First Day of Second Grade

Jen DeZeeuw August 20, 2012

I hate to say that it was the morning that I was dreading. Dreading seems so severe…I guess I could say that it was the morning that I was certainly not looking forward to…that sounds a little nicer. But anyhow, its the morning that was this morning. The first day of school for Logan. Second grade. I know, I know, a gazillion other children on the planet started second grade this morning, or this week…or last week, but it seems in my world today like he’s the only one and I can’t believe that my first born stands almost to my shoulders and is entering second grade. Well, I had better believe it because it happened and he’s just over three hours into it!

It went as well as we could have hoped and quite honestly expected. Chris and I are very grateful that our guy is as confident as he is. My heart did break a little bit though, as I also expected. But I wasn’t sure how the breaking would occur or if there would be something specific that would trigger the break, or if it would just be the whole idea of the morning.

I tell you what… there were two heart break triggers that happened and the first one occurred after I asked Logan if we should do the kissing hand. If you recall from Kindergarten, on the first day with the parents present, they read the story called, “The Kissing Hand.” The long and short of it was that the child raccoon started his first day of school and the mama raccoon kissed her child’s hand so that her child would have mama’s kiss on his palm all day and if he ever missed his mama, he would find comfort in the knowledge that he still had a kiss he was holding onto. Then, the child raccoon kissed his mama’s palm for the same reason.

Logan and I did it then and also in first-grade. But guess what? He is too old to do it now. I asked him on the side walk leading to the school-not even on the school grounds yet- if he wanted to the kissing hand and he shrugged a little at my query. I asked him if maybe he was a little to grown up to do it and then he shrugged a little again. It was like he was afraid to actually say he wasn’t comfortable for fear of hurting my heart. 🙂 So then I told him it was ok, maybe we could just do an extra big hug instead. At that, he smiled, agreed that would be good and hugged me. Phew! But I’d be lying if I said I fought a couple of wiley tears from falling at that moment.

The second break came after all the kids were lined up to go inside. I asked Logan if he wanted to say good-bye to us there, at the top of the hill, or would he like us to walk him down to the doors like we did all of last year. He said we could say good-bye there, while still in line, at the top of the hill.

*sigh*

It’s like I said, I’m grateful for the confidence he has. I would prefer that over the alternative.

We gave hugs, waved good-bye and watched our big guy walk away. Bleh. My heart is heavy today, but it will mend. I prepare for tomorrow now. Another big day in our lives as our Eli starts preschool in the afternoon. Big, big times are upon the DeZeeuw’s this year-and I know they are only going to get bigger.

Here, I saved us some pictures from this morning. Want to see? 🙂

I had these little lunch cards left over from last year…he was even expecting it in his lunch because he mentioned how happy he will be when he gets to see his note!