The Final First Day of Preschool

It is that time of year when just about everyone I know is posting pictures of their kids on their first day back to school on Facebook, (Me included) although I only posted one blurry photo of my youngest kid.

Last 1st Day of Preschool

Plenty of people can take near professional quality photos with their iPhones. I however, cannot. It may be blurry, but at least it’s a picture.

Beyond not wanting to fall into the horrible cliché of not taking pictures of my third kid, here’s why I shared this less than stellar picture with my 400+ Facebook friends, whether they cared to see it or not. This was a monumental day in our household. This was the LAST time we’d be walking into preschool for a first day of school. Did you get that? For the last seven years, we’ve done this ritual at our preschool, and now this was it. The final first day of preschool. That in my opinion is worth a post.

You would have thought I’d get emotional, but alas I did not. Maybe it was because I was late for work. Maybe it was because I turned into a hardened mother who didn’t really care if her kid screamed like a banshee the second I left. For the record, not a tear was shed. Maybe I was quite certain she was in very good hands. Maybe all of these explanations equal to a whole truth. Whatever the reason, I skedaddled out of there like a bat out of hell, while other parents hovered around the door while their kids sat down for circle time.

It’s quite a different scenario from two years earlier, when I brought Carrie for her very first, first day of preschool.

1st First Day of Preschool

Then I hovered. She cried. She cried a lot. She cried so much the preschool director told me she was about a minute away from calling me to pick her up. Somehow, she and I survived her first day, and although there have been tears at drop-off since that first day, there are more smiles and waves, than wails and sadness.

For that I’m grateful. Grateful and proud that my little toddler in the two-day class is now a glorified “big kid” in the five-day class. She’s grown up plenty in these last two years, more than these pictures can show, but I’ll still be taking the pictures each and every year. And yes, I’ll probably still be posting them on Facebook.