{"id":2100,"date":"2010-05-27T11:26:15","date_gmt":"2010-05-27T16:26:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/i.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/?p=2100"},"modified":"2010-05-27T16:32:28","modified_gmt":"2010-05-27T21:32:28","slug":"the-end-of-the-beginning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/?p=2100","title":{"rendered":"The end of the beginning"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Back in August, I was surprised to find how emotional the start of kindergarten was for me as a mom. I&#8217;d looked forward (regretfully) to getting some of &#8220;my&#8221; time back, and on long days with toddlers and preschoolers, I imagined how eventually I&#8217;d happily wave goodbye and start tackling my perpetually procrastinated &#8220;to do&#8221; list. But I quickly realized that kindergarten was the beginning of the end&#8230; from here on out, every day, she&#8217;s less and less mine. More independent, more expressive, more articulate, more mature, less my baby girl and more of a beautiful young lady.\u00a0 School is 8 hours in her own world, being her own person, stepping away from mine.\u00a0 She&#8217;s loved every minute of this year, while almost every morning was reminiscent for me as I watched her step out of the car, pull on her backpack, and confidently stride into school, without a glance back.\u00a0 Those rare looks back to smile at me as she headed in were the sweetest part of my morning.<\/p>\n<p>So of course, I was surprised to find today&#8217;s last day of kindergarten tugging strongly at my heart, because I thought August was the real milestone . In what seems like a blink of an eye, this monumental year is behind us. She&#8217;s learned to read and write really well, she&#8217;s an amazing artist, she&#8217;s stopped sucking her thumb (cold-turkey, in one night!), learned to ride a bike without training wheels (in one short day!), lost 6 teeth! And above all, she&#8217;s grown into a person I really enjoy being with.\u00a0 Today, we celebrate an amazing year, a fabulous teacher, Mrs. Moran, and close the door on kindergarten, the end of the beginning of letting go.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/p_1600_1200_5D6DF92E-2E1C-4DBB-ACEB-F966BF479453.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-364\" src=\"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/p_1600_1200_5D6DF92E-2E1C-4DBB-ACEB-F966BF479453.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nLast day of school with her teacher Mrs. Moran<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/1stday-walking.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/1stday-walking-300x244.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"Analise and me walking down the street to school on her first day of school\" width=\"300\" height=\"244\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1466\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/1stday-walking-300x244.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/1stday-walking-1024x834.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/1stday-walking.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nAnalise and Brian walking down the street to school on her first day of school<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/1stday-analise.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/1stday-analise-216x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"Analise on the street ready for her first day of school\" width=\"216\" height=\"300\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1465\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/1stday-analise-216x300.jpg 216w, https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/1stday-analise-737x1024.jpg 737w, https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/1stday-analise.jpg 864w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 216px) 100vw, 216px\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nAnalise on the street ready for her first day of school<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Back in August, I was surprised to find how emotional the start of kindergarten was for me as a mom. I&#8217;d looked forward (regretfully) to getting some of &#8220;my&#8221; time back, and on long days with toddlers and preschoolers, I imagined how eventually I&#8217;d happily wave goodbye and start tackling my perpetually procrastinated &#8220;to do&#8221; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[5],"class_list":["post-2100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-parenting","tag-milestones"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkzLf-xS","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2100"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2101,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2100\/revisions\/2101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}