There’s something amazing about the kindergarten year.
Something truly special will happen this year—this transformative, magical, bittersweet year in which you hand your baby over to the care of someone else who you pray will be full of love and patience and grace and knowledge.
You don’t want to let go but you know this is the natural order of things, that she needs to take those first timid steps away from you, the start of a journey that will be hers and hers alone.
There will be bumps along the road and it will be rewarding and scary and defeating and validating all at the same time. But the most incredible and mystifying thing is that this child you are sending to school this fall will no longer be there next summer. Because though she will always be your baby, she will not be a baby anymore.
She will know how to read.
She will have a newfound confidence and self-assurance that wasn’t there before.
She will add and subtract with ease.
She will problem-solve and ask thoughtful questions.
She will have her own friends and inside jokes.
She will be independent and brave and unafraid to try new things.
She will have shot up a few inches, outgrown her clothes, and will need new shoes. She might be missing a tooth or two. Her face will have lost the baby pudge, and you will see glimpses of the big kid she will grow up to be.
There’s something amazing about this kindergarten year.
And there’s something about this kindergarten year that absolutely breaks your heart. Because you will learn that kindergarten is also a lesson in goodbyes.
Goodbye to the baby you once cradled, the toddler who curled up in your lap. To the preschooler who was your constant shadow. To slow mornings and filling the long weekday hours between meals and naps. To pushing a grocery cart that always held a pair of chunky legs in the front seat. To seemingly endless time spent just the two of you.
You know that after this kindergarten year, there will be no turning back. No way to pause time or hold on just a little bit longer. She is off, she is ready, you are so proud, and your heart is just a little bit broken.
This kindergarten year will be the last chapter in the sweetest story, and it will be the first chapter in a brand new one.
So hold on tight, kindergarten mamas.
You’re in for a beautiful ride.
And believe me, it’s all going to go so fast.
Originally published on the author’s Facebook page
by Caitlin Q. Bailey O'Neill 
by Jamie Duhn 
by Lauren Dunn 
