2nd Grade: 2013

There is this moment in late August that has happened the last two summers.  My mind gets caught between not wanting summer to ever end and in the next moment I find myself counting down the days until Labor Day.  As is every Spring, I nervously anticipate the approaching summer.  Fearful the girls won’t have any fun (or worse yet, drive me and each other absolutely crazy) I wonder if we will survive and enjoy summer.  And then summer happens, and we get into a groove and we really learn to love summer.  This summer we lived schedule free.  We have nobody napping in the house so our days could be as long as we wanted.  We were as carefree as we could. We spent numerous weekends (both ours and the rest of the worlds) at Sandy Lake.  We poured memories into that place like we have never done before.  We enjoyed it right along side my dad and I wouldn’t change any of it.

As with Summer’s past this one came and went in a blur.  Mid August we were walking into school for Mallory’s teacher meet and greet and it felt like there was no time that had gone by since we last left those halls in early June.  In that 30 minute session with her teacher, Mallory decided that summer was over.  End of story.  She was ready and she desperately wanted it to be September 3rd.  Those last two weeks of August, at times, tested more of my patience than the previous 10 weeks combined.

Here we stand. Two weeks of school are behind us.  The first day jitters for all have subsided. We are now called by alarm clocks, attendance charts, and empty lunch boxes that require filling.  It’s a change but it is one that will come and go each and every year.  I am hoping this bittersweet feeling of leaving summer behind, will remind me next spring to anticipate summer with a little less fear and bit more excitement of what memories beg to be made.

                           

There was no looking back (both figuratively and literally) for Mallory this year.  She was knows the routine, her bus driver, some friends in her class and the layout of the school.  She picked right back up where she left off 12 weeks ago.  My moment with Mallory when the wait for the bus seemed endless, was simply this, “Be the best Mallory you can be.  Remember what we’ve taught you about being kind, fair and easy going.  No one is perfect—and all I want for you is for everything to feel just right.”