The Sunday Afternoon Before School Starts

I am sitting here in my house counting down the hours before my kids get back from their dad’s house. I have a little less than three hours before my house is once more full of little girl’s laughter, chatter and sibling rivalry. Tonight is the last night of summer vacation. Tomorrow I will get the girl’s up, feed them breakfast, help them dress for school and fix their hair just so and take them to school. After the first day photos are snapped and posted to Facebook and Instagram, I will have a 1st grader, 2nd grader and 4th grader. As much as I am looking forward to having the house quiet for me to create a more efficient work schedule, I am not doing well with this at all.

I have spent the last few weeks with my kids 24/7. Though I may not have enjoyed every single moment of it, there are no other people on this planet I would rather be with. Sending them off 40 hours a week to spend the day learning and building relationships with lifelong friends makes me feel lonely. Not lonely like ‘I need a person around’ but lonely like, ‘what are my little girls doing and why can’t I be there to see it?’

Obviously, I have known this was coming for a while. We even have the days marked on the calendar as all of my girls still love school and have been anxious to go back for a while. As we shopped for clothes, shoes, the perfect backpack and the right ‘1st day of school‘ outfit, I knew that I would be dropping them off at class one day soon. So why is it so hard? Why am I struggling? Why can’t I get over this feeling that I can surely homeschool, run a business, keep a house, take care of three dogs, take care of me and manage everything else in my life without dropping the ball on anything? Without any know how, patience or desire to actually do it all.

I don’t know. I don’t know why I am not excited to send my kids back to school. At least, I am not as excited as I was last week when they were bored and fighting was their only creative form of entertainment causing me to down obscene amounts of aspirin in one week.

Now that it is here, I have to face it. I will drop my three babies, who were just born yesterday, just learned to walk, just learned to talk, just started preschool, just started Kindergarten, just grew up too fast, off at school.

I will eventually be fine, of course, as I am every year. But on The Sunday Afternoon Before School Starts, I am allowing myself to miss them. I am allowing myself to wish I had one more week. I am allowing myself to wonder what they will be doing without me.

The Sunday Afternoon Before School Starts I am allowing myself to be one of those sentimental moms that I have never wanted to be. And then tomorrow, with an I love you and a prayer for their safety and happiness, I will let my little girls take one more step in their independence from me.

Because that is what mother’s have to do.

But it really kinda sucks…