All choked up

Annika "graduated" from Kindergarten this week. I'm so over these "graduations" but well, it's still cute and I still eat it up like a cupcake with peanut butter icing and devils food cake...was that too specific?

The teacher promised the parents who were able to go a "surprise" and a surprise we got! The kids sang four songs that they had clearly been practicing and they even had little hand motions for many of the words. It was super cute, to say the least, but I found myself holding back sobs thinking to myself "she'll never have it this good again."



Not that I'm that much of a pessimist - I think Annika will have a swell life. But after Kindergarten, when do you really get to sing with your friends and sit on a carpet with different colors and have a room full of toys to play with during your "free choice" time? When do you have 4-hour school days and "snack time" and friends who forget to zip up their pants and have their shoes on backwards and no one cares? I literally had to pinch myself to stop crying while they sang, sad that my little girl is on her way to finding out what life is really like.

Again, this sounds so awful, but come on...it's true. Mortgage payments, fat jeans, teeth whitening, busted water heaters, weird neighbors...it's all coming for her. I'm so sad that her innocence will slowly be chipped away until she finds herself writing a blog post (or whatever they have in the year 2028) about many of these same subjects.

As we were walking back to the car, I started to tear up again, and she asked me "Momma, are you sad because I am growing up? I'm not even in 1st grade yet!" And I laughed a bit and said, "Yeah baby, I am sad. I'm sorry." Then she insisted she would cheer me up. Her tactic? "Think about my butt."

It worked.