Bye bye, baby

Today my baby started kindergarten. I thought I was ready to see her go off and start her education without a qualm, I've been looking forward to having more time for my work and things for ages, but last night I lay in bed and thought that the last 4 years have gone so fast...not news to any parent, I'm sure, who watches their offspring cross yet another milestone. It seems like only a few months ago that Max was starting kindy; now he is in the 2nd grade and Lola is in kindy!

Now that my baby is in kindy, I won't ever have to do that being-at-home-all-day-with-a-young-child thing, with all the frustration, boredom, fun that that entails - days stretching out with not having much to do but just having to be there to make sure no-one falls out of the tree or skins their knee or gets a paper cut, going to the park, the shops, the doctors, the playdates, the playgroups, the hours spent trying to decipher the newsletters sent home from school and their arcane ways of telling you just exactly what equipment yr child needs at school. No more nappies, baby food, wipes - my kids can feed, clean and toilet themselves.  I don't have to take a small child with me to go shopping (every mother's secret fear), because I can choose to wait until they are both gone in the morning and then do it uninterrupted by tantrums and demands for toys and sweets.

It's hard to miss those hard-labour days of caring for a small baby or child, because it's damn hard work, messy and endless, but those baby and toddler years... they are so sweet despite all of the hard work. Last night was the first time since Lola's babyhood that I thought fondly of the thought of having another baby, but (thankfully) we'd put a permanent stop on all that last year with bruno's *snip*. Phew, who knows how we might have ended up, another 5 years, back at the starting line! This morning I watched my baby running off to join her friends, jumping into her kindy experience and landing with both feet running. She is more than ready for kindy, readier than Max was at her age, more confident, more aware, thanks to the benefit of having seen her older brother go through it all before her.  I hope she loves it.

Comments

[Alison]

I'm about to go through the whole infant thing again, after a break of 3 years, and I empathise with everything you're going through. I will love having a tiny baby head to sniff again, instead of a preschooler who constantly smells like paint and dirt - but I am not looking forward to being tied-at-the-hip for another few years!