The End of An Era

Today was the last day of the school year for DD & DS. It was an exciting day, yet a touch sad as well. Today was the last day of 5th grade, and thus the last day of elementary school, for DS. He has been at this school for 6 years.....Kindergarten all the way through 5th Grade. It's hard to believe I have a middle-schooler for a child! Surely it was just yesterday that DS was toddling off with his toy tools, mimicing DH as they worked around the house. Now he's old enough to use real tools all on his own to build/fix things. While I am excited for this new phase of his childhood (what little of it is left!), I am also sad to be finished with this phase of it with him. It also marks the last time DS & DD will be in the same school building, ever. By the time she reaches this point in her school career, DS will be a Freshman in high school!! To think of it that way really makes this all sink in even more.

At school, to celebrate the 5th-graders' achievements, they had them all stand up on stage in front of everyone at school (during the awards ceremony) to be applauded. Then at the end of the school day they had all the other students line the main hallway to applaud the 5th-graders as they left the building for the final time as students of this school. So DS has "left the building," moving from elementary into a new stage, middle school.

Remembering....

I need to remember something tonight......DD lost her first tooth!! So I need to remember to play the Tooth Fairy. She was quite nervous about this occurrence (it had been very loose for several days but she wouldn't let me near it), but excited at the same time. This afternoon DD & I went to one of the local high schools to see their performance of "Once Upon A Mattress" which is a version of The Princess and the Pea. DD absolutely loved the musical (she loves going to the local high schools' theatrical productions), but about half-way through the first half of the performance she became panicked as her loose tooth wiggled enough to cause the gum to start bleeding. She was adamant that I not pull it there (she wanted DH to watch when she had the first one taken out) but was not happy at all about the bleeding. I quickly gave her a tissue to help staunch the little bit of bleeding so we could make it through the rest of the performance. As soon as we got home, she grabbed DH's hand, I reached in, and out the tooth quickly came. She looked up at me and said, "Did it come out already?" in quite a bit of astonishment. She was sure it would hurt, despite her older brother's reassurances that it would not (and despite having watched me pull out one of his just a couple of weeks ago without him even flinching). After getting over the shock, she ran to look in the mirror to see what she now looked like. Her comment? "Mom, I think that after a while people's smiles start to look a little boring, so losing teeth is one way to make them interesting again." Said, of course, with a big, gap-toothed grin.