Looking back, the 2013-2014 school year was the busiest one ever for our family. And one of the most eventful. Catie moved to Westlake, Nate started Preschool, I started a school Newspaper, we went to Galveston most weekends, the kids did more activities and sports than ever before, and we (pretty much) LOVED it all.
This school year changed some beliefs we had about ourselves. Catie had never really found a good school friend before. She sort-of thought that she wasn’t the type to have good friends at school. Westlake changed that. This year, she made about six good school friends through Volleyball, Basketball, and sharing her faith in Religion class.
Sam and Elisabeth had struggled to keep up their first few years in school. Blame it on their summer birthdays, blame it on being twins, but they were never the first to learn their sight words, never the fastest at counting to 100, always in the middle of the pack. Oh, what a difference it makes to repeat Kindergarten. This year, for the first time ever, school is coming easily for them.
We all assumed Nate would hate school. Nate likes our house, lazy mornings in pjs, days with Aunt Katie, Daddy holding him, sugar, ice cream, playing Star Wars in our playroom, and leisurely lunches with Mom. He does not really like playing with kids outside his family, that terrorizing moment at drop-off when Mom or Dad walks away, or chaos. School seemed like a good idea for him, but we couldn’t see him liking it.
We were all wrong. Nate loved school this year. He loved it more than any other of our kids loved their first years of preschool. Maybe it’s because school is what the big kids do, and Nate desperately wants to be a big kid. Case in point: when we all get home from school, the kids are supposed to bring me their folders to be signed. Nate, giddy to be one of the group, skips bringing me the folder. Instead, he pulls it out of his bag, scrawls my initials on the date, and shoves it back in his backpack. This year, Nate learned he likes the rules and expectations of school–and he likes to do it his way.
I also learned so much this year. I learned that the more you volunteer, the more people you meet. The more people you meet, the more phone calls and texts and girlfriend lunches and friends you have. After ten years of spending my day with an infant or toddler, the adult friends were nice. More than once I thought, I have never been this happy. I like everyone to like me, and it seemed like that was finally happening.
But then I learned the hardest lesson of the year: Oh, shoot! I can’t actually make everyone like me.
Other hard lessons followed…the more I do, the more I’m criticized; when I take a stand, I make someone mad; sometimes the other person really is wrong, if I don’t forgive that person, the bitterness will eat at me; all the lunches and calls and texts net about three real friends; the balance between being a mom and being a volunteer is a tricky one, but it’s probably best to error on the mom side.
So long 2013-2014 school year.
You were one for the books.
