Little Valedictorian

I suppose its unreasonable to be proud that your daughter was named Valedictorian of her preschool. After all it's certainly not because she somehow excelled at school. She came into preschool already reading well, and she's gotten better/faster since, and she has definitely learned new things since starting school (the months of the year, how to count to one thousand), but she's not perfect by any means. It took her until the very last second to earn all her punches on her Positive Behavior Card after all. And she was always the last to finish her lunch since she was too busy talking to eat. And she's so tall and skinny that any pants that are long enough for her won't stay up on her hips, and she won't wear a belt, so she pantsed herself on the playground enough times that the boys in her class stopped even batting an eyelash when they saw her undies, but she was still known as The Girl Who is Always Showing Her Underwear.

Poor child.


On an unrelated note, I adore her hair. Thank you David for the curly haired gene! And also the girls' eyelashes.
Also, I need a better camera someday.

Anyway, I was unreasonably proud that she got such a big part in the graduation ceremony and she pulled it off without a glitch. She may have said her goodbyes at a slightly accelerated rate, but not fast enough to be any kind of problem. Oh yes, and she looked adorable:

Of course seeing her in a graduation cap and gown (which for the record was a much higher quality that either my high school or college graduation robes), just made me dread how fast the next several years are going to go. She had her kindergarten placement screening Friday morning, and has been extremely ready for kindergarten to start ever since. Between that and Lilli constantly asking me if she is 4 yet ("no? will I be four tomorrow?") and can go to preschool yet, these girls are growing up on me too fast. And THEN, tonight our neighbors, who also happen to be our friends, stopped by and all the kids were running around shrieking in the front yard and Elizabeth ran up to us and said "AAAAAAAH! C says he's going to kiss me if he catches me!", and then proceeded to taunt C with "you can't kiss me, you can't kiss me" in the way that also sounds like "please catch me!" and I had visions of the future that I'm not ready for.

So, lately I'm a bubbling mixture of pride and distress and emotions I haven't quite identified.

Being the mama of a 5 year old is hard work!

(super cute school picture from this spring)