When our older son started kindergarten 5 years ago, it was terrible. I started crying the night before and was a mess that morning. He went from being home with me nearly full-time (I had been working outside of the house about 3 hours a week most of his life) to being in full-time school. It was a HUGE adjustment to our schedule and I missed him so much. It was hard but I was reassured that I had a new baby at home and so I wasn't alone!
Fast forward five years and now I am home alone.
It all really started to hit me last winter. For awhile people had been asking what I would do once our second started kindergarten and I probably said something about working more. But it wasn't until late February, a few weeks after Sam hit the age that Luke was when we got Sam, that I realized I really might have to figure out what I was going to do with an empty house all school day.
The spring was HARD as that reality started to sink in more and more. I spent May very conscious of the fact that my days with just Sam at home were quickly coming to an end.
No more lazy mornings of Monopoly Deal, coloring, reading books, and playing together. No more daytime outings to the zoo or library or to do things with cousins. I was going to be alone. 8-3ish. And I would have to find something to do. The prospect of "working more" was not enticing when my past 10 years had mostly been spent with a little buddy following me around.
My professional ambitions changed often as a kid but I always hoped to be married and to be a stay at home mom. Got the marriage one young (22) but then the kids took awhile. It was just crazy to think that those years of being a stay at home Mom were coming to an end, the job I had really wanted nearly my whole life. They ended up encompassing my 30s: we got Luke a few months before turning 30 and I sent Sam to kindergarten just a few weeks after turning 40. My 30s were my decade of being a stay at home Mom. How were they over so quick??
The last month before Sam started kindergarten was just a whirlwind and I don't think we have fully comprehended it all. It may go down as one of the craziest months of our lives. There wasn't much time to even think about crying over kindergarten until the final days. Luke started school the day before Sam so Sam & I got one last "Mommy-Sammy day" together where we did all our favorite things (I WON Saints Memory of the first time in months) and it was wonderful.
But that next morning...you all, it was weird. And hard. Where I started crying with Luke the night before kindergarten, with Sam I started crying over 3 MONTHS before he started kindergarten. I surprised myself by being able to hold it mostly together until it was time to leave Sam in his classroom and then I did not hold it together any longer. I had specifically been dreading that solo walk home for MONTHS and actually doing it was just as terrible as I expected it would be.
It took until Sam's 7th day of school before I didn't cry (and now writing this I'm crying for the first time since day 6!). Quiet alone time had been SO elusive during the previous 10 years. It always felt just out of reach that I would get a moment to think or read or just be. Or I'd be staying up too late in order to get just a little bit more. But now that's all my days were! Quiet hour after quiet hour. And all of sudden, for the first time since becoming a parent, I had TOO much quiet time in my days.
It's not that I didn't have things to do, I did. I've been working more, both in the office and at home (although still not at anything approaching full-time). I am still the more at home parent, doing the school runs and assisting with homework and packing lunches and all of that, post 3pm. I do enjoy running without a stroller. And there are the COUNTLESS things that got pushed during the summer, specifically the last month, to catch up, that I'm still not all caught up on. I am working on photobooks and sorting vacation pictures and have a variety of doctor appointments scheduled (all routine things). I think I pulled myself out of a reading slump! I'm clearly back to blogging! And I feel like my brain finally has a bit of margin to do things like dust the baseboard behind out bed! I am far from bored.
I'm still figuring out how to reorder what feels like my whole life in the wake of all these childless hours. Like do I need much solo time on the weekends since that's my whole week?? What things can I pull out of my weekends and evenings and stick in the school hours to make those family times easier? I find myself wanting to squeeze as much productivity out of school hours as I can (even if I am counting reading as productive).
If I had written this post last week it would have been different. If I had attempted to write anything on Sam's first day it would have been much different. In some ways, it's a relief to have that huge transition (partially) behind me. The dread I put on those first days was so high, it's a bit empowering to know that I got through them. Yes, emotional, but I survived. I am adjusting. I have learned that being on my own and not talking to another person the entire school day is not good for me, as much as I am a pretty introverted homebody! Even I need human interaction.
It does also help that Matt is still working 4-10s so he's had a day off with me each week which is just delightful. Daytime weekday dates! And working on some projects! Although he's ALSO about to go back to school which will ALSO be challenging although I should cry less! (Hopefully not at all, until the stress of hardly seeing him and doing the vast majority of parenting gets to me!)
Once I get through a tax deadline at work I have a few other ideas for how to fill my days and do hope to be in volunteering in the school more than I have in the past. I do still miss my kids! It's still so weird to have these quiet hours, to be able to listen to my podcasts in the car when running errands! (I'm catching up on those too!) It's a very different life than my last decade but I am figuring it out. It's a bit of an unknown and that's a tiny bit exciting too!
Helpful resources: Kindergarten Empty Nest | To My Fellow Moms, on the First Day of Kindergarten (this made me BAWL)
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