What a week it's been for our sweet Madelyn Grace! Monday, September 9th, marked her first day of Kindergarten at Chief Joseph Elementary School right behind our house in North Portland. She did amazing, not that I would've expected anything less. She eagerly and confidently walked into her brand new classroom knowing none of the other faces and reached out to another little girl, Grace, who was having a hard time saying good-bye to her parents. "Hi friend!" she said. "Want to come over and sit by me?" I might've made it out of there that morning without crying had I not witnessed that interaction; my heart literally ached with pride.
Tuesday, September 10th, then marked her 6th birthday. We greeted her first thing in the morning with a candle stuck in a marshmallow singing Happy Birthday and gave her a silver necklace with an "M" charm and her birthstone. Before we even left for school that morning, she said "I still feel 5, Mama." I giggled internally and wondered what pivotal moment will make her "feel" six.
Then, quite unexpectedly, Maddie lost her first tooth on Thursday, September 12th. It's been loose for awhile but got really loose really quickly -- like, gross loose. I knew it was ready to come out, and in a sudden burst of maternal confidence, I suggested that we just pull it before it fell out on its own and disappeared. My arms literally felt shaky as I reached into her mouth; I mean, the whole thing is totally disgusting, right?! Teeth just fall out of our mouths. Blech. But I did it and it came out and Madelyn was super excited. And, oddly enough, of the three momentous occasions this week, the lost tooth makes her seem the most grown up to me, perhaps because it dramatically alters her appearance. She lisps slightly and keeps sticking her tongue in the empty space, and it's freakin' adorable. The Tooth Fairy paid a visit and left a dollar bill sprinkled with pink fairy dust.
Phew! What a week. We are all exhausted, but we've survived and even thrived.
One more quick thought: in the book The Help (one of my top-5 favorite books), one of the characters, Aibileen, whispers the same words over and over again into the ear of the little girl she cares for in an effort to burn them into her psyche and counteract the damage of her neglectful mother -- "You is good, you is kind, you is important." I immediately loved that (for many reasons -- read the book if you haven't already!) as it solidly resonates with my training in child development that the words we say to our small children become their internal dialogue and shape the way they begin to view themselves. That's an enormous amount of pressure, and I have felt the weight of that responsibility every day for the last six full years. But it's also a privilege, yes? So in the same spirit, I began whispering my own mantra into my children's ears the day Maddie started Kindergarten: "You are kind, you are brave, and Jesus loves you." No doubt they will grow very tired of hearing me say this to them, and in their tween years they might even shrug it off or say with exasperation "I know!!!" But words are powerful, and my prayer is that this very distilled mantra will become the foundation of their identity and the key to the map of how they will conduct themselves in this world. And if that's the only thing they'll ever remember their mama saying to them, I'll feel pretty good about that.
