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| On our way to school! |
Today I dropped T off for her first day of her second full year of preschool. I'm not very sentimental about it, since she's been in preschool since she was 2.5, and she still has *another* entire year of preschool before she's eligible for kindergarten in our state. Never mind that she's academically ready for K now. Sigh.
I'm somewhat amused that she'll have almost as much preschool as I had college, and more time than it took me to get my Master's degree. But she loves her school, and (mostly) so do I.
I realized something this morning when she was getting ready for school. When she was 2 and still sleeping in her crib, I lamented the fact that as soon as she woke up, I had to go get her, change her and get her breakfast. My day started when hers did, and it was often long before I would choose to wake. If I had my choice, I'd sleep until the kingly hour of 9am at least.
Last year, I brought her a complete outfit into the bathroom, she'd get dressed by herself and come upstairs for breakfast. I was pretty excited about that. This summer, she's been getting up herself, choosing her own outfit and coming upstairs completely dressed *without my intervention*. Holy crap! How did we get here?
Now, obviously, Baby M runs my schedule, and when she's up, I'm up. But (and I'm sure I'm jinxing it here), for the last week, more often than not, she's been SLEEPING THROUGH THE ENTIRE NIGHT, y'all. Like 7pm to 6:30am. No milk at 11pm or 2am, or both. No perplexing screaming for hours at 3am.
When I wrote about being resigned to cosleeping back in March, I couldn't even imagine this. We transitioned BabyM to sleeping in her crib in May, and that was a rough couple of weeks. She regularly woke up twice a night, which is astronomically harder for me than once a night, for some reason. And then, she slowly started waking only once, and usually it was *before* our bedtime - how courteous.
So far in such a short time. I forget how all these daily parenting annoyances fade away in weeks. Sure, they are replaced by others, but it's a hard job with ever changing requirements, so I expect that. It seems like the annoying habit or extra work will last FOREVER, but it doesn't.
It's only taken me two kids and four years to realize this!
I am celebrating these little moments of independence. And when life starts to feel more relaxed. Now that the littlest one is almost two, I'm actually setting an alarm again because no one's waking me up at the crack of dawn.... (trying not to jinx myself, either!)
ReplyDeleteOMG, setting an alarm?! Wow. I can't imagine...
DeleteShe is a genius! Ours can dress themselves but Lord, it's a mission if you just leave them. They'll take an hour - playing in between, etc. Is it a twin thing?
ReplyDeleteYes, I imagine if T had someone (real) to chat with, it would take 10x as long. As it is, with the imaginary friends in the bathroom, I do often have to go see what happened.
DeleteOh Anandi, this was such a rookie move. You DO NOT discuss STTN, as it angers the gods, or something like that. I will pray that you will be one of the lucky ones, but man-oh-man, you are tempting fate here. ;)
ReplyDeleteThat said, I am SO glad you're getting some sleep! And it's a good reminder to me that as we lose some of the sweet babyhood, we gain some sweet independence. It's all good.
Oh, I know. I figure by getting out in front of it, maybe the hand of fate will know I'm not scared ;)
DeleteIs it possible to start K one year early? V has an October birthday and will miss the Sept 1 cutoff here in California, but I'm determined to get her in one year early. It would make my life much easier if Z and V were just one year apart in school. But, I hear that it is near impossible to start K early in public or private school around here.
ReplyDelete