My Big Girl

Well, we did it... today we signed our baby girl up for kindergarten. YIKES! We woke up and had breakfast with daddy (he had today off since he worked so late last night) and headed over to the kinder/1st grade campus. We get there and parking is nil, so I send Jonathan in with Nash and Michi to get signed in and head to the overflow parking lot. I get a fairly good spot and head back to the school, walk in and find a madhouse lol it was loud in that cafetorium for sure. Michi has a little orange paper butterfly pinned to her shirt with her name on it and Jonathan has already grabbed a packet of paperwork to fill out. We find a spot and sit, and the opening presentation begins. After a few speakers, they start grouping kids up to go on a bus ride around the neighborhood, a tour of the school, some sit down time in a classroom to get a feel for the routine and then back to the cafetorium for snacks. At first Michi looked at us like we were crazy when we told her she was going to have to go off with a strange adult and a group of kids she didn't know lol. But she finally reluctantly followed her group and group leader (as I stared after her anxiously... Jonathan laughed at me and said "don't worry, babe, she's fine" and I knew this. But that was my baby I was watching leave with a group of people we have never met, and i saw flashes of the first day of school haha) Jonathan and I began filling out our stack of papers and it all seemed very redundant, many of them asking for the same information over and over again. Finally, we got through it and then I stood in line to turn it all in along with her documents. At long last, I get to the front and turn it all in and I get back to my seat where I start getting anxious for Michi to return... not because I was anxious to leave or anything, but because I was worried about how she was doing. Soon I see her group come through the door and she is absolutely beautiful. My little garden nymph (as every one likes to call her) is frolicking along with her group- happy and excited and absolutely glowing. She has really blossomed out of her shy little shell. She picks a seat at the table so she can sit down and have her snack, and I catch her looking over her shoulder at me with the hugest grin on her face. I wish I could bottle that feeling I get when she gives me that smile. And all at once I feel a flood of so many emotions that it takes every ounce of willpower I possess not to tear up and start bawling right there in the middle of all of those people I don't know. My little Michi Peach is a big girl now, and it seems to have happened over night :( I still can't believe my baby will be starting school in fall. All I can hope is that Jonathan will be able to go with us on the first day of school, as he missed that with kenna *sigh* Here is to one more huge step into the future. My kids are growin faster than I can keep up, it seems.