School started for everyone this year. Every one. Even my little Dutch Baby (can I still call her that?) gets up with the big kids, dons backpacks and water bottles as deftly as any middle schooler, and off she goes with the fray.

It's a time of new beginnings for all of us. Dutch Baby is learning about lower case alphabets. Opening juice boxes by herself. Trying to understand why Taylor told her she didn't want to dig in the sand with her. Her favorite time of day: "carpet." Phenomes.

My second-grader, Young Padawan, is adjusting to a classroom of brand-new faces. A brand-new teacher in a brand-new building across town. He is finding out that when your mom accidentally removes homework from your folder, your teacher is serious about missing recess for not having homework. No matter what. But if you cry a little, she'll show some mercy and let you out for a little bit. And that your mom will take you out for ice cream for causing you to miss recess. And that making new friends isn't so bad.

Butterfly Girl! Sixth Grade! Recesses aren't about unicorns anymore: It's boys and it's annoying. Shaving your legs. Having a boy ask you to "go out." Go WHERE exactly, when you're eleven? No where with my baby, that's for hecksure.

And what do I do with Smalls? His last year of Junior High! Adventures like on-line Spanish class. Deodorant. Plans for a field trip to Washington D.C.!

See, I just never pictured myself as a mom with old kids. Motherhood is/always has been preschool co-ops, playdates, and mac and cheese lunches. This is freaking me out. The house feels enormous in its emptiness. Thank goodness Blake works from home. At least the house isn't dead while the kids are gone. Just idle.

I've been able to pick up a few shifts during the day at Honeyville Farms to break up the week. I went to lunch with Blake. It was weird proposing it, a new idea which should have occured to us as a possibility on the first day of school. We can go to lunch! Once I went back to bed after I dropped the kids off. But I couldn't sleep. I felt like a cheater.

We're all adjusting. Changing roles, changing our ideas of who we are. Instead of changing diapers? How did things change this much?

I feel like Padawan did here, in this first day of school pic:



Yeah. I'm freaking out a little.



Not sure why this picture sums up what I'm trying to say, but I know it does. Something about dark clouds raining sun. If you can phrase that in some eloquent way to help me wrap up this post with the perfect bow,

Please share.