Tomorrow my youngest baby starts the big K...kindergarten.  She has been waiting for this day for as long as she can remember.  I can't believe this day has come.  This girl has been present (or at least almost) through many of my life changing events as a mother.  I was pregnant and teaching when I decided to open Sweet Peas.  I realized I was BSC (bat shit crazy) while teaching, pregnant with my third child, and opening a restaurant.  6 months later, my memory of a blessed early morning adventure begins when my now 5 year old daughter brightened our world.  After 2 hours of labor...we barely made it...I remember traveling in our party wagon.  I only call it this because on a rare trip to a concert in Eugene we figured out that stemless wineglasses fit perfectly into the cupholders (a bottle of wine fits there nicely too).  Being the crazy hostess I am I even made appetizers.  Our drive down was epic.  We offered to drive multiple friends.  Wine in the car.  Rocking to Jesse's girl, stopping first to watch part of a roller derby. Can't get better than that.  As I climbed into the mini-van that night I thought...this may not only be a party wagon, but a birthing wagon.  There was no sitting down in the mini-van.  I faced backward in the passenger seat as we made our way through Corvallis.  We walk through the plastic surrounding the Emergency room admitting doors, because the hospital was under construction and I yell at the man behind the desk that the elevator may be too big of a challenge because I'm having this baby NOW as I'm bent over absorbing the never ending contraction that is forcing my child into this world. I look up into the face of a friend, a soccer referee who I know from my indoor soccer league and who I really wish was not here at this moment.   After waddling, step by agonizing step, into the tiny room known as the elevator, there is no relief tangible.  Once I reach the labor/delivery floor and fall into my bed the midwife begins asking Mark if he is a hunter because she saw a deer on the way in and wants to know if he might want to shoot it.  I think I may be hallucinating as the "doctor" in the room asks if I can lay on my back so she can see the birth more clearly.  My hunter savvy midwife yells at the doctor that I will have this baby in whatever way I feel comfortable and....I relax, and with one great effort I have a 3rd daughter.  While laying between the starchy sheets, breastfeeding my day old daughter, I decide, I do not want to own a restaurant.  I've tried it and do not like it.  I do not like the weekends for free, I do not like serving sweet tea, I do not like the long hours at night, I do not like bills    stacked out of sight.

She was 1 month old and swaddled to my chest, when my oldest daughter crossed the threshold at our local Charter School.  This first year was a momentous occasion as it was the first year of operations.  After taking on PTO president, hot lunch originator, activity organizer, classroom volunteer, and board member, I decided, for my sanity to take a step back.  I will now, as my youngest embarks in her educational adventure, volunteer in the classroom, quit 3 of my 4 jobs, and focus a bit on my own interest/needs.

This child has been my challenge.  For the most part she is well behaved, however she has that extra something special.  When asking her what she might like to do on her last day of summer she tells me that she wants to organize her closet?  I am not flabbergasted because this is my youngest.  She loves to have everything in order.  I say "great, let's do it".  She says things like, "Mom, I have to go to the bathroom now.  Don't move or touch anything until I get back."  She wants to be part of it and have a schedule.  After her direct instructions are completed, we make molasses crinkles that she says, "melt in you mouth."  She wants to go to lunch at Kim Hoa's and eat salad rolls with peanut sauce.  Since we were there last week, I suggest Local Boyz, which she is down for because of the chicken and rice.  Her last wish is a pet store.  This particular pet store was a bit horrifying.  6 rats in a 5 gallon aquarium, which as we progressed, changed to 5 to 7 Chinchillas in a jar (not kidding), and large constricting snakes in broken 10 gallon aquariums.  I feel like I am in a "Steven Kellog" book of a grown character.  One who wishes to have 37 fish, 42 cats, 12 dogs, 18 mice, 39 rabbits, 4 tarantulas, and a dinosaur and that all reproduce...voraciously!  Aquariums stacked  7 high and two deep, filled with reptiles.  In another room, rabbits and guinea pigs, barely able to get cool.  An angry looking chinchilla who was either possessed or stuffed eyes me with a glassy stare. And then there is the smell.  I knew there was something dead and I knew something had defecated several thousands of times.  As Claire left, her whim, take them all home so they could run around in our yard.  Fun times.    

She is observant and sometimes that can be unfortunate.  Living in the PNW can be a problem when it comes to teaching children about diversity.  There is not much of that...diversity that is.      I do not condone or approve of it, but I think sometimes my children, especially this one is a bit racist.  While eating at a Vietnamese establishment,  crowded at lunch time with Asian patrons,  my youngest child looks up and asks, "Mom."  "Yea," I say.  "Why are there so many Mexicans in here?", she asks.  I wanted to swallow her tongue.  I distracted her by saying, "Look a fortune cookie.  I wonder what your fortune is?"  This summer hiking in the Redwoods, we passed many Asian family members, obviously having a family reunion.  Claire asked why there were so many brown people hiking in the forest.  Living in a predominantly white society, I am unsure how to proceed to allow my children to see people as people and not as a specific race.  But that is not the lesson here.  It is when I see her sharing her sports equipment at the park with any child.  It is when she names her ballerina after a cousin and is upset at night because she can't find her and wants to sleep with her.  It is when she feels compassion for a fellow being.   Her observations are innocent but her kindness knows no bounds.

I am proud of my girl and much saddened by her entrance into kindergarten.  My kids have never gone to daycare, pre-school, or any institutionalized program/facility before being school-aged.  I do not remember life without a child to tend to.  I am unsure of how to proceed, but I welcome the opportunity.  I think I can manage.