First Day of School - Part 2 Kindergarten

My baby is a kindergartner!  He has been going to school now since Friday.  On Thursday there was an orientation for the children and their parents.  That was lovely the second time around.  When Harry went to kindergarten, I was much more nervous about the mechanics of things.  This time I know the routine and was able instead to focus on the little person and what he was going to experience and also a bit on myself and my dread of being alone at home for extended periods of time for the first time in over 10 years!  Who would think that this introvert would be dreading silence?  Really it is more the fear and sadness of letting go.  I think that is what having children is about sometimes.  We let go.  It is a series of small and large ways in which we let go.  As mothers it is a visceral thing because we are the ones who carried these little people in our bodies.  We are the ones who set their first rhythms as they traveled along within us for nine months.  Nobody knows us more intimately and we don't ever have a more intimate relationship than the one we have with our babies.

Mind you I understand that it is a similar experience for men.  The introduction of children into a relationship changes things.  It certainly isn't all happy things.  We have to learn again how to share; our time, our bodies, our loved ones. It brings a certain tension for everybody, but I guess the reason people have children is that it also brings a great joy.  For all of us mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles and grandparents, children are a reminder that life goes on and that there is hope and newness.  They challenge and frustrate us to see things in a different light.  They remind us sometimes that we didn't always look at the world through our adult eyes.

So anyway, before I wax too philosophical, Robert is now in school and on his own for 7 hours a day.  He seems to be doing fine.  I will now attach some pictures of Robert's first couple of days.

Here he is in his new classroom on orientation day - his spot is right in front of the teacher :-)

Ready to go to the bus

Every year I have a picture of Harry and Kevin walking to the bus.  There is not one of Robert & Kevin because Robert and I walked to the bus together.  Even though in the past year or so, Robert has moved some away from me and declared Daddy is more fun and more beloved, I am still the one he seeks out in new situations and for comfort.  If I was worried that we'd lost some of that, I am not anymore.  The experience of starting kindergarten taught me that anew.  I know that the little guy I put on the bus will be very different come June when school comes to an end.  I remember that phenomenon with Harry.  He went to school looking so little and although he wasn't that much bigger at the end of the year, he had changed.  He looked more like a little boy than a toddler and that is the change I am expecting.  

Getting off the bus at school (yes we followed the bus and actually I did end up talking to him again because he was a little uncertain of where he should go and what he should do.  I gave him a nudge and a smile and I think that helped.)