T-1 month to Kindergarten

Time is moving slooow in reno-land. This week, plumbing rough-in began and all of the blue boxes for light switches and outlets have been installed. The aim is have all of the “mechanical” work finished by the end of July and have windows installed in early August.

Please let me wake up tomorrow and it be early August. Not that I want to wish away this precious…ly endless time with my children 🙂

Since the pros and cons of a tankless water heater is not something I am particularly excited to blog about, I’ll address the other, more important, hot topic in our household — we’ve opted for the in-person traditional classroom route for Kindergarten. Today was the deadline to decide. If that option holds true, I’m gearing up for a really weird, not at all what I pictured, first day of real school for my first-born child.

First and most obvious, we won’t be in our house. We had hoped we would be at the finish line in August when we got this process started and wanted to start the build in January. Don’t be at all surprised when you see first day of school pictures with the in-progress house in the background. I am most certainly planning on parking in our driveway and walking to school on the first day.

But when we get to school, will I be able to walk her into the classroom and say hello to her teacher? I think the chances of this are low if not zero. And that means asking her to find the kind of bravery that I by no means had at her age. If this was 1988, I would be so completely paralyzed with fear and anxiety that my mother wouldn’t even consider sending me to school just to save us both from it. Fortunately, my daughter did not inherit that particular gene. I’m sure I’ll have enough anxiety for both of us as I watch her walk into a school that I myself have never set foot in. I won’t know what classroom she’s going to. I don’t know that I will have laid eyes on her teacher before that morning since there is no Meet the Teacher Day. Please let there be a FaceTime or Zoom call ahead of time.

And what’s it going to feel like for her in the classroom? Will she know when the teacher is smiling underneath a mask to know she’s warm and welcoming? Will she be able to get a hug when she’s missing me? How will she be able to make new friends if they have to stay far apart?

Ohmygod, people, just #wearadamnmask so this can all be over soon.

To the parents who have chosen the virtual option, I can’t wait for your child to meet my child in January. It will be like a big ole family reunion with cousins you’ve never met. We will have just collectively lived through one of the more difficult decisions of our time as parents, and fortunately — because of the resiliency of kids — they’ll snap right back into a “normal” rhythm soon after. Which means we will finally get to too.

So in the meantime, our house will keep inching along to finished, and our family will keep reading books about Kindergarten, do some back-to-school shopping ONLINE, and not let our daughter think there is any reason to be less excited about the big milestone she’s reached.

And come that first day of school, I’ll be over here in this rental cleaning up all the clutter, and then curl up into a sobbing mess.