The break-neck speed that time seems to tumble by the first few years of having a child can fool us (certainly fooled me) into forgetting there's also so much routine to our crazy lives.
Kyle's been at the same daycare since he was five months old. We've been in the same house since about then, as well. We take the same drive to school, and we take the same drive home. He's had the same best buddy since around then, and we see him at soccer practice and swim lessons and at parks when it's not a million degrees outside.
He's hit so many milestones--crawling, walking, talking, sleeping through the night, moving out of his crib, writing his full name, riding a bike, and way back in the day my personal favorite, putting his pacifier back in his mouth himself--that life feels like it's always changing. Yet he's up at 7am every morning, still napping all these years later. He has loved Legos for years. He has loved motorcycles forever.
He watches sports and plays soccer and though my memory is stellar, it gets fuzzy when I try to reach back into it to remember a time when he didn't watch sports or play soccer.
We say goodbye to his daycare teachers and 7am wakeups and naps next month. He starts Kindergarten and, not to sound too dramatic, he starts his entire life. I remember my first day of Kindergarten. What I wore, where I sat, how long I wanted my parents to stay in the room with me (longer than they were able to). I bet he remembers all that too.
I'm thrilled for this new chapter, and I'm so thrilled for him. Kindergarten! School! He's going to have a blast, even when he doesn't. Even when days suck, he's going to be starting his beautiful life. I can't wait to witness it. I can't wait to watch him read and learn and add and subtract and throw Kindergarten-level fits when he's too exhausted to speak clearly at the end of the day. To make friendships and break friendships. To eventually fall in love, with people and hobbies and moments.
But it's a new chapter and with it the end of, truly, a five-year-long one that came before. That came first. His first chapter, closing.
Hello and goodbye.
Hello.
Goodbye.