The End.

Do you all (all five of you who read this blog...hi mom, hi joan) remember my post from last August (if I had any idea how to link you to it I would!) where I confessed that sending Isaac off to 3K was really tearing me up?!  Just something about your first born putting on that big backpack and heading out to an experience that is all his own.  Well, here we are in the last week of school already.  I can hardly believe it.  In fact, I was in complete denial about it until dropoff this morning.  Isaac's experience in 3K has been more than we could have asked for. 

We debated long and hard about whether or not we would even send him this year.  He only made the age cutoff by 6 weeks.  That would be young in any class.  But in this particular class it was SUPER young as 11 of the 13 of them were 4 by January.  And Isaac has Apraxia, we knew he wouldn't be able to communicate with the kids as well as he'd want to and worried that his age and speech disorder together might be too scary of a combo for this year.  Perhpas better to red-shirt him.  But with the gentle urging of both our speech pathologist and nanny (the only 2 people who spend as much time with or more time with Ike than we do), we took a leap of faith and sent him, hoping the classroom would give him a loving, safe place to practice his speech with others.  I figured the worst thing that would happen is it would become evident very early that he wasn't ready and we'd just try again next year.  And we had every intention of repeating 3K again next year anyway. 

Well, here we are, a full school year later and Isaac has grown immensely and is enrolled in Junior Kindergarten for the fall.  They say a child will never grow or learn as much again as they did that first year in life.  I'm not so sure.  I think that's different for kids with any kind of special need.  This year for Isaac has been one of such immense growth.  I will always look back at 3K with a special place in my heart - the year our boy was able to unlock his ability to communicate verbally.  I'm not sure there will be another where such a monumentous change takes place.  Ok, ok....there probably will be because all I keep learning is that these kids just keep getting better with time!

Anyway, I'm going to miss our normal morning dropoff routine in 3K - the familiar faces of slightly exhausted preschool moms, the faces of joyful and energy-filled 4 year olds, the little siblings wide-eyes taking in this special place and the kind and gentle words and encouragement of Mrs. H.  I have to stop, I'm crying at work.

2011-2012 3K, Central Christian School