Alley Oops: Kindergarten (or How Did This Happen So Fast?)

I'm not sure how it happened, but in the blink of an eye, this little girl:

Turned into this BIG girl:

Kindergarten started last Thursday. It was a day that I'd honestly not been looking forward to. It meant that my baby girl will never be only mine again. She's going to be with a teacher and classmates that I don't really know and there is so much that I will not be able to protect her from. Thankfully, our district still offers half-day kindergarten and we actually know about half of the kids in her class. I've also heard great things about her teacher.

This new phase has been a good lesson for me, once again, in how little I can control. I've been praying as often as I think of it for strength and grace for her teacher, as well as for protection and wisdom for Brooke, and opportunities for her to show love and kindness to others. And I know that she's going to do great. She's always loved school and was SO excited to go on Thursday. Her teacher gave each of the kids a bag of "Ready Confetti" to keep under their pillows to help them sleep and give them sweet dreams. About 15 minutes after she went to bed, Brooke called shenanigans on the confetti being magic because she still couldn't go to sleep. She did say that she had sweet dreams, though.

Because we knew so many people at the school, and because I'd already shed a few tears earlier in the week, I was able to hold it together at drop off. Plus, I thankfully still had Miles and Paige to distract me. We ran a couple of errands and Miles asked literally five times when we could go pick Brookie up. His preschool doesn't start for a few more weeks, so we'll have to find ways to stay busy until then.

It's pretty fun that Brooke is going to the same school that Matt, Mike and Jamie went to, and that she already has so many friends in class. It's about a 3 minute drive and I think we're going to attempt to walk there at some point this coming week. We'll see how that goes.