Layla's First Day of School

The baby has been dying to go to school for months. Well, let’s start from the beginning. In my way to parent guide, all kids would start school at the age of three. Jory started three months before turning three. Rowan started a little less than two months before she turned three. So based on this, the baby should have started school in January, a few weeks before she turned three.

I got the paperwork, filled it out, but then I looked at her. She was so tiny, so little, such a baby. She couldn’t start school then. But in February she would start, but oddly enough even though she was officially three, she was still small. I mean, she was wearing size 18 months pants. How can anyone wearing pants and tops that small start school? So I decided she would start in March, which turned into April, which turned into after school ends and she’ll start in June for summer school.

I told Oma my plan and she said, “Why should she start in June? Just let her start in September.”

She didn’t have to twist my arm for me to agree. But when April rolled around, the baby who had had a taste of school from AWANA would ask almost every morning when we dropped off her brother and sister if she could go to school with them. I told her, when she got bigger she could go to school.

So Labor Day rolled around and since our house is chaos central, I couldn’t even find her uniform shorts. I decided I didn’t have the energy or the strength or the wherewithal to even begin to guess where the shorts might be, so I figured as long as she wore blue shorts or something in the blue family with a blue or white top that was about as close to uniforms as she and Rowan were getting this year. Though Rowan did wear uniform shorts with a school shirt so she was in uniform style, the baby not so much, but hey bygones. Layla started school being closer to four, than three, so why should start following tradition now by wearing an actual uniform the first day of school.

The baby was excited to be going to school. She tolerated her ponytails and at anytime she started acting funny, I would say, “Okay, you don’t have to go to school today.” It’s amazing how that phrase was quite the attitude adjustment.

I gave her a kiss, a hug, told her to listen and obey, have a great day at school, and that I loved her. I repeated the routine with Rowan, with Jory, and off to work I went.

I would love to say the baby was beside herself with sadness, that tears were flowing like the overflowing Red River, that she clung to me like cheese to pizza sauce, but alas she did not. She kissed, hugged, and went on her merry way like it was no big thing. Did she miss this monumental moment? She was starting school and it wouldn’t stop for another fifteen years. Nope, she didn’t get it.