"Happy first day of school!" I said to her as she wandered into the kitchen in her purple-striped pajamas, clutching her stuffed dinosaur to her chest.

She broke into a big smile. "It IS a happy day!" she said. "Because I get to go to kindergarten!"

And that's pretty much epitomized her attitude toward "real" school so far. Happy, happy times.

Last year was her three-mornings-a-week preschool in a church a few minutes' drive from our home. But this is kindergarten. In the elementary school near our house, the one where all the big kids in the neighborhood go. This is serious business, and she's been looking forward to it for months.




If she had any first-day jitters at all, they didn't show. We walked her to school, she hung her backpack on a hook, we helped her find her seat. And then we left her sitting there, hands clasped neatly in front of her, eager for it all to begin. I peeked in at her through the window as we left, saw her so fresh and bright and beautiful, and couldn't help getting choked up a little. My first baby! In school!



"She's going to do great," Eric said. "That kid is going to rule the world someday."

He was right, of course. She's a bright, enthusiastic, self-assured young girl and I think she'll thrive in a school setting. She came dashing out of the classroom afterward, assuring me that she had "SO much fun." It's just hard for the mother in me to leave her in the hands of strangers--nice strangers, strangers with degrees in childhood education, but still strangers. They have a whole class full of kids. How will they ever know just how bright and amazing and exceptional MY CHILD is?

They won't, of course. They're her teachers, not her mother. Loving her with all their hearts is not their job.

It's mine.