And lo, it happened. My teeny tiny preemie babies have just had their first day of kindergarten.

Also, Daniel has apparently been passing along his photo-bombing skills to Ellie, which is full of awesome.

Speaking of Daniel, he can’t walk at the moment. Tuesday night, he was doing his Spiderman-climb up one of the door frames and jumping down, and apparently it was one jump (or five) too many and he did something unpleasant to his knee. Four hours in the Emergency Room and an x-ray suggest nothing is broken, but it’s now Thursday and he still can’t bear weight on his right leg. Orthopedic appointment tomorrow. In the meantime, he’s hopping around on one leg, because it’s shockingly hard to find crutches for a kid who’s under four feet tall.

He burst into tears at breakfast this morning. The stated reason was that he got a different chair at the table than the one he wanted. The real reason is probably a mixture of anxiety over the start of school, anxiety over the state of his leg and his limited mobility, and simply the fact that bursting into tears over strange things is kind of his M.O. these days. He cried over a lost rock. He cried because it was the last day of the Olympics (but they won’t happen for four more years!!!!) That’s just how we roll right now, apparently.

Academically, he’s more than ready for kindergarten. He reads incredibly well, basic math doesn’t seem to be much of a challenge, and his handwriting is fairly legible as long as he’s got lined paper to write on. (Give him a blank piece of paper and the scattered letters look like the scribbles of someone in the midst of a psychotic break.) His memory is sometimes alarmingly good, and he internalizes some pretty crazy concepts. No, our challenges are with attention and focus and motivation and staying on task. Hard to tell how much is typical for a rather young boy – with an August birthday, he’ll always be one of the very youngest in his class – or whether it warrants further concern. All we can do this year is try to keep a close eye on him, try some new strategies, and see if things improve with time or not. Stay tuned.

Rebecca is as ready as she can be. She lept out of bed this morning and got herself dressed in the outfit she had chosen last night.  While she has had her fair share (and then some, perhaps) of whiny, grumpy, sassy moments recently, she is and has always been good with social cues. She can tell if M or I is about to lose our shit and is quick to make the turnaround into helpful and affectionate, even when I can tell she’s just trying to play me like a cheap fiddle. She’s also been sensitive and weepy recently, especially in the late afternoon hours. While they’ve both been going without a nap for quite a while now, there are plenty of days when it seems like she could still use one.

She, too, is just peachy on the academic readiness front. Over the summer, she has become a voracious reader. She is working her way through the entire catalog of Rainbow Fairies books (I’m just glad she can read them to herself now, so I don’t have to…), and she has been known to blow through two of them in a single afternoon. Our trips to the library can barely keep up. She loves to write and draw, and her spelling is better than she gives herself credit for.  So far she’ll really only do the math stuff as required, not really by choice. She’s perfectly capable, she just doesn’t seem to have much interest.  The apple doesn’t fall far from her mother’s tree.

Everyone wanted to know if I cried for their First! Day! of Kindergarten! The fact is, I am in near-complete denial. They didn’t start a new school, they didn’t take the bus. They aren’t going to be gone that much more than last year. No, they are in their third year of Montessori – same building, same classrooms and teachers, many of the same kids they’ve known for the last year or two. The only difference is that, starting next week, they’ll stay for lunch and some additional Junior Program (Montessori-speak for the kindergarten year, apparently) curriculum until 1:30, instead of coming home at 11:30. That’s it.

So, no. I honestly wasn’t particularly emotional this morning. I was happy to see the teachers and parents at the school we’ve loved for two years already. I am happy to get back into our school-year routines, and I love the start of Fall. But I didn’t freak out about my kids starting Kindergarten, because I’m barely aware that it’s happening.

Now, next year? When they start first grade at a brand new school with brand new people in (quite possibly) a brand new town? Maybe even on a SCHOOL BUS? Oh yeah, you can bet I’m going to fall apart.  But not today.