RTKandM

I don't know who's brilliant idea it was to give a sweet, defenseless baby to a couple, expect them to love and protect the little creature for 5 or 6 years, while they grow more and more attached to the thing, and then ask them to just hand it off on some arbitrary day in August to a couple of strangers who have a paper on the wall that says they know what they are doing in a room FULL of little people, just one of which you had trouble handling sometimes, and then expect you to go on about your merry day without another word from them for 6 or 7 hours. To make matters worse, they expect you to jerk that sweet sleeping child out of bed at an hour that man was not meant to walk to earth (since it is still DARK) so that later they can try to get the poor child to sleep on a towel, sardined up against kids they've never met, in the bright light, on a concrete floor and with a belly full of greasy popcorn chicken and fries. Why couldn't we have just let them sleep in the morning and skipped the whole nap farce? And what in the heck is popcorn chicken? Did it start out as a dry kernel of chicken before it hit the grease?

Maybe I'm just a little emotional right now, but I miss my kiddo. We did survive the morning. She did great. She was nervous but brave and it was hard to leave her in her chair, waving goodbye, and not go back for another kiss. But I was heartened to see that as I walked away, she was drawing a happy sunshine on her paper. Here are some of the moments...

The requisite "First-Day-of-School-in-front-of-the-house" picture. I have the one of Darrell and I waiting by the mailbox for the bus on my first day of kindergarten, framed on a shelf.

This one kills me. She didn't even need to hold my hand. She didn't know that I needed to hold hers...

Katie finding her own little piece of real estate - the illustrious cubby - with Mrs. Roberts (who is quickly emerging as the favored of the 2 teachers.)