Kindergarten Days

As M starts her second half of kindergarten it recently dawned on me that these half days we share are coming to a close. Next year she will get on the same bus at 7am, but won't return until 2:30 much like her brother T.
It is a bittersweet thing.
Though M is my stepdaughter, I have known her since she was still in diapers, barely mobile and a few months short of 2. In many ways I look at her and am in utter disbelief she is the same child.

She has changed and grown so much. She went from this shy, timid little girl to a child who can be so independent.

When I first met J, she didn't want much to do with me. By the time her birthday rolled around that March, she wanted everything to do with me. She had two go-arounds with pre-school. The first one was NOT a good fit. We brought her kicking and screaming to class each week, and picked her up the same way. She was not quite ready. We pulled her out about the same time I cut down my work week. I was home with her one day a week and we tried to do "pre-school activities"

The following year we tried a different school. The preschool I hope H attends too. Those first weeks were unbearable. She would clench my neck, look at me with her big blue eyes and BEG me to stay. Each time I would have to walk out the door listening to her cries was heartbreaking. But then one day, she didn't. She kissed my cheek goodbye and went to play. And it was over, like that. She'd made her way.

We had expected the fall and the transition to kindergarten would be brutal. I envisioned a tantrum at the bus stop as we would push her to get on. I envisioned tears outside the classroom door when we made her go in. But no. She surprised us all. She got on that bus with a big grin and got off of it at school with a big grin. She was ready.


She has made me laugh and cry. She has made me ponder some of life's mysteries. I remember hearing her shrill shrieks at the doctor when she was three. I remember the day she asked another child at preschool where their Samara was? She doesn't remember a life without me, and it's hard for me to remember without her. When I was pregnant with H and getting sick on a daily basis, she was there to rub my back and get me ice water. And as a matter of fact before we even told a soul we were expecting, she came in my bedroom one day adamant that there was a baby in my tummy! She was right.

She is 100% girl. Loves baking, cooking, dressing up, shopping. Loves giving gifts and making surprises.

Loves arts and crafts, making cards and singing sweet songs. She is loving, sweet and kind. She is silly, happy and content.
She is so good at school. She does all of her best work and is proud of her accomplishments and her friends.

But now that February is here, and school gets out May 31...I am seeing the end. Yes, we will have the summer break when T and her are off of school and H will be old enough to play at the park and the beach with us. But come next fall, she too will be gone all day, every day to the land of school. Where baking cookies at 11am isn't an option. Playing dress up and singing songs in the living room won't happen in the early afternoon.


And it is bittersweet. I know that moving up in school is what is next for her...but I now understand why some parents want to hold on. I do want to hold on. I want to freeze her kindergarten year and do half and half. But we can't. And we won't.


Though she is my stepdaughter, I love her in such a way, my heart knows no difference. M I hope you know just how much you are loved.