The day I’ve been dreading for the last five and a half years arrived.
My baby started school. I’ll be really honest here. It was not my finest hour. But more about that in a minute. Here’s how the morning started.
McKenna woke up moderately excited about school. However, she was really excited about breakfast. We had a surprise first day of school party at breakfast. Nothing fancy. Just whatever I had on hand the night before thrown together. McKenna loves cinnamon rolls so the menu was pretty simple. Cinnamon rolls and fruit and orange juice.
The breakfast table was pretty simple. I’ve seen some really swanky table settings on Pinterest for just this occasion. But since I don’t plan that far ahead, I improvised with what I had on hand.
A plastic table cloth unused and left over from a birthday. The fancy table runner is none other than a the last piece of a narrow roll of wrapping paper from the dollar aisle at Target (I love that dollar aisle.) And some sidewalk chalk on a chalkboard I made from an old picture (more on that another day). I table crepe paper to the back of her chair so she would have the “guest of honor” seat.
I found a printable from the back to school fairy compliments of Happy Home Fairy. As my luck would have it my printer was completely out of ink and I had to get my sister to print it out for me at 10:30 the night before school started. {It’s always good to have a Type A in the family. They are prepared for crap like that.} You can quote me on that.
And we couldn’t leave out Miss A.
I took a few pictures before we left for school. The sign is a printable from HowDoesShe.
Everything was still going well at this point.
Check out her hair bow. It says “Kindergarten Rocks” The hair bow is from my sister’s online bow shop and the bottle cap is from FlipFlop Bottlecaps on Etsy.
When we arrived at school all the kindergarten classes were gathered together by the office waiting for all the students for each class before they walked to their classroom. My baby sat down with the rest of her class looking as glum as I felt. I stood by feeling out of place and wondering if the teacher would rather I hit the road instead of making the trip to the classroom to get her settled in.
The longer we stood, I felt more and more emotional and then the tears started. And they continued. I didn’t see any other adults crying. So I cried more. Don’t worry. It wasn’t an ugly cry or anything. I hid it behind my big Jackie O sunglasses the best that I could. I wasn’t even sure why I was crying exactly. Since I work, it’s not like I would have been at home with her anyway. But there was no reasoning with myself at that point. 
And just like that, my baby walked off into a new chapter in her life…with me following closely behind, taking pictures and crying all the way.
According to her teacher, she cried as soon as I left. And she has proceeded to cry as soon as we leave her every day.
We will start a new strategy on Tuesday. I will keep you posted.
p.s. I’m linking this sob story up to Tatertots & Jello, Serenity Now and I heart naptime.
This is an emotional time. Don't worry that there were no other Moms crying with you, I know Moms that cry when they get in the car or Moms like me who got it all out of their system in the school supply aisle at Target 2 weeks before school started 🙂
Thank you! It's good to know you're not alone!