It felt like the end of his childhood even though, at 5, he is still very much a child. But it was the end of something.
The end of lazy mornings.
The end of him sleeping until 9am.
The end of going on all our vacations during the school year.
The end of Mom & Dad being the primary influences in his life.
The end of having him with me (or at least near-ish me) almost every hour of every day.
The end daytime playdates and zoo trips, downtown library visits and story time.
But it's not all bad. Starting this new stage was also the end of many thing I did not care for.
The end of me teaching him letters & numbers (there are many teachers in my family and I am definitely not one of them.)
The end of me feeling guilty for not doing more schoolwork with him.
The end of figuring out how to get any quiet time for myself when one or both boys was awake and downstairs with me at all times.
The end of not showering until 10am because it's when I finally got the baby down and Luke settled with a show.
The end of constant begging at the grocery store for snacks he knows I'm not going to buy.
The end of spending 10 minutes in the Lego aisle at Target every time we go (at least until Sam is big enough to want them).
I loved having my little buddy turned big buddy home with me for the last 5 years. There were positives and negatives to having him always with me but looking back I largely remember the positives, the good times. The days spent making blanket forts and car racing tracks and reading piles of books. Of playing Legos and sorting his Star Wars guys again and again and again.
A year ago I thought I'd never be ready to send him to school but then we got Sam. And life got harder, especially once Sam started napping regularly and quiet time was a disaster and I felt like I got very few moments of peace (I think I'm an HSP introvert...I need some peace in my day to stay sane). He was ready for school. I was coming to terms with sending him.
I started crying the night before school and was a mess before we were even out of the car the next morning. As much as I knew we were all ready for Luke to go to kindergarten, it was still really hard to leave him there. To let go of so much of the control I've had over his life and schedule for the last 5 years. To trust that this is better for him than staying home with me.
That first day I came home from dropping him off, after walking him to his classroom and barely having him look up once he was settled at his table, got Sam down for a nap and then I sat and looked through all Luke's photobooks. I thought it would make me miss him more but it was really helpful to see that we did get FIVE years together. That's longer than I knew my husband before we were married and it felt like we had been together FOREVER by that point.
While that morning at school I could have sworn we JUST brought him home from the hospital, really, looking at all those pictures, I realized we did have a lot of time together and it feels like we made the most of it. In that moment it felt like the time had gone by in a flash but it didn't. We went on vacations and went skiing, read 1100+ books, went to story time, went to the zoo, had countless playdates, went to Target (a lot) and IKEA (a few times). We had park picnics and he ran hundreds of miles with me. We had weeks we barely left the house because of the cold and snow and weeks where it felt like we were barely home.
I got five years of being the person he spent the most time with and I am so glad we got that time. I know he is ready for school. And I know, deep down, we were ready to send him. (And it doesn't hurt that he's going to school in the very building where Matt and I met and started to fall in love.)
It makes me think about what memories I want to have with Sam when we send him off in 5 years. I hope I can look back as fondly at his time at home with me. And makes me appreciate even more what a gift these years are. The boys won't remember all of them, I won't remember every day, but there are a lot of really good days that stick out. Those are the memories I'll treasure for a very long time.
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