Growing up too fast

Next Tuesday, Stella starts at a local preschool 3 mornings a week. Okay, it's sort of a preschool and probably more of a daycare at her age, but nonetheless, I ran around Santa Barbara for two weeks looking at different places. We started a month ago with a babysitter at the home two mornings a week so this Momma here could write an article that she is WAY BEHIND on, and after the first week, I realized that 1) a local preschool was actually cheaper than an in-home babysitter and 2) Stella lights up when she interacts with other children, whether at the local playground, the beach, the dog park, etc. So partly motivated by my scant pocketbook, but mostly by Stella's need to socialize, I found a place that is within walking (or biking) distance to place her for a few mornings a week.

And then I freaked out that my baby girl was growing up.

I think what really made me realize that she was now a "big girl" and "going to school" was the need to purchase a lunch bag and small tupperware containers for her lunch. A lunch box? Already? (It's pretty cute, though, isn't it?)

This week we went a few mornings for a "Trial run." I stayed with her for the first day, disappeared for an hour the next day, and tomorrow, she is dropped off for the entire time, with me "on call" in case she melts down. The first day, she never looked back - just hopped into the sandbox with the other children, following them inside for quiet play and snacks, happily grabbed for paint brushes and pipe cleaners, and the like. The second day when I actually tried to leave, it was a little harder, with her wrapping her legs around my middle, crying big tears. (which, i was told, stopped in about 2 minutes after I left). Why do kids make it so hard on us parents? I walked to the local coffee shop with my research, feeling the largest hunk of guilt settling uneasily in my stomach. Steve wondered aloud at dinner last night if she's ready to be "institutionalized" - I asked him what he meant. "Oh, you know, learning to all line up, follow the leader, sitting down to lunch with a group of kids, taking directives... you know, the beginnings of institutionalization." Oh dear, it is as if we live in Communist state or something!

But in some ways, I hear his thoughts. I wonder how my free-spirit, my independent, stubborn, excitable daughter will act each day with a larger group of children. I wonder will she have as much passion for activities or will she stand back and watch? We are all different people in the comfort of our families versus in the company of others.

As I start to label her outside fleece, consider what the heck I'm going to pack in the lunch box, and plan my research agenda for the next few weeks, I want to hold all these moments, these precious toddler moments, in my head, and hope that in 20 years, I don't forget how great this time, being almost two. Sure, she exhausts me like hell, but I think I do secretly love (al)most every minute of it. Maybe this, this feeling, is why people want to have another kid. Not to deal with the terrible twos all over again, but to feel the wonderful twos all over again.

7:20 am, baby in stroller, with a bubble wrap package on her head, all of her own devising. Yep. That's our silly little gal.