I don't think there's another phrase that sums up parenting better than that. While a day can sometimes feel interminably long (we call it Groundhog Day at our house...more on that later), the years seem to fly by.
It seems like it was just yesterday that we were bringing Reed home from the hospital, unsure of what in the world to do with him, and here we are now getting a smart, talented 5 year old (make that 5 and a half, thankyouverymuch) ready for kindergarten in the fall.
Tuesday night was "Kindergarten Orientation" for kids and parents. The kids got to do a few activities in a classroom, tour the school, and go on a quick school bus ride. The parents got to hear from the principal and the kindergarten teachers about how a typical day goes, what to expect, etc.
Reed just loved it and I think would be perfectly happy if he could start kindergarten tomorrow. Or today. Right now would really be ideal, I think he'd tell you. When we got there, he made his own name tag and proudly put it on. He thought it was cool that he was dressed in orange shorts and an orange t-shirt (plus tan dress socks and his Crocs...he's a fashion plate!) and he got assigned to the Orange class room.
When we got home, I asked him to take the name tag off his shirt before he put it in the hamper. He took it off, got his PJs on and then put his name tag on the PJs and slept with it on. In the morning, he put on his brand spanking new green tie-dye Little River Elementary school shirt and moved his name tag to that, happily wearing it to school. It's so awesome to see how excited he is.
And Groundhog Day...well it comes to our house most days. Amy is firmly in a stage of wishing she had greater control. It's a daily battle to get her to brush her teeth, go potty and get dressed each school day. It's exhausting! We've tried reasoning with her. We've tried to make it a game. We've tried to make it fun. We've flat out ordered her around. All with pretty similar results. She ends up crying in the "naughty spot", sometimes hitting us or throwing things along the way. I wish we were able to let her do things at her leisure, but it's not in the cards on school days. Hopefully soon we'll figure out a method that works. And hopefully it will last at least a week or two before it stops working, as it inevitably will.
Thankfully Reed entered a time of being more cooperative about getting ready for school just about the time Amy started to be a real challenge, so that's at least good. It's amazing to me how that seems to work out -- one gets easier when the other gets more difficult. I think it keeps us from selling our children to gypsies (don't think I haven't considered it from time to time).
