Anxiety

I'm having some fresh bouts of anxiety.  My sweet kiddo will be in kindergarten next school year, which means she's officially beginning school.  Real school.  I know she already goes every day so that in real school she's only adding on 3 more hours a day but it's somehow different.  It's real now.

Yesterday she had her annual check-up albeit late, but concurring with her kindergarten physical.  She had to have FOUR vaccinations/boosters, so 4 shots in the leg has made for a cranky kiddo.  I rewarded her handsomely at Target afterwards where she picked out a new pair of boots and toy.  We also picked out school valentines (which of course, I just love.  This year she picked out PAW Patrol and Disney Princesses).  She then stood in the checkout at Target singing "I'm a wrecking ball" over and over.

I'm making mental notes of all the things I can't bear to lose, or things she no longer does: they way she used to say spaghetti, or how she loves to sit and have her back rubbed.  I love how she still has her loveys Mr. Snuggles and Boo.  I want to forever remember the way her voice sounds when she says, "hi mommy" in the phone to me.  I love that she loves to be read to every night at bed time.  I love that she loves to "read" where she just tells whatever story she likes along with the pictures in the books.  In many ways it's cute how she wants to be a big girl so much she refuses to like the things our younger friends like (but she loved until she knew "babies" liked those things).  One day her sweet child face is going to morph into a bigger kids face, and her baby teeth will fall out and she'll have these big gigantic replacements...one day her sweet little voice is going to sound more and more adult...one day she's going to not want to play school with me, or Barbies...or one of the one million other things I'm always too busy for.

I tell myself EVERY day that I'm going to do more and more with her because she's only this age and only this little person for so long and then I find myself not doing those things.  I'm trying to live as those ahead of me have told me to...embrace it...let the little things go and play with my kid.  It goes so fast.  So now, as my kiddo lays asleep with a sore but vaccinated leg, I sit here feeling lost and sad and worried about everything I haven't yet encountered nor have lost but feel and know it to be lurking around the corner.