You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby!

Yesterday, my firstborn started Kindergarten at Monroe Academy.  I wish that there was a more profound sentence than that to sum up all the emotions that are jumbled inside of me as she begins this journey.  It all started last week after I picked up her school supplies from Central Office Supply, and right on top, there was a pencil box.  A simple, little, cardboard pencil box with her alphabet and numbers painted on the side along with a place for her sweet name.  That did it.  We have preschooled since she was 18 months old in varying degrees and she never once had her own pencil box.  That pencil box represents responsibility.  The ability to keep up with your own stuff without any help, the decision that one makes to keep it neat and orderly or jumbled around, the first telltale signs of the adult that she is going to be.  Tears well up in my eyes as I type, and I know deep down, this is when life presses the fast forward button.  Because before you can blink, she will be so much more.  So much more than this precious child who holds my hand into class and likes to snuggle with me on the couch while we play "The Think Game".

Caroline, with backpack, headed to preschool at Gulf Beach Baptist Church.

Speaking of random emotions,  I am not just a basket of tears.  I am also excited.  Kindergarten is so important and I can remember so many things about it that I can't remember about other elementary classes down the road.  Their are a lots of firsts, and firsts always stick in your mind.  It's these firsts and the wealth of learning opportunity waiting for her that I can't wait for her to experience.  Although I have already figured out, her Kindergarten is going to be vastly different than mine.  As different as mine was from Laura Ingalls on Little House on the Prairie with her chalkboard slate and my fat pencil and actual paper.  She learns computer, she learns how to read at a higher level, she learns science, social studies, the states, etc. She will have tons of homework (we have been warned) and a part of me is actually looking forward to sitting down every afternoon and opening new doors for her.  And she is excited.  She is a sponge and wants to learn and experience new things, and I am tickled that she is beginning her academic endeavors.  I am also excited for her to see her first pep rally.  We love football, and she will get to wear her Volunteer cheerleader uniform every Friday during the fall.  Cooper and I can go also, and he has a football jersey, #7 of course, just like his Daddy, in Monroe Academy orange.  Let's not even mention the actual football game!!

I love that this first day has allowed me a little retrospection, however.  Sometimes my daily life is so planned out and I spend so much time looking forward, you forget those special moments along the way.  I can remember the day she came into our lives. Woody and I didn't sleep a wink the night before, knowing that I was to be induced the next day.  Around noon, when she breathed her first breath, I cried.  I cried because she was quite possibly the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.  And the love that I felt for her was almost too powerful.  I cried because I was so grateful to my Lord and Saviour for this gift from above. It was one of the most glorious moments of my life.

Now it is our job to help her realize her purpose. To help her access all the tools that she has been given to fulfill the perfect plan that God has laid out for her.  To teach her to understand that she was uniquely formed by her Creator.  To show her to always give Him the glory.  To focus her eyes on the One who gave his life so that we might live.   

And to think it all started with a tear and a pencil box.......