Is It That Time Already?

And so the countdown begins. Letters from the boys’ teachers arrived in our mailbox yesterday, introducing themselves and providing the all important ‘back to school shopping list’ and time for open house and meet-your-teacher-day, which will be this coming Thursday, but missing the tax free weekend, like usual. Did you hear the sudden intake of breath? How can it be back to school time already? Summer went almost as fast for me this year as it used to seem to go when I was in school myself. Do we really only have one week left? What happened to summer? Where did it go? Did we really waste this whole break? Well, not exactly waste, but not exactly doing what I had obviously not actually fully planned to do but intended to do all summer. We did get some fun beach days in. And lots of reading together. And swimming lessons (finally). And days to just be kids.

I’ll tell you why it seemed so short. Drew was gone for most of it. We were in survival, single-mom mode most of the summer. So be it. Here we are.

We made a trip out to the office supply store yesterday to buy the school supplies the letters listed. Oh, do I have a story about that - remind me to tell you all later. Another intake of breath. My oldest son is going into the FOURTH grade this year. And just when I got my brain wrapped around that unbelievable thing, I realized my youngest son (not youngest child, but youngest son) is going into the SECOND grade this year. I mean, obviously I knew he is going into the second grade, but it kind of hit me all of a sudden that he’s going into the SECOND grade! Aaaaaack. Gaaaack. They are not little anymore. What happened here? Time happened. It does that. You blink and there you are.

And then it hit me, too, that I usually start making the kids go to bed earlier the week before school starts to get them back into that habit, and that is THIS WEEK. Aaaack......

Life is a vapor. If you don’t believe it, well, you haven’t seen how fast a kid changes once his baby teeth start falling out and his grown up ones grow in and he finishes kindergarten and first grade. All of sudden, in the blink of an eye, he’s just not a little guy anymore.

And with the back to school letters arriving in the mailbox yesterday, guess who had a nightmare last night? Well, I’m not saying, but it wasn’t the happy-go-lucky boy but the more intense, sometimes-thinks-too-much, sometimes-obsesses-about-things, goodness-but-he’s-a-lot-like-his-mother-in-that-respect boy. Poor guy. He came into the kitchen around 11ish PM last night, where I was ineffectively staring at the blank computer screen trying to will a blog post to write itself because lately, I’ve just got nothin’ much in the blogging department, upset because he’d had a bad dream. I prayed with him and hugged him and sent him back to bed and soon after turned off the computer and went to bed. Not much later I heard the same boy spreading blankets in the living room floor because that seems to help on those kinds of nights. I asked him this morning if he thinks it might be because the back-to-school letter came yesterday that he suddenly had trouble sleeping. He doesn’t think so. I silently and knowingly beg to differ. I know how it is. I still have those kinds of nights when this time of year comes around, but I have them also at midterms and finals, too. I'm starting to think that it isn't going to matter how many years post-school I am, that this may just be how it's going to be. I’m sorry, son. I have truly tried not to pass my weirdness down.

So, that’s what’s up with the older children. Guess what’s next on the agenda for the rapidly-growing-out-of-babyhood Boo? Potty training. Oh dear…….

Though the thought of being done with diapers and the hit to the budget that they are is intriguing, but it’s just one more reminder that in just a few blinks she’ll be in kindergarten, as the little grocery store toddler preschool pals club newsletter informed me when it hit my inbox with its brightly titled “Countdown to Kindergarten” headline. Don’t rush me, people, she’s only two…