seems that she is indeed made of all those larger and truer-than-life colors. She seems to pop against the background of our everyday lives.
How I love to rest my eyes upon this child, and marvel that she is my own. Happy Birthday, sweet Lily. I know that you spent a lot of time when you were four telling us about how you're tired of being a human, and that you're ready right now to turn into a mermaid OR a pixie, but you should know that we're quite pleased with the form you've taken in this life's incarnation -- magical little girl -- and hope you stay this way for a good while longer.

Love,
Your Mommy