Last week, I sent my oldest daughter to preschool. This was the first time I’ve ever turned her over to a “stranger.” I’ve been a stay-at-home mom for most of her life and before that, I was lucky enough to work somewhere that I could take her with me. Other than staying with grandparents or aunts and uncles, she’s always been under my care. Naturally, I was nervous, but she was super excited!  

Here we are, a little over a week into this whole school thing and it’s going pretty great. My daughter attends school for 2.5 hours and has so much fun during that time. She comes home and sings new songs, tells me about the “challenges” she completed on the playground, and even fills me in on her day. It’s so weird to not know every single detail about her time away, but I’m getting used to it. I ask so many questions once we’re in the car — so much that I think she gets annoyed with me! Well, at least as annoyed as a 4-year-old could get with their mama!

Now that my daughter is going to preschool, me and her sister are making the biggest adjustment. We go home and she’s not here. The girls are rarely ever split up so it’s been hard for Baileigh to find things to do around the house by herself. Most days, she ends up helping me with chores or something because, “It’s not fun to do that without sissy!” As a matter of fact, the first day we dropped her off at preschool, Baileigh started crying before my big alligator tears even had time to drop! She wanted her sister back! I’m sure once the new baby is born, she’ll quickly get over not having sister around all day.

So far, we’ve had a handful of arts and crafts make it to on our fridge, including handwritten papers with her name. We’ve even receive our first book order catalog. It’s a very different ballgame when a child enters the school age years. I want to do everything right and really, I’m not even sure what that means! I thought going from the cloth diapering stage to the potty training was life altering, but having a child enter school? Oh my.

I can’t believe my baby is old enough to be in preschool and next year, I’ll have two kids in school! It’s crazy how the days can seem so long but the years are so short!