Growing Pains

I talked with another kindergarten mother yesterday who had just returned from volunteering in the classroom. She said that Claire is a typical girl student--the sit up straight, adore the teacher and raise the hand for every question type. It was good to hear that. I really didn't know how she was doing. I feel so disconnected from my daughter. She is away from me for hours everyday--and she can never remember what she did at school beside lunch or recess.

The transition to kindergarten has been difficult for us, really difficult, cry the eyeballs out difficult. Claire is not always excited to go to school and comes home very tired and SASSY. Lily desperately misses Claire during the day and has had to learn to play by herself. I bear a large portion of everyone's tantrums (some of my own too) and still wonder (even in mid-October) if we made the right decision sending her to school, especially with all of my homeschooling sympathies. Things are just starting to become routine, and consequently the children are better behaved. I am sure daylight savings will send us out of alignment. Sigh.

I do love where we chose to send Claire to school. It is everything that I would have wanted to do in a homeschool setting. They are teaching her to read with phonics and are doing Saxon math. She is learning about art and artists. She is learning to speak Spanish and about American history. Her teachers love being surrounded by children--and seem to thrive on the abundance of youthful energy (instead of going crazy like me).

I never seem to move gracefully through change, it happens so fast--I went cold turkey out of diapers, I have stretch marks to prove that adolescence happened much too quickly, and I went from high school senior to married and pregnant in less than 30 months. I wish that I could embrace and and enjoy these changes instead crying big tears. These changes are good things...not always easy, but good. I need to keep telling myself that.