Back To School Blues

I've got the blues, and I've got them bad. In my last post I'm rambling on about how exhausting it is to have the kids home over the summer. Now, in this one, I'm boo-hooing because it's time to go back to school. I think I'm handling it worse this year than ever before. Maybe it's because my son is starting third grade, a.k.a "Upper Elementary". It probably doesn't help that he turns nine in two months. I swear he was a baby and I blinked!! All of those times I whined about how I couldn't wait for him to stop nursing, or stop teething, or start walking, or quit babbling and start talking...

I regret them now!

Third grade scares me because it's the age of full memory. I can really remember third grade. In my mind, I can still picture the day my friends and I stood outside the classroom and discussed the ages of our parents. I remember realizing that most of our parents were in their thirties, and we all squealed about how gross and old that was. I have come to the point in motherhood where I question my parental "cool factor".
With a third grader, I have a very limited amount of time before my X factor wears off. Mommy has already been replaced with "Mom, Ma-uuumm, MOOOOMMMMMM!!!" This now means, that in the eyes of my son, I am officially "old". I have become the lady in a robe flipping pancakes at 7:30 in the morning. On occasion, I have even been known to wear mom jeans, regretfully. Hold on while I go get a brown bag, because I am hyperventilating.

Third grade means our family has reached the pre-teen years. It is time for me to face the facts. I no longer have a baby/toddler/preschooler/kindergartner, etc. I have no idea how to cope with this new information, and I get the deer-caught-in-the-headlights look if someone even mentions the dreaded word, "tween".
I am in complete denial that I only have one more week at home with my daughter before she officially starts her LAST year of preschool! Maybe that explains my first major motherly "faux pas", which I committed today by forgetting to go to her 9am preschool orientation. At least I redeemed myself by making it up there by 11am, even if we did "orient ourselves" to the wrong class.
In all my misery and nostalgia, I have been torturing myself by clicking back through the "first day photos". I swear I just took them yesterday. In fact, I know it wasn't that long ago, because I still haven't organized them or uploaded them or printed them. That's one of those things on my to-do list. I keep meaning to get to that, but I've been putting it off until the kids are in school and I have more time. Oh no, wait a minute...no, now I don't want more time. Picture someone digging in her heals and screaming NO, NO, no, NOOOO!! I don't wanna' and I'm not gonna' let them grow up. Yep, that would be me.

My husband must be feeling it too. He keeps talking about how this was the first year that our son didn't look back. He has told me at least twice how our son just hopped out of the car with a crooked grin and then he was off, just poofed into thin air. My husband was just left behind in the car, dazed that just like that...it happened. And here we both are, just left watching him go...talking about how dropping him off at college is absolutely going to punch us in the gut!

In the meantime, we scroll through the piles (digitally speaking, of course) of pictures snapped with the phone because we're always in a hurry. We promise to get organized and keep it all together, to make more time for him, and not take all of childhood's little phases for granted. But mostly, we sit and talk about the good ole' days when he was so little....


Happy 3rd grade, big guy. I know you're going to have a great year!