Back To School Today :: For Them and For Me

Having spent 23 years of my nearly 40 years of life getting ready to go back to school as a student and then as a teacher, it still seems strange to be the one staying comfortably at home in my jammies as my boys ride off to school with my husband on his way to work.

There are so many things about a new school year I adore.

• new pens
• blank planners
• fresh, clean notebooks
• new backpacks 
• brand new shoes, clothes and that specially chosen 1st day of school outfit
• haircuts
• lunch boxes
• snack size treats to hide in their lunches
• love notes for them to find
• new teachers
• new schedules
• new friends
• big ideas, goals and dreams

(I have to laugh at my tendency to buy myself new school supplies right alongside the items the boys' needed.) 

As I type this note they have just departed.  There are dishes on the counter, pjs left in random piles around my kitchen, empty shoeboxes on the table and an unfamiliar sound - total quiet.

I miss them already.  Thankfully, they were eager to go back to the school they have been in for three years now.  Even my littlest, KC, had no worries or tears, just a bit of shyness with his new teacher.  I feel blessed to be able to send them to their school just down the road.  And now I sit, still, and a bit lost without them, at my computer with the rainy morning stretching out before me.

Time to get busy.  There are dishes to do, pjs to pick up, laundry to fold, dinner to prepare,  and before I know it, it will be time to pick up KC and feed him his lunch and hear all about his first big boy day.  Then back to pick up the older boys, home to eat and then hurry them off to soccer practice.

I may be staying home but I am still going back to my own school of mothering busy boys and I hope to get an A+ this year.