My baby started kindergarten today. I couldn’t write about anything else if I tried. Today is her day, yet it also marks a change of seasons for our whole family, and we’re keenly aware of it.
As my parents and my husband and I paraded the kids to the bus stop this morning, snapping photos and adjusting backpacks, I tried to drink in all the details of the moment, right down to those pink shoelaces.
This is my last first day of school – we’re standing on the threshold of a brand new season. 
With three kids in school full time, the days of having infants in arms and toddlers underfoot are behind us.
We’ve shifted our focus now from having babies to raising children.
As parents, we want so much for these three that sometimes we can feel the clock ticking. That can cause enormous strain, as we wonder aloud if we are doing enough, if we’re doing it right, if we’re getting our messages through, if we’re having enough fun.
The questioning can make us crazy; we’re hard on ourselves and sometimes we’re hard on them! But every time we lose our way, we get our heads back in the game because this new season is upon us, and our focus is on living it well…and on loving it together.
It’s all too easy for my mind to jump ahead to where we’ll be in five years, or ten, or heaven help me fifteen…
We’re given days one at a time for a reason.
So today, with my to do list still unfinished but my heart full, I’ll close my laptop at 3:00 and head back to that bus stop to collect my littles, to hear their stories, to etch the moment in my mind. Because this day? I’ll never get another one like it.
There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven. -Ecclesiastes 3:1
